Aid Workers Reach Vermont Towns Cut Off by Floodwaters
Land of green, happily ever after hills
Your treetops are underwater
Your covered bridges are floating in sodden rivers
Your leaves will turn soon
Burning orange and crimson
Who will see them?
Wednesday, August 31
Tuesday, August 30
Beginning
Science and Human Life
I saw your genesis
Five interlocking cells
Pulsing with luminescence
A speck of life,
From poppy seed to sesame;
From blueberry to kidney bean;
From grape to kumquat;
From fig to lime
The miracle of your creation,
A cluster of cells,
Rendered under telescope
In black and white.
http://www.babycenter.com/6_your-pregnancy-13-weeks_1102.bc
Beginning
Science and Human Life
I saw your genesis
Five interlocking cells
Pulsing with luminescence
A speck of life,
From poppy seed to sesame;
From blueberry to kidney bean;
From grape to kumquat;
From fig to lime
The miracle of your creation,
A cluster of cells,
Rendered under telescope
In black and white.
http://www.babycenter.com/6_your-pregnancy-13-weeks_1102.bc
Monday, August 29
Game
World Of Warcraft Addiction Made Video Games Crowd Out Man's Real Life
Dreaming of
Battling demons and monsters
As baby cries
Avatar protecting
Voluptuous maidens
As pregnant wife complains
Hero, warrior, dragon-slayer, quester
Reduced to diaper changer, bill payer, drone
Sunday, August 28
Tropical Storm
Nearly 75% lose power in Richmond and Tri-Cities areas
Tree through roof
Lying next to me in bed
Leaves and bark on white sheets
Rain and wind within
My son, once sleeping,
Lost forever under the branches
Friday, August 26
On Refusing CVS
http://www.babycenter.com/0_chorionic-villus-sampling-cvs_328.bc?page=1
Floating in darkness
Surrounded by white
Your tiny arms brush your forming face
Forgive us for glimpsing your ancient, watery world
What mysteries lie within?
Coils of DNA blaze with your beginnings
Genes float in a bath of placenta
But what if seeking to know you would destroy you?
Thursday, August 25
Wednesday, August 24
Palpable
Images Show Mass Graves in Sudan, Group Says
Deep in Nuba Mountains
Rows of freshly dug graves
Sear the landscape
Piles of bodies, shrouded in white
Summarily buried, hidden
Yet nothing can bury the scent of burning hair,
Greasy smoke of the pyre,
The palpable presence of absence
Tuesday, August 23
Quake
UPDATE: 5.9 earthquake rocks Virginia, East Coast
Buildings swayed,
Rumbling like a freight train,
Thumping like deep base,
Threatening as a terrorist attack,
Threatening as a terrorist attack,
Trembling like your hands,
As the earth grew still.
Monday, August 22
Wordless
The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky
Stolen from your mother
Who turned her back at your birth,
Shielding you from grabbing hands of humans,
Who raised you as their own.
Dressed in overalls,
Fed lavish meals,
Nestled as a child,
Taught sign language.
Given images of chimps and people
You placed yourself with humans.
Then abducted again.
Moved to a windowless lab,
Drilled by grad students,
After never ending language classes,
You began to bite your caretakers.
Abandoned to live in a cage,
With chimps for the first time,
Your silent hands, limp and wordless.
Sunday, August 21
Saturday, August 20
Barefoot
Congo River luxury condos cause Kinshasa controversy
Barefoot men
Drain the river Congo
To build Manhattan of Kinshasa
Carrying bricks on heads
On street littered with rusty nails
Friday, August 19
Accident of Birth
Where Children Sleep
Golden child
Dimpled and tanned,
Clad like a bumblebee,
Sleeps surrounded by crowns, trophies, and blue ribbons
Romanian boy
With resigned eyes,
Sleeps on an uncovered mattress strewn with leaves,
Overlooking the lights of Rome
Seven year old girl
With wild hair, draped in flannel,
Holds a small hammer,
Works in the granite quarry and
Sleeps in one room with her family,
With tumbling bricks and thatched roof in Katmandu
Skinny boy
Holding a bag of refuge
Lives in a trash heap in Cambodia and
Sleeps on top of abandoned tires on a dirty sheet in Phnom Penh
Young man in three piece suit
With arrogant eyes
Sleeps in his tidy bedroom on Fifth Avenue or Spain or the Hamptons
Thursday, August 18
The Practical Man
Mexican Catches Real Fairy, Preserves It in Formaldehyde
Stretching for sweetness,
Picking mountains of guavas
Surrounded only by bees and heat
When I brushed against eerie light,
A faerie,
With translucent wings
And darting eyes
Skittering like a violet hummingbird
Her skin, a glowing purple,
Like flesh of a bruised fruit.
She sang, an angel choir,
Weaving hopes and promises into frenzied dream
But I held her tight,
Stuffed her in a bottle,
Drowned her in formaldehyde.
Now pesos rain from villagers’ hands
Wednesday, August 17
Let Him Be Haunted
US tobacco firms sue over graphic labels
http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/CigaretteWarningLabels/default.htm
Will he reach for another
Despite the image of
A plume of smoke encircling
A diapered infant?
Let him be haunted by photographs of white vapors rising
From hole in clavicle;
Blackened lung
Dusted with soot;
Rotting, yellowed teeth
In a mouth lined with burns
Will addiction’s throb overpower
The foreboding of elderly man
Wearing an oxygen mask?
No. He will close his eyes to
Chest of cadaver
Lined with gunmetal sutures;
Tears of sobbing woman
As she mourns alone.
Let Him Be Haunted
US tobacco firms sue over graphic labels
Will he reach for another
Despite the image of
A plume of smoke encircling
A diapered infant?
Let him be haunted by photographs of white vapors rising
From hole in clavicle;
Blackened lung
Dusted with soot;
Rotting, yellowed teeth
In a mouth lined with burns
Will addiction’s throb overpower
The foreboding of elderly man
Wearing an oxygen mask?
No. He will close his eyes to
Chest of cadaver
Lined with gunmetal sutures;
Tears of sobbing woman
As she mourns alone.
Tuesday, August 16
Bugged
Air Force Eyes Micromachine Bugs That Can Spy
Metallic wings of the dragonfly
Beat each millisecond
Covering an infinitesimal camera
Enemy air thick with electric moths
Recording each breath,
Iridescent cicadas
Calibrating distances
Machinated mass of insects
Poised for reconnaissance
Monday, August 15
Profit
Shell profits jump 77% on higher oil price
Profits soar
But oil will surge
Cascading into ocean,
Coating coral reef in inky night,
Staining kelp and carp.
Sunday, August 14
Locked Door
He served 10 presidents, but died alone in squalor: What happened to Theodoric C. James?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/he-served-10-presidents-but-died-alone-in-squalor-what-happened-to-theodoric-c-james/2011/08/11/gIQAdz5zDJ_story_2.html
He ----of the cracked windows and
Broken down porch,
Fills rusty buckets with his own filth
He---- the corpse rotting within the
Decrepit row house
He ---- advised ten presidents,
Read top secret cables,
Smiled for the camera,
Linking arms with heads of state.
He ---- died famished and forgotten,
Behind a locked door.
Saturday, August 13
Collateral Damage
Over 160 children reported among drone deaths
Swollen lips
Growing purple
Brown eyes mercifully shut
Or open, vacant
Bruised and bloodied
Or strangely sleeping
Images of dead children
Rendering the truth
Unreadable
Friday, August 12
Open House
Richmond Apartments For Rent
Strange feet traipse across your burnished floors
Foreign fingers touch your grandmother’s silver service
Outsiders study your gilt framed photographs
In cool appraisal of their worth
Thursday, August 11
Liberty: Closed for Repairs
Statue of Liberty to Close for a Year
Liberty is closed
Citizens may no longer climb her narrow staircase within,
Touch her oxidized green walls,
Or view the harbor from her crown.
Liberty needs reconstruction;
Please forgive the delay.
Wednesday, August 10
Mama
My name,
Embroidered with silver thread,
Alights the darkening dreamscape.
Whispering to you from the rushing river,
The song of birds,
The falling blossoms.
My name,
Spoken as if a prayer,
Soothes your terror,
Shepherding you to your dreams.
Tuesday, August 9
Shattered
In Pictures: London's Burning, Day 3 http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/inpictures/2011/08/201188233856953939.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets
River of fire
Rages from blackened police car
Officers clad in sleek gear of battle,
Bearing battered silver shields,
Face angry youths in track suits
Arms filled with boxes of Nikes and cartons of cigarettes
Young faces dirty, defiant,
In London,
City of shattered glass and charred storefronts
Monday, August 8
Warhol Before "Warhol"
Brazenly
In black and white
Three girls in bikinis
One proudly erect,
Two laughing in the sunshine
Sunglasses reflecting waves
Young Andy Warhol at their feet
Studying grains of sand
Sunday, August 7
Operation Spring Wind
Letters from Drancy
Four thousand children
Ripped from their mothers’ arms
Using truncheons and ice water
Women, like animals,
Raged and bared teeth
Placed in cattle cars, all the same
Four thousand motherless children
In Vel de Hiv
With soiled clothes and knotted hair
Scavenging in the dust
Destined for Auschwitz
Friday, August 5
End of Detente
Russia uses dirty tricks despite U.S. ‘reset’
You are an advocate
For Peace,
A man with deep laugh lines and bright eyes,
An American in Russia
You find
Your door unlocked,
Cigarette butts on the carpet,
Blood in the bathroom,
A doctored photograph
Of yourself
With prostitutes
Or children
Awkwardly spliced
Yet strangely compelling
You fall to the floor,
Blameless yet burned
Thursday, August 4
Collaboration, disintegration
Wikipedia Is Slowly Dying
Thousands of lonely men
In drab efficiencies
Typed frantically on lap tops,
In silence of night,
Purple screens casting a sickly hue
Keyboards clicking
Punctuating the silence
They mapped the world of knowledge
Encyclopedia
Written by the unheard
(Men in their twenties working retail,
Selling books,
Making coffee)
Edited by the masses
Slowly falling out of use
Collaboration, disintegration
Wednesday, August 3
Spirit Bear
Kermode Bear
Spirit Bear walks in moonlight
Bright white against deep green
mooksgm'ol, Black bear the color of snow
Tuesday, August 2
Muslim teenagers convicted of criminal damage after spraying burkas onto scantily-clad models in Lynx poster
I.
Woman
Hair flowing, sultry mouth open,
Wearing feathery white wings,
As if an angel.
Breasts bursting from
Tight silk,
Legs straddling a molten pit
Of pearly steam.
II.
To look twice is a sin yet
How could a man look away?
Waiting for the bus to madrasa
Or walking to mosque,
Her wings
Mocking my devotion.
III.
Black paint covers
Her nakedness.
If only paint could cover
My desire.
Monday, August 1
Conversion
Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?
Annihilate your light
Sever your love
Extinguish your longing
Deny your truth
Recast yourself in borrowed robes
Strangle your desire
Shun your truthConversion
Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?
Annihilate your light
Sever your love
Extinguish your longing
Deny your need
Recast yourself in borrowed robes
Strangle your desire
Shun your truth
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