CROCKPOT

by Scott C. Kaestner

Dow Jones?
More like Down Jones, right?

Tariff is just another word
for insider trading.

Wake me up when it’s time 
to eat the rich.

I’ll get my Crockpot out
of the cupboard.

Not me but history says
haves vs have-nots.

Is now, always has been
again… not me but history.

This is why powers that be
don’t want it taught in school.

Now history is screaming
haves vs. have-nots.

A white wine reduction
and garlic should do the trick.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and a man of few words but many syllables. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings—maybe even buy a book.

SHORT DIVISION

by Diana Morley

Must cut says the prez-elect

in one of his cozy countless buildings

 

slipping in partners in crime

all the slime that’s fit to fill the void

the bigger the fire the better, he says,

to raise foes’ arm hair along with their hackles

to bring the thrill of campfire tales

all love to chill by, hoping they’re not real.

The public mass, like plants and wildlife,

work daily, yearly, season by season

knowing dawn’s the time to rise 

for the sun to warm, to turn us all toward others—

by nightfall there’s still the rent to pay

and a plugged-in quilt at bedtime

a kitchen cold as an unplayed banjo.

Diana Morley publishes poetry online and in journals. She published Spreading Like Water (2019), a chapbook; Splashing (2020), a poetry collection; and Oregon’s Almeda Fire: From loss to renewal (2021), a documentary of photos and poems.

YEAH, I’M WOKE

by Gordon Gilbert

        My eyes not closed
 
to all the colors of the rainbow;
         this world is not just black and white
 
to men telling women how to live their lives;
         they can’t even manage their own
 
to the rich getting richer;
the rest of us, poorer
 
to the racism everywhere;
how to some, others’ lives don’t matter
 
to the worship of the gun;
some even willing to sacrifice our children
 
to those who have the one, true religion;
they want to impose it on us all
 
to those who profit from these endless wars;
         they are never the ones who fight them
 
    My eyes have been opened
    I see the world more clearly
as it is
                         not
                             as it never was
 
            and so,
              I say it proudly,
                     yeah,
 
       I’m WOKE !

Gordon Gilbert is a writer of poetry and prose residing in NYC's west village. Actively involved in NYC spoken word events since 2008, he has also hosted programs celebrating the beat writers, several African American poets and other poets as well,  including William Carlos Williams. During the pandemic, Gordon found solace and inspiration in long walks along the Hudson River. 

COMMODUS

by Howie Faerstein

Commodus as Hercules, also known as The Bust of Commodus as Hercules, is a marble portrait sculpture created sometime in early 192 AD. It is housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy. Originally discovered in 1874 in the underground chambers of Horti Lamiani, it has become one of the most famous examples of Roman portraiture to date. Commodus (31 August 161 AD – 31 December 192 AD) was Roman Emperor from 180 to 192 and the son of the previous emperor, Marcus Aurelius.During his sole reign, he came to associate himself with the Greek hero, Herakles (whose myths were adopted in Rome under the name Hercules), eventually having a bust depicting him as the hero created near the end of his reign.There is speculation of the Emperor's intent by creating depictions of himself as a godlike figure. While some sources say it was Commodus's desire not to be the protege of Hercules, but to be a god, the incarnation, the epiphany of Hercules and others claim instead that he simply desired to be the center of attention and show his intense appreciation for games and spectacles. —Wikipedia

Claiming to be Hercules reincarnated,
Commodus killed one hundred lions
and three elephants single-handedly
and our leader thinks he’s special,
says his I. Q. is one of the highest.
To honor the gods, Commodus had amputees chained together
in the arena and, pretending they were giants, clubbed them to death,
and our president says part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.
Late 2nd century emperor, Commodus
renamed Rome Commodius Commodiana,
and our buffoon-in-chief says, I could shoot somebody in the middle
of 5th Avenue and I wouldn’t lose voters.
With his bow, Commodus shot the heads off ostriches in full gallop,
slew a giraffe once, strange and helpless beast.
With each appearance as a gladiator,
he charged the city a million sesterces, depleting the treasury.
Citizens were often killed for making him angry.
He proclaimed a new order
just like T***p
and was assassinated finally
by his mistress, his chamberlain, and his prefect.

Howie Faerstein is the author of two poetry collections: Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn and Googootz and Other Poems both published by Press 53. His poetry and reviews can be found in Great River Review, Off the Coast, Rattle, upstreet, Mudfish and on-line in Verse Daily, About Place, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, Poetrybay, Peacock Journal, and Connotation. He presently volunteers at the Center for New Americans and is co-poetry editor of CutThroat, A Journal of the Arts. 

NO ANSWERS

by Marsha Owens

The poet said she was born “to look, to listen.” I envy her self-awareness, her certainty. Still night lifted, and I languished under warm morning blankets, listened to my breath coming and going, remembered each day’s name, not marked by miracles, yet reliably present after the darkness. Warning-less, reality tromped the sunshine. I felt dragged like trash into the ugliness, the unholiness of the day. “Let them get loans,” the rich man said, “let them find food if they can and insulin. Let them struggle like I’ve never had to. Let them work for a living, like I’ve never had to. I will feed at the trough off of their backsides, a flagrant godfather with not a shred of good intent. Let them be content.”

I screamed into my soul asking what am I supposed to do? For what was I born, dear poet? I’m sure she answered in the silence folding down around the dawn.

Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond, VA.

CRIME

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

T***p Administration Mulls a Unilateral Tax Cut for the Rich 

—The New York Times, July 31, 2018

I see him frequently

When I drive downtown,

A small, bent, gray man

Dressed in greasy, ragged clothing

And dragging a wooden pallet,

Piled high with overstuffed black trash bags,

Along the sidewalk

Heading to God-knows-where,

If anywhere.

The effort required 

For each Sisyphean step he takes

Is an act of heroism,

And he trudges on,

Almost doubled over, eyes never looking up,

Past fast-food restaurants and taquerias,

Beauty shops and appliance stores and locksmiths,

Pulling his load 

Like the ant impossibly towing the elephant.

I have seen old women and men on the street,

Our sisters and brothers,

Pushing grocery carts full of torn jackets and frayed blankets,

Broken radios and artificial flowers,

Empty bottles and unmatched shoes,

On their way perhaps to the midnight shelter

Or the encampment under the bridge

Or the cardboard boxes behind the supermarket.

I am 75 years old

With enough resources, 

Barring calamity,

To remain housed and fed

From now until the final tick-tock

At the end of my time,

And what I ask myself is not

By what blind, stupid luck am I not they,

The wretched and exhausted and defeated, 

But instead,

Why does America not take care

Of all those in need?

Why does America create suffering

Rather than relieve it?

Why do some few matter and most do not?

Is the United States of America a country

Or a crime?

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World, and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California.

NOT A GOOD DAY

by Wayne Scheer





Not a good day for me...

The Republicans pass a tax bill
to help the rich get richer
and the Yankees
don't choose Bam Bam Muelins
as their new manager.

I have nothing against the Yankees' choice,
nor do I care about the rich,
one way or the other.

But it would have been fun
if a guy nicknamed Bam Bam
managed the stately Yanks
and it would have been nice
for those of us without private jets
to believe people in power cared.

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He's published numerous stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories. His short story “Zen and the Art of House Painting” has been made into a short film. 

CHRISTMAS PAST WITH THE TRUMPS

by Alan Walowitz

Image source: Pinterest

The Q17 would take me past Jamaica Estates—
though I didn’t know then of Trump,
whose pop already was a big deal in Brooklyn,
but I knew this was where the rich folks lived.
And I’m sure young Donald, though a bully even then,
wasn’t the one who pushed me aside
and shook me down for a couple of dimes
in the arcade at the Jamaica Terminal
just to get at the shooting range,
with a rifle that shot light at the little metal ducks that
would shut with a snap like a flock of cheap valises.
A guy like him didn’t take the bus, I learned,
and would have pocketsful of dimes to fill his own machines
that lined his basement finished in teak and kingwood—
and had real guns to shoot at summer camps
with riflery and riding, Western and English,
and cloth napkins that came with service
and they didn’t dare call it mess.

My father would drive us through Trump’s part of the world
this time of year to see the Christmas lights of the rich,
and we probably went by his house a couple of times,
though the really well-to-do never put up lights,
while the newly rich installed just one color—a melancholy blue—
on their mansion’s outer edge so passersby like us might be awed by its size,
in the winter dark, while the family that might have lived inside
was off on a cruise, though they likely left the curtains open,
and the white lights shaped like candles on the huge tree
would illuminate those ten foot ceilings, in those cavernous front rooms
that otherwise were never permitted to reveal
even a shadow.

Alan Walowitz has been published various places on the web and off. He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John’s University in Queens, NY. Alan's chapbook Exactly Like Love is available from Osedax Press.

WITH A NOD TO JACK CADE'S REBELLION

by William Aarnes

First thing we do
let’s lock up all

the pollsters in solitary.
Then let’s stretch a cable

a hundred or so feet
above Times Square

and see if journalists
can maintain their balance

as tightrope walkers.
Then let’s deport all

the microchips.  Then
let’s tax the rich

out of enjoying influence.
Let’s open gated communities

to families fleeing
oppressors.  Then let’s see

if we can save
the planet from ourselves.


William Aarnes lives in a county where 73.9% of the voters cast ballots for Trump.

THE BRAGGER

by Martin Ott

Image source: Reptiles Guru

Told the world that the ferret on his head was his own virile pelt and the sheen of tangerine on his cheeks was the glow of courage. He promised that his body parts were wonderful to behold and hold, and that his brain was bigger than even his intentions. The tales of his successes became his job, and he could not divorce the actor from the man as easily as his early wives. He learned from an early age that suckers were made, not born, and the dramas around the world could hold him as a leading man in the narrative. There is nothing he won’t say he can do. He can stomp his feet like a lizard king and crush foes. The rich will build castles that will not be torn down by the rabble. The rabble will have fortresses made of sticks and straw, but the moral of pigs and wolves is a lie. Time is a backwards journey and the smoke rising from our planet is just the end of a cigar with the proper vantage. Words will tingle at nighttime and sleep will settle in with gasps and tiny knives on your arms. Dreams will frame his face in a flower, in the horizon, in everyone.

A previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Martin Ott’s most recent book is Spectrum, C&R Press, 2016. He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his first two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and a dozen anthologies. He tweets and blogs.

WHO CAN BREATHE

by George Held

            “I can’t breathe.”
                        Repeated last words of Eric Garner, police victim


Like Fate’s arbiters,
Cops crush the breath
of those they oppress,
let the rich breathe easy;

Hawaiians couldn’t
smell the breath
of standoffish whites,
ha‘oles

(men without breath),
distrusting those whose
withheld breath might stink of
treachery.

If you are rich
or white and can breathe
easy these days,
you should shun

city streets, TV news,
and poems that can
take your breath
away.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.