Solidari Tea

like a scratchy old 
black and white film
-darkness set with light
i saw you today
your eyes already alight
as timeless lovers
winged in bravery
your hands reaching for
every shimmer, every dance,
every harrow and heartache
this world breathes upon us

nirvana is boring
  
  if we find out -,

there’s nothing
   to do tomorrow

you and me,
  Ellie
 hopscotching across
        state lines

 washed with warm air 
  standing tall
    on the tallest mountains
chins high and brave

alive together,
   barefoot,
 dreaming awake
    beneath the bourbon sun

   love   
is our food  
 dancing always -
your soft feet
 never far from mine

darling girl,
   you
are the 
   love of
my life  

we are a saxophone
   blaring through an
     August night

we are a clapping
  high hat
 bringing on the rainbow-faced
      fireworks

we are Elvis Presley
  we are the
        goddamn Rolling Stones

we are greek gods
   of youth
      our beautiful bodies 
follow the sun west

 the morning hawks
    crow as we
pack our bags
   and dance slow
 down the bright road 

leaving nothing but
  a few smoking coals

the fire forges forward
  with us

we are the light  

Though I don’t recall submitting it, my poem “Overture” is in the 2010 edition of Grub Street. The lit mag is available all over the Towson University campus and in various spots in Baltimore. 

The magazine is full of free, local art. So check it out.

Overture (or, five or six ways to not pay your taxes)

I.

this rabid militia of snakes dates back
to the first ghost writer with
a god complex

the capital building is a summer camp
for the criminally insane

dead turtles silenced and scrubbed from the island
native bones stolen and strung together
this country is a broken dream catcher

II.

no water for bottles but its chest high
flowing through the department store
ground zero is a cesspool of arsenic alliances

better living through chemicals;
 - i like to think oppression isn’t organic
 but sometimes i’m not sure

III.

futile, fast and funded
we’re fighting the sun with fire

Ahab sold his harpoons for water colors
tonight, the captain’s dreams are in technicolor
an all night marathon of good intentions

      (with tar in her feathers
       time elapses through empire
       bread becomes dirt
       trees become trenches
       and people become birds) 

IV.

so we’re felling a nation, our huddled masses
and free breaths assemble
and disassemble the walls

north capital is flooded with angry tribes
of the tired, the hungry, the poor

somebody’s kicked out the window
of the state house
firebombs are taking out the national bank
and a stolen tank climbs the steps to
the capital

V.

i think if Jesus were alive,
he’d read Howard Zinn
in a boarded up basement and
lobby against Exxon
he’d be in the streets, fists raised and feet firm
marching with black and green flags
waving like a dark and endless forest

until one day
while dancing with the kids from SDS down K street,
he’d be arrested for terrorism
and killed quietly in some unknown building
in northern Virginia 

 what is it
 to know that you’re
 doing the right thing - ?

      to wake up in a 
           nameless town
       with yesterday’s dirt
        still in your hair 

       to watch the morning sun
         yawn through low hills
        and over passing cars
         as they push on to work

       to eat the last of a
          stolen loaf of bread
        and follow a talkative river
     grazing on the promise
       of each untasted moment

 this knowing - 

 do you know
    you know it
do you feel
  noble wind howl in each
breath

like the word of god?

or do you mostly focus
   on the ache in your
dry stomach
  and wonder how your feet
     will fair
the coming winter?  

don’t kid yourself -
  every single moment
   of every dragged out
day
  is life or death.

whether you are clutching
  the last inch of a
 wire over god’s empty
    cavern 

or drinking red juice
  on the same dull
brown couch
  week after month

you are either alive
   or you are not.  

stand tall and
unbreakable
upon the shapeless
guilty heart of the city.
feel the sun -
  the sun feels you.
dance. 
dance like you are
four years old,
limbs and hair barely
clinging to a center.
dance like you will die tonight
and no one will ask 
about it tomorrow.
the world belongs to you
but your feet owe a debt.  

The Hidden City Quarterly, a Baltimore Literary Magazine, published my poem “bound.” They added odd line breaks, capitalized things I did not capitalize and changed the last two words. But, nevertheless, its local and its free art.