by Alan Catlin
Reading Camus
in pretrial jury
selection room/
court
the book about
a man with no
moral center
no values
changing his
story depending
upon the witnesses
this judge/penitent
unredeemable as
the guilty & the dead
our case: murder
one
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. More than 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.
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