Weiner Admits He Sent Lewd Photos
Cell phone images click
In quiet office
Photographs in frames behind my back
The only witnesses
In the sacred silence
Power overwhelms me
As I flex
For the camera Tuesday, June 7
Monday, June 6
Tailsmans
adapted from Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man
Attacked by his own
With punches, kicks, and club
Medicines, pelts and bones,
Thrown into the Sabi River
Holy objects sink in rushing waters,
Powers leeched by rock and rain
Like Prospero,
The n’anja abjures rough magic
But he misses
The smoke of burning sheep fat,
Catching evil spirits in their plumes;
Conjuring ancestors,
Seeking their truth;
Longs for lost root and bark,
Horn and herb
Sunday, June 5
30 Years Ago
As AIDS Turns 30, Scientists Reminisce
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/05/136972454/as-aids-turns-30-scientists-reminisce
Skeletons line the sidewalk
Beautiful, wasted men
Bruises blossoming on thin arms
Young men with strange sarcoma
Speckling skin like berries or blood
Mystifying doctors
Local news thick with obituaries
Gristly, brutal deaths
Bathhouses are closing
Freedom, like steam, dissipating
Saturday, June 4
Mercy
Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; A Doctor Who Helped End Lives
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&hpw
Efficiency apartment
Salvation Army clothing
My love, death,
Intolerant of luxury
In modest homes
Or rustic campgrounds
Saline drips
Potassium chloride floods
Heart ceases
Then silence
Photograph their eyes
Capture the vacancy
Flat like fish
My own final moments
Kidneys failing
Imprisoned in hospital bed
Praying for mercy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dr-death-jack-kevorkian-dies-at-age-83/2010/12/03/AGhktuHH_story_2.html
Friday, June 3
Rebirth's Price
Nigeria: 32 Pregnant Teens Arrested in Baby-Trafficking Scheme
Belly swollen like
Egusi melon
He grows inside me
Swimming within,
Stealing my breath
At the sound of my voice,
He startles awake
He prefers plantain and cassava
Protests pepper soup
With small kicks
Soon he must leave me
I will cry and drink palm wine
With $25,000 naira
I’ll fly from this shanty town
To begin again
Thursday, June 2
Unbidden
Locked up for reading a poem
Poetry burst from your lips unbidden
Escaping through clenched teeth
Rising like dawn;
Like crocus in spring;
Like crocus in spring;
Like 5,000 fists,
Waving on the streets of Bahrain.
Waving on the streets of Bahrain.
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"We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice Don't you hear their cries, don't you hear their screams?”
Ayat al-Gormezi, poet
Wednesday, June 1
Starter Home
Minneapolis Housing Market: Busted, again
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2011/05/minneapolis_housing_market_bus.shtml
Storybook cottage,Homestead house
Built in 1900
Surrounded by plains
Cornfields and pasture burst from earth
Soon eclipsed by miles of modest bungalows
Well tread parquet floors
Dining room walls kissed by crimson
Bedroom, pale green of sage
Basement laced with wooden beams, smelling of mildew and time
Who's once strong hands planted
Who's once strong hands planted
Your bleeding hearts and peony?
Lilac in lavender and white
Cranberry, a riot of soft pink blossom
Lilies of the valley sprouting by the rusty spigot
Another planted tall orange Tiger Lily near the creaky steps
Ornamental willow, like an over sized bonsai
Surrounded by bright yellow Blanket Flower.
Cottage yarrow, Russian Sage line the garden bed
Hens and Chicks pepper your flagstone path
I too left my mark
In dirt sewn by generations of owners:
Pink Echinacea, Black Eyed Susan
Conjure prairies of old,
Conjure prairies of old,
Joe Pye Weed, tall man with stooped shoulders,
Guards the porch.
Guards the porch.
Morning Glory climbs weathered metal,
Hostas punctuate the deep shade.
Sweat and soil
Sunshine and snow
I remember
Cold winter wind stealing through thin windows,
your quiet corners,
The slant of sunlight in borrowed rooms.
Cold winter wind stealing through thin windows,
your quiet corners,
The slant of sunlight in borrowed rooms.
Tuesday, May 31
inspired by Nudging Young Women To Think About Fertility
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/31/136401095/nudging-young-women-to-think-about-fertility
Time marches like a high school band
Horns wailing, drums beating,
Twirling batons, sweating in polyester
Ears stopped with cotton
You turn your back to the parade,
As time, like a mugger,
Steals gold from your hair
And babies from your womb.
Monday, May 30
Sacrifice
inspired by Changes in Oregon Law Put Faith-Healing Parents on Trial
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30followers.html?_r=1&hpw
Holy hands laid
On her small chest
A tiny bird, a wounded rabbit
Flesh, blood, bones binding spirit
He anointed our baby with oil
She glistened,
A sacred being, broken, perfect
We waited for burning bushes
Parting seas, fish and loves.
Shunned herbs, poultices.
Murmured prayers
She grew still.
She grew still.
We cursed His Name
Sunday, May 29
Kewpie Doll; Gas Mask
inspired by Chernobyl - 24 years on
In an abandoned fun park
A rusty carousel spins
In the breeze
Husks of buses and cars
Rot in snow and sun
In deserted classroom
Books remain opened on desks
Sheaves of yellowed paper cover floorboards
Peeling green paint and ripped curtains adorn
A room of toddler beds,
All empty.
Lying in the corner,
a Kewpie doll, a gas mask
Saturday, May 28
Charade
How to spot a psychopath
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/jon-ronson-how-to-spot-a-psychopath
In a sea of slovenly men with vacant eyes
I wear pin stripes
My steady, dark eyes
Calculate its effect
Why Broadmoor Psychiatric?
Attacked a homeless man
Kicked him until rage subsided
Into song
Faked lunacy to escape prison
Quoting Clockwork Orange, Blue Velvet,
Ted Bundy
Locked up for twelve years
Away from
Mother, with her gin tears,
Her endless stream boyfriends,
Needles and tie-offs.
Now my name is ‘psychopath’
How do the sane cross their legs?
Interact with the deranged?
Express remorse?
Friday, May 27
Unbroken
They had 24 minutes to escape the twister
Hiding under a stairwell,
Or in airless closets,
Praying in bathtubs,
Clinging to children,
As walls and roofs peel away
Wind whips
Uprooting oak and cottonwood,
Tossing pick-up trucks and tractors
Fence flying like a
Metal bird
Couch in treetop
Chandelier on sidewalk
Everything inverted
Crystal vase, strangely unbroken
Surrounded by an avalanche of loss
Thursday, May 26
On the Arrest of Ratko Mladic
Executions Were Mladic’s Signature, and Downfall
In Srebenica
Your soldiers gave
Chocolate wrapped in golden foil
To Muslim boys,
Sweets before slaughter.
In Sarajevo
You withheld electricity, food, water,
Burned our cathedrals and mosques to ash.
You shot us at soccer games,
Waiting in endless lines for water,
At the market, bartering for bread.
You destroyed our harvest,
Bound our hands and escorted us, still breathing,
To our graves
Wednesday, May 25
Vagabound
Leather Man, Mysterious 19th-Century Wanderer, Will Remain So
Leather man
Clad in tall boots,
Soft as Lamb’s Ear
Coat crafted of musty hides,
Pants, a rough patchwork of pelt and skin,
Hat and scarf of suede and buff.
Tramping on railroads,
Favoring sardines and brandy, rough bread and dark beer,
Sleeping in lean-to’s and rock shelters,
Surviving blizzards and twisters,
Smelling of smoke and earth,
Walking 365 miles each month,
Sleeping in a pauper’s grave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherman_%28vagabond%29
Tuesday, May 24
6:01
Make My Bed? But You Say the World’s Ending
When the apocalypse didn’t come
I knew my life was over.
College fund emptied
By parents who dragged us to Times Square
Bearing garbage bags full of
Bibles with cheap plastic covers
Mother will sit on the calico couch
Too dejected for dishes or showers or paying bills or cooking dinner.
Father ,too listless for working or mowing or speaking or protecting,
Devotes whole days to numerology and prayer
Like overgrown children, or lunatics,
They gave it all away for the rapture
Too witless to realize the sun would still rise,
Shedding light on our diminished future
Monday, May 23
Blackmarket Blood
In Bulgaria, a black market in blood is flourishing as donors become more and more scarce
Black market sales of blood
By bearded men in a haze of tobacco,
Outside of the emergency room.
Desperate relatives count worn bills
Paying dearly for red vials
Life, for a price
Sunday, May 22
Silent Genocide
SKorea, US to investigate veterans’ claims Agent Orange was buried at US base in South Korea
Working in darkness
Roped muscles straining
Fifty grunts in filthy fatigues
Digging deep hole
A mass grave
for cardboard boxes of Agent Orange
Seeping through the centuries
Into soil and ground water
Silent genocide
Our parting gift
Saturday, May 21
The Devil You Know
At Hussein shrine, nostalgia for a strong leader
Filing past marble tomb
Festooned with plastic carnations,
Purple and green lights flicker
Children throw sweets
We pay respect to
a jackal bearing blood drenched fang,
Our fallen leader
(Don’t think of how Uday and Qusay,
Would select a treasured daughter,
Devour and throw her away,
Predator and prey)
Look how these weak leaders quake
Without Saddam
(Forget the Kurds he gassed
The thousand daily terrors of his reign)
When he ruled,
Electricity flickered from outlets,
Children walked to school
Knowing whom to fear
Friday, May 20
On the Cancellation of British Literature
Fighting with only bare hands,
Characters under the spell of words
Beowulf vanquishes Grendel,
Hangs the monster’s bloody arm above the mead hall,
And sails home on ancient seas
Prioress, Wyf of Bath,
Monk and Miller
Ride on palfrey and stallion from
Canterbury, tales all told
Arthur reminisces about pulling steel from stone,
As Merlin languishes in the Hawthorne tree
Lady Macbeth scrubs lily white hands
Seeing only divine blood
While her husband longs for holy, restive sleep
Lady of Shallott weaves tapestries in her crumbling tower,
Viewing the world through rippled reflection
Keats's lovers dance on Grecian urn,
Trees forever blooming
Characters under the spell of words
Live on, unbidden
Scops, singing stories
Scops, singing stories
To empty rooms.
Thursday, May 19
Telomeres, The Oracle
The £400 test that tells you how long you'll live
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-163400-test-that-tells-you-how-long-youll-live-2284639.html
I.
Sooth-sayer tracing lifeline across
Palm unblemished by callous or cut
Searching for breaks, fissures
Teasing out time's tale
II.
Telomeres,
Chromosomal caps ,
Shortened by cellular division,
Revealing true age
III.
Oracles of future,
Or lack thereof,
We bow to God of science,
Praying for time
Seeking,
Oedipus- like,
Terrible revelation
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