"headlined" poems
Under silver wing
San Francisco's towers sprouting
thru thin gas clouds,
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
Berkeley hills pine-covered below--
Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence
Declaration
typewriter at window
silver panorama in natural eyeball--
Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese
dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's
blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands'
brown wasteland scratched by tires
Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
coccyx broken--
Leary out of action--"a public menace...
persons of tender years...immature
judgement...pyschiatric examination..."
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam
Leroi on *** gun rap, $7,000
lawyer fees, years' negotiations--
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez'
paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe--
having a baby, a man--
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked,
Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
on to Cholon's sidewalks--
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
Earplugs in, steak on plastic
served--Eyes up to the Image--
What do I have to lose if America falls?
my body? my neck? my personality?
June 19, 1968
4.5k
there's said to be some merit in me
and there's something to be said about mine
but please never let it be taught
and please never have it headlined
that I've ever done any of this
but with measured and deliberate thought
or time consuming and considered design
none of this comes easy
little of this goes smooth
we all think ourselves imposters
but some of us have pushed through
so whatever doubts you're having
however steep the climb
take the chances that you're offered
and give yourself some time.
Aug 16, 2019
Aug 16, 2019 at 1:07 PM UTC
What is a lover, brother?
Other mothers
have tried to define the word
in the most absurd
form.
Reform —
torn
between AK-47 —
streamline railroads point to heaven
in a back alley,
where crossed fingers
pray for lucky number seven.
Chasing paper trails
like Miles Davis
works through manifest scales,
struggling to find
means to define:
what is yours is not mine.
Jazz squeezed a smoke
between sets,
through murmurs of bathroom ***
to the tune of
a show headlined by
the movement,
a movement headlined by
the show.
Marvin to Miles,
Martin to Malcolm,
opposites attract —
that’s how I found them.
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 7:55 PM UTC
Left the stage.
Exited stage left.
Her swan song lifted spirits.
Perfect performance.
Drama filled.
Last breath then she was gone.
Her bolstered tutu puffed up proudly.
Released her wings.
Trumpeters played, then she was gone.
One last gasp, she was done.
To her audience a revelation.
The flowers they threw fell in stems.
Time and time again.
An apparition that still remains.
Daily the stems of falling flowers lay.
When bought forth the janitor comes to clean.
The flowers have gone if you know what I mean.
Another supernatural scene.
Her name headlined all the papers.
Was front page news.
Now just the ballerina who passed on the stage.
Not even a paragraph given.
The headlines for the tabloid's now, are only for the living.
(c) Livvi
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 4:29 PM UTC
poetry was hushed
or ushered out from being compared
with philosophy,
well... bye bye systematisation
leave you to it...
it's hardly an art, given it only uses
two extremes that can't be defined
as colour, but more or less x-ray vision...
i know... so much colour and so
much perfumery surrounding
me that i wish to not replicate...
hence the stance...
important dates like the battle of Hastings
(1066), or the great fire of London (1666) -
such importance goes hand in hand
with being up-to-date for a quiz show,
alt. to knowledge? quiz or trivia.
poetry is that: it's the sole mediator
of history and journalism,
entry of Darwin on a 10 quid banknote,
poetry has to marry someone else,
it can't be stuck in a rut with pompous philosophy,
and it's too crude to munch off a sharpened flint-stone
(Flintstones? Hanna-Barbera?! **** off)
of Pythagoras' cubism - cubism, you sure?
only cubes herrscht? well hardly,
Marilyn Manson is still an introvert anomaly
in Essex amongst the zombies... as i heard in
a HMV, one of the last strongholds of the
mutilated high-street and the death of
the postman profession... they're going, those postmen,
you hear? among the carrier pigeons
shot down dead! unlike Sartre i'm making a claim:
evolution precedes adaptability... essence indeed first
and existence last...
and with regards to poetry, that great mediator
of journalism and history...
ten sixty six mattered as much as today's article
headlined: GAMBLING ADDICT 'DIED OF SHAME'...
hmm? it does... you can just immediately pick
out the correlation for a national egoism.
if it weren't for skin-heads the metal rock enthusiasts
would have been called meat-heads for head-banging
too much: smooch smooch (x x in slang).
Apr 28, 2016
Apr 28, 2016 at 6:53 PM UTC
I open my eyes each morning
to see the glistening of the sun,
as it hits the dew on the grass
spreading images of glitter across
the ground.
I close my eyes to the harsh words
headlined across my morning paper.
I don't dare reach out on my porch step
in efforts to grab that folded piece of garbage
screaming words of death, poverty and war.
Instead I open my ears to wind,
the warm breeze that brings to my ears
the sweet music and rejoice sent to me
from the heavens above.
I close my ears to the voice on the t.v.
the cold, cruel voices,
only there to reinforce the
bitterness I find in my coffee.
Instead, I lean over the rose bush
smelling the sweet fragrance that
seeps into veins,
generously filling me with
happiness and life.
You see –we all have a choice.
See, we can all chose to live a life
of joy or a life of pain.
You see, many of us chose to share the sad things in life,
and while there are times when sadness is only right
we cannot allow it to take us over,
like a flood after a long storm.
And even when the biggest flood of them all,
is over and sun has dried up all the rain,
the roses will bloom again-- a little brighter than before,
the birds will sing a little again—a little louder than before
So choose life.
Choose love.
Jun 21, 2010
Jun 21, 2010 at 8:02 PM UTC