Everyone On the Corner

- By William S. Tribel (Repressionist Poet)


In the digest form
Language of conspiracy
Association
Of or with, as opposed to
A tangible act in kind

In the digest form
Language in complicity
Destabilization
For and to the meek and massed
Sub minor majorities

In the digest form
Language inconsistency
Obama-nation
By as from those that say so
All and every in union

With grace and good form
All given propensity
Right until the end
Ever in the digest form
With no good reason for war

Into Dust

A Villanelle
- By Repressionist poet Tina Twito


These temporal things will crumble into dust.
These fickle moments skewered across the years.
Be wary, child, of where you put your trust.

You do not notice love disguising lust.
You seek the kiss you crave beneath the leers.
These temporal things will crumble into dust.

These shining wonders all begin to rust,
This new Pandora's box of subtler fears.
Be wary, child, of where you put your trust.

You'll find there is no bread beneath the crust.
You'll find that when you scream, nobody hears.
These temporal things will crumble into dust.

There's no true beauty where there's no disgust.
There's no true joy without the cleanse of tears.
Be wary, child, of where you put your trust.

You think my words decrepit and unjust.
You will not fear the heat until it sears.
These temporal things will crumble into dust.
Be wary, child, of where you put your trust.

A Vast Confusion

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti



Long long I lay in the sands

Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all life's voices lost in night
And the tape of it
somehow running backwards now
through the Moog Synthesizer of time
Chaos unscrambled
back to the first
harmonies
And the first light

Sweet Will

by Philip Levine

The man who stood beside me
34 years ago this night fell
on to the concrete, oily floor
of Detroit Transmission, and we
stepped carefully over him until
he wakened and went back to his press.


It was Friday night, and the others
told me that every Friday he drank
more than he could hold and fell
and he wasn’t any dumber for it
so just let him get up at his
own sweet will or he’ll hit you.


“At his own sweet will,” was just
what the old black man said to me,
and he smiled the smile of one
who is still surprised that dawn
graying the cracked and broken windows
could start us all to singing in the cold.


Stash rose and wiped the back of his head
with a crumpled handkerchief and looked
at his own blood as though it were
dirt and puzzled as to how
it got there and then wiped the ends
of his fingers carefully one at a time


the way the mother wipes the fingers
of a sleeping child, and climbed back
on his wooden soda-pop case to
his punch press and hollered at all
of us over the oceanic roar of work,
addressing us by our names and nations—


“Nigger, Kike, Hunky, River Rat,”
but he gave it a tune, an old tune,
like “America the Beautiful.” And he danced
a little two-step and smiled showing
the four stained teeth left in the front
and took another suck of cherry brandy.


In truth it was no longer Friday,
for night had turned to day as it
often does for those who are patient,
so it was Saturday in the year of ’48
in the very heart of the city of man
where your Cadillac cars get manufactured.


In truth all those people are dead,
they have gone up to heaven singing
“Time on My Hands” or “Begin the Beguine,”
and the Cadillacs have all gone back
to earth, and nothing that we made
that night is worth more than me.


And in truth I’m not worth a thing
what with my feet and my two bad eyes
and my one long nose and my breath
of old lies and my sad tales of men
who let the earth break them back,
each one, to dirty blood or bloody dirt.


Not worth a thing! Just like it was said
at my magic birth when the stars
collided and fire fell from great space
into great space, and people rose one
by one from cold beds to tend a world
that runs on and on at its own sweet will.