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Poetry - Selections from The White Crow v1, i1 - Osric Publishing
(More poetry from Mia Starr and DeKay available in the print version of The White Crow v.1, i.1, available for $2.00 ppd from Osric Publishing.)
Dandelion
She is the Dandelion of her times
And seasons into her hours
A war is raged
On open wounds
The battle begins
She and her destroyer
Dandelion,
In the hands of the demon
Lies an envious hold
Turning seconds into hours
Smothering the petals of hope
Strangling the stem of courage
Burying the roots of strength
And in the eyes of hate
Is an angry stare
Blinded in ignorance
Smears of her delicate beauty
Of which is colored in golden rays
Spalshing touch of grace
Simply elegant
Simply beautiful
Dandelion,
In the hold of envy
Strikes battle's ground
Ignites poison with poison
Is the breath of death
Withering in the wind
Petals in the air
She fades into her grave
The deed is done.
The demon to vanish
Leaving behind
A deadly silence
Ringing through the field
Sounding horns of victory
Dandelion,
Into the darkness
Grappling for a chance
Struggling for survival
Searching for a passion
To discover
The rebirth of life
Awakens from deception
Dandelion to be
Ever powerful
Ever more determined
To bloom again.
She is the Dandelion of times.
She is a masterpiece.
- Mia T. Starr
Ice Island
Tonight my two boulders drip milk
for eight-year olds cradling .380s
in babies' mouths
or their own
shots like crickets
echoing in the backs of their throats
Bone barrels nod thanks
On Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 135th Street
she is caught on an ice island --
cars from both directions
They do not hear her
Her voice has been dismembered
buried alive
She hears the dirt falling above
and smells it
tastes the flowers they have thrown
on top of her death
The sign above the grease pit
Chicken and Waffles
has not changed since 1952
The windows have not been replaced
The corpses have not changed color
The canary in the cage sings with squinted eyes
Melodies do not come easy any more
His feathers look more like molasses than honey
these days
These days
are dangerous days, Malcolm
He sings for the woman
because she can't
because her ugliness does not fit her
She cannot contain it
in the patched housedress
one gray daisy balanced on each hip
She keeps her hands in the pockets
fingers the black seeds
in her spare time
plants them in her fingertips
fertile, but no ridges
nothing grows
in the dark hours
fear falls from her eyes
and she is comforted
by nothing new
- Ellen Baxt
Ginsberg
Stories high, a tapestry sewn for Buddha by Malaysian women
paid ten cents a piece, with patches red, copper, magenta-yellow,
elephants all holding each others trunks, milling
in circles of positive karma,
and those baseball caps, flannels with cigarette burns,
stodgy mothball tweeds breathing from closets,
stealing seats closer to the stage, BMW keys in pocket
dreds laced with marijuana smoke brushing
against the obnoxious frost-tipped fur hag . . .
Holy poetry circuit! communion for mankind
in tribes of Ecuadorian wool sweaters-
Children, behold the teacher! the broken sunflower
in a sooty gray suit on a fragile & wise chair,
tea pot, tea cup, ceramic leafs of manuscript,
the tapestry falling, curving, draping small tired shoulders,
a shroud of an ancient village, perhaps the Bronx . . .
Last of his kind, one-man show, admission-paid exhibition
of his sight, his voice, his incantations,
the hand organ hissing along with viola and bass,
recalling jazz-drunk nights, howling Blake-ian verse, jumping
from windows into the cusp of Denver, soaring in the
sick, thin air of the state mental hospital . . .
now eating strict vegetarian breakfasts, revising poetry in the middle
of the night, seducing young men & obsessing about death,
crisp white sheets pulled over the head, Tibetan bells ringing-
and here, limbs stiffening into catatonia, eyes rolling back
glazed by thick glasses, raging and shouting against
the walls of the temple, the tapestry shrinking with
tremors from the wrecking-ball, patches shifting
in auditorium seats, souvenirs in hand awaiting
the Dalai Lama under midwestern steel-wool skies
- Sarah Rogacki
Star Spangled Hamberger Man
They eat him with thick portions of sympathy,
But he wasn't tender enouph
So they beat him with their toungs
and stuffed him so full of the secret sauce
that his eyes melted,
but he held his breath
wile they told him he could escape,
If, he worked with speed of course
and tried hard enouph.
but ambition grows on trees
and they knew it
So they sprinkled him
Cool Ranch styal
and told him he was an americian.
They wrapped him in tin fowel
and let him think he'd become a Doctor or a Lawer
then they laphed as they
locked in his flavor
and backed him slowley over an open flame
Afterwards they toasted his soal
like seame seed bun
and cut stars ot of it with a rusty cooky cutter
and flew it on a flage
above the highest mountian of hope
and they told him it was freedom
- Leif Peterson
Yes, all the spelling errors in "Star Spangled Hamberger Man" are intentional.
Published 1994. Crowright 2000 Osric Publishing. Last updated 07.02.2000