I need to

turn down the volume

on the world

sometimes

cus the space

between my ears

done shrunk to

a knot of confusion

Bum rushed by Limbasity

pecked by Beck’s feckless lies

drowned in that  chorus of nonsense

echoed in foxholes

shouted loud

shouted long enough

new truths spring up from lies

and zealots carry banners

as if marching off to war

          “…there’s no evolution

          there’s no climate change

          let’s stop the spooky black man

          should of been John McCain

in the

          white house,”

so

wing nuts take the statehouse

sound their battle cries:

strip women of their right to choose

suppress the young black vote

shake down the working man once more

and ban all union strikes;

stall railroad progress in its tracks

nip green business in the bud

heap more wealth upon the wealthy

while halting healthcare for the poor.

They want their country back again

to 1954?

when white power ruled the land at large

and those of color had no say

 I see their mouths a moving

          and hear a cacophony of lies

 ring in my ears so loud

it hurts to even think…

I need to

turn down the volume

on the world sometimes,

but who knows what they’d say

if I do.

Disinheritance

I remember how you threw a stapler at me from across the

room & when I think of it now the stapler hits a wall in my

mind slams metallically on the floor but I see you weren’t

mad at me you were mad at yourself the things you do to

your children are like etchings on metal plates they carry

these plates with them through their entire lives & when

new situations arise they pull out their etched metal to try

and make sense of what’s happening before them for

example my natural reaction to people is to wonder what I

have done to upset them & it’s because of this stapler

etching you gave to me when I was six because your life

was falling apart not mine so I am giving this thing back to

you it hasn’t helped me & it is heavy.

A Breath

Prana-Sanskrit for

breath—a vital life

sustaining force of

living beings flows onto

the page in symbols

of abstract black

ink which the mind has

bound up with meaning

& our mouths sculpt breath

putting sound to these

symbols that break the

plane of lips & enter

this new quantum

Universe where quarks

& strings pulsate to

every single sylla-

ble so before

you engage the muscles

in your cheeks &

even think of lowering

your jaw &

forming your tongue to

shape this force realize

the resulting rhythms

you skip across

the reflective

surface will ripple

& dance & tickle

& stab the beating

apparatus of

everything that has

ever existed.

I object

to food being left in the fields to rot

while those who have, celebrate.

As Leviticus  says: the harvest is not done

‘til all have eaten.

I object

to calling deserts “wastelands”, lands-for-our-waste,

when all that we are really naming

is our own ignorance

of all that breathes and teems

in a space unknown to us.

I object

to cities lit by fuels of fossil strength

to illuminate the night – for what?

so that we can neither breathe by day

nor see the stars

in whose nurseries

Carbon is born.

I object

To saying “ straight” to mean not gay

( even though it may also mean not happy )

as if to love one’s own

were crooked,

as if to love could ever,

ever would,

be wrong.

I object

to bad coffee

that is also not “fair”

if by “fair” we mean

what it would mean

if I were you and you were me.

It is unfair to use fair as an ambiguous adjective;

even we knew this as kids:

“Fair is fair.”

I object

to obliterating history

re-writing time,

resetting calendars to the year “1”

as if there were not, had not been,

three thousand

seven hundred

sixty one years

already counted

and Lawfully lived.

I object

to forgetting

as if the past were superfluous,

just so much flotsam in the tides of time,

as if, Jean-Paul, all that counts is now.

Refusal to remember is not

an innocent vagueness,

not an individual indolence

for all forgetting takes others’ memories

of moments that have mattered,

and looses to obdurate oblivion what could instruct us all.

I object.

You are the virus,
You hacked your way in,
Burrowed into my brain
and soaked through my skin.

Now you’re nearly everywhere,
Tugging at my heart and soul,
But for the first time in a while
I’m starting to feel whole.

Am I wrong to feel this way,
Or are they wrong to judge?
For some reason with you near,
I float rather than trudge.

I know I’m better off without you.
I could pull a match and strike it.
I’ll admit, you’re bad for me,
But I’ll also admit, I like it.

That Girl

She’s the girl too sad to cry,
Too down to shed a single tear.
She just holds it all inside
Locked away with fear.

She’s the girl too scared to scream,
Too terrified to yell
So she’ll just bite her lip,
Hold her tongue, and she won’t tell.

She’s the girl too mad to care,
Too angry to give attention.
So she’ll keep it to herself
And not give it a mention.

She’s the girl that goes unnoticed,
You probably look right past her.
She looks fine from the outside,
But inside she’s a disaster.

Samantha Bielicki

A Dream I Had One Night
I can feel it
From the deepest pit
Of my guts
My darkest frustration
With everything
every damn thing
My biased-for-me place
This thing
begins to boil
heats my center
And begins to rumble
Vibrating my core
I can feel it claw
Tearing out of my throat
A scream of such magnitude
Everything in the world becomes silent
Everyone, everything around me
Fades slowly into whiteness
Only I am left
And now my voice is gone

Weighted Down
She writhes in my arms
And wets my t-shirt
With her angry tears
Staring with frustrated eyes
Demanding that I know
That I realize
How obvious her need is
For her it is so crystal
So perfectly apparent
And yet why do I continue doing the wrong thing
How could you believe I’m hungry?
You just changed me
Put me down
Pick me up
Carry me over there
Make things better
One by one I go down the list
Console, console, console
Hold, walk, swing
Feed, change, play
Futile, all of it
So along we go
I try, she cries
Hours pass
After one hundred years
She goes heavy
Twice what she weighed before
Today was a rough one
Intense is the frustration
Of not knowing how to fix
Doubly so
Is the thought of such powerful love
Such affection without bound

A canvas of silence

holds hostage the frozen tundra.

Cosmic lamps twinkle in the galaxies.

Planets chase their ethereal peers.

Giant pines cast shimmering shadows.

Migrating moon illuminates

a nocturnal doe, silhouetted.

 

Caught in the current of chance

Touch is the key to tack on

Doorway is required to dance

Without it nothing is done

Attached, latched piercing insertion

Enter the host and stay as a ghost

Hide, glide, make it all function

Control Room is the new post

Give machinery your new codes

Now, comes the resulting parts

New foreign growth explodes

Maturation before, end starts

Collect all the proper pieces

Build, yield the massive number

Bloated, the production ceases

Sickness waits in slumber

Integration brings devastation

All to produce the genome

Federation for its regeneration

Free to roam, for the next home

It all started

In a car

Then after that

I got a scar

A few years later

I had a seizure

The cause?

They don’t know for sure

When you’re reading this

You might think it’s bad

You might think that these things

Would make me sad

But it’s actually positive

If you look at it that way

Because these events

Made me who I am today

Jesus was a vampire;

so was Mother Mary;

his maker.

When he hung upon

the cross with nails

driven into his hands

he cried for salvation…

and the sunset lay

upon the brink of the

horizon and the little

children played.

His body was wrapped

and laid to rest upon

the stone, as his divine

blood dripped into the

cup–it was called a

Holy Grail.

After that he vacationed

because the devil then

came and said he’d

sealed the deal.