November 8, 2017
America, Not Always So Beautiful
Not so beautiful to the thousands of families burnt out of their homes or flooded only to be stiffed by the insurance companies and an underfunded FEMA who who do not care for them.
Not so beautiful to the three million Americans in Puerto Rico who don’t have electricity or enough food.
Not so beautiful to bicycle riders who get run over by drunks who the law allows to keep driving our roads.
Not so beautiful to the 50,000 Americans killed each year by gun fanatics who can’t get the mental healthcare they need.
Not so beautiful to the sick and dying Americans who suffer a lack of healthcare so the rich can buy new summer homes.
Not so beautiful to the millions of immigrant children thrown in jail and deported back to a country they hardly know.
Not so beautiful to American women who face discrimination and sexual harassment on the job and at home.
Not so beautiful to people of color who face racism every day.
Not so beautiful to American citizens threatened with nuclear war by a president too narcissistic and too sociopathic to face reality.
Not so beautiful to the people who are not rich enough to afford the lies the rich tell themselves about how beautiful they imagine America might be.
And it wouldn’t be so beautiful to Jesus Christ. He threw the rich moneylenders out of the temple, when they sold their souls for such riches.
And it wouldn’t be so beautiful to Martin Luther King, Jr. to hear that his dream has not become true.
Not always so beautiful to me.
When the Star Bangled Banner plays, I kneel out of respect for the human dignity and justice this country no longer offers.
(All text by me, Art by Anne Abrams.)
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May 9, 2017
From Tesora
I look at her hands
on my hands
on her stomach.
A baby.
I hope to see
into the future,
but all I see is
the basket of shadows
the lamplight makes
of our fingers.
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December 18, 2014
Rondeau At The Train Stop
It bothers me: the genital smell of the bay
drifting toward me on the T stop, the train
circling the city like a dingy, year-round
Christmas display. The Puritans were right! Sin
is everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-bound
in the population. it bothers me
because it’s summer now and sticky – no rain
to cool things down; heat like a wound
that will not close. Too hot, these shameful
percolations of the body that bloom
between strangers on a train. It bothers me
now that I’m alone and singles foam
around the city, bothered by the lather, the rings
of sweat. Know this bay’s a watery animal, hind-end
perpetually raised: a wanting posture, pain
so apparent, wanting so much that it bothers me.
Rondeau At The Train Stop By Erin Belieu.
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December 3, 2014
New poem by that upstart poet, Walt Whitman:
“To Bryant, the Poet of Nature”
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September 28, 2014
Position Needed
United States Secretary of Peace:
an Executive Cabinet position to
be appointed by enlightenment
itself. This Secretary may not be
removed by any president ever.
Secretary of Defense answers to
Secretary of Peace who has veto
power over anything it says or does.
The United States Secretary of Peace
answers to no one but to peace itself.
(Photo by Anne Abrams)
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August 8, 2012
Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson, The Text
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
—”Wild nights! Wild nights!” is a poem of sexual passion. Colonel Higginson, her editor, wrote:
One poem only I dread a little to print–that wonderful ‘Wild Nights,’—lest the malignant read into it more than that virgin recluse ever dreamed of putting there. Has Miss Lavinia [Emily Dickinson’s sister] any shrinking about it? You will understand & pardon my solicitude. Yet what a loss to omit it! Indeed it is not to be omitted.
The myth of Emily Dickinson as some kind of virgin recluse?
We poet gots passion!
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July 31, 2012
I’ve been reading a collection of the poems of Charles Simic. I like his poems. He is a Serbian American and was named the 15th poet laureate of the United States. I love the way he juxtaposes ordinary images with evocative ones. When questioned about his style, he once said: “I wanted something seemingly artless and pedestrian to surprise the reader by conveying so much more. In other words, I wanted a poem a dog can understand. Still, I love odd words, strange images, startling metaphors, and rich diction, so I’m like a monk in a whorehouse, gnawing on a chunk of dry bread while watching the ladies drink champagne and parade in their lacy undergarments.” At another time he said: “In America, if you want to know where the heart is you listen to the blues and country music.” This juxtaposition is also something Margot Suydam does well in her work (found below). Here are two excerpts of his:
“I like to cloister myself
Watching my thoughts roam
Like a homeless family
Holding on to their children
And their few possessions
Seeking shelter for the night.”
and:
“Friends of the small hours of the night:
Stub of a pencil, small notebook,
Reading lamp on the table,
Making me welcome in your circle of light.”
Here are four of his best poems from “The Future & Other Poems.”
http://www.pen.org/blog/?p=10928
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March 28, 2012
Yogi Berra
I sit in my window in springtime
writing a story about life and death
in World War II. Just past the view
of my notebook is a dogwood tree.
Half its buds are purple, half the blossoms
are pink, half the blossoms are lavender.
There is only one day in a year
the tree shows such color.
Fifteen people walk past it
talking on phones, gazing at feet,
texting friends in far states of mind.
One woman crosses the street to it
and looks around as if surprised
that no one sees a burning bush.
She aims her eyes and camera.
Another in a lavender top
stops and looks into it as if
it’s a mirror:
it is one
and she is one.
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March 9, 2012
What Freddie Stole
Dad’s beagle tugs a bone from
under my boot and sprints
around me. I cut him off against
the fence. He drops it and barks.
He slurps it up again and runs
behind the rose bush. I sit down.
He peeks out. Chase me, he says.
I let the walnut tree rub my back.
He lays the bone beside his paws.
Orange from the sun sets in his eyes.
His tongue wags like a tail.
A flight of geese honk over Norm’s farm
and I hear their calls echo off the hill.
Don’t you know he’s never coming back,
that he’ll never rattle your water bowl again?
I’m not going back in there—
that living room is too full of polite.
I didn’t announce it was Dad in the canister
although he would have liked the audience.
He would tell his bullfrog jokes again.
He can learn to listen now.
When Steve held the canister up
they squared their shoulders to him
one last time. I could see in their eyes
what they didn’t want to know.
I let Freddy back inside.
They didn’t wait long.
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