Join us every Monday night for drinks at the Daily Kos community political poetry club
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional
The keypad is mightier than the sword
7 new pieces offered this week:
1. Musings on a churlish regular who frequents our local coffee shop, ostensibly to complain about Obama, Democrats, Unions, non-Christians and related (to him) subjects. The man is a retired teacher! Whoa!
"A life lived in neutral gear is no life at all"
2. Then, I just discovered that a friend, like me spent several years of his early childhood living in a Quonsett Hut. If you haven't been there, you will never know!
3. Next, this week, Romney's exhortation to "borrow college money from your parents" got me to thinking how totally out of touch this ghoul is. This immigrant who has had all his assets taken by the medieval US healthcare system has a teenager about to go to college and I can only afford to buy him a 2B pencil! His grades are great and we will be OK!
4. And the Romney/Ryan behavior is so reminiscent of some earlier megalomaniacal characters in history that the propaganda piece wrote itself.
5. Perhaps you will agree, perhaps not. My career was as an Economist, but I always wrote poetry and painted and always thought that the poets/painters/composers/writers held the key to our future. We simply don't enshrine ledgers in Museums!
6. A mea culpa upon realizing that listening is a better way of telling your own story
7. A reaction to first learning that the chemotherapy is not working and I will need to go to blood transfusions. Then to find out, this morning, that all is changed, at least for another week. And...
Please respond with poems of your own
Peace
CJ
The Complainer Strikes
(for don in the corner)
Some people have lived in the same place
For over forty years in time counted on clocks
And for less than a week
In time counted in time that matters
A life lived in neutral gear
Is a life lived in the same place
Every day with no reason
To go any where or do any thing
Reminiscing about events that did
NOT NOR WILL
EVER HAPPEN
FALSE AMERICAN DREAM
© CJ Campbell August 2012
Quonsett Hut Blues
Swing was the thing in Oz as well
The late 40's, early 50's Fred and Gingered
Technicolored, Crosbied, Mitchelled
Frankie-boyed until they dropped
Mum and Dad had nothing but two
Imperfect boys to love and cherish
Bundled in converted military barracks
Currugated iron semi-circles of space
The older son, knock-kneed and frail
The younger, diagnosed and dying at six
From childhood leukemia. Scuttling about
On hands and bottom, already unable to stand
The metallic echo of iron sheets
When a tap is turned on somewhere
In these temporary digs on 100 degree days
And the water spews into sink at 100 degrees plus
The symphonic aboriginal music unleashed
When thunder storms pour gallons of unwritten
Score in a strange orderly disorder down
Long open flanges of quonsett organ pipes
The tap-tap percussion of raindrop on windows
Wirebrush of gum tree branch in howling wind
As the melody is taken up by the high pitch
Of a screaming southerly buster
We stop our game of French cricket
“Come to my place” says Rick my abo friend
“Me Mum's making vegemite sammiches”
And we do, milk and vegemite sandwiches.
Peering out the window
5 Aussie kids
Watching the storm
With gleam in eyes
Hope in hearts
© CJ Campbell August 2012
Adopted Child of Abusive Parent
An adopted child expects more
In some different ways than those
Naturally borne to parents of wealth,
Health and liberty
An adopted child will obey without
Question in return for food shelter
And most of all love never before
Experienced
An adopted child will thus believe
That mistreatment by an abusive adult
Is a sign of perfect love
And kindness
Thus does America treat the poor
Thus do the uneducated respond
A nation in need of therapy
Madness
© CJ Campbell August 2012
Propaganda
Paul who once was Saul and wants to invent his own religion
Romney robotic microphone who uses his religion to enrich
Onan: For one man, the selfish credo of the wealthy right
Pain is vain, temporary setback, grit those teeth, send a check
Appeal of zeal: Demonize those unlike you, gay, black, foreign
Gross dreck n dross: History as fiction teabags in Boston Harbor
Air up to there: Why think when you have TV networks, NFL and NBA
Nut with no buts: Jump in the car and listen to Rush, or Laura. Wholesome.
Denier of equality: Would an alien choose us as the first place they want to live?
Aristocrat fat cat: Sorry King Mitt and Prince Paul, we canned the monarchy already.
© CJ Campbell August 2012
The Bindings
solid orderly row on row
cut to match and built to last
how else can society survive
without these constant past
and present boards and posts
on which to ever grow
these same as those before
and happy to be bland
anchor us to history so that
most will understand
that only for a few
does the world offer more
binding all these planks as one
the mastic of humanity is fierce
unforgiving, unrelenting, ready
at any time to punch and pierce
the shell of ordered complacency
with aggression overdone
who is this you may well ask
who holds these planks together
why, artists, poets, musicians know
how this world is illusion or whether
dreams can become true reality
it is their sacred task
© CJ Campbell August 2012
Note to My Self Who Forgets
(for Les)
Learn to listen
Before you speak
Others have lives more
Interesting than thine
If you only take
Time to understand
Where they began
And the path they trod
To arrive here today
This is why
We have
Two ears
But only
One mouth
© CJ Campbell August 2012
After Chemo Becoming Other
This day has been a day of change
A day of news both bad and good
To learn treatment plans once more
Change again as lab result would
Indicate some cause for great rejoicing
Rolling gently in a bed of flowers
Only to discover that the blood
Coursing through these ancient towers
Of veins and arteries needs to be
Replaced with that of other more hale
More capable of carrying the force
Of existence forward without fail
Else the fragile nature of human
Flesh must give way, and with it
Those surreal or imagined notions
Of a more expansive life explicit
Implicit then is the notion sealed
Inside a twice wise altered day
“All change is good, if only we decide
To see it as help along the way.”
Change more than expected comes
On this day of publication
"The treatment worked, he says,
Take a brief and earned vacation."
First fear and then, relief
Unspoken silent glance
Substitute for trust in our
Life affirming romance
© CJ Campbell August 2012