CLIMATE CHANGE

by Art Goodtimes

The petro-

geomorphic freight train

keeps chugging along

 

dragging

the ionosphere behind itki

like a superhero cape

caught on a junkyard Edsel

Author’s Note: “Ki” is a grammatical neologism Indigenous science writer Robin Wall Kimmerer advocates for using in place of “it”, “its”, “it’s” or “itself” to help correct English’s objectification of phenomena when speaking of objects in the natural world. The neologist term is harvested from the last syllable of a longer word in Potawatomi for an “earth being.” 

     As a pre-school teacher I learned that we humans learn best by going through the known to the unknown. Instead of substituting “ki” for “it”, I’ve chosen to add the Indigenous neologism to our neutral English pronoun as a suffix, changing the way we speak of things in English from inanimate to animate. 

     Indeed, that syllable, “ki”, is a Potawatomi suffix meaning “from the living earth.” Thus, itki means that even what English sees as gender-neutral objects are in some sense alive.

Art Goodtimes, poet, basketweaver, former preschool teacher and Green Party social activist, served as San Miguel County Commissioner (1996–2016) and Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011–2013). Poetry editor emeritus for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth, and the Mountain Gazette, he is currently poetry editor for Fungi and Sage Green Journal.

TWENTY YEARS IN & OUT

by Art Goodtimes

For the first ten years after 9/11

a band of us peaceniks marched our

San Miguel County Seat’s main street

in protest & remembrance

Once a month. Every eleventh

Doves preaching to the peacocks

 

No permits. Just commish & citizen kin

remembering those who held hands

falling from the Towers like shot duck

 

Remembering those eagles in uniforms

racing up stairwells intent on rescue

as the crushing hate of true believers

came crashing down on their heads

 

Remembering America’s lashing out

without true purpose. Invading Iraq

Afghanistan. Predator strikes. Collateral

damage. A nation bent on inflicting

endless terror on endless terrorists

 

After decades of foreign wars

we peace-marchers kind of lost heart

Chickadees with PTSD. Crows

becoming accustomed to carrion

So industrial Telluride’s unreal

estate bubbles on undisturbed

 

Now, explains

Capt. Barefoot

lives of peace

our only protest

 

Parade-master & poet-in-residence at the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Art Goodtimes served fives terms as Colorado’s only Green county commissioner. He is currently represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle).

DRONING ON & ON & ON

by Art Goodtimes

In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda. Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified. It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military. “I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” he said in court. He said he shared what “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.” U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced Hale, 33, of Nashville, to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act, saying his disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” stance on drones. —Washington Post, July 27, 2021

Ironically perverse, ’inn’it

that the whistleblower descendant

of our first patriot spy Nathan Hale

who blew up the U.S. drone program

 goes to jail for four years

 

Convicted & sentenced for exposing

to the light of citizen discernment

our American guide to extrajudicial killings

& their collateral

extinguishment of innocents

 

While, feted followed & showered

with speaker fees

Bush Obama Trump Biden

go on being hailed as leaders

given awards

 

But we the people know whatever the hui

as they’d say on Kauai

with a hang-loose flash of the fist

whatever the name of the game

they gotta keep to the Free World's

bipartisan new normal

 

Mass murders on a scale outweighing all recent

incidents of personal gun violence

in the ol’ U.S. of A

 

So, on we go, in spite of lies

insurrections deceptions liberal

cant & fundraising junk mail

 

On & on. Targeting terrorists

in ever-widening circles of definition

Editor’s Note: For more on Daniel Hale, go to: the sparrow project, the intercept, and Stand With Daniel Hale.

Art Goodtimes is a Western Slope poet, former Green elected official, and constituent of Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado's Third Congressional.

SPACE-TIME DESIRE

by Art Goodtimes

Tweeted by @SciencepornPics

More than the spark

of the 4th’s faux bombardments

 

it’s the dark

with its slow burn

of thousands of nuclear fires

 

that makes me appreciate

the exploding population of stars

that we imitate

 

That all nature mimics

 

This space-time desire

to expand beyond all limits

 

That colors our lives

vermillion and gold

and speeds our demise

as a billionaire species

 

Beautiful

Deadly

Perplexing

 

Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute.

TISSUE & NERVE

by Art Goodtimes

Illustration: Jonathon Rosen for Mother Jones, 2011.

One of the books Capt. Barefoot’s been reading

Crews’ Freud: The Making of an Illusion

details how Freud’s entire legacy

constitutes a tissue of lies

 

Only 'tis you and yous who believe

who put the lie to lies, even

poorly disguised with political handstands

cheap shout-outs & calisthenic flash mobs

 

Truth is, truth can be torn

& so mangled it’s not just-us or justice

but tissue & nerve that compensate

for the loss of all muscle

 

Just one rip & a deep

unconditional dive into the bliss of belief

whether odi et amo, for, out of the fabric

to leap lizard bots & borgs

 

Aye, citizens. Let’s inaugurate our hills to climb

Unzip the science. Unmask the threats. Let’s be

born again believers in the freedom of choices—not so

much the answers, but the friends we make of the questions

 

Art Goodtimes was an Earth First! poetry editor before getting elected to five terms as a Green county commissioner in Southwestern Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle) now represents the Third Congressional district in Congress. Art is co-director of Talking Gourds, a local and regional poetry program under the non-profit aegis of the Telluride Institute.

GEORGIA ON OUR MINDS

by Art Goodtimes

Feels like we’re moving

Pushing like we did in the 60’s

Knowing it’s still kiss & kill

Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth and the Mountain Gazette and current poetry editor for Fungi magazine, Art Goodtimes was Colorado’s Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011-13) and has been poet-in-residence for the Telluride Mushroom Festival since 1981. He retired recently after 20 years as the Inner Basin West’s only Green Party county commissioner. His latest book is Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Fruita, 2019)

CANCER IN A TIME OF COVID

by Art Goodtimes

The One Cancer Voice group of charities has issued advice on COVID-19 for people with cancer .

Strange to be among the target infirmed
at highest risk, after years of
exceptional health & feeling exempt

But we may all end up there too
at the mercy of a virus

that's famous for mutating on the fly
as in bats & pandemics & virulent alleles

If viruses are alive, which we aren’t
even sure is true. Maybe they’re the real aliens
Saprophytes cocooned among us

or as one Deep Creek artist told us
years ago at Dan & Laurie’s art camp
humans are merely vesicles for viruses


Art Goodtimes has a new book out from Lithic Press in Fruita, Colorado: Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (2019).

THE SMEDLEY D. BUTLER BRIGADE

by Art Goodtimes

Smedley Darlington Butler by Robert Shetterly / Americans Who Tell the Truth

John Bolton

Mitt Romney

McRedeye has to say

that it’s unexpected truth-tellers

of a completely different

stripe

that make my day

Like Smedley Darlington Butler

in FDR’s day

America’s not perfect

by a long white shot

but it has its heroes

Art Goodtimes of the Talking Gourds Poetry Program in Telluride has a new book out from Lithic Press in Fruita, Colorado: Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (2019).