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Showing posts with label January 4 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label January 4 2011. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Die For Friday Night Football [Guest News Poem by RL Greenfield, January 4, 2011]

Die For Friday Night Football [Guest News Poem by RL Greenfield, January 4, 2011]
By RL Greenfield

Wanted: red white & blue boys & girls
for Afghanistan
Go to the desert & die for Jesus Allah & Exxon.
Die for Halliburton & the Carlyle Group.
Lie down & croak for General Electric.
Die for J. Updike’s skinny anemic god, Rabbit Angstrom.
Die your ass off for Dow C. Jones & for Binny the Laden
& Starbucks, International. Die for all-American spaghetti,
Die for Chinese food made in America by white dudes---
Yeah, die a little bit for a tank full of gasoline at nine bucks
a gallon & on the up & up: die for the death of the American
penis, circa, 2009---finally got that out of the way
Shut up & die like a good little pussy-whipped cowboy
who wears sandals to church every Sunday morning
Die so you can have a ninety-nine cent funeral paid for by
Blackwater, Inc. free coffee & donuts
Die for China that owns the USA lock stock & candlestick
Die for A & W Root Beer high school football & unrequited love
Die for The New York Times The Wall Street Journal &
Time Magazine
Die for David Letterman Jay Leno Bill Gates & Viagra
Do you need another reason? Die for white bread
& call it a day.



RL Greenfield lives in & loves Los Angeles, California.
 
Recent work online Stride Magazine ( poems, Aug. 2010), Poetic Matrix ( poems Dec  2010).   9 January & 1 December 2009---Charles Wright’s Littlefoot and Russell Edson’s See Jack.  Forthcoming poems The Denver Quarterly, Chiron Review, Nether,  Eunoia Review, & Sein und Werden.  Review of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road online  November, 2010 Gently Read Literature.  Numerous other publications in national reviews such as The Wormwood Review, The New York Quarterly, The Minnesota Review.
 
RLG received NEA fellowship literature mss of poems 1995.  Created television program  The Greenfield Code & produced & hosted 150 one-hr shows in Santa Barbara featuring writers & artists.  It was terrifically successful & a thrilling experience that transformed his esthetic forever.


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Prayers Blow Back [Today's News Poem, January 4, 2011]

Prayers Blow Back [Today's News Poem, January 4, 2011]

We've been blowing our fumes for so long
The sky thinks we deserve a reward.
We've spit sacraments into the mouth
Of God, doubting it sips what we've breathed.
If prayer works, then I ask why don't storms?
Why ice, asteroids, rainbows and sun?
We blow back on your breath with a curse,
You send us the collateral birds—
We shout down all the flight and they're stunned
By bad breath and embittered, foul tongues.

"At most recent count, up to 5,000 birds fell on the city. Sixty five samples were sent to labs, one of which is at the Livestock and Poultry Commission and the other in Madison, Wis. "
—CAMPBELL ROBERTSON, The New York Times, Published: January 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/04beebe.html


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