the revolution will be                          caffeinated....

Poetry Night

Second Tuesdays, 7:00 pm*

Next Poetry Night -- May 20 *(due to special event, Poetry night will be on the 3rd Tuesday in May)

host, Benicia Poet Laureate Joel Fallon joelfallon@aol.com

 Poetry Matters

Tahiti Time

At the Cafe Voltaire on the Benicia waterfront
there’s three clocks on the wall.
One has the time in Papeete, Tahiti,
one in Benicia, and one in Paris, France.

Now you can contemplate all aspects of the globe
and just so that you don’t think we’re alone,
or ahead of our times, how many times
can you tell time in a poem?

Our mentor sets our rounds in Tahiti time,
and we break for ten minutes, arriving back
at the Voltaire (if not Tahiti) at ten past the break time
just announced in Tahiti time. We can’t wait to get started.

Imagine how long the war in Iraq or Afghanistan would last
if Congress had to convene in Iraqi time, just before the next bunker-busting bomb for Democracy

and leaking but perennial
oil supplies were announced to go off
or be cut from production in Iraqi time?

Would George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make it
back to the bunker head first through the dust and
depleted uranium in time for the IED of a lifetime
if they set their watches by Iraqi time?

Would the midterm elections arrive any sooner?

Time to get back to Tahiti. The next round
of poetry is gonna start. Drop in, it’s a hoot,
second Tuesdays of the month, while Tahiti time
dances on the clocks on the wall.

©Peter Bray, 10/11/06 All rights reserved
www.peterbray.org
www.sonador.com/pedro
See Joel Fallon’s www.poetrymatters.150m.com
(See Benicia Poets pages)
See Cynthia Bryant’s www.poetslane.com
(Poets in the Know & Get It Off Your Chest)
See also "Every First Tuesday, An Anthology of the Benicia Library Poets"
(e-mail: gmr9540@netzero.com for availability)

.War. 

 © 2008 Tyriq Plummer

This is tax evasion in a third world nation.

Those bombs are getting restless and losing their patience.
Radio silence the violence and join in a vigil,
vigilantly setting your .50 cals on the windowsill.

Breakout of chicken pox and smallpox slay red fox,
but walls burn, their roofs burn, its our turn to stop and learn.
I'll try to touch the sky with my smokestacks,

my crooked back,
by moonlight, I swear that I'll be back.
With the tracer rounds that I found.

build yourself a compound.
A complex in context of a declaration.
Independence stated clearly in a declaration.

The right revoked to make any declarations.
Of our rights, this is a clear and present violation.
Station your troops by the flag at the paramount,

Take inventory of the ammunition, what's the amount?
Cavalry coming on an army of mounts,
But everyone's dying fruitlessly,

It's time for us to bounce.
I'm out on a limb,
To revoke the privileges of the underprivileged.

Their angst provoked by sending messages undelivered.
What about them?
The enemy we're being ravaged by?

This extraneous existence is saying goodbye.
In morse code.
Mortar shells provide the beat for a violent ode.

Take up the load of dead bodies. Reload.
Up on your toes.
Storm their abode.
Take the stronghold With longbows,

And maybe we'll kill foes.
Swords against AK-47s,
and M1-A1s,
Air Strike squadrons,

and concrete pylons.
We fight on with lions and bears at our backs.
We wear blackened jackets to protect us from flak.

Lost in the fog of war.
Which way takes us back?
Back to the land where the sky is cracked.
The land where our very existence is hacked.

Reprogrammed to believe the news crews.
All they ever show is what can be used
For personal gain.

They take others' pain,
and frame them in a cathode array.
Showing sandstorms and trials,
Test-tube baby vials.

And the miles of style they style us to.
Called stereotypes and...
This is not a through street,
soon enough you'll come to a dead end,

Where the silver lining the clouds turns to coal.
At the same time the forces meet,
there will be nothing but a red blend,

of the thousands of souls that died for black gold.