Solidari Tea

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