Saturday, February 29, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY SEVEN

Deep Dive into the Pit of Hell

the republican senators
voted to acquit tRump
hoping to convince themselves,

knowing he was guilty,
knowing he is toxic,
that tRump will learn

from the impeachment
and do the right thing
yet

the vote is the death knell
for their party and tRump
doesn’t care about them

he only cares for himself and
he doesn’t understand
that the path he’s on

is dragging the country,
the world, deep into
the pit of hell

--Thomas R. Thomas


Friday, February 28, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY SIX

POEM and COLLAGE by Oscar Varona 

“NADIE”

Dejé que aquel hombre entrara en mi cabeza por la puerta de atrás.
Dejé que se recostase, que hiciese de mi cráneo su guarida.
Permití que todo su ser abarcase el diámetro de mi cerebro vacío,
Pues no había nada en mi pensamiento excepto el aire nítido de la apariencia.
Consentí que sus palabras fueran las mías, que hablase por mi boca;
Que el odio que en su interior albergaba, se convirtiese en el mío.
Y renuncié a pensar por mí mismo, a hacer o decir lo que yo quisiera,
Porque en realidad nada quería, nada deseaba, excepto seguir respirando.
Me convertí en su títere sin yo saberlo.
Ya no podía pensar por mí mismo, sino que era él quien pensaba por mí.
Y cuando él reía, yo me reía del resto del mundo.
Nada ni nadie me volvió a importar.
El infierno eran ellos, ellos, todos aquellos que me señalaban;
Los que querían que dejase de escupir aquel rencor, que pensase en los demás;
Que respetase a las mujeres, a los negros, a los pobres… a todo el mundo.
Pero yo era incapaz de respetarme a mí mismo,
¿por qué iba entonces a considerar a todos aquellos que nunca se habían percatado de mi presencia?
Según él.
Siempre según él.
Pues él vive en mí, se ha convertido en mí,
O yo soy él.
Soy su voz, su esquirla, su trozo de vida conquistado.
Soy sus ojos enrojecidos por el rencor envenenado al vecino.
Soy sus tripas cancerígenas que inyectan rabia en mis nervios partidos.
Soy poderoso y un don nadie.
Y camino por la calle sin ser yo, pero orgulloso de ser él.
No soy nadie.


“NOBODY”


I let that man enter in my head through the back door.
I let him lie down, make my skull his lair.
I allowed his whole being to cover the diameter of my empty brain,
For there was nothing in my thought except the crisp air of appearance.
I agreed that his words were mine, that he speaks through my mouth;
That the hatred inside him, became mine.
And I gave up thinking for myself, to do or say what I wanted,
Because nothing I really wanted, nothing wanted, except to keep breathing.
I became his puppet without me knowing.
I could no longer think for myself, but it was he who thought for me.
And when he laughed, I laughed at the rest of the world.
Nothing and nobody cared again.
The hell was them, they, all those who pointed to me;
Those who wanted me to stop spitting that resentment, to think about others;
To respect women, blacks, the poor people... the whole world.
But I was unable to respect myself,
Why would I then consider all those who had never noticed my presence?
According to him.
Always according to him.
Cause he lives inside of me, he has become me,
Or I am him.
I am his voice, his splinter, his piece of life conquered.
I am his eyes reddened by the grudge poisoned the neighbor.
I am his cancer guts that inject rage into my broken nerves.
I am powerful and a John Doe.
And I walk down the street without being me, but proud to be him.
I'm nobody.

--Oscar Varona



Thursday, February 27, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY FIVE

SOFTER THAN PUSSY

I hate your ugly mug
I really do
that fake tough guy scowl
would fade instantly
if they dropped you off
without an armed detail
in one of the inner cities
you love to talk shit about

but the hands
the hands tell the story
even better

and I find it hard to believe
that any man who ever
swung a hammer
or laid bricks
or drove a truck
to earn his daily bread

would not change his mind
about you being a champion
of the working class
if he shook your hand

hands that probably
never held a wrench
a screwdriver
or even a plunger

I’ll bet those things
are softer than any pussy
you ever grabbed

and by the way—
you don’t “grab” pussy....
Idiot!

--Brian Rihlmann

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY FOUR

WRITTEN ON THE EVE OF ANOTHER WAR

It’s not the powermongers in their offices,
in their churches, guards surrounding them,
sending bombs to drop in drone strikes,
exploding cars in marketplaces,
setting the snake of vengeance loose
that hisses poison through the world.
It isn’t them, it’s us,
our blind obedience in every country.
Without us not a drop of blood would fall.
We maim the children

--Bruce Hodder 

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY THREE


watching youtube videos
of baseball card breakers
as democracy fails again

the dilemma is
i could read hannah arendt
or watch faceless men with fat hands
rip open baseball card packs on youtube

the point is not to work
although i’m sure there is an incident to report

another leaking roof somewhere
in this wretched building

outside my office is the muffled din of calamity

twelve-year-old boys
playing sharpshooter games
that only show you the barrel of a gun

there is a homeless man
who has locked himself up in our bathroom
for almost an hour

showering by flushing the toilet over and over

customers and staff
keep informing me about him
as if i were his warden

and all i can think
is though i may live in a sanctuary city
there is really no sanctuary from america

i choose the baseball card breakers
over the arendt

it is an easy choice to make
as democracy fails again

there is no totalitarianism
in watching a faceless man rip packs
looking for cardboard heroes

shouting in joy
like children

it’s just some triviality to cover over the dark
a little sanctuary for me within his sanctuary

that won’t cost me my soul

as the homeless man
flushes the toilet again

and the boys playing video games
line up another shot in the crosshairs

screaming to each other

kill
kill

like some new american mantra.

--John Grochalski

                                                       

Monday, February 24, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY TWO


Retribution Tour

IMPOTUS the Third seethes,
compiles an enemies list,
conspires with rethuglicans
to replace the insufficiently loyal
with Stepford sycophants willing to validate
right-wing conspiracy theories
fueled by encroaching dementia.

Corrupt, spineless senators
who caved, supported a kangaroo court
followed by unmerited acquittal
feign outrage and surprise
at the orange moron’s
consistently oblivious,
self-serving behavior.

Continuing to enable criminality,
they naively believe karmic retribution
won’t return during blue-tsunami November
when outraged voters remember treasonous perfidy,
cast millions of ballots and, in a landslide victory,
remove them from office.

--Jennifer Lagier

Sunday, February 23, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY ONE

Rant and Roll

Gimme that TV I.V.
for vain in vein insane
gimme booze, sex, gambling
highline fashion
low blows
gimme local lobotomy
drill my lobal monstrosities
gimme gone
gimme go
gimme fast cars in red glow
neon no ones run low
jazz jumped slow
gimme want and went and wan
night in sight of sun
anything to numb
this shit world dumb
to doom due profits sons
in never pure
ever slippin' strip stream whirl
gimme never when
back then
Zen
but get me gone
I don't belong
nor do
you

--Steven B. Smith

Saturday, February 22, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY


Meet Me Where We Survive

 It’s only getting warmer. Even those who
don’t want to admit it know that it’s true.
I walked up the steps to use the restroom
and I was met with a pair of polar bears.
It was alarming to me, but they seemed
undisturbed—they didn’t budge an inch.


--Scott Silsbe

Friday, February 21, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY NINE


we are all reality tv

coronavirus virus
dance craze
is sweeping the world

and like a game show
we’re wondering who has it this week?

even the speaker of the house knows
that if you tear up the state of the union address
all it does is make for good drama

better than kids still sitting in cages

no, we can’t cancel that orange bastard
with all of the buzz surrounding him

let’s give him four more years
see if he can keep
the corporate news media’s ratings up

facebook
twitter
your local bar

you can go anywhere now
to binge-watch the end of democracy

i’m outraged
i’m angry

but i got so much shit stored on netflix
that i’ll be inside for a month

with my buttered popcorn
resting on the constitution

the tattered blinds drawn
to keep out the light

from all of those cellphone selfie zombies

and the glare of gleaming
ugly american flags.

--John Grochalski 

Thursday, February 20, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY EIGHT

These are dismal times.
Every morning when we wake
it's still Trump o'clock.

--Cheryl Caesar

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY SEVEN


On Reading Tomas Tranströmer in an Election Year

At first it's only my eyes I feel
dripping down the lines and pooling
somewhere west of Stockholm, a blaze
of traffic over my shoulder and still
this glassy puddle underfoot, the blades
and engines writhing again at the river
and my pen, too now angry in the dense
rending noise. The chimneys stark
and blowing hate into the February sky
like a sheet draped across a still face.
The music I hear full of nothing. Lines
of it blown on the air clear as gas, no less
than a signature of sighs. Try to make sense
of it. These words suddenly a creeping
thing. They wait in the woods for more
like you. Their faces burnt in shame, flush
cheeks daubed in the only world we knew.

- Kristofer Collins

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY SIX


Last Glance

I watch the decay
of the promised land,
frail institutions
no longer protecting the people,
as the few consume
as if there’s no tomorrow,
hastening a poor tomorrow,
and I can only wonder
if someone watched
in ancient Rome
as the barbarian tide
engulfed the empire.

--Gary Beck

Monday, February 17, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY FIVE


Lower the Lifeboats

Write down who you are.
That was what we were told to do
so that in the future we would remember.
Write down what you value
your hopes for your children
Write a list of things you would never do
Because it’s possible in this new
bleak
landscape
that you will do them.

Know who you are. Know what you believe.
know how you fight and how you run.
And now, four years later,
aging and anxious
I pace the floorboards of my small apartment
picking up memories,
holding them like moths in my cupped hands
asking them if they are okay

Are we okay? Are we still okay?
I text people that I love just to tell them I love them
over and over again
as if that will make some difference
as if the flood waters outside
brackish and black
have not been rising for years now
as if they are not lapping against the walls
as if my hands alone could hold back the waves
or stop the bleeding
that pumps with each heartbeat

as if they could save even one precious life
as if we could ferry ourselves out of this darkness
find new land
lower the lifeboats
and sail away


--Ally Malinenko

Sunday, February 16, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY FOUR


Johnstown Sleeps
Johnstown sleeps
under the giant beautiful ruins
of the machines of my Grandfather’s generation.

And on day they buried my Great Aunt Elanor
they tore my Grandfather’s favorite bar down
because Johnstown sleeps
under the weight of bad trade deals
and the even worse idea
the future belongs to coal.

Johnstown sleeps
under the haze of uncritical nostalgia
and evangelical theologies
preaching personal satisfaction
isn’t the nihilism of the soul,
because god’s chosen people
always live in the country.

And for every racist comment
on every race-baiting story
on WJAC’s Facebook page,
the guy who drives around
on MLK Day, with a noose
and a tribute to James Earl Ray
in the back of his pickup
enjoys a sense of belonging denied
to every young person with an idea,
whose daily lesson is they’ve got to get out.

Johnstown sleeps
in the memories of
my two-week summer vacations
at Grandma’s house,
since burned down by an arsonist,
and the greatness of all
this town’s lost humane architecture.

Because Johnstown sleeps.

Johnstown sleeps,
and it won’t wake up
because of every grandstanding politician
with an easy answer as to how to find the real problem
in Philadelphia, in Washington DC, at the border
and the primal need to be better than somebody, anybody.

Because when Johnstown sleeps
dreaming only of the fantasy of a perfect past
never of a pragmatic future,
Johnstown lies
forever in the restless sleep
of its pastoral nightmare.
                                                                 
  —Matthew Ussia

Saturday, February 15, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY THREE

[got sugar in our veins or a dagger in our hearts]


and you will be lied to by those who
claim power as their birthright,
and by those who are elected

they will not let you choose in what manner
your blood is spilled
unless you choose suicide,
and so why live in silence in this nation of one-way streets?

why bow down to
false kings or their whores?

all castles will burn in the end

--John Sweet

Friday, February 14, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY TWO


We Meet Briefly, If At All

They are digging a new grave in the cemetery
as I round the corner on my walk, the machines clank and clatter
like ghosts shaking out their bones

It is a good reminder, I think
about where it all ends
in the end
and what we can do between now
and then.

The ghosts whisper from the edges,
peeking between gravestones
daring me to look back
but I am too superstitious
and I know that if I do
and if I am seen by their empty eyes
I cannot be unseen.

The sidewalk is empty
except for one thin girl
leaning against the light post waiting on the bus

and another man coming towards us.
He is ambling, headphones in his ears, seemingly calm.

The three of us are like meteors traveling through the night sky.
The only living things in New York about to come together 
and then depart for good
and I think it works that way.

We meet briefly, if at all.

But he stops near a discarded television set instead.
He considers it for a moment before with a scream,
he kicks it.
Hard.
Harder.
Again and again, the plastic exploding under his foot
is not enough and now he picks up the stand and lifts it over his head
slamming it again and again into the screen
which bends and breaks under the assault.

I freeze
press myself against the wrought iron bars of the cemetery
and beg the ghosts to take me with them,
take me down,
take me into the sky
take me anywhere but here

Take me away from this rage.

--Ally Malinenko

Thursday, February 13, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY ONE


what you fear; what you fear more


but the age of death
is all you get

the paranoid king and his
inbred children and they’re good for a laugh,
                                                 sure,
but why waste your time with pity?

we all choose our own path to joy

we ignore the swarms of flies,
the stench of corpses

each city is built to be destroyed,
is destroyed to be rebuilt,
is rebuilt only to be destroyed again,
and at what point do you walk away?

how many years do you waste
waiting for the punchline?

and it’s never as funny as you’d hoped
once it’s been spelled out in the
blood of everyone you’ve
ever loved

--John Sweet




















Wednesday, February 12, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWENTY


Ash

From the sidelines it seems even worse.
The infighting,
the harassment
the hashtags

#LyingLiz
#MayorCheat
#BernieBro

It’s all right there, allowing us to scramble
and tear at each other desperate to pick
not only the person that can beat him
but the one that we have championed
our own savior
our personal jesus

just like the way the other side sees the President.
The swollen bloated carcass of populism.

I take a step back and then another
and it comes into sharp terrifying focus
not only the possibility of four more years
four more years of violence
and racism
for more years of suppression and fear
and murder and war
and the choking desperate death of Earth,

Not just those four more years
but the four afterwards
the four years beyond
when Ivanka Trump
becomes the first woman president

and everything I ever believed turns to ash.

 --Ally Malinenko 

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and NINETEEN

The Great Cancellation
(For Mark Fisher)


The slow cancellation of the future
gets quicker every day,
because this is the time
when we learn to breathe new air,
or else this is when we die.

To understand things so clearly
in times like these
is a form of suicide.

Our lives are tests of collective,
desperate ingenuity.
We try to build
a more humane future
without a blueprint or compass,
yet this is what we must do.

Because I still believe
I can die
the contented death
reserved for those
who know they did their part
to secure the world
for those born in future.

Friends,
believe in a time when those of us who survived
the great cancellation
will think of him,
Wouldn’t he have been surprised
of the incredible lives we were still capable of making for ourselves?


--Matthew Ussia

Monday, February 10, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN

"An Open Letter to President Donald J. Trump Upon His Acquittal"

Dear Mr. President:

You were wrongly acquitted. You cannot know that, I think, because your addled mind cannot distinguish between your own interests and those of the Republic.

But you are not truly a victor. The adulation of your following is fervent now, but it will not last forever. The world's memory is long, and the books that you eschew will nevertheless labor to make you their detailed subject.

History will remember you as a dangerous, cruel and unabashed child -- unfit for office, heedless of counsel, loathe to lead, pernicious to freedom and bereft of ability. Your mark upon it will be bleak. Generations will look back dismally at how someone so feckless could assail, from within its highest office, the world's greatest Republic.

You are not truly a victor -- not even now, in these few, vainglorious years of your imagined triumph, as you exult dumbly with your frenzied defenders, before the inevitable judgement of time and its binding verdict. The laurels that you clutch at will dry in their impermanence; the ink upon the page will dry as well.

History will remember. You are a hungry opportunist, stalking the halls of a White House where you are always an interloper, because you are ever beneath its dignity -- like a drab vulture that drops lewdly to roost upon the Parthenon's marble. It may squat at the monument's apex -- and presume in its animal mind that its crude claws are worthy of the perch. But its bone and charcoal feather are alien to the timeless stone. It can never truly be of that place.

After the passage of bird's arch shadow, those columns will rise, tall and uncluttered, and the sun will find all of their white architecture.

History will remember. Posterity will know. The Republic will recover.

Sincerely,

Eric Robert Nolan

Sunday, February 9, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and SEVENTEEN


TRAITORTOT


                                      photogrpahy by John Grochalski

Saturday, February 8, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and SIXTEEN



                                                   
                                                animal id, American superhero

                                               Photography by Jason Baldinger


Friday, February 7, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and FIFTEEN


Acquittal

“…a finding of not guilty…” —Dictionary.com

“McConnell and his craven Republicans established a precedent in which the president of the United States can do almost anything without being held accountable.”— Carl Bernstein


One by one, rethuglican lackeys
talk from both sides of their mouths,
admit the mango moron committed the crime
but that laws and the constitution
no longer matter.

After a kangaroo court
with no evidence, witnesses,
members of the brainwashed collective
eagerly fall into line,
lick the boots of their mob boss,
keep the senile pretender in power.

American citizens seethe.
Despise miscarriage of justice,
they vow to defeat and replace
every red troll,
deny Putin his victory,
bring regime change in November.

 --Jennifer Lagier

Thursday, February 6, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and FOURTEEN

FROM ONE BOOMER
“Politics is a vexation of the spirit.” – Doug Draime

It’s not a problem for me,
this old man is on board.
I’ll gladly step aside and
let you young folks take over –
I’ve grown tired of the fighting
and you couldn’t do any worse.

Looking back I can tell you that
those of us who could see what
was happening at the time
were helplessly outnumbered
by the greed and self-centered fear
of those standing on the sidelines.
The exploited, cultivated ignorance,
of the no-longer-silent majority.
Those who rose to power with the
Reagan Revolution, out of the
ashes of Nixon’s resignation and
unforgivable pardon, who defeated
our hope for a future of peace,
for a future of consciousness,
for the future of the earth itself.

We were overwhelmed by endless
waves of insatiable consumerism,
fast food, and increasingly complex,
addictive social media all intended
to spread the illusion of choice,
to keep us all contented and docile.
Any voice of reason which dared
to speak the truth was trivialized.
We were painted as crazy hippies
babbling out of a marijuana haze,
totally out of touch with reality.
When, instead, we were trying to
alert people to the reality denied by
the rich and powerful who hold the
means of production with the vast
expanse of media at their command.
These are the men who harvest the bounty
of the earth to the point of exhaustion,
every bit of it fed to them by the
labor of those they beguile,
those who cheered them on,
who still cheer them on –
cattle to the abattoir, wincing
from electric prods, but defending
their butchers all the way to the
chopping block and the chipper.

So go right ahead Millennials,
generations X & Z, dismiss
me if you must, but make sure
you have a plan in place. Show
us how it should have been done.
We’re waiting, listening, watching -
still ready to move into action
once you’ve figured out
how to topple the massive
Moloch of capitalism, moving,
unwavering, toward its
apotheosis in fascism.
It’s up to you to discover
what needs to happen
to stop all this madness,
to get solutions rolled out.
Hope, if it remains,
abides in you.
Do not let me or my kind
hold you back.

--M.J. Arcangelini

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and THIRTEEN

Escalation

tRump gets away
with his crimes
with the help

of the
Republicans
in the Senate

this man will
commit the
crime

again
a true sign
of recidivism

when he is
elected
again

he is
sure to
escalate

when he is backed
into a corner
he will do

something
desperate and
remember—he has

his finger on the
button of the
nukes

--Thomas R. Thomas

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TWELVE

The Military Quotes
of Donald J Trump
(with comments)


By John F McMullen


“I always felt that I was in the military" (he attended a military boarding school)
(I went to military boarding school and was in the Army and there is a BIG difference)

“I know more than the generals on ISIS”
(Too bizarre to comment on)

“He was captured. Does being captured make you a hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure.” (Speaking of John McCain)
(John McCain was an American Hero; Trump is not)

“'You're a bunch of dopes and babies. I wouldn't go to war with you people. You're all losers!” (Speaking to a room full of Generals and DOD top personnel)
(Bone Spur thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room – He’s not)

The service personnel had “headaches,” but he didn’t “consider them very serious injuries”. (speaking after Iran fired missiles into US Iraq base causing 50
brain injuries among personnel)

(Medical personnel and the VFW consider them ‘very serious injuries’).


It boggles my mind that
anyone can support him
no matter his record on
the stock market, taxes,
or anything else.

This man corrupts the American soul

Copyright John F McMullen 2020


Bio -- John F. McMullen, is a member of the American Academy of Poets and Poets & Writers, and the author of over 2,500 columns and articles and 10 books, 8 of which are collections of poetry. www.johnmac13.com.

Monday, February 3, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and ELEVEN


winter rain

while
the
millionaire
politicians
mock
climate
activists
online
i stand
huddled
under
winter
rain
watching
the
people
go
by
in
spring
jackets
carrying
umbrellas
looking
like
nothing
but
half
beaten
drums.

--John Grochalski

                      

Sunday, February 2, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and TEN

Believe Me

“Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
--Professor William T. Kelley
Wharton School of Business and Finance,
University of Pennsylvania


Trump metamorphoses into a brain surgeon.
Godlike examines the eleven American soldiers

Airlifted to Kuwait and Germany
To receive treatment for traumatic brain injuries

After an Iranian missile attack.
Announces to the public

They only have "headaches and other things.”
As if by ESP or precognition,

Or perhaps a twist of his magic wandu,
He’s inside their skulls.

A faux neurosurgeon with a shitload
Of malpractice lawsuits against him,

He determines all they need
Is an all-purpose capsule.

Trump blatantly and openly lies,
Says in a National Press Conference

“We suffered no casualties,
All our soldiers are safe,

And only minimal damage
Was sustained at our military bases.”

Like a huckster, a hawker, a quack doctor
Selling fake medicine

To his “Believe Me” unquestioning base,
His fictitious prognosis is never questioned.


--Victor Henry

Saturday, February 1, 2020

day ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED and NINE


Trickle, trickle down

(To the tune of “There is a balm in Gilead”)

Trickle, trickle down from Washington
Ye Tax Cuts for the Rich;
We’ve not seen a cent of cash-in-hand
from Trump and Moscow Mitch.

--Cheryl Caesar