Ode To George Carlin | National Poetry Month

Ode to George Carlin |

Value?
Value's been destabilized.
Value's become Orwellian.

Value?
Who's getting good value?

Wealthy elites lacking elite qualities, wall street hacks, new tech industries, old dirty energy, outdated mass-passenger transportation, unneeded military-industrial complexes and DC politicians, that's who. Silver spoons getting repeatedly bailed out by tax money for financial failures and environmental atrocities is also good value.

This capitalism is false, a false god.

More, more, more, growth, growth, growth...

survival of the richest.

So rich. Too rich to fail.

Rich inheritance, but no inherent risk.

Money is not math.

Money is generated, printed and unequally distributed. 

Money hoards and monopolizes.

Math is proven.

Math has truth.

Values are being pummeled by profit.

Real hustle is losing to getting hustled.

Values?

What do you value?

Do you care?

Care? Who cares?

Do you do good work?

Work?

Is there give and take?

Or do you only take?

Value?

Value's not Salary.

Salary's just a figure.

A byproduct.

A finished product.

Finished.

Clock in. Clocked out.

Time.

Out of time.

Collecting a paycheck —

Check.

Where's the value in that?

- J.J.H.

PRECIOUS METTLE | National Poetry Month

Precious Mettle

That silver piece,
polished sun,
gleaming and pretty.
A gray light.

Dandelion linen.
Blue roses
red, black and blue.

Pink white mountain
distant and glowing.
The moon never larger.

Bare
and barley hanging on.
210
remember this number.

St. John 
gone for the weekend.

Great blue herons,
wood ducks, egrets,
a brown heron atop the docks.
The hawk puffing its chest;
my admiration.

Warm afternoon sun
and the wind quick.
Long Beach
Giant kites
Another life

Colors,
precious and noble.
Blue moon eyes.

A river town (near the mouth)
Bridges
blue and gray.


- J.J.H.

HARP | National Poetry Month

Harp

Curious youth, delicate, soft, nonviolent.

Setting up, caring for, and placing books -- rearranging.

Lanky and longhaired. Polite. Thoughtful. Curious.

Old Adidas sneakers, laces tied tightly.
Van Halen hoody, skinny jeans.
Placing items; books, dice... arranging.

Youth and curiosity.
A digital Timex watch. Silver.
Curious.

My first time here. I'll be back.

He, "found the crown."
The reply, "not kids books."
Curious.


- J.J.H.

...Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights...

Fiona Apple | "On The Bound" | When the Pawn...

I don't know what I'm doing, 
Don't know should I change my mind, 
I can't decide, there's too many variations to consider
No thing I do, don't do no thing, but bring me more to do,
It's true, I do imbue my blue unto myself, I make it bitter
Baby, lay your head on my lap one more time
Tell me you belong to me
Baby say that it's all gonna be alright
I believe that it isn't.
     -Fiona Apple

eightychoices.

Richmond

Richmond—
Pick up yo trash bitch

Palms to sky
Digital fellatio
Those robots are crazy
(remnants of burning man?)
I'm taking them home someday

Double 00h
(sup wrangler?)

- eightychoices.

(In Forest Park)

(In Forest Park)

Walking
Pausing

We sat
Watching a beetle,
My reflection lit upon its shell.
You, watching the leaves flutter,
Down, down, softly down.
Then two, 
Gracefully dancing,
Causing no pain.

A baby snail
Tiny

Delicate late season blooms,
Tiny, 
Almost unnoticeable. 

- eightychoices.

Almost Navy

Matte blue
Almost navy
Big amber moon,
(Its face looking back at us)

The same force holding our feet to the ground
Holds the moon in our orbit
True

Wine country roads
It all hangs:
Sweet fruit
The Future
Our lives
(In the balance)
And time, 
Our most valuable resource

- eightychoices

National Poetry Month

Those Darlins | "Why Can't I" | Single

April is National Poetry Month, which is awesome, because poetry is awesome. I encourage anyone to jot down some words, be it creative, inspirational, or therapeutic. Poetry is an amazing form of expression and reflection. Observation skills, and a patience to pay attention, can aid immensely in the effort. April 18th is, poem in your pocket day, a day meant to share poetry. The novel idea of personal interaction is waning considerably in today's today. Keep a poem with you; then all you have to do is share it, read it to someone, hopefully it's read to many someones. Enjoy poetry and let's all try and appreciate it a little more during the month of April, especially the 18th.

Throughout this month I've been posting some pretty powerful wordsmiths via the music I've chosen to highlight. The list includes Fiona Apple, Julia Jacklin and Jessi Zazu, all phenomenal writers that use words to further illuminate their music, their art. Quality songwriting is another form of poetry. These women represent the beauty of poetry through song.

I embrace poems. I too will offer up personal scribbles, images, memories, thoughts and emotions. Take from them what you will. The final piece of poetry's puzzle is to share them...

Cheers, 

eightychoices.

Ps. This is a 1 week warning, have a poem in your pocket April 18th. Poems soon to follow.

National Poetry Month

Wild Poppies


And how do you Survive? Your long throat,
your red-rag-to-a-bull head?

You rise heavy in the night, stars drinking
from your poppy neck.

Your henna silks serenade me
underneath the breadth of the Pyrenees.

You move like an opera,
open like sea anemones.

You are earth's first blood.
How the birds love you,

I envy your lipstick dress.
You are urgent as airmail, animal red,

Ash Wednesday crosses tattooed on your head.
Your butterfly breath

releases your scents, your secrets,
bees blackening your mouth

as your dirty red laundry
all hangs out.

By Marion McCready

eightychoices.

National Poetry Month

The President Flies Over


Aloft between heaven and them,

I babble the landscape—what staunch, vicious tress,
what cluttered roads, look at those slow cars. This is my

country as it was gifted me—victimless and vast.
The soundtrack buzzing the air around my ears
continually loops ditties of eagles and oil.
I can't choose. Every moment I'm awake,
aroused instrumentals channel theme songs,
speaking
what I cannot.

I don't ever have to come down.
I can stay hooked to heaven,
dictating this blandness.
My flyboys memorize flip and soar.
They'll never swoop real enough
to resurrect that other country,

won't ever get close enough to give name
to tonight's dreams darkening the water.

I understand that somewhere it has rained.


By Patricia Smith

eightychoices.

National Poetry Month

Poetry 

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.


Pablo Neruda
(1904 - 1973)

National Poetry Month

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

...


Dylan Thomas
(1914 -1953)

National Poetry Month

Almost Blue

Chet Baker, 1929-1988

It's so much better when you don't want:
nothing falls then, nothing lost

but sleep and who wanted that
in the pearl this suspended world is,

in the warm suspension and glaze
of this song everything stays up

almost forever in the long
glide sung into the vein,

one note held almost impossibly
almost blue and the lyric takes so long

to open,


My Alexandria : poems / by Mark Doty

National Poetry Month

Harlem

[Dream Deferred]

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten Meat?

Or crust and sugar over 

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes
(1902-1967)



National Poetry Month