by Kathy Powers
April 30, 2018
NO SERVICE HERE
Where will we go
To get our food stamps?Where will we go?Follow the rules.
Where can we go to?Where is...
driving to workwith the window downhot breath of an angry Godspewing in my face,
I feel condemned without evenbeing judged,the heat is a ubiquitous, tangible...
Ninety degreesNo cooling centersWhat shall we do with?No cooling centers?Sunscreen cladWe flock to the beachesScorching bleached sandWe flock to the beaches.Deadly yet welcomeThe snow...
poor JesusGregory Pond
at midnight mass, the pope proclaimed“God is poor, let charity be reborn”but doesn’t he already knowthe savior of which he speaksalready sleeps...
Civil Disobedience as Literature- a Review of Dissent: an anthology to end war and capitalism, edited by Mark Lipman, Vagabond, 2023
That we exist in...
Who?D.L. Lang
Who will be leftto care for the elderlyafter all the doctorshave donned uniforms?
Who be left in your congregationafter you have deceivedyour faithful adherentsinto...
Don't Cop OutBy James Norman
I don't use the word unhoused,which pretends it's something weare sorting out.
maybe this linguistic choice has todo with the lack...
Razor wire like “freedom”Was designed to rip the assesOf the poor and underclasses.
Razor wire outshines napalmAllays all anxiety and doubtThe affluent kept safe the...
The Chicago GardenBy Kathy Powers
On April FourthThe poll gates openedOnto fragrant landscapesOf life-giving blooms.
Hopes for the houselessStuck up some shoots;Reasons for livingSmiled over...
Holy Week 2023
By Adam Gottlieb
On the full moon in April80 years since Warsaw40 since Harold WashingtonIn the middle of Ramadan
On the night before PassoverWe...
Poor Jesusat midnight mass, the pope proclaimed“God is poor, let charity be reborn”but doesn’t he already knowthe savior of which he speaksalready sleeps on...
PreambleNo one should go unhomed.There is plenty.If we work toward balance,There is enough.Balance does not occur without struggle.If you were ever a child who...
Dear Editor,
I have one request to you and all the legislative leaders.
Stop opining and pontificating about gun violence.
Just play a repeated loop of the...
You want to talk to me about heartbreak?heartbreak well it's heartbreaking what happenedand keeps happening what happened in Texaswhat happened in Buffalo it's heartbreaking...
For the people of Ukraine and Russia who don’t stand
to profit from this war.
Heroes are born from dirt and struggle
They bleed red through interconnected veins
She is your mother and my mother too
I know her from the neighborhood
She phones her son through the jailhouse glass
I know her from the neighborhood
She lies awake til her daughters come home
I know her from the neighborhood
“I am and will be Other, until I write you into my heart and make you see my home as what it is. Just another extension of your own home. For there is no them; there is only us.”
Rise above the beastly nature
Be the human that you are
The struggle of endless competition
Ends in ultimate ruin
Resources depleted
Fertile ground left sterile
The tension is depressin
Others hold the same aggression
Ain’t no telling but accepted as a life lesson
They say the root of all evil is dinero
Poverty terror
Take a walk along the river's trail, move the tents to no avail
Little do they realize, each is a house for a pair of eyes
Will they ever realize?
Or continue spreading more lies
They try to fit us into the mold of the perfect student.
They try to create the leaders we already have in the new
generation. But don’t they see they aren’t working with the
generations now? We’re not the same.
What happens to a student deferred?
does she give up
like there’s nothing left?
or does she keep going –
cuz its fun?
does she try her hardest to pass?
I'm from the boondocks
An iron city full of rum and drugs
South Central slums no fun is where I'm spawning from
The 90's unwind me to the time these Devils tried to blind me
my opponent is myself and only i can define me
I experienced the streets
For plenty of years we've been oppressed, with drugs and violence
Day and night, all i seem to hear is sirens
Knocking on my drums as i walk and stomp the slums
Breathing the rhythm as i kick and rock the funk
This special feature section, "In Defense of Flint," is a partnership between The People’s Tribune of Chicago and Caravel in response to the contamination of the city of Flint's water supply. Many of the poems here were published in April 2016 as a special insert to The People's Tribune for National Poetry Month.
CHICAGO, IL — A spectre haunts the Americas, a spectre composed of millions of artivists who have united to rescue communities from the attacks of the corporative dictatorship that destroys us with its death doctrine.
The church folk are gathering on Mondays now.
Have you seen them?
Marching through downtown,
Linking arms outside the Board of Trade to block the entrances,
Shutting down business as usual,
1999
Amadou Diallo
Twenty-three years old
Guinean immigrant in the Bronx,
New York.
His name rolls off the tongue
Like waves rising from the port of Conakry
Strangling in the muck of history.
He leans against the tavern wall.
And silently gazes across the Avenue.
Where watchdogs of property.
With vulture eyes and shotguns
With a small stick he worked the grains of wheat
out of the cracks between the rotten boards
of the boxcar floor flying through the Depression
and built a little mountain of them in his palm,
I paw through the table of give away
coats. One cloth number tempts me
to smile. insisting as it does on polished
pews and woolen pedigrees. I’m trying
Don’t ask me why I took it there
Because I didn’t
This capitalist system put me
In this predicament
At the bottom of the pyramid
A second to last class citizen
I passed over twelve destitute today:
homeless on the street,
some with signs, some with cups,
some shaking, some sleeping,
some black, some white,
some men, some women,
all hungry.
Like a fallen leaf o a Fall day
Trayvon Martin lies on the ground
Dead of a bullet
Fired by a man who chased him for being young, black and in the wrong
In reality
It feels like school’s against me
Cus no matter what I know,
If I don't pass that test
Then they won't let me go.
And if I'm not on time
No matter what's going on in my life
SANTA ROSA, CA—The global movement of cultural activists calling themselves 100 Thousand Poets for Change is not waiting for its annual weekend of events in September. Instead, it is vibrantly alive from California to India.
Does poetry have power? Can it be a voice for justice? A threat to the powers that be?
I expect you recently read
that more American soldiers
—men and women both—
killed themselves
in Afghanistan last year
than were killed in physical
combat in the war there.
Free
Mental health clinics
closed. Forced to fight our demons
in the streets. Again.
Angry Eyes
My angry eyes brim
With women searching dumpsters
For capital’s crumbs.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — On the eve of the 3rd anniversary of one of the most horrific earthquakes in modern times, in which more that 220,000 Haitians lost their lives, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco held a fundraising event of poetry and music and featuring the Haitian speaker Max Blanchet, at the Art Internationale, the Brigade’s center, on January 11.
There were politicians, poets, puffery, promises, the public,
The holy, rich and powerful were there. School kids, scarred
Veterans of last week’s, current and far away years’
Social, political and martial wars. Choirs, cheers, bands,
The press, ruffles and flourishes of rhetoric.
If technology could
If it were in the people's control
It could provide the means
For industry to work
Without the stress
So many laborers endure
On the assembly line
* The act of rebellion is the only true sign of intelligence.
* The course of love is driven to resonate from its core, humans being humane to each other.
