#title Poetry #author Various Authors #SORTauthors Various Authors; #date 1989 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/332-summer-1989/poetry]] #lang en #pubdate 2021-10-05 #notes Fifth Estate #332, Summer, 1989 from Cultural Democracy, Spring 1989, P.O.B. 7591, Minneapolis, MN 55407 *** Port-of-Call Cass Corridor Anchored in the oily swamp Near the crumbling dockyard Lurks an old ship . Stumbling past The foggy glass portholes I glance at the stowaways: The Black men and women Are herded and counted The aisles sway As they slump on plastic chairs Escaping only the humiliation Of an auction block While whites and an occasional Black Scurry about the crowded hull In the uniform of the day Carrying out their mission Of sucking blood from the Tired veins Of the waiting. . I had my blood drained twice On one of these ships Dizzy, I nearly fainted As the cold remains of my hemoglobin Trickled back into my sore arm A long thin ice worm Slithering toward my Throbbing and rotting heart. . And Hollywood visited here last year Taking pictures Of a politician playing an actor Or an actor playing a politician In a speech christening A fictitious but new Plasma Donor Center . 208 takes before sailing off To new ports of progress. . A bottle flies over the railing Startling the sea gulls With a message about a mutiny before sunrise While the slave ship rocks gently In the oily swamp Near the crumbling And moaning dockyard. —William Blank *** DETROIT MICHIGAN 1988 our town is built on the river bank the trees are thick with life i was born on this river bank and learned the water flowed between the big lakes. i learned this piece of earth looks like a mitten in a sea of lakes and this river is the water of the lakes. . the mountains of machinery were already here on the banks of the river when i arrived at night in the factory i walked along the stone shoreline and saw the scrub trees covered with soot the freighter docked along the concrete shore the conveyor going down deep into her hold to pull out the iron ore leaving rusty piles of pellets waiting to be burned in the blast furnace. i sat by the scrub trees at the edge of the river and watched a thick liquid pour out of the factory into the water the furnace fired and lit the night sky the stacks spewed a fine shower of metallic smoke across the water. now the factory’s steel bones are rusting at the river’s edge the concrete foundation crumbles under its own weight as the water flows past carrying off the remains piece by piece. the roots of the trees snake through the cracks to reach the water. workers are at a different site trenching out a line from the stack to the river at the base of the thumb the line reads A RACE TO THE DEATH. . this new stack in our town is bigger than the rest fueled by waste a breath thick with sickness settles on the water and says I will make the trees bare no leaves will blossom in the spring the roots will shrivel at your banks. the River says I am the water of the Lakes we stand on her shore and listen to what the River says rise up against the machine when the voice of the water is silenced our voices will echo in a lifeless place. —Mick Vranich *** All the Breaths All the breaths all the people who ever lived or are alive now breathe in their life put together could fit in a space as big as Lake Michigan, Whereas an ant’s total breaths in its life would fill a space the size of your body, And a human breathes a space of air in its life the size of the Empire State Building, And a Blue Whale breathes a volume so large in its life you could go backpacking in it for a month and see no one. —Antler *** Pontiac’s Speech to the White Man Out of the blue sky, out of the waters, out of the woods, of the deer, the beaver the bush the bird flies, out of my people the blood, out of so many moons in this place a man cannot count them, out of grace with the Great Spirit who gave us this land, you seek to push us. . (At night, in my dreams, already I smell you, I smell your railroads, your sawmills, my mother’s hair burning in the forest, I smell these things in my dreams, I see that Chrysler plant you intend over the graves of my people. You cannot fool me! I am the land you seek, I am the supple bowing of the branches, I am the leaves, waving a warning to my young men, I have the strength of all the roots in the forest under me, the fox and the bear and the hawk and the badger have given me their skills, all things and creatures in the forest have given me what is theirs for I have given them my spirit, I have, since the Great Spirit first placed us here, I have trod with respect and care over my mother’s flesh, over this land. . All this! All this! All this! you will have to push out, you white men, you weak pale-faced rum drinking cowards, you who have not been able to manage your own affairs in your own land, you who come now to desecrate mine. Ahhh, this . is your last chance, you bastards, get the fuck out NOW, . or forever the food for the wrath of the forest people. (I know in my dreams, I know your perverse power, your guns and your driven multitudes of paid and punished warriors, and I know in my dreams, against you my branches may break, my leaves may be burned, my fur singed and bleeding in the bitter cold of your ways, and my heart bleeds, my roots squirm and heave with these apprehensions, . but I hear, in my dreams I hear over the clamor of your Fords, over the cries of your powdery women in your department stores over the shriek of the mutilated forest itself, I hear . another tongue, my tongue in another’s mouth, in my dreams I hear the triumph of my forest speech in another time, and it says, it screams with a vengeance UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKERS! Dave Sinclair 1968, in Detroit land of the Ottawas and Wyandottes —reprinted from the Warren-Forest Sun, April 19, 1968 *** Crossing the Freeway Seven a.m. on the way to work Sun not up, headlights on Moving from freeway to freeway Exiting, entering, making ready To merge . And there on the entrance ramp From the north Lodge to east I-94 There in that concrete cavern On a sorry triangle of green A tall strong male ring-necked pheasant Making ready to cross this dangerous River of cars . Though I’d seen them before And now more and more in the early Morning hours I am open-mouthed And my foot hits the brake Wanting so to stop and watch and wait And help him cross . But quickly thinking better of it Knowing I would be back-ended And cause him more of a start I move on with the flow Of that tainted river Just as the sun breaks the urban line So that his head shines green Shines red in my passing eye And I carry his color in my mind The day long —M.R. *** Campfire Talk Birds don’t need opinions because they have pinions. What is the opinion of the pinon pine on whether Christianity is for or against homosexuality? A flower doesn’t need a savior to be able to bloom. A waterfall doesn’t need a guru in order to gush. A caterpillar doesn’t need a Bible to become a butterfly. A lake doesn’t need a Ph.D. to become a cloud. A rainbow doesn’t need a fresh coat of pain every year. Worms don’t need to study existentialism to exist. Mountaintops don’t need to kneel and ask forgiveness for their sins. Capitalism and Communism mean nothing to every tree that alchemizes light. No whale will ever know who Christ is. No chipmunk will ever follow Buddha. No eagle gives a shit about Mohammed. No grizzly will ever consult a priest ... No seagull will ever become a Mormon. No dolphin has to learn computers if it wants to get along in the modern world. No sparrow needs insurance. No gorilla needs a God. —Antler *** Sex and Revolution my flesh is rippling music dancing as i move my hands my lips across your supple body blending everything becomes bewildered unpretende in these moments of ecstatic rhythm reggae sweat your breath so sweet still lingering upon my lips your body mine the last of the wine spilled between us in a kiss an offering not offered to some other god but shared these moments of ecstatic rhythm writhing in abandon Dionysus could not have taught me mysteries more powerful than making love all acts of pleasure consummate rebellion all conscious nakedness can shuffle off this mortal coil and by expanding span the growing chasm between Self and Not-Self eliminating borders to abandonment’s continuum a communion of surrender and resistance which is survival and our happiness think this: distances are dangerous illusions of distinctions are conclusions of extinction we must be in love with the world become it to save it from our own self-hatred lover, i caress the whole in you with every touch turning us away from sure destruction bring your lips again to mine and seal our sweet conspiracy of sex and revolution pleasure is our bread and wine and Anarchy our paradise chaos comes into the inner heart surrounds the world around just at the moment we dissolve our barriers against it in these moments of ecstatic rhythm we become the everywhere and everything at last, uncontrollable and free. —Marie Stephens The fantastic animals on this centerfold and on pages 18, 19 and 23 are by Lynne Clive.