#title Poetry #subtitle centerfold feature #author Mick Vranich
Willie Williams
Kim Derrick Hunter
Marie Stephens
Christina Pacosz
Ron Allen #SORTauthors Mick Vranich ;Willie Williams ;Kim Derrick Hunter ;Marie Stephens ;Christina Pacosz ;Ron Allen; #date 1988 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/330-winter-1988-89/poetry]] #lang en #pubdate 2020-12-28 #notes Fifth Estate #330, Winter, 1988–89 *** Chains Across The Trees by Mick Vranich America’s totem is the hamburger don’t look at me look at tv chains across the trees generations bread on cheap meat glass cars with flashy decals x this z that magnum force for minute sight name a town where the demons don’t lurk lead heads zapped on crack it’s just disease we get to see in young bodies armed and ready to blow your face off don’t look at me look at tv chains across the trees smell the burning hair the leather straps that hold the ancient horn stretch under the weight of the desperate breath of the few who still breathe and walk with careful steps away from the machine with steel teeth don’t look at me look at tv generations bread on cheap meat and paper hats and stars that never show up in the night sky or leave the mirror stars that live in magazines stars that haul piles of rags around on their backs to show you how to look when you get there when you get where the stars live in the magazines and the sky is shaking from the light beyond here don’t look at me look at tv chains across the trees startled wings just before the fire and spinning blades reach the nest America’s totem is the hamburger wrapped in skins of beasts that run from their homes in the thick jungle out into the open plains to be picked off poached packaged up and replaced by the quiet cow grazing until the water runs out the soil wears away and there’s no place to go don’t look at me look at tv chains across the trees *** If Darwin Was Alive What Would He Say? by Willie Williams God godders and goddetts regale in regal laughter as pheasants and raccoons return to reclaim the wilds of this city flames cleanse the lands before forced resettlements leaves space for natures natural squatters darkened ruins are razed as echoes of the living cry out to space traveling at the speed of tears and green colors now memories and once cityscapes things keep changing like Faruk losing his dreadlocks and Kofi doing the fourstep Jabba Jig in aging York. . (Beware of open doorways they could be someone’s home at night) *** for frantz fanon the guevara and patrice lumumba by Kim Derrick Hunter Concerning violence What Are the terms of warfare in the event of darkness The practical application of shadows The technical aspects of dreams . The role of death In approaching cease fire And the liquid embryo sleep . Perhaps it is something Broken once and betrayed Some ugly justice Made to lay out our places At the table of the world . Perhaps Some one Wrestling with death To avoid torture Beheading bureaucracy and privilege And in the process Killing the bureaucrat and the privileged . The hot slant of a small metal missile Rips the son the daughter Both began in the womb And moved into the world And were in the process Of being moved by the world When the world took note The homeless unemployed worker campesina native took note The gay black junkie hillbilly hustler took note The pornographied field house wife body bag chauffeur invisible spine of the world took note . How will the bullet repay Our masters for their kindness How will the flow of blood That begins with the bloodless refusals Of even the “good” jobs Undo the knot of lies that binds us To early slow death . Who will own the burning necklace The silencer When the world is owned by no one . We need a new form Of cost benefit analysis To determine the price of the bullet That will repay our masters’ kindness *** For the Stone-Throwers by Marie Stephens How to carve an image in the Stones left scattered here Scuffle in the streets Students hoarse with yelling Tear gas blood and fear Branded with the tell-tale ink Running from the tracers Harder in the smoke Of burning cities to Define The proper line Easier to gather Under borrowed banners Hope, protection, safety And an order In the quickly gathered Counter structure Better (thought) to Place their limitless Good will and trust in Parties, leaders Lifting scarecrows from their midst To battle harpies in the fields Children torn asunder In the grappling of nations, Their stolen bodies now become Rebellion Throwing stones and running The lowest common factor In the formula of change Only, once again No change, no revolution Only insurrection and oblivion Or just another nation An excuse for more atrocities In vengeance And the blood of the stone-throwers Will have been sold cheap Their deaths, their pain People will whisper to one another Trying to remember times Until invasion, punishment and slavery Leaves them numb and without memory Except perhaps with this brutal truth to live by: Every nation built on barbed wire Every boundary A murder Every flag A thief. *** A Gentle Rebuke to American Schoolchildren In the Form of a Poem by Christina Pacosz Turn off that television, that sickly electronic light, for T.V. is a thief robbing you of your life. . A dangerous drug making you fearful of your own imagination that buoyant, flamboyant eye, your birthright, and then you will be lost when you most need the bright image, the dark vision. . Now, in the silence pay attention, child. At first you will be bored and think there is nothing to do. Remember then what I tell you now. Learn to love patience and desire, for I have heard the children of the Haitian poor, studying on the streets of a dark island in the southern sea because there was no light at home to read by. . If you are lucky enough to to have a full belly fill your heart with the blessed names of the myriad trees. Study light and how shadows fall to earth. Learn to call the bright birds one by one. Fly in your dreams, sing . the song of your own free name. Claim it. *** I Want My Body Back by Ron Allen I want my body back I want my body back Where is my body Did anyone see it dressed Incognito in some spy movie Is it being killed over and over Again in some war To prove someone’s winning It was never photographed And placed on milk cartons Did anybody see my body On to selling underwear Did anybody see somebody That might be my body Don’t want anybody But (my body) back . Is my body in somebodies Body shop Sold to replace body parts . Is my body now a centerfold For the Detroit News The Detroit Free Press Or The Metro Times . Is my body now lying In some funeral parlor Pumped full of the Embalming fluid of Reaganomics . Is my body now being A human error In thermonuclear holocaust . Is my body now working In some South African jail Pushin’ apartheid for both Botha’s Body and my body For the body politic Of white supremacy . Is my body now a paper boy Carrying the bourgeois rhetoric Of the news and the free press . Is my body now a rapist Of women (humanity) Raping again and again The body of my mother . Is my body now a multi-national Stamping the emblem of corporations On the backs of third world bodies . Is my body now a cigar-smoking Fat cat pushing dioxin through His words through The smoke rings of my body . Is my body now a cartoon caricature On some Saturday morning propaganda Sayin’ it’s only entertainment . Is my body now a Contra Stuffing Iranian money in The holes of its body To implement insurrection To internally intern the innocent Is my body now a neo-colonial Missionary blessing the Ethiopian dead . Is my body now a policeman Turning his back to crack To crack someone else’s Mind and body . I want my body so I can walk The 22 hills lyrics with My body tappin’ the bass pedal Sendin’ out multi-dimensional Flesh songs . Anybody sighted my body In the jungles of mass media . Somebody put an APB On my body . I want my body so I can Dig my fingers into somebody . I want my body so I can Dig my toes into the natural earth And walk like a natural man . I want my body so I can Breathe again . I want my body So I can fly again . I want my body I want my body I want my body . Back.