In 1981 a man sat down

he sat down on the cold white house ground

all he wanted was honesty and wisdom but the president 

couldn’t make a  nuclear proliferation treaty 

cause he kept building tanks missiles and bombs 

didn’t care if the world was soon to be gone

then very soon a lady sat down

she sat down on the cold white house ground

she joined up with the man, Thomas his name, 

Concepcion hers, they weren’t playing a game

they built up many signs, some big and some small

they drummed and fasted throughout the fall, but the cops came and took them away

said you will not have a better day, but they all came back 

and stayed there through years of tragedies tears and presidential fears

they stood up tall and they will not fall 25 (now 27) years and thats not all

For more info about the vigil and whatnot

http://prop1.org/

In addition to the weekly open mic, some cats from the scene also hold down the 16th & Mission Review, a monthly poetry anthology. To submit your work for publication, email submissions to Brandon at seven7htangent [at] gmail.com. Also, an initiative organized by some of the CAI's founders saw the third annual Poems Under the Dome just a few weeks ago, featuring an evening of poetry inside SF's elaborate City Hall.

Anytime you're in SF, pass by 16th & Mission on Thursday night. We'll be out in force from 9pm until around midnight…..

Untitled

As far as all us know, love and sin

Walked side by side in world from the beginning:

Serpent's temptation in the garden of Eden

Turned Eve and Adam into human beings.

Thank you, the cunning serpent, for your gifts:

Apple and passion, untold good and evil,

And has remained for many centuries

The might of sinful pain and gorgeous feelings

And we possess no shame, when love arrives,

Of pangs of love or of our own conception,

And may be justified it, for all times -

The earthly passion of enamoration.

Ella Odeyash

By the Sea

Like liquid glass, waters of sea,

Made of the tinted-bottle color,

Was pouring softly, heavily

The appelation of this: summer.

And ships, appearing like white dots,

Forming the distance with their presence.

They went somewhere to end of earth,

The appelation of this: heaven.

*****

Like in childhood, I am walking barefot

With my feet feeling the trail.

For long time I did not walk like this.

For long time I was not this way.

Balmy breeze in my face is blowing.

I forgot how old I've become

And perhaps it's the joy of living

Wafting at me from the ground.

It's the day, it's the path, it's the summer…

Every blade of grass, dear to me…

And my bare-footed childhood

Smiling, is looking at me.

*****

From the bluish distance blown,

Wind, arrives on a spring day.

Arms and elbows smell of orange,

Air is full of jasmin smell.

Not agreeing with my years

My soul sings and sings and sings:

And the leaves' rustle makes clear

Something tender's whisperings.

*****

I live in condition

Of mood schizophrenia:

As if there's no distance

Between Russia and Israel.

I live in two mentalities

In two different spaces and times.

In two "hard" realities,

In noise of different tribes.

In news political

(From darkness where I can't see)

About both Russia and Israel

I say the word "We."

And I watch TV programs

Like fog that is full of blood:

All is woeful and horrible

Both here and there it's bad

Like in a monster fairy tale,

Like in a tale of horror -

The Arabian terrorism

And the Chechnya war

And I live in condition

Of split apart soul -

As if there is no distance

Between the two countries I know.

*****

Again - a lightning bug, or maybe a cicada

Again - the moon and palms above my head…

And in my dream, blockade of Leningrad, and

The icy chill is blowing from the street.

Though life has not been smooth in any manner,

And flow of time has changed so much, I know,

WIthin my soul - I'm still a Leningrader,

And lightning bug looks like the Metronome.

Greg Kleper

My Wife is a Martial Artist

 

My wife is not an actor,

Not a pharmacist, not a doctor,

Not a linguist and not a harpist:

My wife is a martial artist

She gives me no vodka or Riesling:

For dinner - three grains of rice meal

Three raisins and then three olives

And on the holiday - orange.

My wife and I live in harmony

And go everywhere - she is right by me

If you do not like me - too bad

Come and greet my wife instead.

On weekends other have parties,

But me and my wife have a practice,

And I am woking a bag:

The one to punch, not to drag.

The kids have no worries at all:

With Mom they are climbing the wall

They practice with swords and with knives,

I have almost sleepless nights.

Me and my wife never quarrel

Right at hand she has a barbell

If you do not like me - too bad,

Come and greet my wife instead.

And in the bed she has tortured me:

She's short, but keeps jumping all over me,

Putting me in such positions

That I need to see a physician

And now she again succeeds:

She got me to do the splits.

I felt like I was torn in half,

But it's fine, I'm still alive.

My wife behaves quite meekly -

She almost does not beat me.

If you do not like me - too bad,

Come and greet my wife instead.

I will learn a bit more of all that

And I will get a black belt

And such forms to her I will show

That even she does not know

And then I will have no fear

Of my wife darling dear

And to every foe I may possess

I'll be able to say all this:

"Me and my wife live in harmony,

And go everywhere, she is right by me.

If you don't like my wife - too bad,

Come and greet me instead."

Reject the mind - around you t burns.

Intrepid joy - impassioned restless wonder -

The heart-suffused and life-rich way to learn:
Intrinsic conflaggrations, hard to pity

Or to respect, or even yet to see -

The nature's splendor reaching into city

To render its inhabitants half-free

Until joy drops, and out appears concept

And meaning - this, if only for some!

And from beneath the axioms, a rocket

Ballasts into the space, explodes and is gone

And then - another time, another meaning,

The meaning is constructed from all sides

And forms the structure that informs the seeming

Which then becomes the vision of mankind -
 

And then come other meanings and perceivings

Constructed like dynamic SQL…*

The culture wisens, thickens as it's dreaming

And builds to levels more removed from hell.

* For the non-computer types: SQL is a tool that lets the people work with data. Dynamic SQL is SQL statements created by program based on conditions.

About Rush Limbaugh

A finger and a pudgy head

On billboard on the road -

It says on it, "Reality Check"

And on the radio

Insults, abuse and poison

And malice of all kinds:

Hideousness, lies and noise and

Attack on people's minds.

He said that we were mindless,

He said that we were fools,

with his own blindness

He went and made his rules:

To bully and to bludgeon all

And blame it all on us:

This big and strong Republican

This man of strength and class.

The planet's overheating,

The hurricanes erupt,

And there he sits, conceited

And utterly corrupt:

Once many things could have been done -

They said it was not real!

And now it's coming all undone

While they are standing still -

Saying it's man, saying it's God

But truth is harder won:

They caused it - hurricanes and floods -

Man? Yes, but only some.

You speak now for morality?

The debt still grows and grows.

You speak now for reality?

It clearly does not show:

You said that nothing people do

Can change environment -

How many storms till it gets through

Your thick and pudgy head -

Earth, hottest in a thousand years

And hotter every year!

It's catching with you, unawares

Reality - you hear?

The commonsense you deified

Is nothing but a farce:

The prejudices reified

In world in which you are:

Are ways of one society

To truth a valid guide?

Indeed to its entirety -

Indeed to all mankind?

Are lies you spin reality?

Or are they merely webs?

Whose essence - whose totality -

Are only perhaps

The beam within one set of eyes -

The shortage of one view -

And from it, spins a web of lies

To make it seem so true -

Till actual reality

Hits you from the left field -

And then your view's totality

Is shattered and then killed?

Tell me how it is right and fine

To bloat and to subsume

To have no thought for yet to come

And poison to exhume

Tell me, Mr. Reality,

How people can't affect

The world's and nature's quality

When warming is a fact!

The planet's overheating,

The debt still grows and grows,

The groupthink is defeated,

And here you say you know

The true way for America?

The true way for the Earth?

Come on and show some character:

You caused it, now come forth!

Say to the thousands dead in storms

That their loss is not real,

Say to the millions killed and torn

That you know how they feel,

Say to mankind's entirety

As it fights all these ills

That you speak for reality

And that you're moral still!

The planet's overheating,

The debt still grows and grows,

Women are killed and beaten,

The harm gets worse and worse,

And it is not a mystery

Who caused this frightful state:

The biggest mud in history -

Rush Limbaugh and his mates!

http://ibshambat7.blospot.com

http://www.myspace.com/ibshambat/

Shahid, Laurie, Jessica, and the rest of you, you rule.

I'm including here addresses to my own writings, which I've continued as a new husband and father:

http://ibshambat7.blogspot.com (weblog)

http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2005/poems.htm (poetry)

http://www.myspace.com/ibshambat (my space)

http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2005 (translations)

Hope you continue growing and become the next big thing in poetry and politics!