Mass murderers elected to government
Born from masses of murderers
Birth monstrous millennials
From consumer consumers
Mass producing mass murder
Amorphous mobs of conformity
Metastasising myrmidon masses
Amass stockpiles of munitions
Mass communicate maelstrom
Teach humanities/preach masses
Sing the peace of mass murder
Warring for massive profits
Let us proclaim the mystery
Equal to one greater than all
Poetry
Crow Feather Totem VI
Walking on a windy day
My shadow flew away.
Next day the wind was back,
My father vanished into black.
Walking on a windy day
My mother fell to earth.
Next day leaves were flying,
My eldest left the house.
Walking on a still day
My shadow shows the way.
Words for a Friend
RIP Andrew Bellon
One who encourages poetry in others– encourages more life.
One who shares the poetic in everything—shares more life.
And one who lives poetry– outlives death by its own abundance.
The Unspeakable Girl
The divine girl is missing
From Poland, from Czechoslovakia,
From Hungary and the Ukraine…
We mustn’t speak about the divine girl.
She has gone into the streets
And brothels of Europe,
Tel Aviv and the Emirates…
She has gone into the underworld,
Vanished into namelessness,
Passed through corridors,
Swallowed the darkness.
She is unspeakable, expendable.
Shh, don’t speak
About the unspeakable girl.
Substitutes for a Nightmare
Arms deals and beheading,
Education attacked in Hungary.
Good in evil and evil in good,
Terror and subterfuge.
Ignorance can’t be reconciled.
The rich minority in the interests
Of the rich minority.
The wrong people in authority
Pollute population with corruption.
President carrying human head
Offers no apology.
Books begin burning again,
Ashes mock teachers and holy men.
Nuclear attacks on God
Fail to destroy God.
Time is dead forever.
The hatred continues.
The hatred conditions.
Mafias close one ear
And toast in Russian.
Brexit decides to text it,
America to sext it,
Oligarchs to own it,
Working class to suffer it,
Israel to shekel it,
Media to condemn it,
Turkey to meddle in it
And Asia to cook it.
No wonder earth is dying.
Mothers of mothers crying.
The best stop trying.
We can’t tell who’s lying.
Crow Feather Totem V
A white feather in the grass
Like a spirit return
Under star spider legs
Riding grass snake wind
In the region of the disembodied
Shadows flying over the field
For the longest moment
I had forgotten the road
A white feather
And the speed of light
School of Music
Not the doors we never open
But the invitation of a violin.
A student sings from La bohème.
Better than ovations, his passionate devotion.
In another room, two trumpets
Sound out the physics of justice.
A young woman with bass clarinet
Or strange fish caught in a drift net.
A bassoonist down the corridor,
All thumbs at the woodwind door.
Every work a work in progress,
Perfecting imperfection in chorus.
Not the doors we never open
But the invitation of a violin.
Clinical Condition
Masses of medical clinics are appearing.
We must be expecting the worst.
Human shadows saturate the market
Like stuffed sacks of sickness.
The office of doctor beehives into bulk.
Medical realtors create a crisis bubble.
The cost of wellness offsets occupancy.
Clinics flourish on curable defects.
Life is the casting of contiguous lots.
Now every property is distressed.
A density test is a good biomarker
To the health of illness and equity.
Fake
Fake or not— something is amiss
Fake or not— blood runs out the veins
The appendage of doubt withers on the branch
Fake or not— the tree died in Paradise
Fake or not— pockets are sacked
Innocence suffers the fakery
Nothing changes but the fakemen
Fake or not— God has no face
Fake or not— there are natural facts
Presidents sign with a fake pen
A despot murders his kin
Fake or not— the flames of the earth
Blaze through the crust to the sun
Fake or not— the indigent go without shoes
Fake or not— time lifts the mask
Natural resources betray the rot at the core
Fake or not— a dream of peace is real
Fake or not— love is its own illusion
Ann Arbor Poetry Blues
Friday I visited Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most of the book shops I knew are gone, but Dawn Treader Books was still in business— a survivor from the great old days of Ann Arbor book shops. The poetry section was smaller than I remembered, with a few shelves so crammed with collections it was difficult even to dislodge a book from its place. I felt sad looking over titles and names. They weren’t just books. They were people I once knew. So much self-importance. So much certainty in their own greatness. Now here they were, interred in the last poetry mausoleum. I left Ann Arbor thinking I had wasted my life. But then I also thought this, how could I waste a life I’d chosen. That is something. That is perhaps something.
Salvatore Ala 