Archive for the ‘Random’ Category
With Fuzzy Balls
“Remember when we fucked?”
asked the clown
as she spat in my face.
tongue-tied and stumbling backwards
I unzipped my pants to reveal
nothing
she just stared blankly
wiped the clown make-up from her face and laughed
“only in America” she quoted
while undressing layer by layer
until all that was left was
a shadow and shoes
high-heeled shoes, pink
with fuzzy balls
By Brian Feist
A Day
“You know the way you smell in the morning? That’s how I feel.”
The man was saying into his cell phone as he dug in his pocket for a quarter.
Producing two shiny prizes he put them in the machine and pulled the handle, then with out removing the phone from his ear (using his elbow to hold the spring-loaded door down) he pulled out a newspaper.
“No, no I don’t need any of that,” he continued to someone, somewhere else.
Opening the paper in a flourish he eyes darted back and forth across the page,
“Here it is,” he suddenly blurts out, and almost drops the phone.
by Brian Feist
In A Motel in Hayward, California
What is the point of pain
if it doesn’t teach one how to live
What is the point of emotion
if it doesn’t teach you about yourself
the only point of losing is to learn how to win
fucking, sucking, smoking, joking
are all games to learn about the value of love
the importance of those around you
We hate only to learn the value of distance
the pain of faith and belief
God foresaketh thee to a wilderness of empathy
Everything is battle
a game of winners and losers
wandering through the field unequipped, untrained, and unprepared
By Brian Feist
Politics
by A. Little-Greenman
Politics is not
ohh who’s going to win the election?
Politics is the action of deciding how best to use resources
The people who have “earned” the distinction to be the ones who make the big decions, call themselves:
Politicians
But that is only because they have no real job. They are not electricians, or plumbers.
And yet electricians and plumbers also have to decide how best to use resources. So they too are politicians.
Why do they call themselves,
Journalists or Firefighters or Professors?
Because they have real jobs.
Forget about politicians and focus on politics
Pot is such a wonderful drug. -The poem
by A. Little-Greenman
Pot is such a wonderful drug, that one can stop using and actually lose weight.
That never demands anything of you. Way too hard to write this while stoned. Don’t print that.
Beauty, beauty, beauty, ha ha ha ha,,
Very long green stems of bliss that force themselves to flower out yellows and reds
even blues and purples
How can you go wrong with a purple flower of spongy moistness?
And fire
don’t get me started on fire.
The red glow and the heat and the movement, and the …
oops there I go off,
but then you bring the two
together
they consume each other, the fire goes into the flower and the flower pulls the fire to it with each breath.
The fire dances while you exhale then leaps back to action at the moment of suck
suck suck blow
is there a carb on this
cough cough
ha ha, beauty, beauty, beauty!
Then to not have the fire dance, or the flower is only
Meh
not vomiting in dirty closets, or sweating in dirty clothes. Or aching, just
Meh
ha, beauty, ha! beauty, beauty
almost forgot the best thing about pot…
ahhhh
crap I forgot, again
Ode to the beautiful
thank you God, or Shiva
for uniting and creating
than you Kali
for destroying
thank you mom
for teaching
thank you friends
for comfort
thank you
for the dance, the game, the adventure, the bouncing tigers, the hidden dragons, the falling leaves, the growing flowers, the flying insects, the confused pets, the missing links, the ugly, the misshaped, the intervals of pain and pleasure, the fact that there are no facts, the first the last the middle in no particular order.
Thank you Beauty
for you are
and for that I admire you
Poetry – Shmoetry
To write something with power
with meaning
That is the goal
to do it while your butt looks good all the better
but
short of
flinging words at pages
drunken
with the sounds of Kansas
or football fans screaming
walking out the seven steps of the fellow craft degree of freemasonry
they hang elusively out of reach
the words
that ring true
or incite, or invoke
or inflame
lie beyond,
off this page
the distance larger than space
and time
can only be overcome through work
and patience
and I have neither
Dream. Follow. Repeat.
I teach Adult Literacy on the Quileute Reservation. As part of my ongoing instruction and mentoring through the goal setting process, I set the goal to read 52 books in 2010. A list of the books I actually read this year follows below. I had my heart set on achieving the whole goal. I didn ‘t make 52, but I DID read 40+ books that I might not have read. A persons got to have a dream. Dream. Follow. Repeat.
From all of us at poMotion: may your dreams come true this year.
1. Gallo, Kenny & Randazzo V, Matthew. Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia.
2. Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shakleton’s Incredible Voyage.
3. Tobin, L. What Do You Do With a Child Like This? Inside the Lives
of Troubled Children.
4. Peavy, Linda & Smith, Ursula. Full Court Quest
5. Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time
6. Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman
7. Finkel, David. The Good Soldiers
8. Piercy, Marge. Early Grrrl
9. Harrar, Sari. The Sugar Solution
10. Larson, Luke. Senator’s Son
11. Craighead George, Jean. The Missing Gator of Gumbo Limbo.
12. Murdock, Bob. Untitled Manuscript.
13. Avi. Wolf Rider
14. Dorris, Michael. Guests
15. LeGuin, Ursula K. Sea Road: The Chronicles of Klatsand
16. Mortenson, Greg. Stones to Schools
17. Valliant, John. The Golden Spruce
18. Hrdlitschka, Shelly. Dancing Naked
19. Delaplane, Keith, S. First Lessons in Beekeeping
20. Akpan, Uwem. Say You’re One of Them
21. Alexie, Sherman. Ten Little Indians
22. Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Vegetable Miracle
23. Butler, Octavia, E. Kindred
24. Seibold, Alice. The Lovely Bones
25. Paulson, Gary. Dog Song
26. Wroblewski, David. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
27. Kristof, Nicholas, D. & WuDunn, Sheryl. Half the Sky: Turing Oppression into Oppourtunity for
Women Worldwide
28. Berlinski, Misha. Fieldwork
29. Krakauer, Jon. Where Men Win Glory
30. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love
31. Robbins, Tom. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
32. Ferlinghetti. Her
33. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
34. Pahalnuck, Chuck. Pygmy
35. Sayles, John. The Anarchists’ Convention
36. Mapes, Lynda, V. Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe & the
Unearthing of Tse-Whit-Zen
37. Atwood, Margaret. Wilderness Tips
38. Brooks, Geraldine. People of the Book
39. Halpern, Justin. Shit My Dad Says
40. Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain
41. Rawles, Nancy. My Jim
42. Truss, Lynn. Eats Shoots and Leaves
43. Chabon, Michael. The Escapist I, II, III
44. *See above
45. *See above
46. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own
47. Stieg, Larson. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
48. Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders
49. Franzen, Jonathan The Corrections *unfinished*
Ode to the legal system
impossibly hidden right in front of our eyes
the system that keeps us safe is owned by the system that keeps us safe consulted by the system that keeps us safe
triangular connections to inform themselves
of what they already know, namely:
they are rich
law is expensive
the court room is the new temple
from on high
round people with furrowed brows
shoot lighting bolts of fact at us
fact one
I have been rich for most if not all of my life
fact two
I consider most people stupider than myself
fact three
people make poor choices
fact four
stockholders are better than ordinary people, further
stockholders don’t make bad choices
ipso facto:
men, women, children, cows, chickens, goats, oceans, rivers, water, air, ground, earth, sky, universe
are second
to stockholders
by Brian Feist
Poem
“Though libraries are burned for the sake of truth
Fragments always survive in the necks of bottles”
-Doug Russell “The History of Beauty”
When the not
Finished
Shatter
They shatter
In the face of perfection
When
The one who was never finished
Begs
Forgiveness there is
Much to forgive but no one to do it
I won’t finish
I won’t
Even try but I work my fragments
To the bottle neck naiveté and beg
Often
For forgiveness
And it could be worse
The ones
Who finish
Won’t shatter they fall
In perfect arcs like polished stones
They burn
They never even
Think
To beg
By Noah West
Vogon Poetry!
Have you ever read “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” or just wondered what really bad poetry should look like?
Well the BBC has put together a Vogon Poetry generator that every one should try. Here is mine:
See, see the fat sky
Marvel at its big red depths.
Tell me, dak do you
Wonder why the pug ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel ugly.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your champfle facial growth
That looks like
A potato.
What’s more, it knows
Your fiddlesticks potting shed
Smells of pea.
Everything under the big fat sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm poops.
Posted by Brian Feist
Rothlisberger it’s anagram time!
From time to time we receive submissions at PoMotion. This one -regardless of one’s opinion about the innocence or guilt of people like Ben Rothlisberger, Tiger Woods, that Polanski guy-really IS clever.
> lier begs her to
> beer or the girls?
> greet liers broh
> ho regret bs lier
> he, BR, Tigers role?
> oh liers b regret
> r begger holes rite?
> there, E’ robs girl
> go beer slither’r
> i greet her slober
> her globes r rite
> leer beer or hits
By Requiqui
Posted by Sue Zalokar
Wordle Up!
I had never heard of Wordle.com before a few hours ago. Being the glossy-eyed cloud gazer and lover of text that I am, I fell in love.
To the left is my debut word cloud: Wordle One. It was a lot of fun and a great way to motivate students, people in general, to create more poetry.
There are quite a few websites that offer a word cloud creation platform, but in my humble opinion, Wordle is the best.
Try it. Go on, you know that you want to. Please consider submitting comments about your Wordle experiences or Wordles of your own to: pomotion123@gmail.com.
By Sue Zalokar
Outlaw Academics
Apparently, there is a rather large rift in the poetry world—a chasm that spans such a great distance that whenever the two sides try to communicate, the meaning is lost in the echoing of voices vibrating across this canyon.
It’s funny. I don’t consider myself to be an ‘academic’ poet, and yet I’m ‘highly’ educated [Insert joke here]. I don’t consider myself to be an ‘outlaw’ poet, and yet I ride with the posse of free verse, free style, and open ended poems, whenever I can round one up.
I suspect there many other other poets who share these feelings. I know there are.
A MOTHER, MIND YOU
“You’ll have to disassemble that stroller
while you’re on the bus”
“Ah. Come on”
“. . . or get out, here”
“OK”
A few minutes later
Half a mile from the stop
She unfolds the stroller
Driver stops the bus
Reiterates to “Disassemble the stroller
or get out
or I’ll call the cops”
“Call ’em!”
It’s 11:30 late night
Cops come
Bus leaves
Mother and 2 offspring
one a baby
one a young woman
All three red
No ID
Not necessary
Allowed to leave
Then
‘on second thought’
Harassed
Arrest is eminent
All three flee
Daughter with sister in arms
Mother captured and detained
5 days without charge
Swollen babyless breasts
Hog-tied, pepper sprayed in jail
Her baby’s grandfather walks the streets
Peripatetically
with a cane
Permanently pained
by the same police brutality
By Artis
Rae Armantrout wins the Pulit Surprise!!
The wonderful poet Rae Armantrout has won the Pulitzer Prize. It really was unimaginable two or three years ago that someone associated with experimental poetry would win this.
What does that mean? I don’t really know, the history of the avant-garde is that it gets absorbed into the mainstream…so…
Do these prizes even mean anything to anyone but the winner? Probably not.
But hey, the most important point is that she is amazing and deserves the accolades, the $10,000 and (hopefully) the wider readership.
Congrats Rae Armantrout!!!!!
The following poem first appeared in Veil: New and Selected Poems:
Manufacturing
1
A career in vestige management.
A dream job
back-engineering
shifts in salience.
I’m so far
behind the curve
on this.
So. Cal.
must connect with
so-called
to manufacture
the present.
Ubiquity’s
the new in-joke
bar-code hard-on,
a catch-phrase
in every segment.
2
The eye asks if the green,
frilled geranium puckers,
clustered at angles
on each stem,
are similar enough
to stop time.
It has asked this question already.
How much present tense
can any resemblance make?
What if one catch- phrase
appears in every episode?
Does the language go rigid?
The new in-joke
is a pun
pretending to be a bridge.
-Rae Armantrout
Watch Armantrout read from “Versed” on the National Book Foundation’s Web site.
Posted by Noah West
Hissa Hilal’s ‘Message in a Bottle’ is heard across the sea
Hissa Hilal took an unprecedented, third place in"Million's Poet" competiton She stands here with the other finalists, including Nasser al-Ajami who took first place and runner up, Falah al-Mowraqi
Hissa Hilal did much more than take third place in a poetry competition, she blew through a previously indelible line in the sand.
Hilal was out ranked by her Kuwaiti male counterparts, Nasser al-Ajami who took first place in the Million’s Poet competition last week followed by runner up, Falah al-Mowraqi. The Saudi poetess took third place, the furthest a woman has progressed in the poetry competition, now in its fourth year.
Hilal criticized religious extremism in her poem, “The Chaos of Fatwas” (translated here by blogger-editor, Nina Alvarez) which she read in the second round of competition. In doing so, Hilal gained million’s of fans in the blogosphere. She also received threats on her life.
Most of the acclaim that celebrated this brave woman’s journey was spurred from reports in the news and social media, like this podast on NPR’s Morning Edition or the following video from ABC news:
poMotion poetry 