dust settles
dream your vicious dream, america.
don’t let our picket lines disturb
your picket fences.
walk on, wayward manifest —
your destiny awaits.
meanwhile, we’ll be here, like
the dirt beneath your feet.
we’ll be singing, america.
don’t mind these voices
shaking up your earth.
the dust settles eventually.
but remember, mountains
can be made from molehills.
we’ll be singing from the peaks
soon enough, america.
perhaps our song will reach you then.
—tahirih bochmann—
— Ua Mau Ke Ea o ka ‘Āina i ka Pono
(The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness)
you hold the blood of the goddess
in your quiet hands, her flowing hair
at rest beneath your feet, and in
the crater bed of her destruction,
you kiss her air and promise her
worthy of your mortal soul—
still, you laugh at the scattering
of her sacred veins, pocket a pebble
that will never see pele’s kingdom of
heaven again
does the winter chill at feast
upon your lungs spell something
sacred? one bright morning’s spill
against your eyes? the levitation of some
songborn persistence, one euphonic
testament against the milieu?
breathe into her spirit.
the land will have us all in time
—tahirih bochmann—
‘Tain’t
Thought for several
days a hitchhiker
stole my cell phone
Acting odd
in the front seat
Laughing to himself
Found it days later
at the bottom
of the car’s wastebasket
Then a stranded motorist
knocked at my door
late one night
Lent him my gas can
& flashlight. Drove away
& kept them both
Color me gullible
And paranoid. ‘Tain’t
the Sixties anymore
That era
got co-opted
We got trumped
—ART GOODTIMES—
Lone Cone Broadside/ Union of Mountain Poet/ Vincent St. John Local / Headwaters of Maverick Draw / Aztlán/ Jack Mueller Brigade / Western Slope / 4 Corners Kuksu Brigade (Ret.) / San Francisco 13019
Warning
Dangerous air today
they say,
as if i could hold my breath
or turn back the industrial revolution.
Dangerous air today.
Forests burn all around us
old growth turned sunlight
into sugars
a strange alchemy
now turning sugars into
a carbon haze
and air quality alerts.
Dangerous air today.
An “i-told-you-so moment”
if only i could catch my breath.
Ed Abbey laughing–
he tried to warn us–
that we were falling and not flying.
Our fears lulled by PR firms
and impossibly cheap plastic baubles.
“Please put your seat and tray into their full and upright positions.”
Falling not flying.
Dangerous air today.
Red flag warning
no burns,
red-eyes
impossible heat.
Dangerous air today.
Can’t see the mountains–
might as well live in Kansas–
a long nothing.
Without mountains
how can one tell which way is north?
The cardinal directions
are all mashed potatoes–
featureless like a cartoon heaven–
a special kind of hell.
Dangerous air today.
People breath it in
and hate–
as if
that will clear the skies.
.
—Jacob Richards—
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