poem from brigade member Virginia Barrett

FLORA AND FAUNA 

Occupy California

Virginia Barrett

Point Reyes National Seashore

The field mustard

is occupying the land

of the historic ranch

with a brilliant banner

of yellow—urging an early

American Spring.

Crows, in their black,

Zen monk robes, stand

atop the fence posts

and impart:

            “let flowers grow

            in all our hearts.”

Having survived

an earlier eviction,

the Tule Elk graze

on the hillsides

            of loving undulations

above the rousing surf.

Cows, black and white,

conscientiously chew the cud

of the indigestible news

while in Tomales Bay

the oysters form pearls

to pay for better schools.

Mountain lions organize

in the night, stealing

it back from the monopoly

of electric lights,

           

                        (and the stars are staging a sit-in).

                                    Coyotes circle

                        to devour

            the corporate carnage

in the misty rain

that is washing

this earthly paradise,

                                    this California,

                                                clean.

Brigade poets in new Occupy anthology

Occupy SF—poems from the movement, has just been released. Several members of the brigade are in the anthology including: Sarah Menefee, Jack Hirschman, Agneta Falk, Rosemary Manno, Richard Gross, Gary Hicks, Virginia Barrett, Bobby Coleman, Steven Gray, Sarah Page, devorah major, jimmy.mankind, Mahnaz Badihian, Nina Serrano, Adrian Arias, Jim Byron, Angelina Llongueras, Jessica Loos, and George Long. Over 70 poets and authors are included in this important publication. Visit the website to learn more:www.occupyanthology.com

New Poem "MERREK" by Sarah Page

Merrek

(A Poem for the Children)

1.

Children are profound treasures.

I will never forget how

when you were three years old

and we were playing with your Lite Bright
while the other adults were watching the Superbowl

you took out 2 christmas lights and

plugged one into the board

and put another next to it

and said to me

"This is you,

and this is me,

next to you."

I didn't think children

could express abstractions like that.

Perhaps this is what happens

when the world turns upside-down like it is -

the children become the wise ones

philosopher-sage artists after only three years.

2.

Perhaps I cannot stop adults from burdening

children with their problems and short-comings.

Maybe I cannot stop bombs

from being dropped where they sleep and go to school,

can't keep them from being blown up by land mines

in the fields where they used to play.

But, I can know that when these things happen

we are all closer to them than we think. 

These are OUR children getting hurt and blown up and killed,

OUR bombs and OUR soldiers fighting meaningless wars.

And I can protest,

and I can write this poem,

and I can write more poems like this one -

but I would have to be like a ghost of myself

to do nothing.

The Gates of Hell by Steven Gray

THE GATES OF HELL


               (a sculpture by Rodin at Stanford University)




Standing at the Gates of Hell,
it feels like a rehearsal,
it’s a heavy metal representation,
a reversal


of the elevating. Here
the human beings fall
away from the divine, the
theology appalling,


but consider the location:
maybe it’s about
the suffering students who are damned
if they are dropping out.


The man-hours that went into this
metallic metaphor,
the figures are gesticulating,
there is room for more.


They’re going from the pan into
the fire, I’m resisting
the behavioral engineering,
hell does not exist.


The horrifying does, and it is
seeing through your clothes,
are these the people who have learned
their homes have been foreclosed?


The concept and the execution
were a tour de force,
evoking every kind of pain
from gravity to divorce.


The sculptor was an opportunist
jumping at the chance
to show the human figure from
all angles at a glance,


and that requires chaos, there are
people upside down.
I thought about the burning towers
in another town.


We’re haunted by a fall from grace,
historically a mass grave
is an awful classroom, you are
learning to behave,


but it’s a sunny afternoon,
if it’s the Gates of Hell
the vertigo would have us by
the hair.  I lived to tell


about it, but I have to admit
a subway is more hellish
with a cold wind underground,
the echo of a death-wish.