POET IN THE GRAVEYARD (WHISTLING DIXIE IN THE DARK)

So, I was wandering through the graveyard the other night
(no morbid, goth fascination, just the quickest way home from the bar)
and it was mid-July and had rained most of the day
(so you can bet your ass it was humid and sticky as hell)
and I had this goofy tune bouncing around inside my head
that I just couldn’t shake, “way down yonder in the land of cotton,
old times there, they aint forgotten. Look away, look away,
look away...” You know the one.

And the moon and the stars were nowhere to be seen.
And the locusts and the crickets had their maniacal
cartoon calliope machines cranked all the way to “eleven.”
And for some reason, I started feeling kind of edgy,
kind of prickly, kind of a “maybe something’s creepin’ up
behind me” feeling, my mind dredging up everything
from ghastly apparitions to razor-sharp switchblades.

And the going started getting a little tricky
and the leaves and tips of low-hanging tree limbs
did indeed feel like boney fingers in my hair
and I was seriously debating with some shamefully
expansive and cowardly facet of my character the idea
of turning the fuck around and taking the long way home
before some hideous manifestation of the universe’s
darker matters and energies leapt out of whatever box
it was kept in and did whatever it was that hideous
manifestations do to wayward, lonesome travelers,

WHEN SUDDENLY! (and isn’t it always “suddenly”
in situations like this?), those very same universal fates
and furies seemed to have found it fit that I find my foot
sunk knee-deep in what appeared to be a very recently filled
(very recently rained-upon) burial plot.

And the moon and the stars were still refusing to show.
And I’d swear my spook show accompaniment
of crickets and locusts came to an absolute dead stop.
And yes, I believe I very nearly soiled myself (very nearly
“filled my britches” as my Uncle Mikey used to say)
as I sprawled and struggled, there, in the oily,
mucky, mosquito-infused dark with the soil’s
seemingly supernatural suction power.

And sure, I’d like to say that’s how they found me
(the groundskeepers, the cops, the EMTs, whoever),
that I was babbling and raving wildly and had
obviously gone mad (“mad I tell you, MAD!”),
maybe even my hair gone completely white
or that I’d clawed my own eyes out at the sight
of some horrible thing that just should not be,
that something down there had grabbed my leg and pulled
and pulled (not totally dissimilar from the way
you may think I’ve been pulling yours, I’m sure),
that I’ve written this whole thing while “resting
and recuperating, indefinitely, under strict observation”
at a minimum security “mental health facility”
(in that classic Lovecraftian idiom).

But no, I eventually goddamned,
motherfuckered and son-of-a-bitched
my foot free just as it began to rain again.

And, eventually, I collected my scattered faculties
and shambled and squelched my way home
(my shoe pretty much ruined).

And all the while, that sinister and perverse
phantom pin-balling around inside my skull,

no,

flittering unseen all around me
somewhere inside those hissing sheets of rain,
tormenting me with its cloying, insipid adulation
for the Lost Confederate Cause
and the grand old antebellum south...

“Way down yonder in the land of cotton...”

-Jason Ryberg, 2011

WILL THE CIRCLE-JERK BE UNROKEN IN THE SKY LORD BY AND BY (OR GANG-BANG/ORGY PORN AS METAPHOR FOR THE MATING RITUALS OF VARIOUS AMERICAN SUB-CULTURES)

Metal,
punk,
goth,
skin,
rude boy,
rock-a-billy,
nu-jack swing,
garage
and now
“burlesque”
(I suppose).
Whatever.
It’s almost
always ten chicks
rotating their way
through ten
alpha dudes
(as per the
ritualistic observance/
biological imperative
inherent in whatever
scene-specific variation
of the whole money/
muscle/cool equation)
while another
eighty low-status
monkey boys watch
from the side-lines,
grumbling,
grousing,
gawking,
rubbing their crotches,
waiting for a shot
at the “money,”
that, in this squalid,
musky, little
coliseum
of compounded
man-pain,
will, most likely,
never
come.

-Jason Ryberg, 2011

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHUCK MILLER

IN CELEBRATION OF SURVIVING


when senselessness has pounded you around on the ropes
and you’re getting too old to hold out for the future
no work and running out of money,
and then you make a try after something that you know you won’t get
and this long shot comes through on the stretch
in a photo finish of your heart’s trepidation
then for a while
even the chill factor of these prairie winters puts it at fifty below
you’re warm and have that old feeling
of being a comer, though belated
in the crazy game of live

standing in the winter night
emptying the garbage and looking at the stars
you realize although the odds are fantastically against you
when that single January shooting star
flung its wad in the maw of night
it was yours
and though the years are edged with crime and squalor
that second wind, or twenty-third
is coming strong
and for a time
perhaps a very short time
one lives as though in a golden envelope of light.


-Chuck Miller

Occupy Wall Street Manifesto

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

POEM OF THE DAY BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

Wait for an Autumn Day

Wait for an autumn day, for a slightly
weary sun, for dusty air,
a pale day's weather.

Wait for the maple's rough, brown leaves,
etched like an old man's hands,
for chestnuts and acorns,

for an evening when you sit in the garden
with a notebook and the bonfire's smoke contains
the heady taste of ungettable wisdom.

Wait for afternoons shorter than an athlete's breath,
for a truce among the clouds,
for the silence of trees,

for the moment when you reach absolute peace
and accept the thought that what you've lost
is gone for good.

Wait for the moment when you might not
even miss those you loved
who are no more.

Wait for a bright, high day,
for an hour without doubt or pain.
Wait for an autumn day.


-Adam Zagajewski