POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSH RIZER

=locker room=
 

i’m training in a restaurant
for some extra holiday dough.
i’m the only male.
all the servers are women.
by the end of one shift
a girl comes out of the bathroom
admitting the onset of
party butt.
another is throwing up
from the previous night’s drinking.
they are tweaking tits,
grabbing ass
and cupping one another’s cookie.
they are rating men as men
enter the establishment.
one says
he has little hands and little feet
and i don’t wanna’ know what else.
they are crop dusting tables.
(the act of walking intestinal gas past eating patrons.)
they are burping like
hung over bullfrogs.
they are tearing off hunks of foccacia
as if the bread were medieval boar
on the bone.
they are drinking water and it’s running down their shirts.
one of them tells another
she’s violating health code.
the other fires back with a knowing eye
so are you when you pick your ass and handle bread.
there’s two in the kitchen,
locked into pelvic doggy-style
replete with ass-slapping
and here’s this solitary man
corn fed and kansas raised,
trying not to get his panties
in a bunch.

-Joshua Rizer

POEM OF THE DAY BY PETER MICHELSON

In Her Seventh Decade the Priestess of the Dreams

“The news from everywhere’s a gone bad deal
And the Priestess of the Dreams says
It ain’t kabuki Babe, they’re losing it for real…”

Dreams the agonistes of the age
that she’s an antique
doll her face of porcelain but eyes
her eyes are all too real
Her ragged heart pumps plasma
plasma by the barrel
The price is right  She sees it trickle down
“We are Americans
the patriotic people
The Civil War the Spanish War the World War
Korea Granada Vietnam
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The workers work  It trickles down
The workers fast  It trickles down
The great bell tolls


E Coli walks the streets
Muslims eating watermelon in the yard
Patriotic fervor fills the Fourth
Kim Jong Il invites the children in
Their eyes are huge and dark
The mosque explodes all hell erupts
Nada Nada  It trickles down
“We’re still at war”
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The great bell tolls

The Priestess gathers infants in her arms
“I saved hundreds but
what of those who died  I think of that”
It trickles down
She commandeers a train
She fills the cars with children
She leads them through this world
At every checkpoint she declares
her orders from on high
You will not compute these ones
their calculus beyond your profit margin

In each hand a stone
a stone to place upon the bier
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“My drive is to revise Regression’s Law”
Open the gates  Install the orchid beds
the carousels with hyenas gaily lacquered
I think of that
the young one with the baleful eyes
innocent mustache and marginal IQ
He’s out of work
and understandably annoyed
with the hungry child’s squall
slamming her in the manner of
rural women slapping
wet muslin against the stones
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“These are the sympathetic cases”
Nada Nada the Priestess says
Open up the gates
Install the orchid beds
The gaily lacquered carousel
The pools with golden carp
And blossoms bright above the lily pads
In the iris of her eyes the sight
Of children slammed
In the manner of rural women
Slapping wet muslin against the stones
Nada Nada the Priestess moans
She gathers infants in her arms
She commandeers a train
In the iris of her eyes the sight
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls.


-Peter Michelson

(ANOTHER) POEM OF THE DAY BY PABLO NERUDA

ODE TO SUMMER

Summer, red violin,

clear cloud,
the hum

of a saw

or cicadas

announce your arrival.

The heavens

arch

to a smoothness,

lucent as an eye,

and below your gaze,

summer, you are

an infinite sky-fish,

shameless messenger

of praise,

lazy,

sleepy-eyed one,

little bee belly,

mischievous

sun,

terrible paternal sun,

sweaty as a toiling ox,

and the scorching sun

in one’s head

is like a

sudden blow,

sun of thirst

crossing the sand,

summer,

desert sea.

The sulfur

miner

drips

yellow sweat,

the aviator

maps,

ray by ray,

the celestial sun,

darkened

sweat

slips

down a forehead

into the eyes;

at Lota,

the miner

scrubs

his blackened forehead.

Seed beds

burn,

wheat

rustles

blue insects

seek

shade,

touch

refreshment,

dive

headlong

into diamonds.

Oh lush

summer,

ripe

apple

cart,

verdant

strawberry

mouth,

lips of wild plum,

roads

of tender

dust on dust,

midday

coppery red

drum.

In the afternoon,

fire

rests,

air

makes clover

dance; it enters

the deserted factory:

a fresh star

rises

in

the cloudy

sky.

A summer night

sizzles

without

burning.

-Pablo Neruda

POEM OF THE DAY BY PABLO NERUDA

Ode to the Watermelon

The tree of intense

summer,

hard,

is all blue sky,

yellow sun,

fatigue in drops,

a sword

above the highways,

a scorched shoe

in the cities:

the brightness and the world

weigh us down,

hit us

in the eyes

with clouds of dust,

with sudden golden blows,

they torture

our feet

with tiny thorns,

with hot stones,

and the mouth

suffers

more than all the toes:

the throat

becomes thirsty,

the teeth,

the lips, the tounge:

we want to drink

waterfalls,

the dark blue night,

the South Pole,

and then

the coolest of all

the planets crosses

the sky,

the round, magnificent,

star-filled watermelon.

It's a fruit from the thirst-tree.

It's the green whale of the summer.

The dry universe

all at once

given dark stars

by this firmament of coolness

lets the swelling

fruit

come down:

its hemispheres open

showing a flag

green, white, red,

that dissolves into

wild rivers, sugar,

delight!

Jewel box of water, phlegmatic

queen

of the fruitshops,

warehouse

of profundity, moon

on earth!

You are pure,

rubies fall apart

in your abundance,

and we

want

to bite into you,

to bury our

face

in you, and

our hair, and

the soul!

When we're thirsty

we glimpse you

like

a mine or a mountain

of fantastic food,

but

among our longings and our teeth

you change

simply

into cool light

that slips in turn into

spring water

that touched us once

singing.

And that is why

you don't weigh us down

in the siesta hour

that's like an oven,

you don't weigh us down,

you just

go by

and your heart, some cold ember,

turned itself into a single

drop of water.


-Pablo Neruda

POEM OF THE DAY BY PAUL CORMAN ROBERTS

THE LAST POEM I WILL EVER WRITE ABOUT POETRY
OR POETZ FOR REALZ I SWEAR THIS TIME

Contrary to popular belief
The poets are the last
To be killed or driven out
When the various gurgling pockets of
White/educated/liberal/entitlement
Begin to fracture, shrink, divide and multiply
Into a foamy disaffectation
Beneath the economic pressure
That makes a liar out of everyone
Who claimed they had faith
In civilization.

Poets used to be the elite of course;
In the days when only the elite
Were allowed to read and write.

Since then, no practice or profession
Has so sycophantically embedded itself
Into the columns of society
Than that of “poet.”

And this is because genuine poets
Are genuine slaves to words.
And words have always been used
To divide and fracture and
Separate and segregate.
And there is none of this
That is new.

But what the liberal white intellectuals
Tend to forget
Is that while Western Civilization
Faces many humiliating and degrading mileposts
On its slide down history’s timeline
There is still actually quite a long way to go.

But make no mistake about it
And let’s be perfectly clear on this

When the authorities
Begin rounding up the poets
And incarcerating them
En masse,
You can be sure that
It is not the beginning of the end

But a sure sign
That the whole shithouse
Has already gone up in flames.

-Paul Corman Roberts

POEM OF THE DAY BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass"

Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers

Thru the back streets
of all my memories

Somewhere a man laments
upon a violin

A doorstep baby cries
and cries again
like
a
ball
bounced
down steps

Which helps the afternoon arise again
to a moment of remembered hysteria

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass"

Kids chase him.

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti