REVOLVE, poem by Michael W. Eliseuson

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When the trempola plays,
Sad Sarnia runs down the page,
Blood-stained revolution,
When freedom cried alone,
Unheard in the wilderness,
Of the damned,
And the yet unborn.

What blew the bakery,
Also blowed the baker’s brains,
Blew bread loaves to bits,
Blasted all warm biscuits to hell,
And the cakes,
I cannot describe,
Only that they were all dead.

The girl with no head?
Held her headless doll,
Neither wept no more,
All tears dead and lost,
In streets of anguished rubble,
The black corpses of cars,
In jumbled oily smoke,
Jammed in laments of violence,
In that first second,
Of grief eternal.

Today,
We raise the monuments,
Amidst the tended graves,
With speeches made,
The band does play,
Harsh notes indeed,
Each bomb blasting note,
Riles the ears,
Ordering gladness,
For what I do not know,
The vexed poet stands afar,
Empty pen in hand,
Empty pages falling,
From disfigured hands,
Who shall remember,
And how shall they know?

THE ROAD By Michael W. Eliseuson

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The road,
Is the mind,
And the mind,
Is the road,
We mind the road,
The road does not mind us,
But I don’t mind,
The road is just an idea,
And so am I.

I shake out a Marlboro,
Stick it between my lips,
Light it with a lighter,
And drag on it,
I smoke it.
I am a smoker,
And I do it well.

Smoke is just an idea.
I don’t mind it.
Odd that people,
Should worry about death,
Since they will die anyway,
And death is just an idea,
Just like the road is an idea,
So why should we mind?

There are many roads,
Each is different,
Yet, we drive them all,
About the same,
Except the really hard ones,
We drive those differently,
And sometimes we mind.

I have driven many roads,
I cannot remember them all,
And none of them remember me,
I was just a wheeled machine,
Nothing else to the tar,
The macadam,
The gravel,
The clay,
The cement highway,
The grassy road,
With its ruts,
Sometimes wet,
Sometimes dry,
Sometimes rocky,
And sometimes so smooth,
It felt like a dream,
To drive that road,
Through woods,
Along the riverside,
The cool brooklets,
The lake,
Don’t you remember?
I do.

I remember,
Riding in an old car,
Back in the 1950’s,
With my father,
At the wheel,
My mother beside him,
My brother next to me,
In the hard back seat,
Looking out moving windows,
Buggy and old,
The countryside so green and sere,
The still land,
So silent,
So green and golden with harvest,
Cows in the fields,
Old barns,
Older houses made of simple wood,
Unpainted,
Seared by the the sun,
Gray boards and Black roofs,
Tired-looking tractors,
And old dogs,
And father would always say,
“Bountiful. Bountiful.”
And in those simple words,’
My heart felt glad.

The road today,
Is not so good as that,
It is faster now,
On the big roads,
So much looks all the same
Repeats itself over and over,
Until my brain feels lame,
And empty,
And I do mind.

I mind enough,
To write these words,
I mind enough,
To remember,
And to care,
To even share,
A bit of yesteryear,
When things moved slower,
All things on a human scale,
Except New York City,
Chicago,
Other big cities,
But that was alright,
I didn’t mind.

Today,
Millions of people,
Make their living by the road,
Because that’s where all the people are,
They are all on the road,
Everyone gets on the road sometime,
Some never get off,
Some are born on the road,
Some live on the road,
Some die on the road,
But we don’t mind,
We want the road.
The road is us.
We are the road people,
And by the several billions,
In our countless millions of cars and trucks,
We should be scared.

We go and go,
Then we return and return,
And then we go again,
We keep going,
And returning,
And going,
Until the return going,
Is the going return,
And we live that way,
Day after day,
Week after week,
Month after month,
Years upon years of it,
The going and the returning,
And the going again,
And again the returning,
We are the road people,
We should be scared.

What happens on the road?
Not much.
We just want to get there,
And then get back.
We call it normal now.
It is normal,
To be a road person.

This Rabbit Wants Proof by Daisy Dormouse

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No proof
No proof
Said the white rabbit
But the king and queen
Don’t need a trial
Really
They just need
The jury to
Believe in
Fog, and smoke
Send out that smoke
Smoke machines, little grenades
On the six o’clock news
Launched over a decade
Decade of words
It must be true
If everybody says so
Everybody said so
For ten long years
Talk, as always,
cheap
Costing only
The ad time
For pharmaceuticals

We cannot have a trial
If there’s no proof
explained the king
He might be found
Not guilty
Ghastly
Unpatriotic thought
To find our chosen enemy
Our scapegoat
Innocent
People want revenge
The people might
The king said carefully
Lose their faith in us.

Faith, the hideout for
Manipulation,
Lies and fraud
Not seeing that the roses
Have been painted red
No need for trials
And juries, anymore
Just the faith
No need for logic

A dead enemy
Can’t defend himself
One-sided conversations
Don’t arrive at
Truth
But truth, like logic
Doesn’t seem to matter
To the crowds who
Dance with such abandon

Evidence?
The smoke’s enough
To make us throw away
Our trials and juries
Put aside our logic
Put those brain cells
In the closet
And celebrate
A meaningless
And maybe false
Revenge
.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

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I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
_____ human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
_____ went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
_____ bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

~

What Osama bin Laden’s death Proved

< ..>

it didn’t take a war in Afghanistan to get bin Laden
nor the deaths of thousands of American military
yeah, even more than killed on 9/11
right action was all that was needed

sorry folk kin, for slipping back into
my old skin of a motto:
“politics and holy stains”
kinda figuring
only walking would re already converted
will read my blathering…
perhaps tomorrow
flowers will return.

World Laughter Day

{..}

World Laughter Day

true saints are true sinners
before they become saintly
confusing that ha ha

my own Saint John Paul
dead at a younger age than Jesus Christ
around age five was heard to say
in response to a gang of bullies
asking,
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
big little John replied,
“What does it matter?”
of course there was no offers of answers
but they heard it
yeah i think it was in the real year of 1984
a wave heard across the world
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

the art of laughter never comes easy
“keep ’em laughing they won’t fight”
messages the raven
on this the first
World’s Laugh Day

the first of May now belongs to
our World’s Comedy Saints:
Charlie Chaplin in my parents generation
Jerry Lewis in my generation
for the baby boomers generation
they will name their own
as will the year two-thousand and eleven

blessings to all the demi-saints.