Breadlines and Roselines [Today's News Poem, February 26, 2011]

Breadlines and Roselines [Today's News Poem, February 26, 2011]

Make a date: the Ferry Building Farmer's Market.
Wait in a civilized line for a sourdough.

In gray we trust the bridge of shadow, steel, and sunlight
To conjure the dungeness claws for an altar:

Motor oil and seagull bones; a coil of feces
Nearest the merchant with roses from Bakersfield,

And nearest where we kiss, the first of many kisses
(Enormous, between and beneath, we're impressive)—

Nearest rust we trust will wait—our lives beginning
Ordered disorder, with roses and sourdough;

And ready for bridge or pier collapse,
And ready for kiss and crab and rust.

"Workers were still hastily painting over graffiti calling Colonel Qaddafi a “bloodsucker” or demanding his ouster. Just off the tour route were long bread lines where residents said they were afraid to be seen talking to journalists."
—DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, The New York Times, Published: February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/world/africa/27libya.html

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Toys For Crabs [Today's News Poem, November 21, 2010]

Toys For Crabs [Today's News Poem, November 21, 2010]

At three, I thought the motor car
A badge of blithe maturity.
I took a handful, threw my toys:
They bumped against the windy cliff.
At ten, I seized the glider, used
My mind to grip the handles, jumped
And swam in wind that cast me back
To bounce upon the face of land.
My beard's a cradle for my face,
And seagulls mock my fallen mass.
The floating corpses: fishing boats.
The helicopters: seraphim
With bulging bellies, giant heads
That look like blades that chop the sky,
And frame the contrails greater beings
Emit. And somewhere, God itself
Must ride a satellite—a jet
Of gas from godly aft propels
The eye that orbits far above
The foam of taste, the crabs of touch.

"North Korea for the first time showed a visiting American a lab where it claimed to be processing uranium to make atomic weapons, something that, if true, would confirm that it is using a different key ingredient than the one it agreed to stop using under a deal with the U.S. and other countries. "
—EVAN RAMSTAD, The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 21, 2010, 2:55 A.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704496104575627740592221262.html

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Nazi Architecture [Today's News Poem, November 17, 2010]

Nazi Architecture [Today's News Poem, November 17, 2010]

While swimming in soot, near erections of towers—
Or barrels that seem to be pointed to heaven
But aim at the ground, you might notice the pillars
Are cracking: designed for the failure that's coming.
For nature abhors the incompetence gathered,
And quakes with its rage. While indulgence is stunning,
While fumes are unpleasant, consumption is monarch
Or Fuhrer of desire—while carts sell the breakfasts
And stores sell prescriptions, and monitors promise
That war ends in victory; crabs in a bucket
Are stymied by architects, thwarted by surface
And claws, as the mutiny pinches escape routes;
Until they are steamed and are cracked and then eaten.

"The Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to four manufacturers of alcoholic energy drinks on Wednesday, saying that it was unsafe to include caffeine in the beverages."
—ABBY GOODNOUGH, The New York Times, Published: November 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/us/18drinks.html

"Would-be traveler John Tyner of Oceanside, California, wasn't too happy about the new "enhanced" pat-downs the agency rolled out nationally on November 1. The new guidelines let TSA officers feel passenger's genitals with their hands if they refuse to go through the high-tech body scanner."
—Jen Phillips, Mother Jones, Tue Nov. 16, 2010 1:24 PM PST
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/TSA-scan-complaints-grope-tyner

"After a brief delay, the first Dungeness crab cakes of the season should be on Bay Area dinner tables by Thursday."
—Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle November 17, 2010 04:00 AM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/17/MNER1GD43V.DTL



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Poseidon Love-Detector [Today's News Poem, September 4, 2010]

Poseidon Love-Detector [Today's News Poem, September 4, 2010]

The mooring has loosened. The vessel is drifting away,
Lost to the climate: a vortex that tests what we'll do
When rigging unknots and Poseidon enlists all the gods.
Tossed by the ocean and blinded by raindrops I watch
Your boat as it welcomes the grip of the swells, so I leap
Into the water and tackle indifferent lines
And gather the tether that kept us together 'till now.
Din all around; castanets in the clouds—I can't hear
Your words though I know what you're shouting: the opposite thing
That you mean. You are screaming, 'just stay on the shore,'
But my brother I'll drown in a riptide and feed
All the crabs with my eyes—the survivors of hunts
With my net on their pier. They have grown in that time
From the undersized runts to the masters of tide.
You are lost and I've lost you already—we're finished.

“Hurricane Earl made landfall in Canada on Saturday and fizzled after a series of scares along the U.S. East Coast, flooding roads, felling trees and cutting power to tens of thousands in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. One man died in the Halifax region after he swam into rough waters to secure a boat that had come loose from its mooring. He drowned while attempting to swim back to shore.”
– REUTERS, 6:19 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/04/news/news-us-weather-storm-earl.html



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The Bargain [Bonus Poem Collaboration, June 4, 2010, Art: Rutherford Toady (rtoady), Poetry: Khakjaan Wessington (KW)]

The Bargain [Bonus Poem Collaboration, June 4, 2010, Art: Rutherford Toady (rtoady), Poetry: Khakjaan Wessington (KW)]

Art: Rutherford Toady
Poetry: Khakjaan Wessington

I sleep with a basket of cans at my feet.
My monitor flickers. The teevee recites
Some facts on the tidepools not far from my street.
My pizza is finished, the darkness invites
A script from my dreams, where I live on the edge
And snap at the gleanings; the vomit the bay
Has served for my dinner. I watch. On the ledge,
Abutting the rocks—not decayed—dare I pray
For miracles? Pinching its neck with my claws?
Its fat and its alien warmth in my jaws?

More Rutherford Toady at http://carrioncall.blogspot.com

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