Monday, July 21, 2008

here's a lil' something to celebate Xmas in July





This creature is been published and still is as it's all electronica for the people

on GEORGE SOLOMOS's FILM BANK- FIBA.UK website outta London England.

Check this great site out today by the publisher of ZERO MAGAZINE AND PRESS that in it's day-- the late 40's thru the fifties to the early 80's in Philadelphia -- was more real and less spooky (one of the first ex-pat literary journals to publish Jimmy Baldwin for example) than the cooked Paris Review.



Also this thing published hard wise by the Collective Press newspaper in St. Augustine, FL. as of last week and distributed to independent alternative bookstore and other small businesses and public places. Number 21, as of last week.

Theirs is an alternative deep- progressive issue very similar to West Philly's most satisfying and excellent anarchist THE DEFENESTRATOR but the COLLECTIVE publishes good damn poetry!






EARTHDAYMAYDAYANYDAY

There, as well as here,
They’re wondering why
It’s so chilly from coast
To coast? Capitalist Winter
Is underway, people are
Sheep well maybe its time
To seek out and find
The human- being though
People are just another
Word, human is not just
A word, but there’s a difference






In the air and the ocean is
Whipping calling up a storm gale
More than they’re nobody’s used too,
More than they’re amused
two might just be business as usual
All around the world
Food is in demand but no
Problem regards supply under
Handed seeds in lock step
With search and seize and a yearned
Dose of radioactive isotope
Has seen fit to that perfect plant
It’s people’s rout for starving
My gated bunker is darling
Keeps them those humans out
It’s what them folk want
After all while our police



State stands porky and tall
We’ll take suck at the teat of facts smack
Dab [and] faith to keep these people
In their place in the technocratic
Knowhow that things will be
A much hotter, slower pace
In an afterlife beyond time and space.
Nuclear Winter can’t hold
A candle up to the face
Of our spanking new capitalist winter
Coming to a theater near you,
Coming on TV set-up without a clue



And if, if not with a stitch of real food,
At least a battle cry, or a dinking song or two.
4/15/08.




Roger Jollie life long advocate and activist for social justice /civil rights and current mayorial candidate of St. Augustine as seen in the LOOSE SCREWS independent bookstore and emporium, holds the poster for director and newest ULA member Matt Broomfield's Unholy Sideshow, the movie.

Friday, May 23, 2008

ON THE ASSUMPTION OF THE ELITE, AND THEIR CHARTS, MAPS, AND A TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE


dregs of the cocktail party face-off the molotov cocktail outing











The skewed level of prosodic competence "in" composition-- in particular the phrenology of the samples I'll affix for examination on my trays of black wax--of these System savants below considered the best poets ("champions", ie. most decorated and most festooned with redundant Over-dawg awards and monied chairs) the New York Publishing "New England" Ivy Academic Military/Industrial Complex has to offer, (or even in this case, sacrifice, if necessary!) can only be best described as mental, emotional, and, mostly, sociopathic symptoms, dis-ease, brought on by "inbreeding" if not out and out "incest". Figuratively but structurally besides.





As all such closed Systems tend through their quotient of Entropy and as this process of hypostasis is irreversible (only true if the exception is true, namely that there exists at least one reversible reaction under structurally identical conditions) so the savor of the samples





I present may fade into the background





tastelessness of the rules of order,





and make the offending poet prosaic'ly





sympathetic to the choir-boys.



The Monolithic NYC Publishing/N.E. Ivy Academic Axis Kapitalist Force is just this sort of closed system while it is important to realize that its "good" soldiers (as the above is the aggressive that conducts the Culture Wars and maintains, intellectually, marketing, for the ruling class, the Class War) especially where its company poets are concerned, as poets are frequently of a higher, "non-fiction", dispensation, are the "victims" (look at the status of the avante- garde where "literature" is meant! ) as well. While, here, we are trying to re- fresh, reboot, a crucial aesthetic-- "borrowed" from the scientific laws of thermodynamics-- crit, 1960's Counter Culture term, ENTROPY, contradistinct to the preeminence of its "exception", single reversible-reaction paradigm, a HYSTERESIS, if you will, of this "law" as explained previously, to be the underground, independent, cooperatively- determined Letters and Literary Arts on point: the unconditional Conscience of the people and culture. Especially as there are bottom- line issues of free expression, free speech, public access, and distribution of what- is- to- be- accessible at play in the Country ( which would include New York, even Manhattan?). Rough housing is allowed of course especially toward the initiators of the civil Wars here at home.






note:: sub-texte: the word "entropy" happened to be gleaned during my research into affects of one of the three subjects to be roasted in this series of blog-posts, Liam Rector. A brief vacuous essay published in the equally vacant American Poetry Review out of Philadelphia.


Yes! perhaps like yoursell-ves I do take all of this personally.















But my purpose beside the obvious allowance of timelines if not tardiness unlike a few of my more confrontational if not obsessed associates ( in and of the ALLIANCE ) is not one of resentment, nor the despairing anger of wanting, "to have, being a Have- not, what-- the fame, money, the status-- the Haves have", nor even to get published and distributed, especially this late in the game, by duh Conglomerites and supp and sip with the glacial hupsters grind from dusk 'til dawn, but to shame and, if the opportunity present itself, as it is here on this Blog, drive the dominant forces as attached over the edge. For the people, for the reading/writing public, and most poignantly (I do take this personal!) for the Allies, cf. the ALLIANCE [where available; void where prohibited]. Seriously, I am the poet and if I'm lying it's not to bear false witness against my neighbors nor am I even against coveting my neighbor's wife or his daughters for that matter but do so to better advance and promote the causes of the TRUTH.


So that the public I as the poet do serve can cultivate a more critical sense in making actual decisions instead of being limited to the "bipolarism" of mere choices the system forces upon us. So that in effect there is less lying going around, dished out, in other words, the line- fed line of Fantasy Island, as I a poet loud and clear do in turn namely "make - believe", make-believing which exercises the Eternal Organ Of The Imagination and does sustain the citizen of a democratic country well with access to our Collective Uncs. so called, and its attending endless renewable energy and the open range of the lands of peace and ease.








Come to think of it, or more properly, as the Imagination's "woven shade" , the "poets' bower", has been invoked, come to intuit it, this is done and only can be done and is being done by the ULA in particular and it's Presses and the associated zeens, blogs, performances and creative livelihoods of its members and quantitatively more so by the free-association of those independent underground writers, poets, and artists beyond the zone of the Alliance's direct influences.

[ALL PHOTOS ARE GEOFF HALL @ APRIL, 2006]


This is where I the poet of the people, the reading/ writing citizenry, stand, seriously but not soberly, confidently but not necessarily faithfully, full of it never if I can help it full of myself but practically empty, and having no strings to hold me down unlike the three compromised poets who are, by all intents and purposes, (the answer to the question of whose intents and purposes lies in the upper recesses of closed and suffocating Towers one is styled in ivory and the other fashioned of robber-baron booty ) good soldiers, good victims of who they serve, to whom they sold out to, and most grievously, sold out the great art of poetry and the legacy, grounded in the pivotal decades of the '20's & '30's, and the Fifties and Sixties and then as now the "underground" (Fiction and )Poetry of the '90's, the story of which is not yet written nor decided, of that poetry, of those poets, either alive or dead. While I have friends, I take exception to my comrades no matter what their faults being used for ends that kill the messanger and capitalize on her belongings.



FIRST UP LETS TAKE, jason shinder, http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/407





OR MORE CAUTIOUSLY A FEW OF HIS "LATE" POEMS-- AS THEY ARE IN FACT WRIT BY A POET WHO IS LATE RECENTLY IN LIFE'S ESTIMATION TAKEN FROM US --WHICH I REGRET TO SAY WILL NOT APPEAR HERE IN THEIR ENTIRETY AS THE EXCUSE OF COPYWRIT WILL NO DOUBT BE INCITED FROM THE QUARTERS DRAWN AROUND HIS BODY OF WORK AND AROUND HIS VERily BODY FALLEN OUT OF SQUARE WITH our VISIBLE WORLD. BUT BECAUSE ...

note:: subtexte: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. [just in case!]

... OF THIS STATE OF THINGS THE READER WILL FIND THE LINES, STANZAS (OR "STROPHES" AS SAPPHIC SOPHISTS HIPSTERS-WHO-ARE-REALLY-GEEKS CALL 'EM) BY LINKS TO THE WHOLE PIECE UNDER THE GUN, SO TO SPEAK. AS I WILL parley MY OWN LYRICK VERSE, TOE TO TOE (tho I'd be ipso facto the one left standing!) with that of HIS selected , and that THAT I DIVINE TO BE APPROPRIATE AS WELL AS PERSONAL ENOUGH TO BE TAKEN DEAD-SERIOUS by enemies.


JUXTAPOSED.



2001, "The One Secret That Has Carried"

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15957



P:: S: I actually wrote a poem after I read Shinder’s , “The One Secret…”, but I will save it and publish as a comment to this post should the response to my “answering” poem below warrant such.


from A Century Of Sonnets Without Borders

#103


She said she thought the drummer



who pilots a SEPTA trolley now and back


in the ‘80’s raped a dominatrix


according to the dominatrix but at least



not the same one, jerks off while he talks



to her on the phone, you got to be


joking I said into my phone,


not the same phone, but I’d hope

he swabs the receiver down


with alcohol if it’s a public pay phone.


It’s not serious, it’s only a commercial


a movie sequel, a stuffed dodo, a nervous



tick not brought on by sanctions until now



against arab kids for over eleven years.


12.31.03


Friday, May 9, 2008

"Star Spangled Poet III"

I wanna, I wanna
wanna be
I wanna wanna be
be-boppin hit the drummin'
hands hittin table
be-boppin eyes closed
sweatin' be
cool
be
syncopated, baby
be, be, be,
wannabe
just-a, just-a, just-a,
just-as, just-ass,
just-ask
justice! justice! justice!
If you don't know this is the shit,
if you don't think this is radical then you
don't know the audience, the rules
the roles you and me supposed to play
Like, I get to be the poet
and you get to be impressed.
Shut out the lights, Nathan,
This gig is over,
entertainment finished,
wasn't it wonderful?
Not really, but it was adequate facsimile
of what used-ta,
used-ta, used-ta,
used to be cool
used to be beautiful
be known as,
and once really was,
poetry.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Mayu Day -- lest we forget, why, how, who and world-wide





MICHAEL GROVER /THIRD IN A SERIES IS OF 3/


AND BY KNOW MEANS HIS FIRST














Fidel




Fidel walking way
Not as a champion,
Not as a martyr,
As an old man
Beaten down
From fighting for years
american imperialism,
The yankee embargos
starving his people.




Here lays proof
Revolution can happen
Power taken
From the point of a gun.




Here lays proof
Power corrupts,
And absolute power
corrupts absolutely.




Here laid shelter
For displaced Poets
Of south america
For american exiles
Like Assata.




Who knows
What the future holds.
I just hope that yankee bastard
Uncle Sam
Don't get his hands around it's throat
And squeeze it for all it's worth.
Commercializing
Everything in sight.




Let's hope the fence of Guantanimo
Does not stretch around the island
Making it all
A prison.




Ninety miles away
From my florida homeland.
Ninety miles of blue ocean.
I have never seen it.
My friends that returned said
It is an island of prostitution and corruption.
To that I say
We're not that different.




I hear that great
Blueblooded king
Talking about wanting fair elections
When do we get ours George?







Monday, April 21, 2008

the 2nd poem and couldn't be more timely.......

still from, "The Day The Earth Stood Still"


Here's a new one I just wrote. Hope you're well.-Michael




ps. What did you think of those books? [3 well tempered chap-books published and available from Mickey G's newly established CovertPress] Dorsey [rad poet/activist of Toledo, Ohio ] said he'd be down with doing a reading. Anyhow the poem:








Free Speech

Free speech is . . .
Free speech is . .
Speech is free .


As long as you
Pay for what
You say later.
And the mans got
His thugs collecting.







Free verse is . . .
Free verse is . .
Verse is free .

Words torn from the source.
Onto the page,
Flowin' every which way.
She told me she'd
Like to be a Poet,
But she can't write
In all that rhyme.
She's a Poet
And she never knew it.








Slow food for thought,
Simmering in the brain.
It's free speech,

And it's free.





march 3, 2008


Saturday, April 12, 2008

TrueNews 3 Poems From Mike Grover

Cause & Effect, Citizen 32, Alphabeat Soup, The San Gabriel Poetry Quarterly, Mad
Poets Review, Philadelphia Poets and the anthologies One Drop: To Be The Color Black,
West Memphis Witchhunt, and My Time: The Lunch Break Book and online including
http://www.saintvituspress.com/, http://www.outsiderwriters.org/, http://www.getunderground.com/,
http://www.dyingwriters.com/, DecomP Literary Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee,
Redfez.net, Whirlygig Zine, and Beat The Dust. Michael is now back in Florida from there he hosts the website




http://www.covertpoetics.com/, co-edits CP Journal, and hosts a reading at Exodus Coffee & Culture in Port Saint Lucie.








His newest chapbook is titled "The Man That Lives In The Park".














here's the first of his three featured followed by two more



A New american Anthem


I wont stand for this modern society,
This modern technology,
That reduces prophets to profits,
To prostitutes
Pimping their own eggshell egos,
To promotional whores,
To networkers,
To favor dealers,
To rockstar images in a their space photo,
To not what but who you know.


A New american Anthem




I wont stand for this modern society,
This modern technology,
That reduces prophets to profits,
To prostitutes
Pimping their own eggshell egos,
To promotional whores,
To networkers,
To favor dealers,
To rockstar images in a their space photo,
To not what but who you know.


Maybe I'm an old dog,
That learned the old way,
Cut my teeth in LA
With the greatest minds of a new beat generation.
I can still learn new tricks
With the pen on the page,
I refuse to give into the reptilian brain.
Cold and insensitive
As a marketing mind.


This is my last stand,
My line drawn in the sand.
My last chance to go out with a roar
Over a pussy cat purr.


This is a transmission,
If you should choose to receive it.
Read it loud from a street corner.
From a dingy working class bar.
Set Poetry free!
This is my last shred of dignity.
All or nothing.


I am writing a new american anthem.
I can't stand for the rockets red glare anymore.
No bombs bursting in air.
This will be a song for Peace.
This will mean freedom, justice, equality, Peace
And any other word this countries supposed to mean.
I want an anthem,
A country we can be proud of again.
Not the pride that was forced upon us.
Not the prostitute war for profit,
Everything for profit that we have become.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Nothing cold, generic, and corporate sponsored.
No reptilian mind tricks.
Written in blood, sweat, feeling, and soul.


I am writing a new american anthem.
If you can see it, hear it, or read it.
If you identify with it in any way.
I urge you to go and write your own.
Write it in your blood and sweat.
Write it with the intention of a bullet in the chamber.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Because voting is just another useless word,
Made to look significant
If you are told who you may vote for.
And the deck is stacked anyway.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Because we can laugh at cartoons we pay to see
Taking pot shots at the president.
While he's laughing all the way to the world bank.
And you tell me who's playing the fool.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Out of necessity.
Out of preservation.
Because these days
Hope and Poems
Are all that keeps me going.

m.d.g. 4/11/08







Maybe I'm an old dog,
That learned the old way,
Cut my teeth in LA
With the greatest minds of a new beat generation.
I can still learn new tricks
With the pen on the page,
I refuse to give into the reptilian brain.
Cold and insensitive
As a marketing mind.






This is my last stand,
My line drawn in the sand.
My last chance to go out with a roar
Over a pussy cat purr.


This is a transmission,
If you should choose to receive it.
Read it loud from a street corner.
From a dingy working class bar.
Set Poetry free!
This is my last shred of dignity.
All or nothing.


I am writing a new american anthem.
I can't stand for the rockets red glare anymore.
No bombs bursting in air.
This will be a song for Peace.
This will mean freedom, justice, equality, Peace
And any other word this countries supposed to mean.
I want an anthem,
A country we can be proud of again.
Not the pride that was forced upon us.
Not the prostitute war for profit,
Everything for profit that we have become.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Nothing cold, generic, and corporate sponsored.
No reptilian mind tricks.
Written in blood, sweat, feeling, and soul.


I am writing a new american anthem.
If you can see it, hear it, or read it.
If you identify with it in any way.
I urge you to go and write your own.
Write it in your blood and sweat.
Write it with the intention of a bullet in the chamber.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Because voting is just another useless word,
Made to look significant
If you are told who you may vote for.
And the deck is stacked anyway.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Because we can laugh at cartoons we pay to see
Taking pot shots at the president.
While he's laughing all the way to the world bank.
And you tell me who's playing the fool.


I am writing a new american anthem.
Out of necessity.
Out of preservation.
Because these days
Hope and Poems
Are all that keeps me going.

m.d.g. 4/11/08





Two more as we drift closer to MAY DAY and tensions rise!










Thursday, March 13, 2008

Ulf Stefan Lingonblad, a poetry piece



[STEFAN is a native of Sweden who works
two full- time jobs in the Jacksonville Beaches


area of North Florida. He is primarily a novelist
currently at work on his second novel.


Stafan is also an active member
of the North Florida Chapter
of the Florida Writers' Association.

Here is a brief introduction in his own words:]




"Anyhow, I don’t really have much of anything that would be a great fit for the ULA. The stuff I write belongs more in the (hated) mainstream press. But so far no-one has wanted to publish any of it, so what the hey!



I am sending you what is probably the one and only short poetry piece I have that could be a fit (you be the judge).




The bio would be something like:
Stefan – the Swedish Viking, Raider of prose, Rapist of poetry!
My hometown is Strängnäs…. " [out side of Stockholm]








"Fight to Awaken – Fight to See!”



Their Fog-machines put out an impenetrable haze

which shrouds you in

confusion.


Your thoughts, like petals

off a withering

Rose, shrivel and fall to the ground.


Don’t be afraid to pick them back up,

even though they may have gotten

dirty.


Chew on them, digest them,

regurgitate

them, then spit them out
into the faces of those who walk

in the fog

together with you.


Those who don't
flinch
or react in any way –
forget about them, they are without

hope.



But to the others – those who clench their

fists

to strike back at you – shout to them loudly:


“Fight to awaken – Fight to See!”




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------