Cut Your Hair art by Cheryl Townsend

Freedom Trampled by Fear

guest editorial by John Yotko

I was listening to the radio this morning on my way to work and I heard Terry O’Brien mention that the Transportation Safety Administration wanted to start collecting information about passenger meal selection. The first thing I thought, ‘for what purpose do they need this information?’ Then I thought, ‘what right have they to this information?’
She then said that they were probably using it to study the behavior of passengers to determine if they may be terrorists. Terry noted that they have computer logarithms (Jake suggested that she meant algorithm) that they can put this data through to profile the passengers to see if they may be a terrorist threat. Jake joked that the ACLU will probably get all up in arms over this one. Her own state of Illinois agrees that racial profiling is a crime. Meanwhile the TSA has taken to settling profiling cases out of court rather than facing a decision by the Supreme Court that this is unconstitutional. Immediately I was trying to dial the radio station but I couldn’t get through. While I was trying to dial, she said that people do not have a right to fly, that it is a privilege. When did it become a privilege for a private individual to enter into a contract with a corporation for transportation? The day the “Patriot” Act passed, that is when. Don’t worry, your rights aren’t evaporating.
I thought about the references that I hear from many of the socialists, communists and liberals that I know about President George W. Bush being a Fascist. What is fascism? It is a political philosophy that glorifies the state (there is a very good description of Fascism at http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html). I don’t believe that President is Fascist but it appears that many of his supporters are becoming just that. If anyone questions his decisions, the Bush cultists immediately decry that person as being un-American. Since when did it become un-American to protest government action (see the two quotes from American history in this essay)? That was how this country was founded. Remember that your freedom ultimately was defined by a group of traitors and the one we are taught was a traitor, Benedict Arnold, was the one who was loyal to his king and country.
Now Terry is an intelligent woman. She must be, because I agree with her quite often, although I don’t particularly care for her delivery. I am certain she knows the meaning of the following two quotes:
Patrick Henry said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Another respected individual, Benjamin Franklin, stated, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.”
The meanings of the two quotes are obvious. The first establishes that the government should be allowed only to do what the people allow it to do. In fact, that is what the Constitution states. People accepting the gradual changes taking place in our society are slowly eroding this. Franklin’s quote is far more to the point. He is saying that you can’t protect freedoms by taking them away. An analogy is the boiling frog. If you take a frog and drop it in a pan of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. If you place that same frog in a pan of warm water and slowly raise the temperature to a boil, you will cook it. We are the frogs and that water is our liberties. We are remaining warm and cozy as our freedoms evaporate.

John Yotko

Note: The author is libertarian in philosophy and political alignment. Any assumptions that he may support communism, socialism because he knows people of this political alignment is wholly misguided. He maintains his right to complain about the government because he has voted in every election since he was old enough to vote and has never voted for the winner.
Wanna hear more rants? Check out A Rant of my Own at John Yotko’s web site, at http://www.yotko.com.

Shadows

When the sun falls below
The distant horizon
And it’s light fades into night
The shadows come out

That’s what I call the
Creatures that roam in the
Between places of my world

I seldom see them
But I can certainly feel them
Creeping, almost flowing along the
Floors, walls, windows,
And especially ceilings

My skin tingles when they are near
Then it chills instantly when
They scan about looking for
Something or someone
I still cannot tell

Those moments come and go
Yet there are some that I can never
Brush away from my memories

Moments where I am asleep
In an empty room
When nobody witnesses the door
Between the places open to me

Moments where I can see
As clear as day the surroundings
That do not seem the same in
The light of the between
Where the cold splashes around me
Wave after wave

Moments when the shadow takes
Hold of me and pins me back
To my slumbering husk
Where I let out a scream
That nobody in reality can hear

I struggle against the shadow
As I inch my way through
An unseen passage
Until I begin to hear once again

But in hearing myself
I can never avoid
The Demons and Angels whispering
Their sweet nothings into my ear?

Maybe That Is Enough poem translated into Gurmukhi by Carter Donovan

Dirty

How nice it must be for us
To have such a large wardrobe to choose from
To have great multitudes of faces to wear
And fragrances to mask our scent

How consuming it must be for us
To perpetuate the politics of our lives
To waste our precious moments mired in lies
And escaping the consequences of truth

How entertaining it must be for us
To dance so close to oblivion
To sing so loud in unison
That we drown the voices of the past

How dreadful it must be for us
To be left naked and vulnerable
When we are truest to ourselves
When we are treading the mud of obscurity

How surprising must it be for us
When we try to wash away the marks
Only to find the stains permanent
A constant reminder that we are tainted souls

art by Xanadu

trouble in paradise

maybe she’d been the apple of your eye
eaten out lightly purring rthym
rain tapping against
the window

eve picking “the grapes
of wrath” up at
some used
bookstore

but some apples
are filled
with worms

and paradise isn’t paradise
for long enternity smiles
on imperfection as if
it were the red headed step child
of a disco icon

and the only tapping going down lately
is that weathered vein
used to pay the rent

and love is hiding under
the covers waiting for the sun
to make a false move

and at 5:38 am these things
seem like
bitter fruit

when paradise seems
too troubled to say i
love you or even
brush
her teeth

from State of Desire State of Being art by Stephen Mead

Voting Booth Blues

I am glad to be twenty because now all the poetry I write
is not automatically bad because it is teenage poetry.
It is now automatically bad because it is cynical,
disenfranchised twenty-something poetry.
I will keep that in mind next election.
Apparently voting and disenfranchisement are mutually exclusive.
Whoever assigned polling stations had it in for me
and placed the Jewish Community Center a block away
from my first-floor condo.
Without the excuse of laziness,
there is no way I can’t vote.
It’s a strange location for a JCC.
I don’t even know any Jews who live in my neighborhood.
Apparently there’s a large migratory population of Jews
that haphazardly drive or walk or fly to within a block of my house
at random and unpredictable intervals to do whatever
Jews do in a JCC.
Personally, I haven’t a clue.
The only experience I’ve ever had with a JCC
has been directly related to voting.
Well, that and I was once friends with a devout, born again Christian
who was given the old pool table
from said JCC a block from my house by another friend,
who was a Jew, who attended said JCC, and didn’t live in my neighborhood.
I would have liked to have seen him go pick up the pool table.
He would have had to check Jesus at the door
like some inexpensive and poorly lined coat and
received in Jesus’ place a voucher that
he could trade in at the end of the night for his savior.
I am sure if he asked nicely, Jesus wouldn’t have minded
being hung up in a closet next to all the other messiahs.
But, having spoken to my friend lately,
I think he should have just kept the voucher.

church in the Distance art by John Yotko

CARDINAL MESSAGE

The cardinals were silent
this morning,
not a sound until the sun came up,
though they’re usually out
at the gray of dawn
to sing a song,
praising the arrival of light
which they long for,
crooning from treetops
about living
and the simple life,
insights they daily share
with us
in well phrased melodies,
hoping we stop to listen.

Chicago, with International buildings and landmarks

WINDY CITY BIBLE

God is perpetual twilight down Michigan Avenue

Jesus warms his hands by garage barrel bonfires
Amidst the glamorous waste of Lower Wacker
He preaches atop discarded McDonald’s crates
One glorious dissertation to gathering poverty
His home
cardboard trim ornamented with mealworm colonies
Disposable household
bureaucracies squander
Under Wacker there is a map to the son of man
Just follow the hammers in the dark

Noah has docked the arc in Navy pier
Lincoln Park Zoo has relocated to coincide with his wishes
A public service announcement on Animal Planet
“Mating habits of all species will now be shown from the Ferris wheel”
Incessant chirps, roars, moans, repeat
Sends mortal stupor to glass-eyed tourists

David detonates the dispensable time bomb
Along parquet ash and steel mortem
He claims victory over Sears Tower tragedy
Self-proclaimed sky king
He has slain Goliath

Adam pricked by black-eyed bushes
Intrigued by radiance his sin magnifies
While Eve capitulates under the maple tree
The audience of squirrel beggars uncovers
Arrogance in her heart

Moses emancipates stock exchange’s ethereal souls
Parting cars east to west down Lake Shore
Rush hour is hell
Penthouse suite Hancock Building

“Moral Codes Sold Here”
Thou shalt steal, rape, kill, and pillage in order
To satisfy one’s palette
Crosses replace road signs
Rosaries are handouts on street corners
Church bells resonate timepiece
The alter is industry
And Judas has set fire to Lower Wacker

On First Seeing My Photograph as a Six-Month Child

Feet splayed, he sits alone
On the harsh concrete expanse-behind
Him, shadowed so severely that nothing
Shows but alternating stripes
(Were they olive and gold, perhaps, or blue
and turquoise, always her favorites).
He sits. His arms raised high
As if begging him or her or them
To bend and pick him up.
They don’t-or won’t-but laugh (presum-
ably) at antics thought too cute,
Too charming to ignore.

And fifty years slide by.
He sits alone, feet tucked
Sedately beneath his desk, arms
Raised to touch the keyboard and res-
urrect an infant self, a slice
Of shadow, a concrete waste,
And faces just beyond his lens.

music hath charms art by dward Michael O’Durr Supranowicz

Be Sweet

No taste for the bitter
drink, I wet my lips,
I take a deep breath.
A casual stare can burn
hard images into a boy’s brain.
So I just smile, I nod, feeling like
a small girl in
grown-up land.
Now my thoughts run blank,
twitching, I cross my arms to
keep me steady.
Unsteady,
I want my dreams,
keep these eager hands away,
push their voices into boxes
made of whispers.
To be alone, to be sweet.

Pinwheel art by Edward Michael O’Durr Supranowicz

Fever

I. It is something that happens, sometimes:
a person will go up in flames. They burn
at about 3,000 degrees. This is hotter
than a crematorium. Things are sometimes
left behind: an arm, a foot, the head.

Investigators often blame smoking,
drinking, suicidal tendencies.
Nothing around this person is burned.
Their clothing doesn’t burn. The carpet
remains pristine.

The fires are internal in origin.

There are few survivors. The ones that
do live to tell say they remember nothing.
They remember talking to a friend,
perhaps, then a dark hot void,
finally waking up in the hospital
as empty as a husk, burned black, hands
curled, faces melted into masks.

II. When they find me, please tell them
I’ve always burned hot, even in the
coldest winter. If this were a fairy tale,
I would have swallowed a cinder as a child,
a burning needle, a firefly. Believe me,
I have swallowed none of these things, yet still
I burn, I glow, a banked potbelly stove.

They will find perhaps a foot, a finger,
the curve of an ear. My clothes will still
be plump with my shape. They will blame
suicide, smoking.

They will not think to blame you.

This fire will be internal in origin:
my eyes will go first, burning blue,
twin pilot lights. It will slowly burn through
each memory of you, back to the beginning,
the genesis of this yearning. I will embrace
the fire like a lover come home
from a long journey. I will take it to bed.
There will be no afterwards in which
to remember nothing.

A finger, a foot, the curve
of an ear. These are left behind for you
as curios of a forgotten time in which
I loved you at temperatures
beyond all that is rational.

Girl art by Rose E. Grier

UNKNOWING

I don’t know what
I am, the Buddha said.

I don’t know why
my mother gave me up at birth
or how many cousins walk
the streets of Lisbon
or where I lost my first tooth
I don’t know what
became of the nickel
or why the tooth fairy was so tight
or who will wash the blood
from the streets of Basra
I don’t know how
my walkman eats batteries
like Hostess Twinkies
or why fungus grows underground
or why the Somali child stares through
starving eyes
I don’t know why
my dough rises, only to fall mockingly,
or why forced to eat matzah, the Jews
didn’t go back to Egypt
or why I poke my sore knee to insure it hurts
I don’t know
my birthright name

art by Mark Graham

GENESIS

Cain slew Abel
in a moment of anger,
a crime of passion
would be his defense today.
We can only imagine
what Isaac might have done
to Ishmael, had Haggar
not been sent off by Abraham,
after all he was a child
who saw the knife first hand
and helped sacrifice
the thicketed ram.
Joseph tasted the pit
at his brothers’ hands
mourned by his father
only to emerge and forgive.
It is little wonder
we Semites can’t get along,
Jew and Jew, Israeli
and Palestinian, we’ve
been rehearsing this act
for millennia.

even after 32 years

My brother commented
that he was surprised I was taking
ballroom dancing lessons with my wife,
didn’t seem like something in
character for me, not something
I really wanted to do. And I said,
”What can you do together after
the children have gone? Going to the movies
and dinner isn’t really much of a
hobby to do together. I’m interested
in poetry and genealogy, archeology, history . . .
and she likes to garden and shop,
so what can we do together, as a couple?
Yes dancing seems like the perfect thing.”
And he said, “Oh I see, that makes sense.”
And I added, “Another thing, dancing
gives me the chance to hold her
and that’s always a nice thing for me even after
32 years of marriage.”

embossed couple art by Mike Hovencek

AN HONEST DAY’S WORK

Dad earned his living by fixing cars.
But he could’ve been a truck driver instead.
I can see him high up in the cab of
a mighty orange tractor-trailer, his arm jutting out

of the window, sipping coffee endlessly from his
dented, old silver thermos, smoking Pall Malls, driving

hard all night, not sleeping
so as to make his delivery on time.
Yes, I can see him sitting there, sure as shooting,
clutching the wheel, bleary-eyed but smiling, proud

to be doing his job so well, proud
of doing an honest, damn day’s work.

Harbor art by Deborah FerBer

father

a man i called father
~for a brief moment
in my life~
smoked a clay pipe
and chewed ‘old rope’
which spittled
crackling on the
open fire
eyes grey as a
north sea storm
never settled on me
and he went to his death
without us ever touching
or meaning anything
to one another
he was just there
and he came and went
with no word of
greeting or goodbye
except for once
when his own son died
and i saw salt in the crevices
that seared his face
like the salt grey of his hair
and the eyes dimmed briefly
in that brushed leather face
as a single finger, coarse
and brown like a ropes end,
brushed away what might
have been a memory
or an unstoppable tear

Images of Churches in Bruxelles, Rome, Paris and Luxembourg

St Luke’s Church

there is a roofless Church
in Liverpool
all gates barred bar one
thistle and bindweed
now compete
where suppliants knelt
submissive
lace-like elder flowers
cabbage whites and magpies
invade everywhere
and buddleia beckon
through bomb-burnt twisted
metal frames enwrapping
shattered glass...
a pine grows where the
Alta menaced
and pale-flowered
brambles laden with
cuckoo-spit
leer down
the walls and climb
the octagon turrets
that point their
accusing spires
skywards...
the clock in Berry Street,
frozen at midnight...

beside this shell
this ‘place of rest
and tranquillity...
purchased from
the Church...’
a spire of split granite
invites us to
‘remember the
great famine’
...and i do;
some order rises here
from chaos
some peculiar logic
makes the ruin more
peaceful now in death
than she ever was in life

Bird Feeder Any Park art by Irene Ferraro

Autumn’s Purpose art by Nicole Aimee Macaluso

lakota #1

the city is the machine
and the machine is god

god is what you create
with bleeding hands

look at these roads laid down
over the bones of indians

look at what pollock
was trying to show you

what comes after the
age of the ghost dance is
the age of advancement

the bullets pierce the
white shirts
and the children are
slaughtered

the song is an old one

the machine can only
be destroyed from
within

geography

this age of rain
and of wasted time

this flat expanse of land
between the
mountain and the river

the piles of garbage
and the burned-out gas stations
and these teenage girls in
trailer parks

the babies
their boyfriends leave
them with

the sad little deaths
that should matter more
than they do

all of these names
that we spend our lives
forgetting

PERFORMANCE ART

Questions in a World Without Answers

did you ever use a ouija board? I mean, you hear stories of people getting togehther, placing their fingers on a plastic piece with a glass window, asking a spirit to give them answers to questions. Now, I had a party once on a Friday, October 13th, I had what I called a supernatural shindig in my one-bedroom apartment, where I put pages from the Weekly World News all over my walls, with headlines saying things like “Anceint Eqyptian Mummy Terrorizes Village”, or “How To Tell if your Prostitute is an Extra Terrestrial”, and “Aliens Branded Me Like A Steer! ”.

So I had this shindig in my little place, and I was wearing a mini-skirt dress, and Jay & Brian came over and went straight to the ouija board on the floor, put their hands on the glass, and one of them said loudly, “Is Janet wearing any underwear?” and they moved their hands straight to the word “no “ and yelled, “no!”

And yeah, some questions can be funny, like when

squid

or like when I was

On the California Streets

So yeah, people can laugh at the ouija board at a party of adults, but there are so many questions in the world that we hear and want answers to.

Right There By Your heart

And sometimes questions are battles over little details, like when we had

russians at a garaga sale

they were from the russian neighborhood
they could barely speak english

they would pick up an iron. “how much?”
“four dollars.” “fifty cents?” “no.”

it was a warm indian summer day
we were all clad in shorts and sunglasses

they would point at the iron, a toaster,
a blender. “all for a dollar?” “no.”

and all the old couples wore raincoats
and scarves wrapped around their heads

they would pick up a wine glass. “how much?”
“twenty-five cents.”
“how about ten?”

But you know, it then occurred to me that the most questions off the tope of our heads are about relationships, and what we want, and what we hide, too...

All Men Have Secrets

But when I looked, I began to see questions everywhere, like when

content with inferior men

So, I started thinking of these questions, and thinking of relationships gone awry, and I started to think of all the questions we have to those who do us wrong. Because it does seem that some men are content with inferior women and some men even like to downgrade and hurt women. I mean, I write when I can’t find answers to questions, when I see things that are unfair.

Burn It In

and I had a lot of work to do.
There had to be a record of what you’ve done.

Did you think your crimes would go unpunished?
Well you see, that’s what I have my poems for
so there will always be a record
of what you have done
I have defiled many pages
in your honor, you who swung
your battle ax high above your head
and thought no one would remember in the end.
Well, I made a point to remember.
Yes, I have defiled many pages
and have you defiled many women?
You, the man who rapes my friends?
You, the man who rapes my sisters?
You, the man who rapes me?
Is this what makes you a strong man?

Questions come up everywhere in this world, whether or not there’s even about the sexes, like

Private Lives I

the elevated train Chicago Illinois

why do these chairs have to face each other?

They say Americans need their space
and here I sit, while he sits right across from me

I can’t lookI can’t
but in the edge of my vision
I see his dirty clothes
his dirty hair
his dirty mind

will he watch me get off the train,
note the stop I take
watch me walk too?

another time i was on the train,

Private Lives 4

the elevated train Chicago Illinois

“Made in China.”
“Is that his name?”

this was the window
I was looking through

Made in China... Thinking about traveling on a train, I thought about my love of travel, I’ve asked questions about different cultures - in China, Europe, even Puerto Rico.

Scars 2000

But then I thought about my love of travel, and outer space. I’ve had a star named after me, and my name is on a CD that will go on the Deep Impact Spacecraft into Comet Tempel in 2005, and I talk about loving outer space so much, but I don’t think I’ll actually ever get there. And then it occurred to me: I have.

What I mean is that all radio signals are shot out into space, and I’ve been on WEFT, WZRD, WLS, even Q101. I wonder how far my voice has traveled into outer space by now. And all television programs are shot into outer space, too - these signals get to the people on earth, but these signals continue to travel towards the ends of the universe. I’ve been on the news, I’ve had poetry videos published on television stations in Nashville and Chicago... I wonder what other stars have seen my poetry by now. I wonder if anything out there can decode our signals and understand what we’re trying to tell them.

...Or should I wonder about what people here think, or should we know how to go through losing someone here? I mean, what questions go through your head when a loved one dies? Do you think that no one could be feeling as much pain as the pain you feel? Do you want to confront them after the wreckage and just ask,

After The Wreckage

Does your spirit rise after the wreckage
And you watch from above
And see how everyone reacts
And see how I cry
And see how I suffer?

Is this what you’re doing to me?
Is that the way it goes?

People’s Lives Were At Stake

You know, I was remembering an event that everyone was talking about years ago; you’d hear the reports on the news about the damage done during the riots, and you’d think that we were in a war zone and that all of this was done for religious purposes and people’s lives were at stake and maybe they were and I just don’t know it. I don’t know.

But there was a trial case where a black man was convicted of a police brutality crime, and the black community was outraged, saying that the white man was holding them down, and so a large group of people started a rally, and I heard the next day that in light of the trial 23 fires were started, mostly in libraries...

then I heard about one of my best friends, a white man, hit once by a black man in the street hat night, and for six weeks his jaw was wired shut and he had to throw pizza or meat loaf in the blender to eat while he recovered.

Slavery was abolished in 1865.

The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

Because of the Rodney King trial in 1992, 23 fires were started in libraries. And I thought:

Is all this violence getting anything done?

are we coming any closer to racial harmony?

what are we learning from this?

Being from Illinois, I thought of political candidates Alan Keyes (a man from Maryland running in Illinois). But he says it’s not right to have an abortion, but the death penalty is good. Should I get my answers from a man who thinks it’s not right terminate a fetus that can’t live on its own, but it’s apparently okay to kill those who have already been living?

That doesn’t help me... But all I feep thinking about is how our government is supposed to protect us, and everyone felt something was missing after9/11. Then I remember that news reports were stating after 9/11 that if flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville Pennsylvania landed less than 30 seconds later, my nephew would have been killed while in school from that crash.

After 9/11, my nephew couldn’t sleep for days.

Can he be comforted that we had a decision-making president to help an economy that was failing for a year before he became president, when we are gaining jobs in 2004? Can he be comforted that the decisive President Bush stepped in to fight terrorist-supporting nations like Iraq when everyone else backed away?

I don’t know if President Bush can help us, when I wonder why people who have lost jobs have found that new jobs now pay Americans on average 13 grand less per year. Then I wonder: George Bush prays in the Oval Office, and occasionally he even open cabinet meetings with prayer. May he be too much of a religious zealot to warrant reelection? And another thing: both the right and the left oppose the Patriot Act, and Bush wants to expand government powers under it. But what frightened me the most was when I heard a President Bush’s advertisement that ended saying the country relies on freedom, faith, families and sacrifice.

What do we have to sacrifice for Bush’s plan?

What have we already sacrificed for Bush’s plan?

John Kerry and John Edwards protested and say that in war situations Kerry’d deploy all the forces in America’s arsenal - our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, and the appeal of our values and ideas - to make America more secure

Do the Democrats have the answers? Let me think... Our diplomacy didn’t do anything for years. We’ve been using our intelligence system already. And we are the biggest economic power in the world. And they hate our values and ideas. How will that help?

The Green party noteed that this election is dominated by fear. The Republicans play on the fear of terrorism and the Democrats play on the fear of Bush. Do we have to play on fear to elect our president?

I’ve seen how other countries deal with our problems, like gas prices, or health care. In europe, gas is expensive (their government doesn’t subsidize its price down), so they don’t depend on cars as much as we do in America. In China, people pay for healthcare out of pocket, because there was no national health care plans like in the United states. And if that meant families lived together to save money, then that might help keeps the family together better than the American family.

Other countries don’t seem to ask as much from their governemt as we do.

True Happiness in the New Millennium

I say it again towards the end of the poem:

you’re looking for peace in all the wrong places
you’re asking your leaders to save you from yourself
but your leaders are losers and they’re worse off than you

Maybe if we are able to communicate with one another, maybe then we could answer all of our own questions.

Communication

but what if we don’t want to communicate
or forget how
too busy leaving messages, voice mails,
emails, pager numbers
forgetting to call back

what if we forget how to communicate?

because now that we have the information superhighway
we can throw out into the open
our screams, our cries for help
so much faster than we could before

but then the question begs itself:
who
is there
to listen?