protestpoems.org

14 January 2012

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:22:00 +0000

Cheryl Antao-Xavier

David D. Horowitz

B. Z. Niditch

David Sullivan

Bänoo Zan

Cheryl Antao-Xavier

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:21:00 +0000

.
.
You Must Not Tell

You must not tell. It never happened.
She moved quietly through her life
Serving her abuser as he sat
At the head of the table.
Suffering his incestuous touch
The hatred of her mother
The studied ignorance of siblings.

You cannot tell. It never happened.
No one would believe her
There was no one to tell
No one came to her rescue
When the stones were thrown
He was the first to condemn
In the name of God
And the first to throw a stone.

Her dying words were for the God
Who had forsaken her.
You alone I could tell. You know what happened.
Where are you?

Bio:
Cheryl Antao-Xavier is a poet and publisher. She is a Goan (Portuguese-Indian) Catholic, born and raised in Pakistan. Her first book Dance of the Peacock was published in 2008 and her second entitled Bruised but Unbroken in 2011. She will shortly release her first children’s book Life in Maple Woods, stories that embrace diversity and promote integration. She has read her poetry at Canadian and international literary festivals. Her poems have been translated in Rumanian and Italian. She is the National Coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Poets and a member of PEN Canada and Amnesty International.

(author retains copyright)

Return

David D. Horowitz

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:20:00 +0000

.
.
Heretic

Five hundred peasants sweat
To help repay one noble's debt.

Raise questions, eyebrows, doubt,
And bishops sneer you're not devout.

Refuse to spy for priest
And neighbors whisper you're the beast.

Read books deemed heresy,
And you're a devil, Pharisee,

Or Muslim. Stoke your flame--
Some freedom's here, and I'm to blame.

Bio:
David D. Horowitz founded and manages Rose Alley Press. Through Rose Alley he has published fourteen books, including his own poetry collections Stars Beyond the Battlesmoke; Wildfire, Candleflame; Resin from the Rain; and Streetlamp, Treetop, Star. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Lyric, Candelabrum, and The New Formalist. His essays often appear in the online journal Exterminating Angel. His new poetry collection, Sky Above the Temple, is due out from Rose Alley Press in spring 2012. David gives frequent readings in and around Seattle, where he lives. His website is www.rosealleypress.com.

(author retains copyright)

Return

B. Z. Niditch

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:20:00 +0000

.
.
Over The Dust

expectant voyage
in a hungry red eye
of the third world poet

seeing the first
of a starving
obituary

while the second
lieutenant on a veranda
and his ninth wife

feast on
goblets
oozing blood

the lean poet death
sentenced
without laurels

four gunshots
in an embraced
sunshine.

Bio:
B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review,; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

(author retains copyright)

Return

David Sullivan

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:19:00 +0000

.
.
"This Night Which Felt Like 1,000 Nights
for Nori Samir Gunbar Al-Yasseri, Abu Ghraib

Smell of his own breath,
rancid animal of fear,
underneath the hood
they have tied down snug.
Fear, he tells himself, is part
of being human,
only part, and theirs
smells worse than his. No Allah
breathes inside their fear.
They’re only pissing
on a book. Islam’s a faith
written on the tongues
of a million mouths.
The black hood is a given,
and alcohol-slurred
words of his captors.
Mohammed shuddered when he
felt the angel’s breath
traveling through him.
He thought he’d go blind or die,
but that’s how stones see.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Bänoo Zan

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:18:00 +0000

.
.
Freedom Fighter

Love,
you are the eternal dictator—
colonizing the land of
spoken dreams,
suppressing the voice of
identity.

Celebrate your liberation from me.

I am painting your life
with death.

Does liberation stink?

What has become of me?
What has become of spirit
taking leave
of life?

Does freedom
drink the last supper?

Why don’t I mourn
your demise?

The smile on my face
caricatures
tragedy.

Was your land-love
so historic
you would not share it
with geography?

I am washing my hands
of you.

Did I martyr you
to let murder
live?

What have I done?
What have I undone?

Love,
I am the eternal dictator—
colonizing the land of
slaughtered dreams,
suppressing the voice of
nightmares.

Bio:
Bänoo Zan landed in Canada in 2010. In her country of origin (Iran) she taught English literature at universities.She has been writing poetry since the age of ten, and has published poetry, criticism, biography, translations and a book , The Song of Phoenix: Life and Works of Sylvia Plath, reprinted in 2010. She writes in Persian and English.

(author retains copyright)

Return

24 December 2011

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:36:00 +0000

Chiaka Obasi

David S. Pointer

I. B. Rad

Angie Thompson

Stephen Jarrell Williams

Chiaka Obasi

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:35:00 +0000

.
.
The Impostor

You stood on that elevated podium,
Your eyes averting our eyes.
And eyeing the ceiling of the auditorium,
Your lips told good lies,
Which no excellent impostor could tell,
And only skilled salesmen could sell.
We have known you for what you are.

Your mouth has spoken.
Our hearts won’t hearken.
We want sincere men to give our votes,
And not he who won’t steer our boat,
For when the real you is unveiled,
We will look like our votes were for sale.
We have always known you for what you are.

All through your first tenure,
You were averse to our plight.
Though you claim to be our saviour,
Our district could not see the light.
Now, you want to return to that seat?
Over our dead bodies, you can’t have it.
We have known you for what you are.

Bio:
Chiaka Obasi resides in Enugu, Nigeria, where he has worked as a copywriter, taught in a private school and now works with Global Human Rights Abuse Intervention Center, Enugu, Nigeria. He has a B.A. in Theatre Arts, a PGD in Journalism and has completed his course work for the award of M.A. in Theatre Arts at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Crossroads, an anthology of poems in honour of late Christopher Okigbo, Water Testament, an anthology of Nigerian poems on water and water-related issues, edited by Greg Mbajiorgu.

(author retains copyright)

Return

David S. Pointer

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:34:00 +0000

.
.
Definitions

If I define
terrorism
under criminal
law I’ve got
a crime,
If I define
terrorism
under
international
law I’ve got
an act of war,
and If I
define terrorism
as a particular
response
to unjust economic
policies while
receiving media
attention—I’ve
got irate corporate
executives calling
their PR people

Bio:
David S. Pointer has published political poems for 21 years. He was the son of a piano playing bank robber who died when David was 3 years old. David later served in the Marine military police.

(author retains copyright)

Return

I. B. Rad

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:33:00 +0000

.
.
Nuclear Proliferation

Once, I held nuclear proliferation
an unmitigated disaster
but now I've begun to appreciate
growing nuclear parity's just
confirmation of our humanity,
for what better antidote to "global warming"
than "nuclear winter."

Bio:
Ms Rad, I.B. and Wonderdog live in the "Big Apple." Though the poetry is actually written by Wonderdog, she allows I.B to affix his name to it for an occassional biscuit.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Angie Thompson

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:33:00 +0000

.
.
Here We Stand Glorious, Emerged From The Den

you thought we were numb.

You thought we had drawn the curtain on political standpoints and foreign wars

"oh another one" we said,
and you thought we believed it.

You thought that we had gone to sleep,
put to bed like naughty children after a long day of fighting in the house
leaving you to carry on your better, more important things in peace.

I'll be honest that we were tired.
I'll be honest that we started to roll our eyes, and ignore the red flags, and give up on anything ever happening again.
But After all,
it had been a long decade
..and we'd seen more civil rights and Arab blood lost
than we ever thought possible.

Shock and awe, shock and awe,
..and then...
normal.

You know it is said,
after a trauma, an animal will isolate itself,
finding a quiet place to heal, before it joins the rest of its pack again;

Perhaps we have had to do that too.

Here we are, the long sleep of knitting bones and scars lifting,
awakening again to
what it's like to be together:
to do things as one.

Flexing muscles, pulling claws in and out
stretching and roaring like a lion with picket signs
we feel our feet on the ground again,
a pride of lioness, ready for hunt.

Beware.

Between the clouds of tear gas and grenade smoke,
our eyes glow fierce and golden with life.

We will not be told any more lies and believe them.
We will not accept any more rules, and follow them
We will not turn an eye against the factories and drug sales and slavery
those corporations endorse.

It is time we find our moral compass, and start singing our own songs again.

Have you heard?

We are lifting up our voices;
finding strength.

Bio:
Just the facts ma'am?

25, female, tall.
Relentless writer of all things, detail junkie, voracious consumer of children's literature.
Is generally woken up at night by thoughts of what it feels like to be a galaxy, or what
she's going to say next to whom. Just the RIGHT way this time.
Dedicated practitioner of Ninjutsu,
aspiring poet-warrior,
nomad.
Literature, Fine Arts, Africana Studies.
Dancer.
Activist.
Mess.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Stephen Jarrell Williams

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:32:00 +0000

.
.
Ego

None of us
saw
what the world was coming to

we had ideas and even visions
but
nothing like the slap and roar of the end

children no longer born
women no longer loved
sea and sky no longer blue

earth, wood, and stone
falling
on every man so full of himself.

Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon.

(author retains copyright)

Return

03 December 2011

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:53:00 +0000

Peleg Held

Eve Lyons

Peleg Held

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:52:00 +0000

.
.
Set The Hook Deep

This we remember.

Stretched out on the half-ruined,
in unlit clearings, we sing
of extinguished constellations.

Heads back, we sing into night.

A satellite falters on the wire,
and goes black in the belly of Cetus
as the orchard slips slowly into
the uncontrollable substance of forest.

Handfasted together,
in sight of no one,
stitching respite against
the sadness.

We coalesce,
The dark between stars.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Eve Lyons

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:52:00 +0000

.
.
The Giving Tree Makes Me Want to Give Up On This World

In my world,
we bless our food
before every bite.
In my world,
we say thank you
after we are sated.
In my world,
we pay attention
to the impact of our words,
destructiveness of our footsteps,
we try not to add
to the darkness.
In Shel Silverstein's world
a boy takes and take and takes
a tree gives and gives and gives
until the tree is no more
and that is considered love.
In my world,
that's violence.

Bio:
I am a 30 something year old married queer woman living in Boston, MA.
I have been previously published in Fireweed, Concho River Review,
Labyrinth, Women’s Words, Woven, Sapphic Ink, Texas Observer, Word
Riot, Houston Literary Review, and two different anthologies. I have
performed in the now defunct Amazon Poetry Slam for many years and
recently had a ten minute play in the production Ten Tiny Shows in
Cambridge, MA.

(author retains copyright)

Return

18 November 2011

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:32:00 +0000

From the editor

Cassandra Dallett

Pamela Gemme

Howie Good

Kristin LaTour

David Michael Joseph

Jack Peachum

JP Reese

Martin Willits, Jr

Bänoo Zan

From the editor

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:30:00 +0000

.
.
We don't make a habit of editorialising, here at protestpoems. It is warranted on this one occasion, though, I feel.

The world's very foundations are shaking in this time, and all of us are busy preserving what we have left of our lives, always conscious that we are here but for the grace of whatever gods or faiths we follow.

I wanted to apologise for protestpoems becoming, to all intents and purposes, an irregular publication. That's because I also am exercising self-preservation in view of the state of the nations.

Thanks to all of you who keep reading protestpoems, and thanks to all our contributors. Please don't ever give up on us.

Richard Pierce-Saunderson

Return

Cassandra Dallett

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:29:00 +0000

.
.
Fleet Week

A destroyer by our side
lined with jets
war is so distant from here
we can comfortably clap and scream
our applause at fighter jets
A helicopter plane hovers over the bay
spraying water
making us part of some Hollywood version
of the destruction
we visit on foreign lands
ingraining death so deeply in them
they weave rugs
of tanks and automatic weapons
gone are the plants and animals you might expect
in the weaving of hand died threads.
Gone is everything
but dust
it seems to us
the entire middle east some bombed out
orange powder
blowing in the wind
the cradle of the world
just sand?
we are green and blue burning the petro
in smart little Hondas
waving flags
like fascists but not coming off like fanatics
they are the flag burners
the lighters of effigies
we are the sane
in cubicles of recycled paper
moving numbers across computer screens
calling them debts and investments
green zeros disappear off those screens
like a hand held calculator when you hit the Big C
it’s just gone
and they try to explain tax brackets, dividends,
bonuses and Nasdeq
we nod our head so as not to appear ignorant
clap after the flying toys
with exhausts of red white and blue
we nod and clap
and make excuses for filling up our tanks
throwing plastic in the ocean
torturing taxi drivers accused of terrorism
we tell our kids these big missiles
are cool
even after crying through Vietnam films
“We just do it”
another generation eaten limbless
and witless
with the craziness of fighting
for their country.

Bio:
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is in need of a job and a vacation, but writes poetry and has published at Hip Mama, The Chiron Review, Bleed Me A River, Ascent Aspirations, Criminal Class Review, Nibble, and The Milvia Street Journal among others. Look for more links on cassandradallett.com

(author retains copyright)

Return

Pamela Gemme

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:28:00 +0000

.
.
Disaster in the Gulf

Yellow slickers glint like lit
matches on the water.
Salt rises frozen on the cruel rust bleed.
The working walk the inkwell girders.
The answer to everything is to dig
up the blow-out- preventer.
On their pedestal, they gather the belted
bodies labeled BP.
Menhaden belly up in buttered foam.
On this blue/green fallacy, the tide
affirms the consequences,
the question is begged:
Why blame God for any of this?
The earth insurmountable turns the wake.

Bio:
Pamela Gemme lives in Leicester, Massachusetts. She has several online and print publications.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Howie Good

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:28:00 +0000

.
.
Occupy Poetry

If nobody
tells anybody,
how would
anybody
ever know?
My words
long to be
as bees
making honey
in a lion’s
head.

Bio:
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing, To Shadowy Blue from Gold Wake Press, and Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Kristin LaTour

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:27:00 +0000

.
.
A Letter to a Daughter

I do not know where you went
after the man with the gentle face
and large brown eyes took your
hand. Your father was given
money, and I was given tears
and later, a branch on my back
for not stopping them.

Soon you will be ten, be taller
than when I last saw you.
The grass grows as high as my shoulder
but you were already beyond that
seeing far into the distance.
What do you see
in the land where you are?

I eat but nothing has taste.
I wish for sweetness where you are
and good meat. Soon you’ll be 16
and be wanting to know what I have
to tell you about children and marriage
the things I did not think of when you were
eight and in my arms.

I send my message on monsoon clouds
to blow through your hair
and on the beaks of small birds
to tweet into your windows.
There is more to life than what is given to us.
There is more in what is taken away.

Bio:
I'm still teaching at a community college outside Chicago where my stated job is to teach writing, and my real job is to get people to think about the world around them. I have a poem about immigration issues in the US forthcoming in Dirtcakes. My website is www.kristinlatour.com.

(author retains copyright)

Return

David Michael Joseph

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:26:00 +0000

.
.
Standing Still in Palos Verdes

I followed the leader
But he was following someone else.
I asked the wise man for answers.
He said he had to think about it.
I asked the strong man to give me to give me a hand.
He said he had to ask the stronger man for help.
I asked the captain to take me across the channel.
He said he had to ask the first mate to take the wheel.
I tried to read the dictionary backward.
I tried to run a mile but found I was running in place.
I prayed to God for help.
He was in Palos Verdes playing golf.
With Donald Trump and John Elway.

Bio:
I'm a Filmmaker, Poetry/Short story author and Screenwriter from New Jersey living in Los Angeles. I have a passion and love for poetry. I always include poetic prose in my filmmaking. I have created four short films. Shadows of Sepulveda and C.A.k.E, the most recent.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Jack Peachum

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:25:00 +0000

.
.
The Conservative Candidate

Behold– the candidate speaks–
feet firmly anchored in the past!
See– what a miracle– it stands upright–
almost like a creature with a spine!
Flashes of human intellect, small wit, small empathy-
brews here a stew of human viciousness–
darkness where a heart should beat–
and a conscience the size of a mustard seed.

Bio:
Jack Peachum is a poet/ author who has published widely on the internet & in print journals in the last few years. He is shy & somewhat reclusive & resides in a small town in southern Virginia with a bulldog named Eleanor. He's the author of one chapbook, Polyamory, and a novel, Tempest.

(author retains copyright)

Return

JP Reese

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:24:00 +0000

.
.
Leviathan

The act did not begin here in this room. No. It did not
start with this rendition, this hooded man stumbling over cement.
It began instead in an airport in Boston, in a lawyer's precision,
in a president's fear that history would not be with him.
Bones lifted by a shirtfront, the man rises, then lies tilted, neck
arched, his world narrowed to a damp cloth that smells of dead men.
His musk lets go, dripping shamefully beneath the board
to mix with water that erases air. His breath, no breath.
His terror, all terror. Callused hands hold the ropes as he strains,
his heels kick at heaven, tendons snake along each trussed arm.
Outside, twilight falls, a desert darkens, and every belief chokes
on swirls of blood and doctrine in a place beyond a law,
without a name.

Bio:
JP Reese has creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction published or forthcoming in many online and print journals. She teaches English at a small college in Texas and is a poetry editor for THIS Literary Magazine, thiszine.org, and Connotation Press: An Online Artifact., connotationpress.com. Her work can be read at Entropy: A Measure of Uncertainty jpreese.tumblr.com.

(author retains copyright)

Return

Martin Willitts, Jr

noreply@blogger.com (richard pierce) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:23:00 +0000

.
.
What About This Is Not Clear
Based on Occupy Wall Street

We do not need a handout; we need a hand up.
We do not want to destroy the financial system;
we just do not want the financial system to destroy us.

We do not special favors;
we realize that special favors belong only to
the big corporations and banks
that send away our jobs,
waste our money, and demand a bail-out,
then use the bailout money to give bonus
for poor manager performances
and to executives, who created the financial mess,
and furthermore used taxpayer money
to lobby against the taxpayers
in order to get more preferential treatment.

What part of this is wrong? What part of this is not clear?

Many of us want to work, at a decent job,
and be treated decently.
We are not ‘hippies’. That ended in the 1960’s.
We are not radicals, communists,
or any other negative term given to us.
We ARE the PEOPLE.
We are an 87 year old grandmother
worried about her grandchildren’s future;
we are the hard hat who cannot find construction work;
we are the teacher, the nurse, the shop keeper;
we are the recent graduate
with over $50,000 of loans
and no clue who will hire them;
we are the union member who was laid off
as a connivance to limited budgets;
we are the Maine Sergeant that faced off thirty police,
telling them that we do have First Amendment Rights
and this is not a police state yet;
we are the Vietnam Veteran
who was shot in the head with a rubber bullet;
we are the former bank manager,
one of 30,000 laid off after Wall Street downsizing;
in other words,
we ARE the People; not the enemy.

We are the ones who elect politicians
who are supposed to speak for us; not against us,
not to work against us, not to make things work against us.

What part of this is wrong? What part of this is not clear?

The Republicans praised the Tea Party
although their stand against TARPS
is the same as the Wall Street Protesters.
They praised Arab Spring
whose complaints are the same as the Wall Street Protesters.
The situation is too close to home,
too uncomfortable for their real support’s tastes,
so they accuse the protesters as being lazy,
ungrateful, and greedy. Yet they welcome the Tea Party
because it supported them into office.
If one was not true, then the other would not be true.

What part of this is wrong? What part of this is not clear?

Vote the real terrorists out of office.
Change the rules.
Do not let corporations spend endless amounts of money
supporting certain politicians
and paying for lobbyist to promote certain dangerous bills,
when they could be hiring people.

What part of this is wrong? What part of this is not clear?

If certain politicians had to take pay cuts,
lose their benefits,
not be able to include their pay towards retirement,
and have to get their own insurance
while having pre-existing conditions,
then they might consider more carefully
how it effects the voters, instead of their enablers.

What part of this is wrong?
What part of this is not clear?

Pass it on.

Bio:
Martin Willitts Jr was nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. . He has had seven poetry chapbooks accepted this year including “True Simplicity” (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011), “My Heart Is Seven Wild Swans Lifting” (Slow Trains, 2011), “Why Women Are A Ribbon Around A Bomb” (Last Automat, 2011), “Art Is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees” (Muse Café, 2011), “Protest, Petition, Write, Speak: Matilda Joslyn Gage Poems” (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2011), How To Find Peace” (Kattywumpus Press, 2011), and “Secrets No One Wants To Talk About” (Dos Madres Press, 2011). He is a Quaker and they are used to protesting things they feel are just plain wrong.

(author retains copyright)

Return