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Queso Jun 2012
‘Twas but a rare, snowy day in Paris,
a January day, as all the lights of the city
rested, as dancers of the Moulin Rouge
fixed their make up during the intermission

And in the graveyard of Père Lachaise
there stood a solitary figure of an old man,
his hands gathered together politely,
in front, clenching on to a tattered flat cap

The man stood in front of a grey wall,
“a tomb without a cross or chapel,
or golden lilies, or sky-blue church windows,”
but with an equally lonesome little plaque
that read, ‘Aux mort de la commune,
21 28 Mai 1871’

He lit a cigarette, from which he took just one puff,
stuck it upside-down on a patch of dirt,
then notwithstanding the thunderstorm
of camera flashes from Japanese tourists,
he started to sing, with a hoarse yet firm voice,
“Debout, les damnés de la terre,
Debout, les forçats de la faim…”

As the wrinkle on his forehead began to stretch,
the dusty particles of ice piled higher and higher
on neighboring graves commemorating
French members of the International Brigades
and Spanish maquis of the French Resistance
-apparently the 3,400 meters height of Pyrenees
was merely a backyard *****
for ideas and fates to tread over barefooted-

His song was a ballad of unrequited passion;
when he got to the chorus about some final struggle
and the unity of human race in a silly hymn,
a song that was never played on a radio,
for which no cool kid would ever
spend $0.99 on iTunes store,
his voice started cracking in amorous choke

The old man was a lifetime lover
in the truest spirit of a Frenchman,
spent all his life trying to charm a girl named Emma Ries,
and whenever he dreamed of holding
the eloquently bruised hands of that sixteen years old seamstress,
his eyes swelled of nostalgic heart,

And he used to cry joyfully,
dropping tears of bullets back in the days,
whether by the guillotine in Place de la Concorde,
behind the barricades of Belleville amidst the cannonballs,
******* in front of the Gestapo firing squads,
or under the truncheons of gendarme in Quartier Latin

As the expired old ******* moaned wet dreams,
hallucinogic delusions of his bygone youth, however,
the chilly, soggy winter of 20th arrodissement piled on,
the ashen slums of Ménilmontant depressingly ugly as always
with brownish-grey molten snow spattered all over
the streets trotted by drug dealers and wife beaters,
and neither the fiery oratory of Maurice Thorez
nor the sanguine grenade of Colonel Fabien
was around to arson the frost into the proletarian spring

In the same winter that the old man sang
the first, only, and last lovesong of his life,
it had been more than two decades already
since the Berlin Wall had tumbled down
and the ruling parties in Greece and Spain,
both socialists,
had just driven 500,000 workers out of their jobs

-J.P. Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Jean Jaures, V.I. Lenin,
Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, Leon Blum, Abbie Hoffman-
by the time the old man muttered an old pop-song nobody cared for,
all of those names were as relevant as some Medieval knights,
characters from an obscure chronicle centuries ago,
who died by charging horseback into windmills,
mistaking them for giants that held whom they thought as
a princess of an ugly peasant woman,

Eventually, right before his voice cracked
into an embarrassing fuddle of choked-up tears,
impressive for a seventy something years old,
the man finished the song from his memory,
all the way up to the sixth stanza;
yet the curvaceously splintered palm of a seamstress,
it was still so far away from his hands that’s been pleading
since 1871 for that glorious *******
which once stood so proudly in the face of a Czernowitz magistrate

When the cigarette he stuck upside down on the dirt
burned all the way down, he reached into his coat,
took out a rose, laid it softly, like his own infant child,
in front of the plaque which golden inscriptions
turned grey from unwashed grimes of ages
and as the old fool walked away,
his back turned away from the solemn wall,
there was but one little patch of dirt in the whole of Paris
uncovered by snow, still hoping for the spring to come.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
To Be Governed**

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
Not all poems are about love.
Shaded Lamp  Aug 2014
When I die
Shaded Lamp Aug 2014
All that will remain is bones and rotting meat
Toss it in a cheap wicker box for worms to eat
Topped just with wild flowers and no cement
Plant a weeping willow instead of a monument
It can do the weeping, please don't you cry
There is a chance that I'll be busy when I die
For if I am wrong and there is life after this
I have plans with whom I'll dine and reminisce
I'll be dining with Oscar Wilde and Caravaggio
Cocktails and conversation with Kant and Plato
Then with Bellini, Verdi and Rossini I'll take a Show
An interval tipple and discourse with Rousseau
An after party with Bakunin and Proudhon
Whisky and blues with Howlin Wolf til I'm gone
I shall breakfast the next day with Tz'u Hsi, Homer and Malcolm X
And take morning coffee with Gandhi and Marc Bolan from T.Rex
At noon a spicy ****** Mary with Mary Queen of Scots,
Freddie Mercury, Lou Reed, Picasso and lots of tequila shots
Lunch that day with Saladin, Karl and Groucho Marx
Then smoke a pipe with Newton whilst discussing quarks
Afternoon tea with Queen Victoria, Kipling and Colin Ward
Followed by a game of Tafl with a viking on a giant board
Dress for flamenco with Carmen Amaya (then dress the blisters)  
Then pre-dinner drinks paid for by Geronimo and the Bronte sisters

So you see, if I'm wrong
And we actually move along
A fascinating after life awaits me

Yeah, when I'm gone from here
There'll be plenty gin and beer
Cucumber sandwich's and tea

If you wonder what I'm doing
Give your watch a quick viewing
Then just check this poem and you'll see
Just in case
Pearson Bolt  Mar 2016
witches
Pearson Bolt Mar 2016
witches adorn the front covers
of ecofeminist zines
in an anarchist bookstore
nestled on the Left Bank
of Seattle's waterfront

rare rays of sunlight
filter through sheer curtains
photons glimmering
through fading droplets
clinging to cracked panes
refracting multicolor

i sit in the window-seat
listening to a homeless
balladeer's somber renditions
of Jonny Cash and Woodie Guthrie
serenading the locals bustling
down Pike Street Market
while the Olympic Mountains
keep their vigil
across a lonely bay

Emma Goldman whispers
for Alexander Berkman
and i balance on mismatched cushions
considering Proudhon's insistent
inquiries while Bakunin smirks  
nursing secret heresies of insurrection

colorful posters are paper-machéd
across the walls with slogans of struggle
scrawled in sisterhood and solidarity
stickers plaster the narrow halls
encouraging visitors to Smash Capitalism!
or Read A ******* Book
as jam-packed patrons chance
sly peaks at the black flag
suspended in the back room

a faint breeze flutters intermittently
drifting across the open threshold
lifting spirits as if sifting
through grains of sand
not unlike a child
digging for answers
armed with one
monosyllabic question

why?

the banner
cheerfully pirouettes  
for a revolution
without dancing
is not one worth having
Victor D López Mar 2019
I've never taken acid,
So why is the world melting,
All around me every day?

When did 1984,
Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange,
Fahrenheit 451,

Animal Farm,
Lord of the Flies,
Become historical works?

Proudhon, the French Anarchist,
Declared, "Property is theft",
A pity he is long dead,

He'd be another rock star,
With a meteoric rise,
And likely be president,

"******* leads to
Salvation" his quote too,
Would make a catchy slogan.

A man ahead of his time,
And a sad symbol of ours,
How the hell did we get here?

When clowns can be elected,
To Congress and the White House,
And truth has lost all meaning,

We've gone through the looking glass,
Fallen down the rabbit hole,
And I fear there's no way back.

— The End —