by Alan Catlin
Bush's latest
admonition
screed against
Democrats
against troop
withdrawal
bumped by real
news shootings
on campus in
Virginia
Bush's formerly-
to-be-broadcast-
live statements
reduced to sound
bytes same-old
same-old
while elsewhere
life does not
go on as usual
Alan Catlin's latest chapbook is a long poem, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", an updating of Rexroth's seminal poem of the same name. Whereas Rexroth riffs on the abuses of the Eisenhower adminstration, the update observes abuses of power in the current administration with particular attention to the cynical, criminal behavior towards the Katrina hurricane victims. One year later, the victims are not forgotten. No matter how many candles the Bushes light, the appalling lack of humanity and the blatant hypocrisy of the folks in charge is as apparent as the disenfranchised, the homeless, and the poverty stricken people of the Gulf states.