Motherbird – Page 54 – Seeking world peace and personal peace through poetry

Fever | Indian | Secondary Fundraisers | Poems by Laura Close

January 28, 2015 by David Jackson

Fever
About this fever I’m not apathetic.
Carrots might help. I need a credible
Complaint. Is there anyone more careful?
He tries to make me upset. Optimistic,
he tries at what he is about. Memento
and relic, a reminder of plumage
from the great Phoenix, our advantage
merely an investment of time. Ratio
between kin to kind. I do not exclaim.
There’s a lot more to it than security,
finding the necessary guards, carefree
and built. I have limits, a user name;
our dreams roll around in the subconscious;
and of others’ dreams we become envious

Indian
Indistinguishable
Native blood
Touches native blood.
Indian, or Itailienne?
All I ask is for some
Language, to distinguish
And not the loveliness of a culture extinguished.
In the end
Not all believing in Mother Earth and Grandfathers,
Everyone only heard of San Martino
Not all lands, only some.

Secondary Fundraisers

“If your old don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.”
~B.F. Skinner
Let’s throw a party to support wildlife. Antennae
headbands will be a requirement. Circles of fine
men and women, environmentalists, will be there.
Clear plastic cups and cutlery made from recycled
materials will inspire us. Eyelashes elongated by
Maybelline, and lids sporting psychedelic, metallic
eye shadow will make all the women look more like
butterflies . Sidling up next to the token CEO, our
prettiest organizer will flash her pearly whites while
holding a glass of champagne demurely.

Shoulder to shoulder, when it is time to dance, we
will step first one direction, then the other, following
the Native American chieftain that we’ve hired for
the occasion. Our decorations must have all to do
endangered species and national parks, etc. Roads
will be a secondary concern for the government.
for a few months. Interpreted signs will be the talk
of the town. Accessories handcrafted by artisans
will be on display or given as party favors. That
will be the party of the year. Older folks will love it.

Laura Close was awarded the MFA degree in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She is the author of the manuscript Sound and Sense of Leaves (2010) and T Party (2012), published by iUniverse. Her poems have also appeared in Raga Zine and Jerry Jazz Musician.

Early Motherbird Iconic Images

January 25, 2015January 24, 2015 by David Jackson

If you know the origin of these images, please let us know.

Parades of Life | Here They Come Again | Poem by Ron Olsen

January 25, 2015January 18, 2015 by David Jackson

Here they come again

As before

Always in the rear

Armed with pushcart, shovel and positive disposition

Picking up what’s left

From the horses

The elephants

A circus of joy

And the children all cheer as they pass by

The inevitable result of the parade of life

All well paid for their contribution

Considering what they do

Here they come again

As before

Not far from the rear

Armed with bullets, grenades and knives

Bringing carnage

And death

And fear

And sadness

And the children all cheer as they pass by

The inevitable result of the parade of life

All well paid for their contribution

Considering what they do

Here they come again

As before

Somewhere near the rear

Armed with verbal deflection, a clever turn of the word

The fixers

The promisers

The tellers of half-truths

The leaders

And the children all cheer as they pass by

The inevitable result of the parade of life

All well paid for their contribution

Considering what they do

Here they come again

As before

Always in the rear

Sidestepping what the pushcarts missed

Undeterred by their position

Armed with truth, curiosity and hope

The thinkers

The knowers

The bringers of light

The solution

And the children all slumber as they pass by

The inevitable result of the parade of life

The Modern Shanty Shack

January 25, 2015January 13, 2015 by David Jackson

shanty shack

When the U.S. decides to get tough on crime, when the U.S. decides in a right wing fervor to fight a war on drugs, the black man can’t hide. The war on drugs is a war on race and our marijuana laws have put another generation of young black men aside. The war has been waged by the political right who holds the young black man in total disrespect.
Too easy is it for the white man to drive his shiny car beside a young black man who is walking and wave this dreadlock generation off with the back of a hand as lazy and unwilling to work. Too easy is it for the police to find the easy drug on the easy suspect. Too easy is it for the white man to buy his guns at his white only gun show and too easy is it for the black man to have a felony for the same gun.
More prisons than colleges has created an easy industry around imprisoning minorities and poor whites because of a relatively harmless weed. This industry now extends it’s tendrils to the new “Probation Industry” as municipalities learn to profit from outsourced probation and sale of seized property. When police profit from arrests it creates an atmosphere based on profit, not service.
Easy police profiteering from the poor increases the probability that a young black man will have a record. In black communities it is common for black men to “be away on vacation”. The targeting of blacks has insured that many young black men can’t get that job that the white man in the shiny car thinks he’s too lazy for.
This leaves another generation of young black men disenfranchised and basically left out. The national shame is that good intentions led to sad and racist results which are denied by those with the good intentions.
The poor white is a Joe Clark also. The one thing the poor white has been given by the political right is the notion of superiority over minorities. This “gift” has caused the poor white folks to vote against their interest.

The modern shanty shack is a prison cell.

I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know | Poem by Ron Olsen

January 25, 2015January 12, 2015 by David Jackson

garner1

I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know
By Ron Olsen

I’ll bet you didn’t know
Heard the buzz?
It’s real life
Not just Hollywood

James Garner
One of the many
Hand in hand with Diahann Carroll
Newman, Brando, Charlton Heston
And so many more

Hand in hand
Neither cold nor dead
In the march on Washington
Three hundred thousand listening to Martin explain his dream
To move beyond the suffering, pain and indifference
And the hate
The damnable hate
Born out of the coarse repugnancy of small minds

Dear God, will it never stop?

And so they marched
All the way back in 1963
Not so long ago, really
For those who were there
For those who still care
For those who can still feel their way through the fog

Heard the buzz?
It’s real life
Not Hollywood

I’ll bet you didn’t know
Robin Williams wouldn’t deal
Unless the studio agreed to also deal with the real
To hire the homeless
Giving a new start to those with no direction
Hope to the hopeless
Home to the homeless

Saint Robin and
Sir James of the mighty heart
Real life and Hollywood too
Sometimes an unexpected confluence of decency
Reminding us of how far we have yet to go

I’ll bet you didn’t know

Solstice Neolithic by Mike Glover

January 7, 2015 by David Jackson

fire glows, orange embers
fixed points in sturdy earthen ice and clay,
All cattle slaughtered, seeds in storage, an inventory
taken, registered…
in the psychic web of genetic memory
weighing time against itself. Absent,
the paltry fickle gods of future races, distraction
born of comfort and idleness
the many faces of death are stripped away, there is
only lack, and the fear thereof
measured mercilessly by the creep of freeze and
thaw. On pre
Galilean oracle the spectral procession
moves predictably across the pigment and scratches in
stone
angled light, odd precision signals
a fixed point in the cycle of celestial synchronicity
where hope returns.
—Mike Glover