While I'm Counting Votes.....

I'd like to post some new poems.  First are four that Catfish McDaris sent me for the mourning and memory contest that just ended.

Elizabeth

If I could reach

inside my chest

and rip my heart

out and give it

to you I would

Along with all my

worldly possessions

I would do it gladly

Or turn back the

hands of time and

erase all my faults

If you would forgive

me and speak to me

again after ten long

years of silence

My only child

light of my life

I beg you I need

you I beseech you.

---------------------------------------

Animal Crackers

The free buffalo are gone, autumn

winds blow gentle whispers of

falling leaves and children laughing

While Quick listens to Norwegian Wood

wondering about John Lennon building a

fire, his daughter left him a tiny circus box

full of tasty bears, lions, and elephants.

--------------------------------------

 17 Cents A Year

She'd loved her fifteen year

old son to no avail, he was

unhappy with living

She tried therapy, medication,

bribery nothing worked, she

found him hanging from an

apple tree in their backyard

Donating his organs seemed

ghoulish but she did it, a dying

man in Ohio received his heart

They exchanged Christmas

cards for fifteen years, until

his death, he lived long enough

to enjoy his wife and growing family

A few months after the man's

death, she got an official legal

notarized letter with a check

for $2.55, for the heart. 

------------------------------------------------

700 People Dancing Somewhere

Voices from all over
earth come through a little
radio, 35 people dead in
Jerusalem, so far.

Fog rolls in over Scotland,
elections coming in England,
devolution in a fortnight.

Races in Monte Carlo, Sean
Connery front page news.

Building collapses, crashing
onto a wedding in the City of

David, dead being dug out.

51 dead found in graves in Russia.
Oklahoma bomber of 168 dead, to die.
Macedonia minus Alexander battles Albania.

Beirut against Israel.

Japanese lepers apologized to.

What a world, I sit in the

basement and cry in wonder

and ask God why.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bea Garth also sent me a powerful poem about her late nephew Robert.  He had been shot by the police.  The painting above is part of David Alfaro Siqueiros' mural in Tecpan.  Siqueiros' La Marcha de la Humanidad is below.

ROBERT

by Bea Garth

He was my nephew shot by the police

that year, the day before my birthday.

Two months later I visited his hang out in Blue Lake,

murals painted under the bridge next to his mother’s land.

He carried a pole from a rake,

tried to get the vagrant to leave.

The police came

and shot my nephew dead

there by the bridge

on the edge of his mother’s land,

shot dead for carrying a pole

and waving it at that man,

the vagrant with a cell phone,

the vagrant who looked less vagrant than he,

my nephew with his long greasy hair

and old smelly clothes,

he and his mother almost never washed,

my nephew, son  of my brother,

the Libertarian Hippy protecting his land and way of life

with his own odd constructions a few miles away.

My nephew never said much,

he just wanted to become an artist

and was: murals under the bridge—

a woman and her dog,

protests against the police,

now flowers in a glass jar next to the bridge.

My nephew now lies in an unmarked grave

under a redwood tree

buried by his father,

his grave now graced by stolen flowers

and a garland of magical weeds.

My nephew shot by the police

buried by his father

who showed me his grave

while  he and his girlfriend’s  dogs barked and peed.

My  nephew: twenty seven years old,

never said much,

just wanted to paint murals

and protect his mother’s land

from the hobos and the police. 

 I saved Fanny's "Conversation with a Cop" for this entry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAGQZiADkD4

I'm adding their "Place in the Country" as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWsrWi8OxY

Wyclef Jean's "Diallo" is also worth posting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9PMCrIcCfk

All of the Mexican art makes me want to post more Los Lobos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t57_Lk38iEE

I'm closing with Richard Thompson's "I Misunderstood" although it is more emotional than political:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te4YKjLJPro&spfreload=1

I don't want to be up past one am again tonight.