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POETSWEST ONLINE
Volume XII, No. 1
Poems by Anselm Brocki, Yearn Hong Choi, J. Glenn Evans, Ray Foreman, Steven Levi, Ellaraine Lockie, Tyler C. Pedersen, Leonard Peltier, Charles Portolano, and Mark Rubin.
AUDITOR
Though the bookkeeper
inside me can no longer
keep track of exactly
where my ideas came
from because so inwoven,
it began working in earnest
about the age of five,
sorting their sources into
SCHOOL, like grainy sepia
photos shown one-by-one
at the front of the class
on where we get our water
from and how men in white
smocks keep it pure; BOOKS
and MOVIES, like engravings
of kinds of bridges in The Book
of Knowledge, how the musk-
damp forest felt in the 1820s
in Stewart Edward White's
books about the five brothers,
and how to kiss a woman
from Rudolph Valentino;
and ON MY OWN, like how
much Queenie, my dog, loved
me and how to treat that love,
the one source my bookkeeper
has always been proudest of.
Anselm Brocki
**********
PSYCHE
"You'd think they'd taper off.
I'm almost forty, and they're
still trying for bed in graduate
school, even though they're all
living with someone or married,
and the professors are worse,
only older and more married.
"My girlfriend Wilma tells me
she's sorry I ever got into psych.
She says it will ruin my life.
Of course, I would rather be
working as an assistant
in parapsychology but there
just aren't any jobs, none
at Stanford, and the department
at UCLA is even smaller and full.
"That's really where it's all at.
Psychotherapy is just a Band-Aid.
Look at Woody Allen. The reason
it doesn't work is sessions
are only an hour long, and when
you start expressing an emotion,
it takes more than an hour
to come out, and nobody hears it.
"Despite all that, I put myself
on the list for aggression therapy.
Eighty dollars an hour, and no
sliding scale for staff members.
Maybe this is what I've needed
all along. It's a gift to stand up
for yourself. Wilma has it. I don't."
Anselm Brocki
Anselm Brocki has had over 1,440 poems accepted by over 790 publications. A former senior editor for Houghton Mifflin and editorial coordinator for the Los Angeles City Schools, he is currently running his own editing business.
THE MAPLE EXCURSION
In order to see the New England autumn leaves,
40 Senior citizens are stepping on the bus
Early in the morning at the church parking lot,
Like Virginia rabbits.
They ate lunch at a Korean restaurant in New Jersey,
And dinner at another Korean restaurant in Boston.
At midnight, they arrived at a hotel at Nashua
And fell into sleep.
They sang their favorite Korean songs all day long
in the North-bound bus:
"Blue Sky and Milky Way,"
"My hometown," and
"I want to go home at the South Sea"
As if they returned to their elementary school days.
No one seemed bored during such long hours.
In the following morning,
They took a steam locomotive train toward the snow-covered the White Mountain,
The northern-most mountain of the Appalachian,
On the cog railways.
They looked out the maple trees, white clouds, white birches, pine trees
And dwarf yew trees over the window.
Choo-Choo, Puff-Puff!
Finally, they reached the Moon-like wasteland, top of the mountain.
They landed on the Mountain as the astronauts landed and
Walked on the Moon of no gravitation, no cinnamon tree, and no rabbit.
From the Moon,
The Apollo astronauts thought the Earth was beautiful,
Because of its blue ocean and the white waves.
The senior citizens thought the Earth was beautiful
Because of the maple trees and changing colors
on the downhill.
They were standing as the maple trees in the downhill of the White Mountain.
That night, they slept like log at an inn of Newport, Rhode Island.
No one seemed tired even at midnight.
In the following morning,
They went out to see Great Gatsby's house on the beach.
After lunch at a Chinese restaurant,
they headed to Virginia in singing in the bus again,
as if they were in their elementary school days.
They also wrote four-line poems on the autumn excursion.
At midnight, they arrived at the church,
And said farewell to each other,
Good Night!
Yearn Hong Choi
**********
VIENNA WALTZ
One Spring night in Vienna
I became a dancer.
The music made me a fine dancer.
I did not know how to dance before.
I believe the music made me dance.
Suddenly I could move my mind and body
Beautifully, naturally.
In the Virginia woods,
I just listened to the birds' chirping,
And heard the sound of water in the stream.
I just saw the woods and heard the sound.
In the Vienna woods,
I could dance like a nymph.
The Austrian-Hungarian Empire is gone.
The music heralds a new world
In which the subject becomes the citizen
And she/he enjoys freedom.
I see the beauty and virtue of the movement
Inspired by your music.
Mr. Johann Strauss, shall we dance?
Yearn Hong Choi
**********
MOON OF NEW YORK
A great night scene is New York City
From the 86th floor of the Empire State Building
At nine,
But the great night scene is New York City
With a full moon I see at the Hamilton Park
In New Jersey,
The same moon that the coyote howled at the Arizona desert.
The moon on the left corner of the night
Is reflected on the Hudson River,
While making black and white waves
Toward the Atlantic.
My daughter is sleeping in an apartment
In midtown Manhattan.
Beethoven's moonlight sonata is still flowing.
It is Thanksgiving Night.
Yearn Hong Choi
Yearn Hong Choi, the founding president of the Korean Poets and Writers Group in the Washington DC area, has published one poetry book, Autumn Vocabularies (Writers' Workshop, 1990), and four poetry books in the Korean language. His poems have appeared in the PoetryUSA, PEN International, PoetsWest, dIS*orient, Mildred, Wyoming, Washington Post, World & I among others, and were translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. He edited Mother and Dove, Korean-American Poetry Anthology (Institute for Korean-American Culture, 1997), Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial of Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey Books, 2003) with Haengja Kim, and Fragrance of Poetry: Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey, 2005). He read his poems in the US Library of Congress in 1994 and 2003 as an invited poet. He published his poems in the Hyundae Munhak, the most prestigious literary magazine in Korea during his college days at Yonsei University. He reviews Korean literature for World Literature Today.
MAN WITH THE HOE
—His Reply to Edwin Markham
I'm the man with the hoe I'm no beast
I work in the heat of the sun, some say
I sweat and stink, but I take time to think
I lean against my hoe I am my own man
With God's help, I feed my family
And some of the rest of the world too
I'm the man with the hoe I'm no beast
Yokel you call me, you folks in fine clothes
You sneer and jeer at this old farmer
I watch your fancy cars and trucks go by
Some of them owned but mostly on loan
Work my ground, owned or not, feed my family
By sweat of my brow, not that of others
I'm the man with the hoe I'm no beast
I see tractors and other machines
Who gobble up soil, you think they replace me
I will be here when they run out of gas
And tax shelters have gone by the way
I'll be here when mansions crumble to stones
I'll use their stones to build my cowsheds
I'm the man with hoe I'm no beast
I go to church almost every Sunday
Am not ashamed of what I do all week
I raise a flock of kids that are sound
With my mule and a hoe, I work my sod
My soul is tied to this good land
By roots, this hoe, I hold in my hands
I'm no beast I'm the man with hoe
J. Glenn Evans
**********
GLORY OF EMPIRE
Alexander the Macedonian
Conquered the ancient world
Not the first, but the boldest
Spread Greed's enlightenment
One hell of a lot of native blood
And business was good for a few
Then came the Roman Empire
Gave us more laws perfected taxation
Created the military-industrial compact
Built sports arenas for population control
Future tourist trade from Christians
And business was good for a few
Then came the little fellow from Corsica
Created the Napoleonic Empire
Flooded the world with mothers' tears
Set the stage for Women's Lib
Showed kings what empires really meant
And business was good for a few
Then Brits with their class society
Retired Napoleon to St Helena
Filled the seas with boats
Colonialism with capital C
For a while sun never set on their land
And business was good for a few
Then the Huns and the Turks
Chased the Brits and French
Who yelled for the kid's help
Yanks put on their boots
Help make the Huns eat crow
And business is good for a few
Twenty years later helmets go on again
A thousand year Aryan empire dreamed
Gave us a new word Genocide
Come the Yanks with their tanks and The BOMB
Got no room for Commies move over for Uncle Sam
And business is good for a few
Then comes a shrub called Bush
Who struts and waves the flag
Ballyhoos a great new American Empire
Who thinks he's in the right tub
With God's Chosen people
And business is good for a few
With all these empires including
The Chinese Empire
The Turkish Empire
The Russian Empire
Medals breasted on brave fools
And business is good for a few
J. Glenn Evans
J. Glenn Evans is the founder and managing director of PoetsWest and author of three books of poetry: Window in the Sky, Seattle Poems and Buffalo Tracks, a history of Sweden, two local biographies, and two novels: Broker Jim and Zeke's Revenge. Widely published in journals and anthologies. Recipient of 1999 WPA Faith Beamer Cooke Award and 2003 Seattle Free Lances Outstanding Writer's Award. Member of Washington Poets Association and Academy of American Poets. Listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. Produces and hosts a weekly radio show of poetry and stories on KSER 90.7 FM.
RAY'S POEM
I'm watching Ken Burns' documentary on TV
this week and I'm seeing more dead bodies
of American soldiers on beaches and in fields
than I've seen in all the newsreels and films
in the past sixty years. You can add to that the
corpses of civilians in the bombed out towns
from Russian, German, Italian and Japanese archives
I wonder if he's doing this to make a point?
And today as I'm reading a poem about a guy talking
about manufacturing plants moving to Mexico
and China and outsourcing jobs to India,
I can't help thinking about all those 58000 guys
who died in Vietnam, and the over 300 thousand
crippled for life, and the dead guys in Korea
that we never hear or talk about,
and I'm thinking about the hundreds of thousands
of people killed in Iraq.
Man, when is this killing going to end?
Maybe it ain't never going to end.
My mind goes back to the fifties when
an old Wobbly told me over coffee in
a cafeteria on Clark Street while we were talking
about Korea and guys dying and freezing
in the cold there. He said like this,
"Sonny, if you pull the curtain back in any war,
you'll find a guy or guys blowing smoke
so corporations can get bigger and guys getting
richer by tradin' people's lives for money
and power. It's that simple, you don't have
to be an Einstein to figure that out."
Tonight, Ken Burns is filling my TV screen with
more dead bodies and my mind reels
from the sheer number of corpses.
The "For What?" neon sign lights up in my mind
and I go beyond the flag waving and propaganda
and take a long pull on the double scotch
shooter on the coffee table.
I'm a talker, but not much lately, mostly to
myself because there's no one to talk to,
no one to convince to what I've known
since those fifties days in Chicago,
that greedy nut cases and greedy nut groups
want more and more and ally themselves with
corporations, like they did
in Germany and Italy and Japan,
and got citizens, by promise and threats,
to go along with their schemes
and die for their contrived plans.
I gotta tell you, I've read history books going back
to forever and that's what I know and what I see
is the same thing happening today, chapter and verse.
Ray Foreman
Based in Berthoud, Colorado, Ray Foreman has been the editor and publisher of the Clark Street Review for the past 15 years and more recently the Back Street Quarterly.
UNTITLED
it could be said -
and should be said -
the founding fathers were
prescient when it came to
the duplicity of humans.
they scripted the future
knowing full well that
nixon and bush were
lurking in the genetic pool.
they also knew
but could not prevent
the reverse, humans
devolving from upright
hominoids back to
spineless creatures
who argue tooth and nail
over nonbinding resolutions
which have no teeth, no nails,
no claws, no soul,
and no destiny; only
a legacy of wasted
opportunity.
Steven Levi
Steven C. Levi is a freelance writer living in Anchorage, Alaska. He has more than 30 books in print, a dozen of them poetry chapbooks. Levi's book range from poetry to Westerns, travel to how-tos, textbooks to short story collections and humor to scholarly writing. Someday he hopes to make more than a dime for his writing. His latest book is Boom and Bust in the Alaska Gold Fields (Greenwood, 2007).
THOSE MONTANA MEN
His name is Roy
and he calls me Babe
Born and bred Montanan
Like all the men
who mesmerize me
With silver belt buckles
big enough to bring down steers
And shit-kicking cowboy boots
shined for Saturday night dances
where men two-step
instead of two-time
Rough and ready in public
Tender and ready in private
Gutsy guys who rodeo ride
but breech-birth calves
Garth Brooks' kind of caring
Cool pool and bar beers
don't cancel 5:00 a.m. chores
defeat 14-hour work days
Or curb appetites for country
cooking and long loving
The real McCoys
Except for Roy
Who isn't a real Roy
His mom named him Noël
But he makes me feel
like a real Babe
Ellaraine Lockie
Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet, nonfiction author, button historian and papermaker, is a native of Big Sandy, Montana. Although she lives in California, she considers Montana her home.
MEND, AMEND, AMEN
Contradictions are abound
In a 'happy' world full of sorrow
Value labels mislabeled to read:
What is wrong is dead right to me
Immoral judgment calls cloud accuracy
With arguments that augment
Deceit, callousness, fright and greed
Products of the vile truths
We are unable to bear
Let alone amend or appease
Will the forest coexist with a shopping mall?
Should a bomb be dropped to save our own?
Gun control or birth control pills?
One limits the life of death
While the other spares
The eyes of the unborn,
Blind to the malice of man's
Unfaithfulness, unable to hear
The death cry of life outside
A womb-like state
Where the safety is clicked off
And rent is never free or cheap
No matter the control or white-lie sugar placebo
The earth constantly spirals down the drain
People think it's getting 'better,'
It will go away in time, you'll see
But too much wishful thinking
Without action
Doesn't solve anything
Human nature rarely nurtures
After birth
Needless to say, the arrested problem,
Once given a name
Sits in Congress, gathering dust,
Rarely taking precedence over
Comparably poultry cases
Of misdemeanor or injustice
Towards God and country
For where would allegiances be?
If not for a supporting cast
Spinning on its axis
Tethering in space
The impetus of our existence
With the power to erase
In light of all this darkness
Might there be a solution that can
Salvage the biosphere for all of posterity?
Can children experience the remaining shards of Nature?
The same Nature losing appendages left and right
Day by day, night by night
Whose species go extinct before a taxonomic key
Can testify for their sake in Latin apogee
What of glaciers and the Arctic ice shelf?
In their passing, all we have to show is a book
Filled with pictures that quote:
We were snow blinded by ambition
Saw lukewarm profits where danger lay
Dug a hole so deep in our pockets
That no amount of bailing water
Could save us from drowning
In our sinful ways
As worlds collide in the same planet
Where one world may not be enough
To satiate hunger, lust and greed
What will become of this anthropogenic
Hierarchy?
We have declared war on the environment,
By which no Higher law concedes,
To put a price-tag on everything green
We cherish inherently
But, when dollar signs and brand new cars
Don't crown champions
The best way to succeed
Is to give back to the earth
What you sow
And reap
And mend
Amen
Tyler C. Pedersen
**********
WHERE THE SLEEPY DAWN DOTH REST NO MORE
Silhouettes on mountaintops
The standing of the trees
Some slumping over nothing
But the everlasting breeze
Bare granite laced up the slopes
Casting luminous shadows
On the residents below
Crooked, gnarly ridgeline
Offering a glimpse
Of a lunar landscape
While the sun sets
Before tomorrow
The outline of the fading light
Brings about a metamorphosis
Of biological time
Where daytime creatures bed
And nocturnal naturals awake
To revel in the midnight glow
Of high stakes active foraging
Or cost effective sit-and-wait
The moon beckons
Those of post-dusk
With blue, incandescent rays
Of a cooler sun in the shade
Chilling the pallid dirt
Until the morning comes to pass
And once congealed shadows
Warm, break apart
At where the sleepy dawn
Doth rest no more
Alas, tangled silhouettes
Recover
From the briskness
Of a Rocky Mountain
Summer's twilight
To lie unfurled
Neath pristine
Montana skies
At daybreak
Tyler C. Pedersen
**********
FOR WANT OF A CORNER
Silvery soft
Steely strong
Thirteen thousand
Wispy chains entwined
In the glare of the sun
Sway crystals of dew
Dangling down through
Threaded silicon
Contrived in the abdomen
Pulled out of a gland
Clinging
On hold
Then released again
Such persistence
From a wind smote
Geometric polygon
Amid all the tension
Of brooms and paranoia
Whoever did notice
An invisible thread
Escaping time in the attic
A cobweb
Aging with dust, mildew and rot
Sticking to faces long since forgot
For when houses collapse
And our presence fades
No one that owns
Nothing to save
Yet for want of a corner
I'll bet you will find
A cluster of silk
That's just been refined
Tyler C. Pedersen
Tyler C. Pedersen is a native Montanan from Helena. After graduating in 2006 from the University of Montana with a BA degree in ecology and a minor in Art History and Criticism, he has pursued active application through service. "Last year, I was a crew member with the Montana Conservation Corps and this year I am an Americorps volunteer in Gresham, OR with the Northwest Service Academy. As the Biodiversity Conservation Coordinator in Gresham, I am actively involved with watershed restoration projects, community outreach and stewardship education with local schools and the monitoring and protection of native amphibians and reptiles."
He enjoys hiking, running, photography, drawing, and writing about the natural world. His first published work is a book of poetry and photographs, Nostalgia, Naturally. He can be reached at tylerpedersen02@hotmail.com or check his book website www.nostalgianaturally.com.
IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE
An Eagle's Cry
—by Leonard Peltier
Listen to me!
Listen!
I am the Indian voice.
Hear me crying out of the wind,
Hear me crying out of the silence.
I am the Indian voice.
Listen to me!
I speak for our ancestors.
They cry out to you from the unstill grave.
I speak for the children yet unborn.
They cry out to you from the unspoken silence.
I am the Indian voice.
Listen to me!
I am a chorus of millions.
Hear us!
Our eagle's cry will not be stilled!
We are your own conscience calling to you.
We are you yourself
crying unheard within you.
Let my unheard voice be heard.
Let me speak in my heart and the words be heard
whispering on the wind to millions,
to all who care,
to all with ears to hear
and hearts to beat as one
with mine.
Put your ear to the earth,
and hear my heart beating there.
Put your ear to the wind
and hear me speaking there.
We are the voice of the earth,
of the future,
of the Mystery.
Hear us!
—from Leonard Peltier's PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE
http://www.amazon.com/Prison-Writings-Life-Sun-Dance/dp/0312263805/ref=sr_1
WHAT IF ONE DAY….
there was no electricity,
no water,
living in bombed-out buildings,
all windows shattered,
forget the mail;
with no gas,
nowhere to go.
Roads not safe to travel,
even in daylight.
They took our liberties away
in the name of security.
I don't feel safe anymore,
like I'm being watched.
No where to hide,
can't go outside,
so we huddle in the closet
close together to keep warm,
telling stories
of the old times,
knowing at any time
a bomb could go off
taking a loved one,
a neighbor or a friend,
living moment to moment,
never sure where our next meal
will come from,
never enough, if
we even eat on this starless night;
feeding on our fears,
our tears, our water.
The hospital blown away
just yesterday,
what will tomorrow bring?
and why go to school? to get shot?
knowing there's no tomorrows
life on the street is hard,
you learn quickly,
or become a casualty.
Charles Portolano
**********
THE AMERICAN WAY
As the lining of our pockets
grows empty, we quickly
forget about the rockets
that we indiscriminately
drop on innocent Iraqis.
Got to get the new blue-ray,
iPod, and the newest fads,
got to keep our kids
dressed to kill,
it's a tough world out there;
So get out of my way there's
a big sale today.
Out of sight, out of mind,
I don't have the time to care
what's going on somewhere
else in this wild world.
I'm worried about paying
my mortgage, keeping my job
that I hate, getting up earlier
to face a boss I despise
for he constantly tells lies,
so don't tell me of the woes
of others far, far away.
I work longer and harder
for far less pay, knowing
that the powers that be
keep it this way on purpose.
Hey, get out of my way, it's
Sunday I got to go off to pray,
Luckily, In God We Trust.
Charles Portolano
Charles Portolano was stationed at Luke AFB outside of Phoenix in 1977-78,fell in love with the desert and five years ago moved to Fountain Hills, Arizona. His most recent poetry book, All Eyes On Us, was published by The Rockford Writers' Guild in 2007.
WILLAMETTE WOODS
Long estranged, the Muse called to me
Adventuring through rainforest canyon
I have heard her distant calling
It whistled through teetering firs
And blew the swaying lush ivy vines
Told me I'd encounter an old love
And as the oracle summoned
I knew at once who awaited
The Man In Black beckoned me
Mourning "I Still Miss Someone"
Her body's image pulled me
Up the steep ravine blanketed
With lush green sword ferns
Squirrels scattering up slippery madrones
I felt her curvy firmness
Spooning against my familiar thigh
She was lean Sitka spruce,
Lustrous cherry wood, Philippine mahogany
Resplendent cultured mother of pearl
I leaned my weary head
Into cool December drizzle
Listening to her Siren song
The notes were clear, the bass clean
Her caress lustfully waiting
My way too tender fingers.
Began to rattle her trusting strings
Trembling hand and aching heart -
"I'll never get over those blue eyes"
And decades of lyrics long forgotten.
We sat together on velvet bench
Dispatched worldly cares for now
Rekindled our familiar embrace
And whiled away the afternoon.
Mark Rubin
Born in Seattle, Mark Rubin has been creating, publishing and reciting verse for more than thirty years. Mark studied with Nelson Bentley at the UW. His works have been published locally in Bellingham Review, PoetsWest and The New Times as well as San Francisco and Santa Fe's Pennywhistle Press and Full Spectrum and many national anthologies. His themes tend to focus on the yin/yang, dark/light ironies of relationships, spirit and nature. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
"I'm still that same soulful outdooors Pisces boy whose playground is now Oregon with its beaches, mountains, lakes, rivers and streams. Have a great fondness for the eastern Cascade slopes (pine trees and juniper) and the high desert. Active hiker, flyfisher; avid waterways and bike path recreationalist. Busy gardener and landscaper; often occupy myself with outdoors household and grounds projects. Career-wise, is the Admissions Representative for New Horizons, the world's largest computer training organization. I specialize in assisting career changers qualify for and enter the high demand IT occupations in our local 'Silicon Forest'".
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