Reflecting Pools

on the National Mall^*

fighting for civil rights
exploiting nativist frights

images of anti-war young
America The Beautiful sung

the filming of Forest Gump
now filled with murky gunk

passers-by to sanity

fractured reflections of history

^*The reflecting pools on the National Mall consists of the Capitol Reflecting Pool on the east end of the Mall, the World War II Memorial Pool west of the Washington Monument and the prominent Reflecting Pool east of the Lincoln Memorial.

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placed in Poets United Poetry Pantry: Week #15

Bridge to fear

Four old monsters were playing a round
of contract bridge. Nothing profound.
Dracula, The Wolfman, and Frankenstein's creature,
and The Mummy was dummy in this nightly feature.

"What do you fear?" growled Wolfman to his buds.
The creature led with a Jack of clubs.
"Fire! Fire!" was all he could grunt,
and fearing too his play a bad punt.

"Crosses and sunlight," Dracula hissed.
"Closed spaces!" screeched Mummy, not to be missed.
Wolfman scratched his big hairy ear:
"Silver and wolfsbane, I guess, is all that I fear."

"People don't realize we have fears too."
Wolfman went on, "They have no clue."
Dracula grew restless, the hour was late.
A rising sun soon would seal his sad fate.

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placed in Poets United Think Tank #21: Fear

At the beach, bums

At the beach, bums
catching waves of salt-
tasting foam,
a pier jutting out
seeking surfers
bent low over their wash-
boards picking up sand-
dollar tips.

Poems in the cloud

I saw all books of poems and prose
float out to sea,
like flounder floating dead, reposed,
as dead as they can be;
their paper turned to so much mush
and print washed out.
The world would seem to come to hush
but I'd no cause to pout.

I saw a cloud come overhead —
a cumulus.
My tablet cast of glass instead
of stone awoke and thus
it searched the cloud's electric muse
and found a poem;
and lightning down it was transfused —
the poem had found its home.

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placed in Poets United Poetry Pantry — Week 14

HOWL – my impression

HOWL — the movie — is 85 minutes of pure delight. It is a mini class in poem criticism, the philosophy of poetry, and a poet's self-analysis all rolled up in an obscenity trial, a recitation, and an interview. All sorts of writers will relate to this movie, but especially poets.


Note: In my viewing of HOWL today, the only part that left me a bit cold was the animation (of some of the recitation). I didn't get it. Everything else, though, was HAWT. And at the end there is some video of the real Allen Ginsberg's Father Death Blues.


Update (Oct 26, 2010): Apparently James Franco (Allen Ginsberg) is not yet done with gay poets as he is slated to direct The Broken Tower, a movie about Hart Crane.


Allen Ginsberg's recitation of HOWL (from PennSound):
Ginsberg/SFSU-1956/Ginsberg-Allen_04_Howl_SFSU_10-25-56.mp3

Ugly truth

There is more beauty in ugly truth
than in made-up gloss for fools

where war is but talking points,
or just one of nations' tools,

or finding heroes to annoint
whose roughness we choose to smooth.

It's ugly truth that should stop the bull
that sends more men to die

and kill ever more innocent ones
whose babies we never hear cry,

who never themselves had held a gun
— and that is beautiful.

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placed in Poets United Think Tank #20: The ugly that is beautiful

A bird just landed

On my window sill today
he fluffed and stuffed
and told me "No way"
will you be hidden
in your cloistered room
come out with me
and let us play

I just clicked on FOX News Channel

I just clicked on FOX News Channel.

The Christian hour with Glenn Beck.

How global warming is an evil myth
created by socialists,
like evolution.

What planet am I on?

Pink

(once a color of oppression)

makes me think

a color of icecreamation
a color of beutification
a color of sexualnation
a color of decoation
a color of izodation
a color of fanation
a color of bunniation
a color of liberation



placed in Poets United Think Tank #19: Color

Geek poets . . .

are as finely tuned as string theorists:
they lend precision to their style
with a smile,
and science is their clef,
and their BFF.

Citations

Like a sponge soaking in
the creation of others¹,
poetry or prose
with citations²
can have many mothers.

A sponge well soaked we know can
have plenty of heft.
But dried out, and light,
there is only
a simple skeleton left³.




1. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178345
2. http://philosophersplayground.blogspot.com/2010/10/citation.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge

Carl Paladino's pride

I saw Carl Paladino
in a gay pride parade
on a prancing palomino
horse-trading away.

I woke from this dream
but all that remained
was the horse-dung that steamed
near the street's sewer drain.



CNN: Carl Paladino's (R-NY) statement on gay pride
Update Oct 12, 2010: an apology

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placed in Poets United Poetry Pantry #12

They had nothing to lose

They had nothing to lose,
bullied teens, whose only clues
that they are hated gay
were from the stupid among us,
who will soon send fore
a Teapublican caucus,
who will hate them more.

She wiggled her nose

She wiggled her nose.
That was back when she knows.
Something! Like Samantha's Bewitched.
But not anymore.
She should have stayed
With her witchy ways.



to Christine O'Donnell

O Rahm, O Rahm, Emanuel

And ransom captive Obamascare
That mourns in missing finger here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emanuel
Chicago come to thee, Emanuel.

O Rahm, O Rahm, Emanuel.