Patience

Felling virgin forest with butter knife

Digging tunnel with silver spoon

Doggie paddling across Atlantic

Counting blades of grass in prarie 

Waiting for news.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

adapted from France's Veil Ban Goes into Effect on Monday

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Frances-Veil-Ban-Goes-into-Effect-on-Monday-119587889.html

“Under the legislation, women wearing the face veil in public risk fines of up to $200 and taking re-education classes.” 

Wearing sun drenched African fabrics

Or candy colored saris

Or jeans tight as snake's skin

Bright as tropical birds

Women fly through Parisian markets

Buying dates and figs, baguettes and brie

Brush tanned shoulders with others enveloped in

Deep black silence of the Burka

Soon, blackbirds will be skinned

Faces will strain against sunlight,

Shrinking from hungry gazes of foreign men,

Longing for the quiet shade of cover,

Desiring only to know God

Ode to the Maxwell House Haggadah

adapted from Giving a Haggadah a Makeover

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/nyregion/09haggadah.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

Spotted with matzo crumbs, speckled with wine

We return each year

To savor your stilted translation

Your ‘dung heaps’ and your ‘vermin’

 Your dismissal of sons

'the wicked; the simple; the one who doesn’t ask’

Already an old man in 1930’s

Dragged into our century

by errant English teacher

Who plucked your ‘thees’ and ‘thous’,

So many fussy flowers,

And stripped you clean to bone,
Dry as unleavened bread 

Now you sit at our table

Politically correct as a sophomore in college

Modern as Starbucks

Pages coldly clean

Awaiting High Tide

inspired by Thousands Of Starfish Wash Up On South Carolina Beach

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/dead-starfish-south-carolina-pawleys-island_n_846298.html

Generation of sea stars

Line the shore

As if pinpricks of light tumbled from night sky

Calcified voyagers  from deepest blue

Piled upon each other

Awaiting high tide

Psy Ops

inspired by Sesame Street comes to Pakistan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/sesame-street-pakistan?INTCMP=SRCH

Elmo parachutes down

Over the Arabian Sea,

Treks the Khyber Pass

Khaki fatigues cling to his bright red fur

Called upon to rescue 3 million children

Ernie and Bert study Urdu, and contact their agents

Cookie Monster snacks on Galab Juman, biding his time

Untethered

adapted from Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access

Bent-backed, arthritic

Raisin-faced, shrunken

Old woman wields axe

Not to sever a chicken’s head

Nor to fell a tree and haul branches

She scans scrubby ground for copper cable

Golden coils, buried bounty,

Mean hearty dark bread and meat on her table

Bringing the axe down hard

As if to slaughter a lamb or goat,

All of Armenia free-falls into itself

Untethered    

Imagine, if you will,

If an axe’s swipe  could reverse time itself,

Diaspora inverted

8 million Armenians journey home

Rapture

adapted from The Truth About Sex and Exercise 
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/the-truth-about-sex-and-exercise/

Christmas, for instance, has been identified as a heart attack trigger, as have overeating, waking in the early morning, Mondays, job strain, air pollution, using cocaine and living through an earthquake.

White lights twinkling

Roughly cut tree, cranberry garland

Brightly wrapped gifts

Filled with heartache

Beef bourguignon

Bottle of Shiraz, blackberries and oak

Cake layered with chocolate mousse

Dense as darkness

Awakening at first light

Buttery yellow sunrise

Heart singing, then suddenly, silence

Earth shaking

China cabinet clattering

The world trembles

And so do we

Flotsam

adapted from 'Moby-Duck': When 28,800 Bath Toys Are Lost At Sea

http://www.wbur.org/npr/134923863/moby-duck-when-28-800-bath-toys-are-lost-at-sea

World’s largest flock of rubber ducks

Bobs across the Pacific

Floating with plastic beavers to Alaska

Blue turtles swim

Day-glow green frogs 

Jump across the world’s most immense tub

To Japan

Nikes run across the ocean

Floating partner- less, each shoe without his match

Walking on water

From California to Queen Charlotte Islands

http://beachcombersalert.org/index.html

Enflamed

adapted from Afghan protests continue against Qur'an burning

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/04/quran-burning-protests-continue-afghanistan

Kerosene

Noxious

As hatred

Aggressive

As stupidity

Koran in flames

Pastor,

Your only power?

Turning Kerosene turn to blood

Let your name

Remain unspoken  

Let our silence

Smother fire

Burning across oceans

Made in China

inspired by Chinese police detain artist Ai Weiwei

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/china-ai-weiwei-detained-police-beijing

I.

Marble floor of

A vast room

Blanketed with porcelain pumpkin seeds

Each of millions, delicately detailed

In Jingdezhen

Hundreds of hands

Working as one

Teenage boys, old women

Meticulously miming nature

II.

9,000 children’s backpacks

Candy colored

Arranged in Chinese characters

'她幸福地生活了七年在這個世界上

'She lived happily for seven years in this world'

In memory of

Sichuan earthquake

When China’s schools crumbled like cheap toys

III.

His father, Ai Qing, a poet,

Whose hands grew hard in forced work camps

of Mao’s Cultural Revolution

Yet still, he is unbowed

IV.

Studio demolished

To create ‘cultural corridor’

Attacked by police

Brutalized while filing complaint

In custody, again

V.

What government breaks the fingers of its artists?

Ai Weiwei

We wait for you

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/11/tate-modern-sunflower-seeds-review

Whitewash

adapted from The Mural Vanishes

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/the-mural-vanishes/?partner=rss&emc=rss

 

Whitewash

White paint

Hides our history

Diego Rivera’s

“Man at the Crossroads”

Beckons

Somber blond worker,  strong,

Eyes upturned to God

Cog in machine

At his feet, crops bloom

He is body, sun, sky, cells

Stern-faced Lenin governs one corner

 Hailed by workers

John D Rockefeller rules the other corner

Single malt scotch in hand

The painting strains to be seen

Singing beneath layers of thick white paint

Judy Taylor’s

“History of Labor in the State of Maine”

Beckons

Young  workers, children in grays and blues

Hold buckets

Tired women clutch handkerchiefs

Earnest men stare at ballot box

Proud laborers wave bright yellow flag,

The painting strains to be seen

Gasping beneath layers of thick white paint

Listen

adapted from Whale Songs and Elephant Loves

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/whale-songs/index.shtml

Whales are singing

Composing chants, moans

Otherworldly hums

Melodies evolve

Oceanic symphony in deepest blue

Throughout each life

Subtle re-imagining of community’s song

Elephants are speaking.

Sense the throbbing.

Off centered eardrums

Straining against silence,

Struggling to hear.

Eerie Light

adapted from Low Levels of Radiation Found in American Milk

http://www.theledger.com/article/20110331/ZNYT04/103313012?p=1&tc=pg

Mason jar of milk

Evokes cows grazing in storybook pastures,

Bright eyed babes, sucking on bottles,

Childhood sandwiches of peanut butter and jam

Bone builder,

Ivory elixir,

Emitting an eerie light

Statute of Limitations

inspired by Dieter Krombach, German Doctor, Faces Unusual French Trial Over Slain Girl

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/dieter-krombach-trial-kalinka-bamberski_n_842135.html

Accuser and accused

Both of us seventy years old

Limbs uncooperative

Approaching long slumber

Her father, stubborn bastard, 

wouldn’t leave me

To time’s caprice

He demands Justice, blindfolded bitch,

Unseeing girl

I awakened in blackness

Eyes covered in burlap

Kicked in head, in mouth

In genitals

Gasping for air

Dragged from my bed in Germany

Ferreted to France

Shackled to fence

Overlooking the courthouse

In frigid abyss of night,

Warmed only by the memory of
His daughter's curly blond hair, and shy smile

She grew even more darling in her terror

Second Assassination

Inspired by  Mahatma Gandhi Reportedly Depicted As Bisexual, Racist In New Biography

Ganhi-ji

Shrunken, yet  invincible

Of wizened face and ageless eyes

We remember your

March to the ocean

Making your salt from sea water

Wearing homespun

Fasting in protest’s name

Brahmacharya

Yet purity eluded you

Young girls in your cot

Naked as birth, as truth

‘Despite my best efforts, the organ remained aroused.

 It was an altogether strange and shameful experience.’
Longing to extinguish desire

                

Sending a reedy slip to fetch pumice

For your calloused, dirty feet

into wilds of  forest, where women were prey

She returned, tear stained, shaken

‘If some ruffian had carried you off and

You had met your death courageously,

my heart would have danced with joy.’

Summoning strength 

Bapu,

They warp your words,

a second assassination 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/28/mahatma-gandhi-bisexual

inspired by The New Grave Robbers

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28madoff.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all

Bilie Holiday struts away from the Metropolitan Hospital

Beauty restored, free to score a bag

Charlie Parker up and leaves the Stanhope Hotel

Paying riffs, licks, and blue notes

In swinging bars clouded with cigarette smoke,  of black and white photographic fame

Mark Twain is riding Halley’s Comet

Harbinger of his birth, no longer of his death

Frank Lloyd Wright stares at an empty grave in Taliesin

spring soil runs through his fingers

Amelia Earhart rises from her Electra on Phoenix Island

Ready to fly again

http://www.cmgworldwide.com/corporate/overview.html

Impotent Saviors

adapted from Libyan Woman Struggles to Tell Media of Her Rape 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/middleeast/27tripoli.html?hpw

Eman El Obeidy

Your protectors are lost children

Wielding cameras

Escaping personal apocalypse

You raced to the hotel

Harboring foreign journalists

Face, a blossoming bruise

Thigh  raked with scrapes

Hands and feet ringed with welts

Fifteen of Qaddafi’s men.

Plundered.

Burst open.
Desecrated.

Despoiled.

Dishonored.

Violated.

Invaded.

Ransacked.

Defecated.

Urinated.

Tainted.

Assaulted.

Pillaged.

Ruined.
Outraged.

Screaming your nightmare

As camera shutters snapped and keyboards clicked

You begged reporters for deliverance

Hotel waiters

Actually plainclothes police

Brandished steak knives

Rushed you into unmarked van

Mouth roughly covered

Yet still you screamed

Eman El Obeidy

Your protectors are lost children

Wielding only words

Highway Shrine

Shrines line the speedway

Plastic rosebuds, disintegrating ribbons

Mortality’s valentines

Names unspoken

Spirits rise from the byways

Swimming Upstream

adapted from Jesuits settle NW abuse claims for $166 million

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j3TNNLigAb3qQeVpLaBxiu1MQzAA?docId=e43e04558be646299c55ad8bb8990e7f

Robbed of name

Stripped of clothing

Blankets dyed by grandmothers hands set aflame

Rag dolls ripped from small brown fingers

Braids shorn, scalps shaved to stubble

Doused with kerosene, bathed in lye

Native words ripped from our tongues

We languished in cold barracks, prisoners

In Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana , Alaska

Our holy bodies dirtied by priestly hands

We hungered

For blackberries, duck, rabbit

Longed to be salmon, swimming upstream to

Mother and father

Earth and sky

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j3TNNLigAb3qQeVpLaBxiu1MQzAA?docId=e43e04558be646299c55ad8bb8990e7f

http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/a_f/erdrich/boarding/keyissues.htm