day ONE THOUSAND and FIFTEEN

Robocalls

I don’t know anyone

in Flagstaff nor

do I want to.

The same holds true

for Boston, Altoona

and Boulder.

The calls find

me nonetheless.

They wake me

from a dream state

to perpetual abuse.

Voices tell me

my computer is in

WINDOWS hell

and my credit card

has expired. I do not

wish to hear a pitch

from a company,

answer a survey

about my household

or donate money

to the firemen’s drive.

Elections cause a fuss

from dawn to dusk.

My phone lights up.

If candidates share

my concerns,

they will stop

their robocalls

once and for all.

They know someone

in Washington.

--Sarah Henry

day ONE THOUSAND and FOURTEEN

THE WIDOW CONTINUES A LETTER TO HER BELOVED
JR (1951-2016)


How is it Dear One the world has come to
Impossible crossroads so onerous
Leading to a TV reality
Lampoon in which a business man unglues
Arteries of peace touchy tenuous
Rescue Dear Boyscout I need honesty
Your absence impedes my sore levity

Certainly we believe in a woman
Leader one who is clever ambitious
Intelligent knowing truth from fake news
Need I say My Love we have a madman
Tweeting like an angry bird dangerous
Out to undo everything we deem true
Nothing but bad hairdo and worse juju

--Karren Alenier

day ONE THOUSAND and THIRTEEN

MAGA

Listen, I eat nails for breakfast

and keep mountain lions for pets

since tigers are hard to find

and a hair too prissy.


I can whip any three men in a fair fight

and five if I hit low.

My heart is as hard as coal, and blacker,

and I can't begin to remember

how many women whose love

I've cast aside.


I'm meaner than Genghis Kahn

and twice as ugly.

I can't decide if I should fuck your mother next

or your daughter

but I can tell you your wife

is a decent lay,

even if she can't suck dick for shit.

I'll be at your place later on,

just to kick your ass for fun.


You know me, brother.

Don't act like you don't.


Listen now.

Hey, where do you think you're going?

Did I say you could leave?


Okay.

All right.

I see what's going on.

Forget it.

Forget that stuff.

Dumb shit can't take a joke.


Hey, put that down.

For God's sake stop hitting me.

Sweet Jesus. Stop.


Can't we just make America great again


--Jeff Weddle

day ONE THOUSAND and TWELVE

molotov party

there’s a cold hap and harry's

between my legs

5 more hung on ring

on the seat next to me

driving Nashville's safest neighborhood

in the dark, big houses

sprawl gated, ghostly backlit

the ghost of andrew jackson's leg on display

it’s nice the horse girls

and money men did well with

their hatchets, it’s nice

the crime rate is low

money buys secrecy

cameras monitor beyond walls

I wait for police lights

sure no one who makes

under twenty k is allowed

in this neighborhood after dark

crickets so loud

you won't hear the fucking guillotine

so what would stop me

from buying every six-dollar bottle

of vodka from the package shop

with a stop at kroger for a box of rags

start a bring my own molotov party

the proper arc or with good enough aim

I’ll make six bills singe inconceivable million

dollar houses to ash

roadside piss, splash a wall

tag a camera with an empty

sirens crow in the distance

three beers down

flames off in the distance

belle meade is burning

not sure it wasn’t me

let it burn, let those minie balls

sing from their column beds

all the landmarks of those that owned

still feel you can own a human

should be smashed, burned

their history rewritten revealing

this class as parasites

we were to make democracy

every generation in our image

we failed, people are not free

the time is right to start again

spark the next cocktail

it has to start, who cares where it ends

tonight it burns, tomorrow it burns

the next french revolution starts in nashville

--Jason Baldinger

day ONE THOUSAND and ELEVEN

arriving at work

to the homeless man who smells like urine

he sits on the stoop

like a sickly shroud

smelling faintly of urine

he’s huddled in black

black suitcase

black duffle bag at his side

his face ghostly and pale

his lips white with kidney failure

sometimes there is a beer bottle or two at his side

he sits there shivering

as people walk by going to work

with huge coffees and bagel sandwiches

and little rolly bags trailing them like dogs

in less than twenty minutes

i will let him inside

where he will find a chair and read or sleep

until he pisses himself anew

the good people complain

and i have to ask him to leave

arriving at work

to the homeless man who smells like urine

sometimes i think about

how glad i am that i’m not him

but sometimes i think about

how the only real choices in america

are to work like a dog until you’re half-dead

or to end up smelling like piss in the street

how everyone in this shithole nation

is just a few bad mondays

from being just like this guy

a few bad breaks

and america will throw you away

like trash

then i go inside

and i sit at my desk in the dark

with my head buried in my hands

and i wait for something better

that will never come.                                                                

--John Grochalski

day ONE THOUSAND and TEN

To the End

“Masturbating in the factory of facts….” – Adrienne Rich in The Phenomenology of Anger

We watch Congress play Whack a Mole

as whistleblowers reveal layers of criminality,

connect the dots between treasonous acts

and delivery of bribes, favors, payoffs.

Pretender in Chief green lights Kurdish genocide,

high stakes distraction to give Putin

exactly what he wants—kills two birds

with one cruel, petulant tantrum.

Mainstream media misses the truth,

spews whatever talking points

Watergate wannabes in the White House

have carelessly provided.

We salivate for justice, restoration of normalcy.

Blackmailed/brainwashed sycophants ignore

overwhelming evidence of unlawfulness,

incompetence, corruption, unfitness.

--Jennifer Lagier

day ONE THOUSAND and NINE

Self-destruction

So many sat on the Titanic in luxury
inside away from the cold
their view—an ice berg sculpture
a full moon gleams across still waters
so warm, so comfortable they sit
until the accident that was never to happen
the ship that could not sink, sank

It is six am Sunday morning
I lie awake in my soft warm bed,
it is a peaceful morning in Seattle.
In Afghanistan bombs are falling
lazars are destroying brains in caves
families of suicide bombers have their homes destroyed.
I try to imagine a war outside my window—the rain is all I hear
and with the imagining I can barely do
is a sadness for what my country is doing
to a people, to a planet.

I long To Go See What Is A Non-Sight
the empty sky at the foot of all of Manhattan
I mourn this loss
I am a New Yorker I lived with this view daily
this aberrant view of two overly tall buildings
two penile erections

Children are asked to send dollars
Millions of dollars manifest from nowhere
money floods to the military,
is sent to red cross who misuse,
misallocate, and misappropriate it.
The red cross building in Afghanistan is blown up by accident.
Food is shipped, pop tarts and peanut butter.
We say we care about the Afghanistan people
I lie in my comfortable bed—they cross mine fields
to get our junk food
Every social service suffers in the aftermath of this war.

I lie with the eternal question—
what is right with this?
How are we, North America, the USA,
how are we learning? Versus reacting?
isn’t it possible this is based on history?
Like September 11th, 1973
the same day, a Tuesday
the same time, before 9 am
the same number of people dead
Santiago, Chili
Salvador Allende assassinated
ruthless tortures and murders
men thrown out of planes
Do any of us remember this? Do we care?

Some internal jokester sends white powder for kicks
a few more die
We enter a McCarthy era,
always war hyped out of proportion
a twisted way to boost the economy.

The titanic was built to last but it went down.
What in the hell are we doing?
They hate us and they have a right
and they are only getting angrier
with better reasons than they had before.
We are the Titanic boldly going forward
where we have no reason to be
reaping what we sow.

--Julene T. Weaver

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. She has a chapbook and two full size poetry books. Her most recent, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Book Award (2017). Her work is widely published in journals and anthologies. Find her online at www.julenetrippweaver.com & @trippweavepoet

day ONE THOUSAND and EIGHT

Predator Politics

You cried wolf
Now you got one
Pandora’s Box
can’t be re-locked

There is no hiding
in sheep’s clothing
The little pig’s house
is coming down

Red Riding Hood
is left in the woods
The blood of decency
has been drawn

The bite is always
worse than the bark
and wolves scenting power
travel in packs

--Colleen Redman

day ONE THOUSAND and SEVEN

SAME.

No matter how many

times you take out

the garbage there you

are a couple days later

with two big bags that

need to go to the can.

--Robert Beveridge

day ONE THOUSAND and SIX

The Case Against The Case Against Socialism too

and next it’s not the poor here in the us of a who are the people of the welfare state but the rich who people the place of those who are bleeding the blessed people of the people of the us of a it’s these people of the us of a not the bleeding us dry rich who are doing the work that makes the money that should be more fairly proportionately put to their pay and not to the ripoff rich some of whom are getting nearly 300% more than their weary workers so which is better our ripoff corporate culture or a socially fair state where our poor health does not put us in debt to the rich and those same said rich take don’t away our jobs and we don’t lose our homes so we don’t have to live on the streets that our taxes have paid for and by the way those rich don’t pay any tax or at least don’t pay a proportionate percentage of the wealth they get from the blood sweat and fears of the people who should benefit from the so called welfare state yet as I said the welfare state people of the us of a are the greedy rich and as to the bullshit belief in a smaller government this will only benefit your rich republicrats who line your pockets with greens from their greedy hands true socialism is simply summarized by the word fair 

--Thomas R. Thomas

day ONE THOUSAND and FIVE

 The Power That Pulls The
                      Strings

These brain dead fools, both left and right
What do they think they are doing ?
Fucking up so many people's  lives
Driving down the road to ruin

Democracy, has it had it's day ?
What did the Brexit vote achieve ?
The politicians always have their own way
No matter if you voted to stay or leave

And of course they are not the ones
That really control a single thing
It's the CEO's of the corporations
Who say what tomorrow will bring

Politicians are no more than mere puppets,
The real power pulls the strings
Nothing more than muppets
Never mind their posing and posturing

It's the shadowy figures you never see
They're the ones to really fear
They don't need or want publicity
You'd never know that they were here

But, they are the ones who decide
What happens all over the Earth
Because they stay faceless, they can hide
They'll never get what they deserve

--Ian Copestick 

day ONE THOUSAND and FOUR

Walking into tombstones

An echo
in the
canyon
is a
bullet
in the
head
as dogs
bark at
the back
door and
kids run
down the
alley and
everyone
is looking
for rain
or a
free lunch
and today
we lost
100 soldiers
and all
our marbles
deep inside
the pockets
of the
Rich men
who run
our lives
like wind-up
toys all
walking into
tombstones
feet shuffling
in a
death march
to nowhere.

--Matt Borczon