THE TWELVE DAYS OF DRAWDOWN

by David Feela

Image source: Snaxattacks

On the first day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
a drone in a foreign country.

On the second day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the third day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the fourth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the fifth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the sixth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the seventh day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the eighth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
eight Israeli gas masks,
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the ninth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
nine nylon butt packs,
eight Israeli gas masks,
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the tenth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
ten aircraft tie downs,
nine nylon butt packs,
eight Israeli gas masks,
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the eleventh day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
eleven Swedish headlamps,
ten aircraft tie downs,
nine nylon butt packs,
eight Israeli gas masks,
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

On the twelfth day of drawdown
my sergeant gave to me
twelve Kevlar helmets,
eleven Swedish headlamps,
ten aircraft tie downs,
nine nylon butt packs,
eight Israeli gas masks,
seven ROTC raincoats,
six ammo boxes,
five IEDs...,
four rocket launchers,
three folding stretchers,
two parachutes,
and a drone in a foreign country.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

TIBET IS A COUNTRY

by Judith Partin-Nielsen

Image source: globalpost

BEIJING — Chinese police officials have detained a Tibetan monk and his nephew and accused them of playing a role in a series of self-immolations, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The move appeared to be part of a campaign to prosecute Tibetans who are accused of aiding others who set fire to themselves in protest of Chinese rule. --Edward Wong, The New York Times, December 10, 2012 



1

young monk’s red
and saffron robes
dissolving into flame
the intersection of
faith, courage and despair

2

Outside the rug shop
Tibetan flag flutters
Mourning the death
of the “land of Snows”


Following a trail of words, mountains, spirit and tears, this writer, mother, wife and eventually psychoanalyst left Texas for Colorado in 1985.  The land of the Arapahoe welcomed me and called me by name.  The love of poetry, poet and high mountain valleys has warmed my heart and made my home.  Freud said “everywhere I go, the poet has gone before me.”  May we keep following those footsteps on our paths thru the worlds.  Judith Partin-Nielsen teaches contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa University, practices psychoanalysis and writes poetry.

5TH AND AVENUE E

by Stephen Cafagna

“Bus Stop” by Reginald Marsh. Image source: Encore Editions

i stod at the bus stop as a man late for work
looking down the street
wishing this bus would appare from thin air
I’d trade the life of every passing car for my bus

I stod at the bus stop alone
feeling as if i where to die at any moment
almost in shock that i wasnt

i stod as a man looking for his only ride
like when I was four
me and my father waited for the tractor
to take us around the apple ranch
i look down

staring at my hands
think if all i have done with these
ive build, destroyed, takin and give
but what did you do?
What was your triumph?

I stod at the bus stop as a boy
hearing the rpms
twine as when the transmission shifts
the complete stop
Kushhh! brakes awoke me to another dream…

And the only thing i had of my father’s was a glass from Venezuela
He died when i was 5, his glass went when i was 21
the corner where it broke still smells of old whiskey

I had my heart ripped out before
I dont like doing it to others, tho it happens…
Would you rather be the gun shot victum?


This poem by Stephen Cafagna is from his dissertation, finalized in Fayetteville. It functions in the interstices of language and urban life -- in dialect, representing a bridge of sorts, connecting the world of illiteracy, in all its unappreciated beauty, to the literary world.

UNSEASONABLE CLIMATE CHANGE

Poem by Charles Frederickson

Graphic by Saknarin Chinayote

Imploding lonesome planet soiled earthlings

Perverse intolerant misunderstandings amongst Christians

Jews Muslims Buddhists Hindus Sikhs

Praying to whatever god listens

12 days of Christmas solemn

Ramadan 28 Kwanzaa lasting 7

Hanukkah Menorah aglow 8 eventides

Overstuffed feasts celebratory tummy aches

Kwanzaa Swahili meaning harvest bounty

7 guiding Nguzo Saba principles

Umoja (unity) Ujima (responsibility) Imani

(faith) Kuumba (creativity) unmitigated joy

Hanukkah from Hebrew connoting dedication

Honors victorious revolt entering Jerusalem

Holy temple sanctified eternal flame

Oil lamp kindling black light

Ramadan most intensely worshipful time

Profoundly serious compassion giving charity

More about dependence than abstinence

Fasting from sunrise to sunset

O Tannenbaum emerald forest blighted

How lovely were your branches

Hoping faith recycled comfort bring

Resilient strength throughout New Year

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

EXILED LIGHT

by B.Z. Niditch

Asylum-seekers back to where they started: A boat carrying asylum-seekers, believed to be from Sri Lanka, is intercepted off Christmas Island in June this year. Picture: Daniel Wilkins. Source: The Australian

Exiled light
held out
another dawn
a lamp
to another horizon
more certain
and human
than I believe
exists
returning
into a black sun
of memories,
lit up in love
with peace
for the visionary,
your tossed boat
between rough shores
of two continents
trembling for shelter,
to land in
a resting place


B.Z. Niditch, poet, playwright, fiction writer, and aphorist, is published widely throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is also the founder and artistic director of The Original Theatre, in Boston, which has presented original, experimental plays on contemporary social and political themes since 1990.

STEREOTYPE

by Joan Mazza

The unlikely faces of same-sex marriage. --PostPartisan, The Washington Post
Larry Duncan and Randy Shepherd (Meryl Schenker Photography)

Seated— two white haired, white guys
with long white beards down their chests,
their right hands raised to take an oath
or pledge. Each wears a flannel button-down

under a dark blue quilted jacket. Their USMC
camouflage baseball caps look new.
They could be lumberjacks or loggers buying
hunting or fishing licenses, might be taken

for brothers. A wooden cane leans against
one’s chest. Harley- Davidson logo peeks
from the other’s unbuttoned winter layers.

Good ‘ole boys who love their guns and brew.
In another era, each might have lived alone
in a remote cabin, called hermit, loner, scary.
Do they chop their own wood and have a still?

But this is the state of Washington at the end
of 2012. A black man has been re-elected
president, and these two men, ten years
together, finally get to marry.


Joan Mazza has worked as a psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Kestrel, Stone’s Throw, Rattle, Writer's Digest, Playgirl, and Writer's Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia.

REVIEW: FALL CONCERT 2010

by Robert Farmer

 

To the piano in his own sweet way
on the arm of the conductor,
while the packed-house crowd stood,
sang Happy Birthday through tears.
On his ninetieth, not just another gig.

He pulled us back to festivals
and the 50’s college stands,
our youth now gray throughout,
old ladies in dress circle
dancing again to Take Five.

His chops still simple, straight, lyrical,
no pyrotechnical improvisation.
Our age ordered silence on the solos
as we grazed back through lives
to sounds once lost,
now avengefully heralded
by today’s Downbeat recognition.

The Cleveland Symphony played backup,
then stood and cheered.

 
Robert Farmer is a retired professor of forest ecology who lives in Cleveland. He occasionally publishes poems in various journals, including New Verse News.

SOCRATES AND CASEY ANTHONY, A DIALOGUE

by Jan Keough

The poet's photoshopped image of Casey Anthony with Socrates and a young student in Raphael’s "School  of Athens".

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Florida sheriff's office that investigated the disappearance of Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter overlooked evidence that someone in their home did a Google search for "fool-proof" suffocation methods on the day the girl was last seen alive. . . . WKMG reports that sheriff's investigators pulled 17 vague entries only from the computer's Internet Explorer browser, not the Mozilla Firefox browser commonly used by Casey Anthony. --Huffington Post

The wily fox, as some called Socrates,
spoke with Casey Anthony the other day
at an unknown cellular location.

Casey, in hiding after the trial, and Socrates,
freed from bodily inconvenience after his trial,
converged to resolve a thorny dilemma.

“Which is best,” she texted, “to escape punishment and live to regret?
Or to face the punishing side-effects of actions
made from a selfish and immature attitude?”

Socrates, reclining on his metaphysical marble couch,
lifted the Droid close to his eyes.
Texting was not his favorite method of communication.

He preferred to gaze directly at those
who wished to be freed
from the burning disgrace of ignorance.

“Tell me,” he began,
“which Browser is best to use,
Internet Explorer or Firefox?”


Jan Keough lives in RI and the internet.  She is co-founder of The Origami Poems Project which aspires to free the poet by promoting micro-chapbooks of original poetry.

MARS

by Robert Wooten

This artist's rendering provided by NASA shows the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. NASA announced Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, it plans to send another Curiosity-like rover to Mars in 2020. (AP Photo/NASA)

Mars would be the perfect place to begin
to look for water underneath the surface.
It is under something, under my skin.

After we get there, we may find it in
the rocks, when we arrive by outer space.
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.

If not in rocks, it may be frozen
under the soil or in a deeper place.
It is under something, under my skin,

that to find it we may go deeper, then,
going down farther at a faster pace.
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.

But will we become earth’s poorest citizens,
taxed by vast holdings in the Martian race?
It is under something, under my skin.

What next?  the chance of oceans deeply hidden,
drillings with the hope of finding a trace?
Mars would be the perfect place to begin.
It is under something, under my skin.


Robert Wooten's poems currently appear in Long Story Short, Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Trajectory, Convergence, and  The Fifth D . . ..

TO PISS WHEN YOU CAN'T WHISTLE

by Kim Doyle

"A Warden Says No to the Death Penalty" --The Story, APM, November 29, 2012

The minatory prayers, the hoarse clanging bells,
the procession westward from Newgate to Tyburn.
To sit in the cart facing the rising sun,
the noose around your neck, not the only one.

The dismal ditty, Psalm 51 on your lips -
to recite at the hands of Jack Ketch.
The frolicking crowds dance at Paddington Fair,
the gaggler, the topping cove, the roper was there.

To mount the three-legged mare,
to ride the horse foaled by an acorn -
the morning drop, the nubbing cheat,
the rough wool of the winding sheet.

Capital Punishment in its worm eaten coat,
the old fashioned, drop dead, hearty choke.


Kim Doyle points out that the United States still executes - joining in with fellow third world countries.

UNETHICAL TRADE

by David Feela





If only the African moon
was made of ivory,

and as it weighed
so heavily on the horizon

poachers could cut it
into pieces and get away

by daybreak with a truckload
of the polished night.

I would give up the moon --
all of it -- let the earth

invent its own luminosity
if only to keep the elephants.

David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

JAIL BIRDS

by Ed Shacklee

Artist: Marcus A. Bedford, Jr. (K-00220, Y-Wing 204L, P.O. Box 689 Central Fac., Soledad, CA 93960)
Image source: “Comix from Inside” at The Real Cost of Prisons

A captive flock, a clip-winged throng
Whose fledglings start to lose their song
So cheery in the nest, its tone
So much like children of our own,

Their rookeries are known for squalor.
Jurists never see their color
Is all too often blacks and browns,
Though cartoons show them striped like clowns;

Now caged in millions, hard to tame,
Just strings of numbers for a name
Who must make do without another,
But answered once to sister, brother.


Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. His poems have appeared in Angle, Contra, The Flea, Light and Lucid Rhythms, among other places.

THE ELECT

by Sondra Zeidenstein

Image source: Wicked Mike

I woke from a dream
in which I had curly hair,
a bushel of it, unkempt,
uncombable, beyond
messing with
and I was smiling,
I who have always had
scanty hair, flat
to my narrow Rumanian
Jewish skull. I didn’t care
that it wasn’t beautiful,
just that there was
so much of it.

So I’m slow this morning
letting myself down
into reality, the disrepair
our ship of state displays
two days after we won
by one percent, the victory,
a gift from Blacks and Hispanics,
our traditional country
gone, said a pundit.

But my traditional country
has always been
diverse and I remember
how proud I was to be
standing in line in the gym
at school next to the one
black girl in my grade
and when we were told
to hold hands to our left
and our right, my brain
hesitated a second, imagining
the other to whom I’d never
spoken and then
without looking at her,
since we faced forward
so stiffly, I reached sideways
took her hand, and she
took mine. She was thin, my height,
I can’t recall her name,

but that her hand was
slighter than I expected,
her fingers without grasp
to reach for what she knew
by now at twelve
did not belong to her,
her palm flat and dry,

and I felt secretly proud
that I was called on
to extend my privilege
and well being, to someone
less sure of what if anything
belonged to her and I lived
for a moment joined, saying
to my proud, ignorant self,
what I have she must have too.
Here. Take it.

So Obama won again.
He walked on stage at two
in the morning when I could
barely stay awake and his women
wore taffeta, the girls’ legs
exposed above the knees,
their hair flattened and shining
under the lights, their parents
never leaving them for an instant
under the roars of thousands
joined as I had been
seventy years ago
at Morningside School.
This family had it all
for a moment in our country,
something I always believed in.
I was part of it or
I was nothing.


Sondra Zeidenstein is a poet and publisher of Chicory Blue Press. She has published three books of poems, including A Detail in that Story and Contraries and edited several anthologies, including A Wider Giving: Women Writing after a Long Silence.

OH! CHRISTMAS TREE!

by Lynnie Gobeille

Rhode Island Holiday Tree: State To Leave 'Christmas' Out Of Lighting Ceremony-- Huffington Post

I live in the State of Rhode Island

A place governed by folks refusing to see –

That no matter -  what you call it

It’s still a Christmas tree.

The food pantry shelves are empty

Sandy’s “Homeless” remain in the cold

Let’s all hold hands, raise our voices together

Sing the story that needs to be told.

Flip the switch! Go ahead turn the lights on

Gaze at the beautiful Tree

You can call it whatever you want to

It’ll still mean:  HOPE : to me.

Lynnie Gobeille is passionate about poetry. She is one of the co-founders / editors of The Origami Poems Project, a world wide “free poetry event” based in Rhode Island . Her micro-chapbooks can be found there. Her work has been published in various journals and on-line poetry sites. Her mantra?  “We can change the world, one free poetry book at a time”.