When volcanoes spew
sulphur, meteorites lace
the earth with holes,
and oceans begin to bubble,
will the lawyers care
that a fence bestows
proprietary rights
that soar to outer space?

Space and Fences – David Kerr

David Kerr, has lived most of his life in Africa (working at Universities in Malawi, Zambia, and, at present, Botswana).  He is a practitioner of theatre and media for transformation and human rights, about which he has written widely, including a prize-winning book, African Popular Theatre.  His collection of verse, Tangled Tongues, was published by Flambard Press (www.flambardpress.co.uk) in 2003.  His novel, Passages (written under the pseudonym Derrick Zgambo) was reissued in 2008 by Brown Turtle Press (www.brownturtlepress.com), USA.

Before I enter history (whose work
is that of an intern, vaguely patronized),
I want to say I’m sorry
for disappointing you, and to express what I’ve learned.
I thought that in my tense delivery,
its desperation so impacted
for so long that it seems, to me,
ease, you would recognize
a shared yearning of the soul: to hold
the foe down, then praise oneself for hurting him
as much as necessary but less than one could.
Admittedly my jokes, etc.,
failed; but isn’t every attempt
to be a regular guy, a white man,
just that, an attempt? Requiring lenience
from those who somehow benefit from it?

I would have spoken had I been allowed,
until my voice was gone, about my faith.
It’s like yours, but more so. To the Father, Son,
and other free-weights of the mind, it adds
a lurid epic, and a peculiarly resolute
denial of death. Trained thus,
I could espouse wholeheartedly whatever
you wished, kiss unborn babies, eat your food.
Because faith, I thought, was faith: your faith
that you in essence are as rich as I
though temporarily embarrassed; the faith
we share, that the wealth
of one is that of all; and mine,
that the barbed wire around factories
I buy in China is there for safety.
Surely, I felt, my faith had earned some slack.

But finally we let each other down.
A parody resents a parody
of itself, as well as the real thing.
Black fascist muslim communist jewish
bankers on welfare are coming
for your guns and other talismans of freedom;
you knew this but I didn’t. Or rather
I do, but we both know I’m safe from them,
and so they don’t exist for me
except as a convenience, like yourselves.
I wish you leaders who can feel your fear.
With them you may, as Kafka once foresaw,
march arm-in-arm, invincible, reclaiming
the cities from the unproductive, singing
full-throatedly while at each other’s throats.
For man is a wolf to man, but howls in chorus.

Romney at CPAC – Frederick Pollack

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both published by Story Line Press.  His work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Bateau, Chiron Review, etc.  His poems have appeared online in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, DIAGRAM, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, and Mudlark among others.  Recent Web publications in Faircloth Review, Camel Saloon, Kalkion. Pollack is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University.

 Lockdown – Steven Stark

Steven D Stark‘s  fiction and poetry have recently been published (or will be) in 3 am, Litn’Image, Mudlark, McSweeney’s, The Cafe Review, HOOT, Otoliths, Mobius, fleeting, and, among others, Clapboard House, where he won the short story prize. He lives in the Boston area where he was locked down, along with a million of his neighbors, while the police searched for the Marathon bombing suspect.

For Woody Guthrie

Haditha, Iraq, where 14 men, 3 women &
7 children were killed, Nov 19th, 2005.

Come all fair-minded people,
pray listen to my song,
You police a foreign country,
How things go badly wrong.

Small town down by the river,
no special claim to fame,
Till US troops were ambushed
And one of them was slain.

A passing car got peppered
Beneath a blazing sun.
Five bodies were recovered
But not one single gun.

They stormed the nearby houses
And heard their sergeant say
“Fire first, ask questions later,”
For someone had to pay.

Bad apples in a barrel,
The warning signs ignored,
Each time we turn a blind eye
Means bigger trouble stored.

Three women, seven children
And fourteen men lay dead.
The youngest still a toddler,
Aged one, the locals said.

It’s hard to find excuses
when so much blood was shed.
Yet no one has been punished,
No justice for the dead.

They shot some at close quarters,
A bullet in the brain.
An old man in a wheelchair
Was numbered with those slain.

I don’t know why we came here,
I’ve no idea at all,
‘less it’s for the money men
Who buy and sell our oil. 

The Haditha Massacre – Peter Branson

Peter Branson’s poetry has been published by journals in Britain, USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, including Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Anon, Envoi, The London Magazine, The Warwick Review, Iota, Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Poetry Nottingham, South, The New Writer, Crannog, The Raintown Review, The Columbia Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood, The Able Muse and Other Poetry. His first collection, “The Accidental Tourist”, was published in May 2008. A second collection was published at the beginning of last year by Caparison Press for ‘The Recusant’.

More recently a pamphlet has been issued by ‘Silkworms Ink’. He has won prizes and been placed in a number of competitions over recent years, including a ‘highly commended’ in the ‘Petra Kenny International’, first prizes in the ‘Grace Dieu’ and the ‘Envoi International’ and a special commendation in the 2012 Wigtown. His latest book, ‘Red Hill, Selected poems, 2000-2012’, by Lapwing Press, Ireland, is due later this year.

n.
1.) a recurring thought, beautiful as the temptation of sin, like an animal thought dead suddenly scrabbling to its feet 2.) the sound of unforgettable pain, breathing underwater, like shoes without owners strung from power lines 3.) a hole fallen into, like debt, burying our lives by inches of longing for status & things 4.) a waning moon drawing last breath above cold steel lines, a rail-bed frozen with ice, but the train engine in the distance keeping good time—as in, even old men with broken teeth need love 5.) resistance we are shaped against, as in, a strength that cannot be measured

 protest – henry 7 reneau

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words in fire to wake the world ablaze, & illuminated by courage, that empathizes with all the awful moments: a freight train bearing down with warning that blazes from the heart, like a chambered bullet exploding inadvertently.

The Invisible Hand is hitchhiking out of the country.
The Invisible Hand is burying its coins in the sand of offshore Cays.
The Invisible Hand is waving to us from above the heads of its slaves.

The Invisible Hand: I can see right through it.

The Invisible Hand has left oily fingerprints at war crime scenes
in… (dot-dot-dot)
The Invisible Hand is armed and dangerous. Known for concealed-carry.
Back away from the Hand!
The Invisible Hand needs to be handcuffed and led away

The Invisible Hand, where is it hiding? In your face.
What does it want? Its morality is of numbers, worship of entities
that lack sentience, that have been awarded citizenship, that can buy
government, icons, and ideas.

Humble the Hand. Make it show what’s in its Pockets.

—

Is the Invisible Hand not there?

—

Here it is.

—

Invisible Hand Chant

The Invisible Hand has goosed us in the wallet.
The Invisible Hand has performed a sleight-of-hand with our laws and economy.
The Invisible Hand pinches our pennies while floating the currency.

The Invisible Hand closes the hospital door and opens the prison door.
Wall St.: Take responsibility for the suffering you have caused the
world and the planet. Bail out the working poor. Empathy now!
Corporations are no more people than furniture in my house.

The Invisible Hand has no face, no heart, and no morality.

The Invisible Hand is a superstition. The Invisible Hand is an
hallucination. The Invisible Hand weaves fantastic charades.

The Invisible Hand  - Ivars Balkits

Ivars Balkits has most recently had poems and prose published on the web sites for ditch, Silenced Press, Merge Poetry Journal, and Counter Example Poetics. He was recipient of a 1999 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Ivars invites all Occupiers to add to the chant and use it at demonstration mic checks. Christopher Ridgway produced the audio recording.

for Larry Levis

My country greased civility.

My country embraces meme
and wraps superficial round
its skinnying shoulders.
My country cannot see straight
for it’s triggers and magazines.
And that is aspic. And tongue.
And a lark. My country lives
in detours and is no longer
ours, no longer what my love
and I invented.

At the table we weep for our country
that it may one day grow to love
itself, its characters and wilds.
Our country believes in collections
rather than birds and smoke.
Our country cannot see crumbling
streets for the buildings of neon
wrap my country’s bones in
dizzying light.

My love and I watch the foolish hand
stir the collective and change the topic.

My love and I hunch together
wondering how we lost it.

In the Country – Sean Mahoney

Sean lives with his wife, her parents, three dogs, and an Uglydoll in Santa Ana, CA. They have been there a year now. The palateras frequent their street and ring their bells. They ring their bells quite often. With the help of aspirin and water Sean recovers. Sean works in geophysics after studying literature and poetry in school. Go figure.

(in response to Billy Collins’ “Orient“)

No, I will not dwell on landscapes
colored with pretty prayer flags and
dragon-decorated temples, or villages
eternally shrouded in mist, the kinds
so easily conjured in armchair travel
fantasies, because— hello, have you read
the news lately? There is a building boom
in China and the national bird is now
the construction crane. In Changsha,
they built a 30-story hotel in two weeks,
and have plans for several more. In October,
thousands of factory workers doing piece-
work on the shiny new iPhone 5 went on strike
in Zhengzhou and in Taiyuan. Around these
factories, they’ve built metal nets to catch
the bodies of would-be suicides: overworked,
undertrained, poorly paid (we know the concept
here as liability). I do not bow from the fulcrum
of my waist and my talents do not include
“cultural dancing” or being able to cut your toenails
while giving you a blow job. The sound of my voice
is not soft like a bell or like a little saxophone: it is
nothing diminutive, and my children will tell you
that years ago, when their father spent the household
money on a used car someone had conned him into buying
sight unseen, I threw pots and pans against the wall
and told him to go to hell. And yes, I have another side,
I have many sides, but they are all grounded in history,
bristling with context and all the languages in which
I dream. If you dug a hole in one of these worlds and fell
headlong into it, you would think you’d discovered
a new country; you would wonder how long it would take
before a band of beautiful, half-naked women would appear
to bear you away in a hammock and make you their king.

 Dis-Orient — Luisa Igloria

Luisa A. Igloria (http://www.luisaigloria.com ) is a poet and professor, and the author of The Saints of Streets (forthcoming from the University of Santo Tomas Press, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize), Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), and 8 other books.  Luisa has degrees from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was a Fulbright Fellow from 1992-1995. She teaches on the faculty of Old Dominion University, where she currently directs the MFA Creative Writing Program. Since November 20, 2010, she has been writing (at least) a poem a day at Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa site.

My whole family has died.
There is a song about it.
I can’t remember the sun on my skin.
Not remembering is a house.
There are no rooms in this house.
There are so many animals.
I would like to gather up one by one
the animals in my bed.
I would like to sleep with them,
in the sleep that comes after the house.
My whole family is dead.
There is a song about it.
The animals would sing the song.
Each animals thinks
about singing
and then sleeps
upon a tiny word-
colored plot of sun.
Each owes on its plot,
owes more than it could possibly pay.
This owing is all that really happens.

All That Really Happens – Joe Wenderoth

Joe Wenderoth has published books you can get pretty easily, if you have the internet and a credit card.  He teaches “creative writing” at UC Davis.

Billed as a Poetry Night against Political Repression, the November 15, 2012 Poetry in Davis reading featured Joe Wenderoth, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr. Read more about the event here.

Pretty Girl – Joe Wenderoth

Joe Wenderoth has published books you can get pretty easily, if you have the internet and a credit card.  He teaches “creative writing” at UC Davis. 

Billed as a Poetry Night against Political Repression, the November 15, 2012 Poetry in Davis reading featured Joe Wenderoth, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr. Read more about the event here.