day TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY FOUR

How Are You Not Free

This is what he asks me.
How?
He wants a lesson
and he wants it for free

so today I’ll do the heavy lifting
I’ll stop again and talk about
death and health care
about reproductive rights
about a girl
who carried
her mattress around
an Ivy League school
just so someone
would believe her.

But it’s all white noise to him.
I don’t see it, he says.
I wave over here,
at the Black girl thrown to the
floor by the police, his knee on her
twelve year old neck
at the trans woman being humiliated
into the noose.
At the victim grilled on what she wore
what she drank
what she did wrong.

At the pitiful six month jail sentence.
The one that didn’t want to ruin the potential
of the young man but didn’t care
about the ruined woman.

I don’t see it, he says, shrugging.
I just don’t see it, he says.
Show me again.

Over here, I say,
the healthcare that saves lives
being stripped down for parts,
the legislation of the body
beaten raped groped touched
without consent, humiliated

grabbed

Please listen, I say
just listen to what I’m saying.
Over here,
at the women paid less
docked for caring for her sick child
harassed by her supervisor

Or over here,
the woman who has to take the harassment
without flinching just to prove she’s worthy
that’s she just as tough as any guy.

I don’t see it, he says, walking away.
I just don’t get it.
All that fuss for what?
How are you not free, he asks me.

I gaze down at my body
the question hanging there forever
my form the very landscape of my pain.

Look, I say, as he walks away.
Look, there are scars that will never heal.

But he just keeps asking
How are you not free?
How are you not free?

How
are you not
free?

--Ally Malinenko

day TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY THREE

melania’s shoes

it’s not about the shoes

melania

i couldn’t care less if you

want to wear your fuck-me stilettos

into a hurricane ravaged part of the country

wear them all the way to antarctica

and see how you do

prancing across another broken ice shelf

you mail-order bride

by way of keeping up with the kardashians

no, i only care about how you stand there silently

next to that climate changing

racist moron that you call a husband

that we call the president

how do you sleep at night, melania,

having to hear his cheeseburger, apnea snores

after he’s rolled his big, orange body off of you?

do you ever think about grab ‘em by the pussy?

do the infidelities get stuck in your head huffing in

his steak and ketchup breath

after another twitter love session with the neo-nazis?

or do you just think about buying shoes

leather calf-highs or a comfy pair of slip-ons

roll your eyes and say

that’s just donald being donald

as he bans transgender people from the military

pardons some geriatric bigot

and waxes poetic about killing off DACA

did you feel like a fraud

in that FLOTUS hat, baby?

because you and your husband don’t stand for america

you gold-plated charlatans don’t stand for shit

so keep wearing your shoes, mama

wear them through hurricanes and blizzards

wear them through typhoons and the plague

tramp

tramp

tramp

through the shit waters of that man’s corroded legacy

you’ve already won, melania

at forty-seven you’ve found the golden ticket

because rumor has it

he thinks all women are done

after they hit the ripe old age

of thirty-five

so work it girl

work it for freedom.    

--John Grochalski                                               

day TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY TWO

I Dream: America Trumped

Last night I had a dream,
   more like a nightmare.
What I saw was the newly elected president
   rape the American people under a cloudless sunny sky
   surrounded by both supporters and opposers
   doing nothing but staring with mouths gaping wide open
   like waiting for clouds to emerge from the heavens
   and fill their gullets with sweet salinated tears of God.

This misogynistic destructive dream man,
   a singular man I remind you,
   made the the entirety of this country's people 

   his ventriloquist puppet bitch.
He clumsily slid his small childlike hand
   deep into our rectal cavity.
A snicker grew across his face
   as his hand moved bloody innards aside
   and pushed past organs like societal classes;
      blue collar class stomach,
      rich white pancreas,
      working woman kidneys,
      the "hood" born intestinal track,
      past tissue connected by stretched veins and arteries
         like the long I-75, 

                  the classic Route 66, 

                              the massive JFK International, 

                                        they mighty Mississippi.

Don't worry. He will patch up the diaphram
   and make Mexico pay for it.
Then the Americans, just a shell of who they once were,
   grunted and winced in pain as the arm inside him
   came to rest along side single parent vertebrae,
   the backbone of this nation.
With a tug on ligaments and sinew
   called love, hope,strength and willpower,
   he made the country's lips move with ease
   and spoke his voice from their lips.
Modern day magic from a master illusionist.

Afterwards we, the people, take a long hot shower,
   fall into bed, curl up into a fetal position and cry,
   because funding has stopped for morning after centers.
Then the counting begins:
      hours, minutes, seconds
   until Trump would rape us again.

--Craig Firsdon

day TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY ONE

Fallen Hero Quilts

Each square represents

another life lost in

middle eastern war zone-

eight in the series

shown here in early June

Some panels are hand

sewn, artful, professional,

with pictures, testimonials

from loved ones

Others are hand written

scrolled with mistakes

but the feeling of loss

and emotion is clear

Next year more panels

will be sewn

another quilt

assembled

Maybe two

--Alan Catlin

day TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY

Supplemental Nights

minor regional poet, the end of town
the dust of modernity clouds over the lights
of a thousand lost art deco bulbs

almost show time, why not
maybe this is better
than burying oneself in a rathskeller
waiting out the new apocalypse

this is a cavern, for only three
so much time to stand still
the projector rolls
shaky white lights turns
to images on the screen
another different apocalypse

it seems all our entertainment
is dystopian now, all our images
are war, man vs man, man vs state
man vs supernatural, man as superhero

its if to say that the world you live in
isn’t that bad, there is worse to offer
there will be worse to come
please rationalize the Orwellian fantasy
you prefer, let it take your mind off
this current Orwellian fantasy

there are monkeys on screen
that take over the world
maybe the rathskeller
the sweat of a bottle, summer heat
would have been preferable

I leave the last picture show
I still hear it

the horror
the horror

the horror

--Jason Baldinger

day TWO HUNDRED and NINETEEN

best quesadilla in new york

i’m looking for something

i’m looking for three dollar drafts

and someone to talk about the government with

i’m looking for protest

i’m looking for america underneath those white sheets

i’m trying to wrap my head around this insanity

and looking behind my back

in case a van or a car comes tearing down this crowded street

i’m looking at the republican party

and shaking my damned head

as the president jacks off nazis with barbaric glee

i’m looking at half the sun in the sky

drinking tepid water out of a nation half-empty

and devoid of reason or logic

i’m staring hate in the eye and breaking statues back into rock

i’m looking for artisan ice cream in flavors i never dreamed

and ice cold beer locally brewed

so that i can feel like i’m making a change

i’m eating something called a moza-repa in the blistering sun

as i walk down 6^th avenue thinking about endless war

and reparations and nuclear weapons and a sunset over the pacific ocean

i’m interested in doing some hardcore winning

i’m tired of coming out on the losing end all of the time

i’m looking for honesty and love and gender fluidity

craning my neck to hear the death rattle

of all of this toxic masculinity

i’m looking for something simple and real

like a sunflower reaching toward god

like a dark place to tuck into and hide

get myself out of this swampy heat

or like cruising down an avenue in a big, gas-guzzling car

black with tinted windows that’s almost a block long

bass playing the baddest motherfucking jam in the world

searching for the best quesadilla in new york

sizzling and gooey

washed down with a shot or two of tequila

underneath the ashes of american flags

with a cool breeze coming off the hudson river

as speed boats break waves in white crests

and the statue of liberty hangs out alone

in that blue horizon

just one moment this year

where she and the rest of us

aren’t always holding our breath.

--John Grochalski

WineDrunk SideWalk : ShipWrecked in TrumpLand week THIRTY ONE wrap up

Watch out everyone...Stephen K. Bannon, or should I say, Bannon the Barbarian, is ready to go to WAR. That's right ladies and gentleman while DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER is getting ready to play war games in Afghanistan, the former other half of this sick and twisted take on the white male ego, is ready to take on all of those people who frozen him out in the WH and didn't let little Stevey push his Nazi agenda.....using the "strong" arm "MACHINE" of the FAKE NEWS site Breitbart, Bannon the Buffoon is going to take on such mental heavyweights as Gary Cohn, Lt. Gen. (too many abbreviations here) H.R. McMaster, and Trophy Daughter #1 and SecurityRisk-in-Law...this should be exciting.

How long does the death rattle of the white, male patriarchy last? 241 years and counting folks.

Back in the real world DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER is planing on sending more American troops into Afghanistan (because that has worked so well over the last 16 years) to do some hardcore winning...and because his flailing, racist presidency could use a boost, Donny John  announced his plans for "winning" on monday night in a public address offering no specifics on troop size or tactics other than "killing terrorists" our already lame duck president did promise that unlike in the past he would be writing no "blank checks" in Afghanistan, which comes as a relief since he and his idiot family have all but bankrupted the SECRET SERVICE

I guess if you can't blast North Korea into the stone-age the next best thing is keeping the good ol' home war fires going. Hey, maybe instead of sending more troops, we could send Afghanistan all of those shitty monuments to racist-ass confederate presidents and generals that are coming down

But, honestly, I can't tell what's worse....DOUCHE acting "presidential" or DOUCHE acting like the racist, clueless raving lunatic that he is....I mean would you accept directions to a highway in a strange city from that man? And if i can find one true fault with the media it's this: They're still, after all of these months, after all this idiot has shown them, trying to paint this moron as being somewhat presidential. Not that he's acting presidential. But the Times article on DOUCHE's speech links his plans, whatever they are, to what PRESIDENT Obama did, or what Dubya did, or....oh, this is just like Biden's plan. Really? Why compare this lunatic to ANYONE who had any hand in what has been going on in Afghanistan the last 16 years...at this point headlines should read: CRAZY NUT JOB SAYS THINGS ABOUT THINGS....AGAIN.....we'll all get it at this point

Real Quick....Paul Ryan came out of hiding but, sadly, did not see his SPINE....so at least six more weeks of Trump.

The Solar Eclipse happened. The first Solar Eclipse to basically be over the United States in almost one hundred years. The next one won't even happen until long after I'm gone and cities are under waters and the water toxic, and people will have to go outside in spacesuits, provided the human race still exists....but wasn't this shit cool! I got me a pair of those solar sunglasses and started checking out the eclipse around 1:30 EST and kept going out until we were about 70% covered at 2:45PM. I'm not much for communal activities but it was fun being out on the street sharing my glasses with people, letting little children line up to see this once in a lifetime event. And people were pretty smart about it too....i didn't see  many jackasses trying to look at the sun with their naked eye. Even children seemed to understand that doing so was a stupid and dangerous act. It really looked like scientists got the word out on this one....until......

....sigh......

I guess not everyone got the message.....

Speaking of staying on message....where do beleaguered autocrats go when the going gets rough? To a NAZI rally of all things. That's right....on Tuesday Night the sitting president of the United States (25th amendment) held his 8th rally since his inauguration in the 108 heat of Phoenix, Arizona, where he doubled down on his racism, hatred of the media, so-called illegal immigrants and everyone and everything from the state's senators Jeff Flake and John McCain, all the way to getting his inbred minions to chant "CNN sucks" to hinting at pardoning that criminally convicted Nazi-fuck, Sheriff Joe Arpaio...talk about staying on message....Bannon the Buffoon must've been smiling his fat ass off in the offices of Breitbart.

Nazi strongman in one speech, DOUCHE's administration is all about "love and unity" in the next....and now the Orange Fucker is threatening to shut the government down if he doesn't get money in the budget allocated for his bullshit wall? Here's what happens during a government shutdown: the departments of commerce, education, energy, as well as the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, dept of health and human services, housing and urban development, interior (and this includes your national parks), the IRS, the department of labor, fucking NASA, national institute of health, and the Smithsonian....all get SHUT THE FUCK DOWN. and estimated 800,000 plus employees get furloughed.......all because this King Lear of a whiny Nazi bitch isn't getting money for his wall...the one he promised his inbred, twat base....and wasn't Mexico supposed to pay for this, you gold-plated piece of shit?

And come to think of it....i'm not buying DOUCHE's whole schizo bit...and neither should you.  DOUCHE is a moron and a philistine but he's good at egging people on the way that all silver-spooned bullies are....honestly i think the pea-brain is too scared to do the job he was "elected" to do and is looking for a way out....one that will still make him look good among his minions and those fat, red white and blue inbred sycophant slobs who attend his Nazi rallies.

Sticking with Nazis for a moment, on Friday DOUCHE, surprising no one but the last remaining clueless liberals and the news media, finally went ahead and pardoned Joe Arpaio, a man who has made it his life's goal to harass and try to harm anyone with skin any browner than a blonde ditz coming home from the beach. What to say about this? There's nothing to say about this except we've reached a point where DOUCHE is appealing to no one but the 20-30% of double-downed racists and nazis that are his rabid base. This is unexpected behavior coming from a craven fool such as Trump, who when asked about Hurricane Harvey, while slithering away to Camp David with Trophy Wife III and that idiot kid of his, offered little more than "good luck"

Democracy has learned some hard lessons in 2017.

Lastly....on the subject of hurricanes....can we fucking stop with the cutesy names? Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Sandy, the badly hipster named, Hurricane Katrina.....anything that is heading toward land with 130 MPH winds and the potential to kill people and, in the case of New Orleans, shouldn't be named Harvey or Katrina or Anne or anything...You know who Harvey is? He's a fucking local butcher or the guy sitting next to you at the bar.....let's name this Hurricanes properly. Hurricane Lucifer.....how about that? Hurricane Devil? Hurricane Joe Arpaio? Hurricane Trump?

anyway.....i hope people are all right in Texas. As much as I'd love to see the Trump Administration fail....this is not one of those times. Let's hope the Nazi gets something right and that FEMA is there for the people who will need it.

I'm up at 10:30 and the great Jason Baldinger is coming at you tomorrow at 10:30.

SUBMIT2RESIST: winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com

day TWO HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN

"Declaring War On The Alt-Right's Holy War"

Sharia Law
oozes
from the holes
in their
gaping grins,
diluting
the blood
on the streets
until swastikas
bloom
and strangle
the sun.
They brandish torches
burning
every skin pigment
until only the pale
of the void
remains.
Those that oppose
this naked hatred
are embraced
in the arms
of vehicular manslaughter
and slanderous winter.
Meanwhile,
Glorious Leader
shrugs
his wrinkled shoulders,
his maggot fingers
hovering over
nuclear code
in preparation
to raise
his approval rating
through destruction.
Our fists
are raised
but snipers
take aim
at every knuckle;
the alt-right
is coddled
in their
infantile loathing.
We
can take our
grievances
and shove them
down the throat
that sings
intolerance.
We
can never
be satisfied,
long as their
holy war
infests our streets
like lupus.
Fight
back!

--Robert J.W.

day TWO HUNDRED and SEVENTEEN

Tears, Detachments*

—November 09, 2016

Something sudden.  Bursts
of shadow, likely trauma.  Changes
allowing the brain a sharp corner.

Damage, loss.  To shrink, to detach.
Time may thin, easier for scar to form.
Tears, breaks, holes occur.

Evaluate history, magnifying
areas of place.  Waves of detachment. 
Troubling left untreated.

Tears, blood, strands of light.  Signals.
Serious changes, symptoms of
separates. The present, difficult.

Beneath the lift off, common growing.
Conditions pool, peripheral.
Best to follow recovery.  Numbed,

seal around the freezing, resume
activities.  Avoid filling the bubble.  A need
to heal.  Safe to socket; buckle in.

Done, stop.  Prepare.  Experience.
Recovery may be shield, limit, monitor. 
Follow-up, gain.  New eyes.

*an erasure poem, citing the booklet “Retinal Tears and Detachments,”
Krames Patient Education, © 2003 The StayWell Company

--Dianne Borsenik

day TWO HUNDRED and SIXTEEN

Animal Farm

There’s a pig. There’s another pig.
Holy fuck, they learned how to split atoms!
The first thing they did is make a giant fucking bomb?
This is actually what happened?
This is actually what is happening.
It’s like none of these assholes
ever watched James Cameron’s epic,
TITANIC, with the boobies, or, even
the one on TBS, yeah, less compelling, but still.

--Bob Pajich

day TWO HUNDRED and FIFTEEN

Thanksgiving 2016

The bird is dead.

(Votes counted).

Cooked, it might be an eagle.

How the glazed skin glistens.

Amid the platitudes

and gratitudes –“Health.

Family. Another year”

we hear “That the wrong person

won’t be in the White House.”

Oh my Republicans,

sore winners all.

Your raised knives. Your bile.

My strained smile.

You spew. I stew.

When they go low,

we get high, but the wine bottle’s

not big enough to float

us backward to democracy.

Valiantly, we reach for books,

old jokes, the dog show, anything

to take us to dessert before

mad voices rise.

We share memories, blood,

and even love,

but what does that mean

and how can it help us

in a country torn like cloth?

--Alison Stone

day TWO HUNDRED and FOURTEEN

On finding three hundred dollars in a book on FDR that I ordered off the internet

(For Lori Jakiela)

Thank you

FDR

for paying

my rent

this month

--Jason Baldinger

day TWO HUNDRED and THIRTEEN

Hell

She’s been complaining for nearly two hours

which is how long we have been waiting

in this packed waiting room

for an MRI.

I’ve lost count of how many MRIs

I have had in the last three years

but here we are,

me trying to not think about

how small that tube is.

You trying not to think

about the cancer coming back

so in a way I guess this is a welcomed distraction.

She keeps getting up from her seat,

her arm hurts,

she wants the IV out

she complains to the people at the desk.

She complains to the people around her,

now getting them all riled up

so they too want to know what the wait is for.

She works for a doctor’s office

she tells everyone.

We shouldn’t have to stand for this.

She raises her fist in solidarity

but then winces and cradles it.

I close my eyes.

I try to breathe.

She gets up wandering

through the double doors

back to the treatment area

and each time she comes in and out

opening the doors

my stomach jumps

thinking it’s the nurse

coming for me.

On the television

in the corner

Trump is yelling about CNN

showing that stupid video

bleating like a goat about himself.

I look away hating the sound of his voice.

I take your hand

lay my head on your shoulder.

You kiss my forehead.

We wait.

She moans.

Trump bleats.

and I think

This is what hell must feel like.

--Ally Malinenko