EVERYTHING GONNA BE ALRIGHT (OR, TRADING BODY BLOWS WITH THE GHOST OF VICTOR SMITH)

The night was thick, black and nasty
and my mattress was a raft, drifting down
a mighty Mississippi of memory-
a Viking longboat in which my broken
warrior-poet’s form had been placed
and sent downstream through the grey mists
of eternity and on to the far bright shores of my
forefathers and their fathers before them,
only to be turned away from those fearsome
gates for being “insufficiently deceased.”

And, lately, it seems like I’ve been waking
in varying stages of dream-state, at all my
“former places of residence,” feeling around
the bed for some imaginary “former spouse
or significant other,” freaking out about
being late to some “former place of employment”
and whatever it is I’m gonna say (this time?)
to assuage whichever “former employer.”

I can’t help but believe if things continue
at this rate, eventually, I’ll bolt awake thinking
I’m late for my first day of kindergarten
(though, hopefully my mother will also be
on hand to say, “It’s OK, little man.
It’s only Saturday. Go out and play.”).

And then there’s that recurring one where,
in what some new age, metaphysical,
guided meditation counselor type might
call “a deep subterranean cave of me,”
some here-to-fore unknown (or merely suspected)
part of me suddenly cracks and snaps off
like a massive icicle or stalactite, morphing
on its way down into another more fully actualized me,
a new and improved me, you could say,
and hits the ground, running, like Jesse Owens
at the ’36 Olympics.

And let’s just say, for the sake of the poem
(and your brief relationship with it),
that this new and improved me is actually you
and it’s not a slimy or treacherous cave floor
that your feet have found but a cool, rain-slicked street,
late at night, in some industrial part of town
you don’t recognize

and, just over there, to the right,
maybe fifty, sixty feet away, at most, there’s
a freight train blowing out its big brassy basso profundo
as it slows down to take the curve and it's not
even an issue of nerve or wanting it bad enough
'cause you know you can make it, this time, man,
and you don’t even have a suitcase or bag or anything
but that shit don’t even matter ‘cause everything’s
gonna be different from here on out if you can
just catch that train, man, everything gonna be just fine
if you can just keep runnin’ and sayin’ it
and sayin’ it and sayin’ it:

"everything gonna be alright,
everything gonna be alright,
everything gonna be alright,
everything gonna be alright... "


-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]
I am signaling you through the flames. The North Pole is not where it used to be. Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest. Civilization self-destructs. Nemesis is knocking at the door. What are poets for, in such an age? What is the use of poetry? The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it. If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic. You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words.... -Lawrence Ferlinghetti

POEM OF THE DAY BY ISHMAEL REED

I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
'The devil must be forced to reveal any such physical evil (potions, charms, fetishes, etc.) still outside the body and these must be burned.' (Rituale Romanum, published 1947, endorsed by the coat-of-arms and introductory letter from Francis cardinal Spellman) I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, sidewinders in the saloons of fools bit my forehead like O the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists who do not know their trips. Who was that dog-faced man? they asked, the day I rode from town. School marms with halitosis cannot see the Nefertiti fake chipped on the run by slick germans, the hawk behind Sonny Rollins' head or the ritual beard of his axe; a longhorn winding its bells thru the Field of Reeds. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. I bedded down with Isis, Lady of the Boogaloo, dove deep down in her horny, stuck up her Wells-Far-ago in daring midday getaway. 'Start grabbing the blue,' I said from top of my double crown. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Ezzard Charles of the Chisholm Trail. Took up the bass but they blew off my thumb. Alchemist in ringmanship but a sucker for the right cross. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Vamoosed from the temple i bide my time. The price on the wanted poster was a-going down, outlaw alias copped my stance and moody greenhorns were making me dance; while my mouth's shooting iron got its chambers jammed. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Boning-up in the ol' West i bide my time. You should see me pick off these tin cans whippersnappers. I write the motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris. Make them up when stars stare at sleeping steer out here near the campfire. Women arrive on the backs of goats and throw themselves on my Bowie. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash, the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do the dirty boogie with scorpions. I make the bulls keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste. I am a cowboy in his boat. Pope Joan of the Ptah Ra. C/mere a minute willya doll? Be a good girl and bring me my Buffalo horn of black powder bring me my headdress of black feathers bring me my bones of Ju-Ju snake go get my eyelids of red paint. Hand me my shadow I'm going into town after Set I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra look out Set here i come Set to get Set to sunset Set to unseat Set to Set down Set usurper of the Royal couch imposter RAdio of Moses' bush party pooper O hater of dance vampire outlaw of the milky way. -Ishmael Reed

POEM OF THE DAY BY ETHRIDGE KNIGHT

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Hard Rock / was / "known not to take no shit From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it: Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut Across his temple and plowed through a thick Canopy of kinky hair. The WORD / was / that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head, Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back, Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose, Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status. And we all waited and watched, like a herd of sheep, To see if the WORD was true. As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "He set The record for time in the Hole--67 straight days!" "Ol Hard Rock! man, that's one crazy nigger." And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit A screw on the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit. The testing came, to see if Hard Rock was really tame. A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock From before shook him down and barked in his face. And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and looked silly, His eyes empty like knot holes in a fence. And even after we discovered that it took Hard Rock Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name, We told ourselves that he had just wised up, Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long, And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed. He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do, The fears of years, like a biting whip, Had cut deep bloody grooves Across our backs. -Etheridge Knight

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHARLES SIMIC

Eyes Fastened With Pins
How much death works, No one knows what a long Day he puts in. The little Wife always alone Ironing death's laundry. The beautiful daughters Setting death's supper table. The neighbors playing Pinochle in the backyard Or just sitting on the steps Drinking beer. Death, Meanwhile, in a strange Part of town looking for Someone with a bad cough, But the address somehow wrong, Even death can't figure it out Among all the locked doors... And the rain beginning to fall. Long windy night ahead. Death with not even a newspaper To cover his head, not even A dime to call the one pining away, Undressing slowly, sleepily, And stretching naked On death's side of the bed. -Charles Simic

DARK KNIGHT-ERRANT

Whereas I can understand why coveting what
other people have is generally considered to be
a bad thing (or at least not good in the way, say Socrates
would have conceived of it along with his notions of

the Just and the Beautiful; the “what”, in this case,
being a real beauty I’ve had my eye and mind on
for some time now and the “other” being, not exactly,
a good friend of mine but an otherwise “OK guy” who,

just for the record, always seems to net a little more
than his fair share of both the Good and the Beautiful
if not exactly justly, so) and why loving thy neighbor
is usually agreed upon by priests, philosophers, politicians

and other members-in-good-standing of Chambers
of Commerce everywhere as being a good thing
(even though my attempts at loving them both
in my own separate and compartmentalized way

have been met with a degree of complication, if not
resistance, respectively, and, you know, the more
I think about things, this guy probably qualifies
as more of a “friendly acquaintance” than a “friend,” really),

the more I think about how much I’ve really wanted to
fuck this girl (as well as do other nice things for her
like bake bread for her and lift heavy things for her
and massage her feet and shoulders and be there for her

when she needs someone to hold her and say “there, there,
little soldier, everything’s gonna be OK” and still do,
now more than ever, despite the fact she’s “taken”
as they say), but I just can’t help wanting some vague

misfortune to befall this dude and just sort of
knock him out of the way; nothing by my own hand,
of course, and nothing too terribly bad; maybe something
along the lines of a minor industrial accident or alien abduction or

perfectly mundane and random example of someone
simply slipping on a well placed banana peel of the perverse

and tumbling right the fuck out of the scene, leaving me
absolutely golden and resplendent in a somehow wholly new

and different light in her eyes, right? YER GODDAMN
RIGHT I’M RIGHT!!! Somehow more intriguingly mysterious,
more smolderingly, viscerally virile, more ruggedly,
ribaldly, irresistably charismatic (if not exactly as monied

and handsome as my former nemesis-by-proxy) in a way
she somehow hadn’t noticed before this momentous occasion.
But, if you’ve managed to labor this far into the poem
and you’ve got even a basic aptitude for three dimensional

thinking, then you probably already know the score:
she’s every girl I’ve ever needed but couldn’t have and he’s
every one of those guys that swoops in superhero style
and scoops them up right before the pool of my idiot

slack jaw drool and my bugged-out, disbelieving eyes.
And me? I guess I’m the kid what likes to crack wise a bit,
sitting nose-first in the corner of the classroom,
wearing a pointy hat, or maybe I’m the guy that kid

inevitably grows up to be if he doesn’t get wise, fast,
you know; that ragged, little monkey man (with the haggard
little monkey dance), the one you see every now and then,
standing at that dangerous and dreary three-way intersection

of Rejection, Self Loathing and Unresolved Lust (some long,
dark knight’s errant quest for the Good, the Beautiful and the Just,
very possibly the reason he’s even in this mess),
a cardboard sign in his hands that reads

“PLEASE HELP. GOD BLESS.”

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY BILLY COLLINS

The First Night
The worst thing about death must be the first night. —Juan Ramón Jiménez Before I opened you, Jiménez, it never occurred to me that day and night would continue to circle each other in the ring of death, but now you have me wondering if there will also be a sun and a moon and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set then repair, each soul alone, to some ghastly equivalent of a bed. Or will the first night be the only night, a darkness for which we have no other name? How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death, How impossible to write it down. This is where language will stop, the horse we have ridden all our lives rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff. The word that was in the beginning and the word that was made flesh— those and all the other words will cease. Even now, reading you on this trellised porch, how can I describe a sun that will shine after death? But it is enough to frighten me into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon, to sunlight bright on water or fragmented in a grove of trees, and to look more closely here at these small leaves, these sentinel thorns, whose employment it is to guard the rose. -Billy Collins