WATCH THE VIDEO

by George Held

Screenshot of the video of the murder of Tyre Nichols.

For Rodney King

 

 

After Memphis, what more can we ask video

to do? After Tyre Nichols, what more

can it confirm? About barbarity,

good ol’ American barbarity? 

The Nazis had nothing on us when it

comes to barbarity. Just look at

the video and see those black men in

uniform dishing out murderous mayhem,

 

killing Tyre as surely as pink-cheeked

SS troopers brutally murdered an old Slav

or a Jew. Yes, these assassins, blond or black,

and legitimized by uniform, carry out

the will of the culture, brutalize the despised

while we, mute, wait to watch the video.

 

George Held occasionally contributes to The NVN and has poems now in Ultimate Reality and Jerry Jazz Magazine.

NOW THAT ALEX TREBEK IS DEAD

 by George Held

Yes, this might be my last autumn

And yes, I love the fall leaves

In their annual resplendent beauty

 

A deadly fall, when Coronavirus

Has surged, again bringing mobile

Morgues to house the superabundant dead

 

In El Paso, on the Rio Grande, the Chicano

City to which I drove in 1967 for my divorce

In Ciudad Juarez, where quickies were then

 

Institutionalized: you paid your

Hundred dollars and the Cesar Romero

Judge gaveled your once-great marriage over

 

In 1967, when Alex Trebek was still

Canadian, a host for CBC,

And I was in the middle, Canada north

 

And Mexico south, and now we’re all

In the middle, T***p still in the White House

And Joe Biden the President-elect

 

No one knows where it will end, the COVID,

The Transition, a life, but Alex Trebek

Is dead

George Held is a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

THE LAST ELECTION

by George Held

“The worst case,” [Barton] Gellman writes [in The Atlantic], “is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him.” Merely by refusing to concede, Trump could keep the electoral result in doubt through the 79-day period between Election Day and the day the next president is to be inaugurated. Gellman's reporting shows that Republicans are already discussing plans to bypass the popular vote and directly appoint electors to the Electoral College. This could lead the country to a precipice: Two men could show up to be sworn in on Inauguration Day. “One of them,” Gellman writes, “would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor, The Atlantic in today’s email to subscribers releasing the magazine’s November cover story.

 ...the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote... 

—Twelfth Amendment, U.S. Constitution

 

The sound of horse-drawn tumbrils

Echoes in DuPont Circle 

Punctuated by the chop of the guillotine 

As the heads of the opposition fall—

the chairs of the most strategic committees,

ranking members of others,

obstreperous heads of key organizations... 

 

The death of the most influential liberal

Justice and her replacement

By another grim rightist ideologue 

Have opened the sluice gates

Of reprisal and crimson revenge. 

 

The Orange Duce is often smiling

As good fortune shines upon him,

Death having opened a decisive seat

On the Supreme Court—never more supreme

Than when handing down death—and then

As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment,

He receives another term in what will be

The last election, election for life.

 

So, set in motion by his hippo

Of a compliant attorney general,

Who gets the Orange Man’s code— 

No translator needed—his bizarre fantasy

Of a return to the terror of the sans culottes

Haunts official Washington and the entire country,

 

Like a corporeal rendition of the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse,

Every night at 5 on Fox TV, kicked off

By a pep rally and boastful remarks

By the Orange Man in Chief,

The tumbrils roll and the glistening blade falls

While, in the continuing pandemic,

The maskless base howls in visceral support.

 

 

A longtime contributor to The New Verse News, George Held plans to vote in 2020.

STYMIED

by George Held

T***p wears mask in public for 1st time. The president told reporters, “I've never been against masks,” before departing the White House for Walter Reed Medical Center. Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP via ABC News, July 12, 2020

That is no planet for old men, or young –
the Earth contaminated by a virus
so deadly that in one great city
one in three hundred has become

infected and in a tiny Arkansas town
one in nineteen, and all the while
the most powerful man on Earth
wears no mask, except at Walter Reed.

Maybe a mask offers no more protection
than a rubber with a hole in it
but still, the President might wear one
at least to show concern for prophylaxis;

so those who mask up to walk to the post
office must encounter strapping young women
and men whose aplomb, arrogance, or disregard
for more vulnerable citizens

lends even a commonplace sortie
a risk like charging a machinegun
nest on Iwo Jima. But most old folks know
their time is up and dying from the virus

can be more efficient than falling victim
to a malignancy. An aged human
is but a decrepit thing, unlikely to remain
a golden bird upon a golden bough,

much less to sing to a careless emperor…

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, is sheltering in Eastern Long Island.

IN THE CONTEXT

by George Held

When long waves roll in at Napeague and roil the tidal pools, I feel nature’s force and nature’s balm soothing my wounded body and my troubled mind,

All in the context of Covid-19, the plague upon all houses...

Ah, “coronavirus,” that beautiful poetical word, amphibrach + trochee, a perfect word for free verse, a word that can break any meter the way the virus can break down any human organ—

“Coronavirus” - caress its divine sonic details on the tongue, in the pharynx, the miraculous voice box,

As you murmur the all-consuming word—
coronavirus,
coronavirus,
coronavirus


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, is sheltering in Eastern Long Island.

SHAME

by George Held

Trump Provides Cover For the Kurds by Pia Guerra at The Nib

Full story by Jennifer Griffin and Melissa Leon at Fox News.

The last vestige of shame
our Special Forces feel
for abandoning the Kurds,
our ablest warrior allies,

is pure attar in the rose
of battle grown in the garden
of the temporary victory
over ISIS and their allies.

That rose has faded and died
on orders from our supreme leader
to betray and abandon
our loyal Kurdish brothers.

In future where can shame
bloom? Who now will share
the arid earth where Kurd
and Special Forces bled

Out their lives in hard-earned
mutual trust? The old words
—trust and shame and loyalty—
have wilted and died.


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry chapbook out, Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

SANCTIFIED

by George Held

Cartoon by Mark Taylor, The Commoner Call, May 27, 2019

“In Alabama—where lawmakers banned abortion for rape victims—rapists’ parental rights are protected: Alabama is one of two states with no statute terminating parental rights for a person found to have conceived the child by rape or incest . . .” The Washington Post, June 9, 2019


Thank God our holy sperm
has been sanctified
by Christian Alabama law.

That little wench of a niece
better see the light
and let me raise our boy,

with or without her.
So what if she conceived
after a little roll in the hay?

At first she had her way
in court—calling me “rapist”—
but now the law has stepped

in and declared me a proper
parent, confirmed my right
to father my boy,

to teach him to shoot and hunt
and how to treat the ladies
so he’ll know the law

is on his side. Thank God.
Our sperm has been sanctified
by Christian Alabama law.


George Held, a ten-time Pushcart nominee, is a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News. His new collection of poems is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

SACRED

by George Held

The governor’s statement places
the key word, “God,” in the place

of emphasis, at the end, where
it makes the most of her pious case

but most offends those who question
when a fetus has become a “life”

or even doubt there is a god,
at least one who can give sacred gifts,

and those who believe that a woman’s life
is her own to join in sex with whomever

she wants and once pregnant whether
or not to delete that tiny comma without

the intervention of the almighty state.
What sort of Handmaid’s Tale

is ‘Bama spinning here now that its Senate
and the Court are packed with Medieval

men of the Right who consign women
to the stove and the marital bed,

where all conception is authorized
by a Fundamentalist Godhead.

What country is this where theocracy
struts its stuff in public and democracy

hides under the bed to avoid
a vengeful thrashing? My count-

try, ’tis of me, I sing, sweet place
of Liberty, of thee I sing . . .


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations and published or edited twenty-two poetry books.

AVIELLE'S MOM

by George Held

The following statement by Jeremy Richman’s widow, Jennifer Hensel, was posted at the GoFundMe page created by Jennifer’s brother. It is the only authorized fundraising site for fundraising for Jennifer and her children. “Side by side since 1991, Jeremy and I walked a path of deep friendship, marriage, and parenthood. As you may know, our first born, our beautiful Avielle was murdered at Sandy Hook school in 2012. In 2013, we founded the Avielle Foundation to honor her life. Our second daughter, Imogen (4 years) and son Owen (2 years) brought a renewed sense of joy and hope to our lives. Imogen and Owen are imaginative, fun, caring, sweet, curious and RIDICULOUSLY loving. They are a true reflection of Jeremy and me. The work of the Avielle Foundation is meaningful. But my champion and the love of my life is the person who had every tool in the toolbox at his disposal. He succumbed to the grief that he could not escape. Now we also honor Jeremy through the continued work of our foundation. Our family is our true legacy. To parent our children without my champion shatters my heart and I will love my best friend forever.  I am grateful for your support and donations.”

You’ve lost your daughter,
Now your husband,
To the dark reaper
Who sowed death
Among the kids and staff
At Sandy Hook,
Sure as if he’d pulled
The trigger on Jeremy.

Who knew that more years
Would pass than Avielle’s age
Before Jeremy himself
Would pass on from
The hopelessness here
To wherever—we can
Never know—but life
Without Avielle,

In an uncaring nation
Of gun Nazis
Allowing no progress
On gun laws,
Was just too hard
To bear? And we now
Pray for you, Avielle’s mom
And Jeremy’s widow,

We pray for you.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations and published or edited twenty-two poetry books.

POMPEY MAGNUS

by George Held



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in this televised interview that God may have sent President Donald Trump to Earth to protect Israel.


Dressed in his black undertaker’s suit,
The Secretary of State, first in his class
at West Point, visits the Western Wall
with ally Netanyahu, then blithely tells
the press that as a Christian, first in his class,
he believes God might well have ordained
that President T***p be the angel
of Israel’s deliverance, a modern Esther
on this Purim 2019.

Pompey Magnus, Pompeo’s antecedent,
Had three Triumphs in his day; now here’s
Another one, at the Western Wall at the expense
of the wall between Church and State, descended
from Roger Williams and T. Jefferson,
whose descendant T***p desires above all
a wall along the Mexican border, the modern
version of Sicily, which Pompey the Great
conquered in the name of the Republic.

Will our Pompeo the Great, first in his class,
bring down, like Joshua at Jericho, the wall
between State and Church? Who is this god
for whom Pompeo speaks with such confidence?
Who is this Caesar T***p, who like Emperor
Sulla, sends his consul abroad to make
policy without consent of the Senate? And
will he avoid, like Pompey, the scathing
nickname, earned for causing carnage, “carnifex”*?


* “the butcher"  


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has a new poetry book, Second Sense, forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada.

ANOTHER YEAR

by George Held

Another year ends and a new year starts
and I have fewer—it’s just math—
to count on, but I’m glad to have
been born too young for WW 2
and too old for Korea and Nam

and too ancient for the all-volunteer
Army dispatched, like Caesar’s legions,
to any hot spot in the Empire,
though Afghanistan’s a region
a bit too far out for our ambition.

Another year, the President’s third
in office, on the horizon for him
to continue our retreats
from remote and alien climes
(poetic word for “region” and for rhymes)

or to launch new strikes, like missiles
out of the blue: it’s all up to him,
our grand commander-in-chief,
our modern chief executive officer
and main deal-maker and pussy-grabber.

Will this be another year of immunity
for executive privilege, the one man
above the law, for him who has slouched
from the bestial floor in Bethlehem
to rename the world like a neo-Adam,

whose jutting chin recalls Mussolini
and racist rants echo Hitler’s
and whose repeated lies outdo Goebbels’
but who knows how to talk the talk
that enthralls his adamantine Base.

Another year, or could it be our last
before the earth floods or a nuclear blast
solves our overpopulation problem?
The bourgeoisie now draw near the edge
over which many poor have lately plunged,

and the widespread wish of “Happy New Year”
seems frivolous if not a beard for fear.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

A VOICE FROM THE BLUE

by George Held

Her sharp metallic voice says,
“Your record of on-time payments
Qualifies you for zero interest
On your new credit card. Please
Press 1 for our authentication department.”

God knows what questions will be
Asked, what fees charged if I press 1
But her sharp metallic voice
Warns me to beware. It’s like
The brisk, urgent frat-boy voice

That offers me forgiveness
Of my car loan or the sanctimonious
Voice of the pitch-man soliciting
My donation to some starving
Reservation in remote Montana.

The voices might as well welcome
Me to the age of vulnerability,
Of forgetfulness, of frailty,
Of being a mark for any con
Preying on the inept and the lonely,

On those who might be careless
Or dying to squander their shekels in reply
To a disembodied voice from the blue
And its promise of only connecting
For one last desperate minute.

A longtime contributor to the TheNewVerse.News, George Held writes from New York. His forthcoming book is Second Sight (Poets Wear Prada, 2019).

AGAIN

by George Held

Oct. 27, 2018 Squirrel Hill is home to a large Jewish population. Above, Tree of Life synagogue. Pam Panchak/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP via The Washington Post

Jews are being slaughtered again, ho hum –
In serene leafy Squirrel Hill this time

After days of pipe-bomb deliveries
To Dem bigwigs, enemies of the T***p state,

As reported by those enemies of the state,
The media; now the Jews again, those

Enemies out of central casting always
On call for the demented demons

Of domination as they once again
Focus their hatred and execute scapegoats

In the name of some Judenfrei utopia
That can never exist, because once

Judenrein, those left will turn on the weak
And most despised among them

And the executions will begin again…
So don’t look for barbarians at the gate

They already are right here inside –
Inside our borders, inside our hearts


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017). Under the Escalator, his dark fantasy for children, came was released last month.

THE WRECKED SEASON

by George Held

Florence left a trail of flooded roads, broken trees and downed power lines across Leland, N.C. (Ken Blevins/The Star-News via AP via The Washington Post)

              As I walked down to Rotten Lake I remembered
              the wrecked season, haunted by plans of salvage…
                             —Muriel Rukeyser, “First Elegy. Rotten Lake”


Snow & cold in the Northeast
Show your breath on May Day;
This spring will be short –
A wrecked season.

Every rare warm day overwelcomed
As halcyon, a resurrection,
Citizens worshiping the sun
Bare legs & shoulders to welcome warmth.

No one mentions the global warming
Behind each wrecked season,
& few foresee the advent
Of a wrecked planet,

Its seawalls overtopped, lowlands swamped,
Sea wrack & sea foam decorating
Flooded floors & warped siding,
A civilization sliding by on mud.

Cry, the beloved Earth
& cry, the drenched citizens;
Leave your belongings behind:
Flee upland or drown.

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017). Under the Escalator, his dark fantasy for children, will be released later this month.

NEVER CRITICIZE A NAZI

by George Held

unless you have spoken out
in church or synagogue
or demonstrated in the streets
against your own fascist regime
as it squelches one civil right
after another

I know, as long as the sheriffs
concentrate on the Muslims
and the blacks and the Latinx
we can calmly complain among ourselves
about the increasing nastiness
and aggression

as the Other is whisked off
to prison and to the camps
now being built in the pine barrens
beyond the view of the casual
observer of all the nastiness
and aggression

and besides, it’ll be more peaceful
for a while, as long as we keep
resistance to ourselves and act
the part of loyal citizens—we know
the primacy of loyalty today—in
ignoring nastiness

have you calculated like an actuary
how long it will be before they
invade your house at 2 AM
and drag you before your cousin
the magistrate for arraignment
as a traitor

anyhow, it won’t be too long
unless you keep your mouth shut
and switch from Rachel to Hannity
at 9 PM and wear a handsome
red ball cap that says Keep America
Great

Oh, yes, and never criticize a Nazi.
Achtung!


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

RULING CLASS

by George Held

Left: Cameron Kasky, Photograph by Rhona Wise / AFP / Getty via The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2018.
Right: Bethany Garrison, Photograph by Sharif Hamza, The New Yorker, Mar, 26, 2018.

The Parkland Kids have made
the cover of TIME: new
icons of a teen-mad age,
out to change the world,
or at least U.S. gun laws.

There’s barefoot Jaclyn,
buzzcut Emma, and the boys:
Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky,
and David Hogg, chairs of the board
of The Stoneman Douglas Survivors

and so far Kevlar impervious
to competitive envy,
so far without endorsements
(will they appear in ads
as a group or individuals?).

Even their motto, “Never
Again,” has brought no protest
from those who use it to resist
the Shoah: Whose slogan is it?
Which will happen again first?

But the Survivors’ suburban faces
ricochet off the teens with guns
in the pages of The New Yorker:
rural, poised, resolute, responsible
owners of shotguns, handguns, AR 16’s,

practicing where “shooting
felt as common as skateboarding.”
Whichever side you choose,
Americans, how will you accommodate
both law-abiding groups?


George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

LEDELL LEE, R.I.P.

by George Held

Image source: The Innocence Project

The state machinery for murder
executed its steps coolly and efficiently
in the killing of Ledell Lee.

So what if the blood on his shoes
and the hairs found at the scene
received no test for DNA?

So what if the Innocence Project
and Sister Helen Prejean protest
Ledell Lee might be not guilty?

So what if Camus warned against
executions as mere state-approved
murder? How many have heard

of Camus, Prejean, even DNA? How
many have thought hard about
the idea of state-approved murder

or resisted the confection that
medazolam’s nearing expiration date
justified eight executions in eleven days?

So the executioners poured three drugs
Into Lee: medazolam, a sedative, then
a paralyzer called vecuronium bromide—

hear the falling meter?—and a heart-
stopper, potassium chloride.
Each flawlessly performed its part.

Thus did the wheels of Arkansas justice
turn exceedingly well on 4/20/17
in the killing of Ledell Lee.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has received ten Pushcart nominations, including ones for both poetry and fiction in 2016. His new poetry chapbook is Phased II (Poets Wear Prada, 2016).

SUNSET COMMENT ON THE NEW YEAR

by George Held

29 December 2016

It’s one of those glorious sunsets,
Like an ad for New Mexico, that makes
You feel blessed to be alive even as
Authoritarianism leaks over the horizon –
Orange and gold flames with a purple core
Over New Jersey without the seasonal
Obstruction of leaves on the trees –
What might it presage, what tacit
Message doth it bring, this dynamic neon
Peach Melba of a twilit sky? Not the Orange
Man risen from New York City towers
To loom Kong-like over even the sunset,
The sky, the compliant Universe,
The galactic figure of our tabloid
Imaginations?
And now the fire in the sky
Deepens like a Roman omen, the night
Rushes in to drape dark auguries
About the perishing republic, and we brace
For the inevitable inauguration, the sunset
A mere glowing ember in the charred evening.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has received ten Pushcart nominations, including ones for both poetry and fiction in 2016. His new poetry chapbook is Phased II (Poets Wear Prada, 2016).

O, SAY CAN YOU SEE

by George Held

Mr. Mammon. Posted by Fearguth at bildungblog, February 25, 2016.

Once-temperate female Facebook friends
Who’d reckoned Hillary would win for femmes
Now sound in defeat as intemperate
As the rightwing half of the electorate.

Some blacks and Latins now prove as hateful
Toward whites as the most bigoted of baleful
Enemies who supported the winner, Trump,
Who they’d supposed would land on his rump.

Now that there’s no hope for e pluribus unum,
And our petitions are voided in a tweet,
As we prepare for Armageddon in the street,
Listen up to what the Whitelash has spoken:

A land run by conglomerate Trump Bannon
& Co., in thrall to almighty Mammon.


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry collection: Bleak Splendor (Muddy River Books, 2016).

THE END

by George Held

Image source: Christian Science Monitor

The ending becomes clearer,
The fire and ice of catastrophe,
Ecological collapse or nuclear
Dystrophy striking Earth’s
Set for the last time on its human stage,
“The End” dissolving on its screen . . .
The exits are closed
While the Harvest Moon
Looks indifferently down.


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry collection Bleak Splendor (Muddy River Books, 2016).