BEGIN OVER AGAIN (BOA) BUDGET

by Tricia Knoll

Image Source: Hasbro

Whoever coined that penny-dreadful acronym BOA played too much
Monopoly. Report to Jail. No go by go. No payment for the work
you did, for what the artists painted beneath the bridges, for the songs
that mothers wet with milk dripped into their baby’s mouth or
that fathers moaned as regrets of what they hadn’t done to help,
you know, the sounds you could hear once in a while on public radio.

The beginners-again movement men whacked all the monuments
to pieces, loved it that Ramses’ head showed up in a sewer works hole.
When they carved out human services, they cared not a whit
(and I have it from a very reliable source that whit is much smaller
than bit), that zombies, the victims of flesh-eating cut-backs,
careened around downtowns with nowhere to go, washing in McDonald’s
restrooms, or giving up and pitching a tent in the graveyard
next to the wild sweet peas and the four-leaf clovers.

You won’t have this. You won’t have that. That refrain echos
in the school yard recess warning bells and the sirens that get people
to the hospital emergency rooms where they might be treated
depending on their documents. If they are legal people.

You will have bombs and walls. Lots of bombs and because we have big
sticks, we can use them wherever we want. We don’t have to lend them
to friends because the nations we once called friends aren’t very nice.
We can keep them all for ourselves. The BOA men don’t believe
it will go nuclear. BOA work, choking and squeezing, is not noticeable
to the average person who doesn’t care about tax returns or Putin.
The hungry might feel tightness in the gut. The sick or the less abled
may make unhealthy comparisons to the old play board
where they did collect $200 every once in a while.

What you will notice is how BOA men get new black suits,
gleamy gold badges, and red hats with bills

to keep the sun from blinding them.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has been writing poetry of protest for some months. Her collected work includes Ocean's Laughter (Aldrich Press) and Urban Wild (Finishing Line Press).

UNCLE SHAM

by The Bangkok Bards 
Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

   Decades of incessant bullyrag meddling
    Dysfunctional US versus THEM universals
    Imposing patriotic homeland socialized insecurity
    Anti-communism anti-terrorism anti-violence anti-clockwise rotation
    
    Having rained napalm white phosphorous
    Agent Orange misty bunker busters
    Misguided drone missiles peed upon
    Raging bonfires burning themselves out
    
    Contrived false truths catastrophic consequences
    Innocent Vietnamese Cambodians Iraqis Afghanis
    Pakistanis Yemenis Serbs Somalis Libyans
    Prejudged guilty debunking good intentions
    
    Bloated Cold War machine should’ve
    Been dismantled demobilized long ago
    Collateral damage exceeding exaggerated threats
    Spymeister propaganda bamboozling public awareness
    
    Taxpayer loot morally bankrupt squandered
    Faceless faded greenback Monopoly revenue
    Funding well-greased assembly line productivity
    Chancy condemned Boardwalk private property
    
    Thousands of minors major challenge
    Overburdened underage deprived of childhood
    Dispossessed ghosts haunting boogeyman nightmares
    Brainless etchings permanent indelible tattoos

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

DAS CAPITAL

by B.Z. Niditch

Image source: Ron Swanson Wisdom

Grandad said,
"No one should be
a money machine,"
"Greenbacks",
he called money
or sometimes monopoly,
when he discovered
an ATM
outside his bank
after slaving all night
since he was seven
and turned away
he was expiring
on the pavement
because thieves
broke into the bank,
"What's the difference
inside or out"
he whispered,
"Most people
live by default
the bribe taking pols,
editorial writers
monocled judge
and hung juries
even at
this neglected hour
fear on the street
on a bankrupted day,
now grandad
you are gone
encircled by time
in rooted bitterness
of an uncollected
memory
with interest
now stored in my poems
and housed away
at the bottom draw
of an auctioned desk
with no one to give
an account.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

NOVUS ORDO SEDORUM

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote 

Whose world is it anyway
Shorn sheep led to slaughter
Innocent lambs barbecue spit grilled
Monopoly Boardwalk 99% mortgages foreclosed

American-can unipolarity chiding homeless hubris
Spreading unfounded panic humiliating intimidation
Displaced classless NOocracy abysmally ignorant
Resentful of U.S. vs. THEM status Quo Vadis

Corporate think-thank-thunk tanks Foxy televisionairies
Right-wing plot achieving universal domination
Bushwhacker has-beens declaring bleached supremacy
Overacting upstages gilded lily abomi-Nation

In Gold Wet Rust imperial
Self-interest oily motivation Super-Capitalism
Federal Reserve 4N Relations Council
IMFucked Vaseline friend or enema

Rapture theologians blissfully force open
Heaven’s Gate to annihilation prophecy
Nuclear holocaust Great Armageddon battle
Fallen angels neon halos unplugged

Where New World gives orders
Superclass dictating microchip virtual implants
Viral Internet cyber-propaganda mindset virus
Sold Out to highest bidder

Author's Note: Inspired by Earl Wilcox’s nudging.

 No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .