This poem is for you
Irwin Altman
And for Ed “Foots” Lipman too
For every poet who ever paced the cell blocks
Of San Quentin, Folsom, Attica, and Neil Island
Or gave his life in the people’s struggle
Of Chile, Cuba or Nicaragua
This poem is for those who walk the
Dream of freedom with guerilla visions
In their hearts and eyes
This poem is for those who gave their life blood
To wash the streets free of oppression
For those who rest in heroic and not so heroic graves
In the struggle for human dignity
Poet of blue denim jacket
Mechanic of whispering trees
Walking the execution yard
Over the sleepy tresses of rain
The imaginary and not so imaginary
Shattering of the skull
I sit here one day from turning seventy-two
In this prison of a zoo
Thinking of long unwritten poems
Thinking of young boys who have fought the real war
Of grieving mothers and widows
Thinking of young girls with color book eyes
Young women in black suspender belts
And knee high leather boots
With revolutionary roots
Thinking of how the words come to late
And never say enough
Knowing that in the Buddha Temple of life
All things must die
Knowing there is no survival
No tarot cards horoscopes or incantations
To being back the dead
I walk the midnight supermarket of death
Thinking of Lorca and that long dirt road
Thinking of the execution wall the hangman’s noose
Ethnic cleansing ovens and genocide
Hearing the gypsy ballad that sings to the heavens
Knowing there is a strange code to this language
We are addicted too
As Gene Fowler pointed out to me
”Evil spelled backwards is live.”
Being made into a State automated robot is evil
But dying is not evil
For it’s in its whole the disintegration the
Bacterial feeding which in turn
Is a live process
And so the fight goes on and must go on
Until every street has been cleared of assassins
Until every new born is encircled in a poem
A thousand Bush’s a thousand Cheney’s
Can not kill the spirit
The vision remains even as we retreat
Into the depths of our being
Listening to the blood beat solid against the hands
Knowing there are secrets in the bones
That cannot be denied or sold out
To the whims of others
Sleep well my brother
Only the flesh is gone
Your strength lives on in those who dared
To reach out and kiss the sun
Untitled
the moon mocks my
shadow
keeps gaining ground on me
like a child playing leapfrog
with an old man and his cane
Random Word Poem
snow light warm dream
blue morning woman
sweet spring spark love
like gentle bird
in green garden mind
(This writing came
about from a poetry calendar with magnetic words and exercises.
The exercise was to pick favorite words in random order and put
them alongside each other with no thought as to where you wanted
them....this one nevertheless came out as a poem.)
