rage of the poetry critic

predictable
as shit-laden stallion hoof beats
pound white
like empire gentry

and the words coming
from the margins
kept marginalized
concrete this
cut-up that
who really knows
the origin of the beat
the sound
wasting away
a gutter’s rag
can be honorable
infidel labor

--- e b bortz

my eyelids

slamming shut
never stopped me
from writing a poem
fact is
maybe it could help
focus
someone said my driving
might improve also
haven’t tried it
yet
traffic is a lot noisier
when your eyes are closed
just heard a dog yelp out the back window
not my dog
his paws are scratching the floor
behind me
this might be good therapy
for politicians & generals
close your eyes
shut the fuck up
& listen

--- e b bortz

earth note 103

the snow was still white
on the fifteen year photo
from the laurentides
the brightest day
of that year
covered your face
with doubt
& wonder

--- e b bortz

(published in split w*sky, December 2006)
(published in Trumpet Call, Green Panda Press, 2012)

Green Roots & Harrisburg Blues

Titus North
(photo by Sandy Hazley)




Green Roots & Harrisburg Blues

(Published in The New People, Pittsburgh, PA, December 2006)

by e b bortz


You know when you’re in the middle of one of those indelible segments in your life...the kind that will twist around and transform the emotional and logical sides of your internal processes. Social change, politics in the broadest sense of the word, is often the tumultuous vehicle that delivers that impact.

This year, as has been the case since 1996, Green Party activists in the Pittsburgh area and across Pennsylvania hit the streets in early March petitioning to place Green candidates on the ballot for the November election. We had no illusions about the task at hand. To place our candidates Carl Romanelli for the U.S. Senate, Marakay Rogers for Governor, and Christina Valente for Lt. Governor on the November ballot, we would need more than 100,000 petition signatures, to satisfy the repressive Pennsylvania ballot access requirement this year of 67,070
registered voters’ signatures. Of course it wasn’t just signatures. The petition, technically known as a nomination paper, also required a printed name, address, and date of signing for each person willing to sign.

In the Pittsburgh area, we were energized by the desire to place Titus North on the ballot for Congress in the Fourteenth Congressional District. We all felt deeply that Titus needed to be on the ballot so that voters would have the chance to express a strong vote for peace and the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, an unequivocal approach to national health care for all, equality, immigrant rights, and a defense of the Constitution and due process --- issues where other politicians have been “missing in action.” We probably talked directly to over 50,000 people on the streets, at peace and social justice events, at festivals and at farmers’ markets all over town. Greens in Allegheny County sensed a historic mission this year, and turned in over 7,400 petition signatures for the statewide candidates, which also included over 6,200 for Titus North’s ballot access.

After successfully defending against an unnecessary petition challenge from incumbent Congress member Mike Doyle (PA-14, Democrat), Titus and the Greens went on to roll up 17,720 votes or 9.9 percent in the Fourteenth District, a Green record in Allegheny County. This vote total of November 7, 2006 will maintain minor party status for the Green Party of Allegheny County.


But numbers don’t really do justice to this story. The dynamics, turmoil, and ultimate miscarriage of justice in Harrisburg from the challenge by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party to Carl Romanelli’s ballot access for U.S. Senate, needs a book written about it. This isn’t the space for that. But I would be remiss if I didn’t at least attempt to put down, in raw form, some personal notes I’ll call...

Harrisburg Blues

We knew that the challenge to our statewide candidates would be relentless, with the full weight of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the Bob Casey Campaign (with their millions in campaign money), and the Pittsburgh law firm of Thorp Reed & Armstrong --- all aligned against Carl Romanelli and a determined group of Green Party grassroots activists and allies, including several from Pittsburgh. Most of us had never faced a political challenge of this kind. From time to time, we huddled out in the hall of Room 304 of the Capitol’s North Office Building, everyone giving their best advise on how to stay focused with the task at hand, and to offer that personal encouragement and solidarity so necessary in order to remain positive.

The actual logistics of our defense involved nine pairs (one Green, one Democrat) reviewing every challenged petition signature, literally thousands, using nine state voter database terminals of the SURE system. We worked eight hours a day in Room 304 from August 14 to September 22. For Titus North and myself, a tent in Gifford Pinchot State Park near Harrisburg became home.

There was an atmosphere of tension and threats of “contempt of court” in Room 304 that had basically been created by the imposition of the court ordered “Protocol for Signature Review” of August 24, 2006. These rules became the mechanism to discard signatures; essentially disenfranchise the rights of thousands of legitimate voters who had freely signed the Green Party nomination papers.

Some of the protocol criteria that knocked legitimate voters off of our petitions:

1) The signer’s name and address were in the voter database, but for some reason, the voter’s signature was not on file in the SURE system. These were likely problems of the database or the local election office. Under the protocol, these valid voters were marked “invalid.” There were hundreds of these instances across the state.

2) The petition listed the signature first, followed by the printed name of the signer. We lost many valid signatures because the order was reversed. We always objected to this triviality, but mostly lost our arguments, sometimes over the screaming of Democratic Party lawyers in the room, enforced by a Court Officer.

3) The SURE system database was horribly inconsistent in it’s formatting of street name directional descriptions (e.g. “South 08th Street” in Philadelphia might be identified as “Eighth Street, S” in Allegheny County). Many signatures were not validated due to this confusion in the first week of the review. Even with the discovery of this problem, we were not permitted to revisit these signatures with additional search attempts at a later date. There was no consistency with rural route addresses in the SURE system either; hundreds of these signers were likely “invalidated” due to this inconsistency.

4) There were some very contentious exchanges between Greens and Democrats when the challenge was based on the criteria “Signature Varies from Registration Card” or “Illegible Signature.” No one in Room 304 was a handwriting expert, making it even more important to have a good faith/common sense approach to this issue. I specifically remember my counterpart on a particular day, a burly fellow from South Carolina who was helping the Casey Campaign, telling me “I don’t think all those letters in that signature look right to me.” It was my opinion that this signature, like many more during that unfortunate day, were lost to the “disputed” column rather than being credited as valid.

5) One of the mantras of the Democratic Party lawyers was that signatures must be struck if they were “facially invalid.” Mind you, these registered voters were real voters at their given addresses, but were nonetheless invalidated; possibly entering all of the necessary information, but maybe abbreviating “Reading” in Berks County with “Rdg,” or reversing some other information on the petition line.

6) And what about the voter that had moved out of the dorm and into a neighborhood nearby and now has a new address that was used on the petition but was never changed at the election office? Even with a confident and consensus arrived verification of signature, we lost thousands of these signers for “Address Varies from Registration Card.”

7) We argued and won a little bit of relief on the issue of nicknames, but not on the issue of initials (either added or missing) in the signature. It’s a simple fact of life that many people don’t remember how they signed their voter registration years ago, and for that, they were essentially disenfranchised. What’s next, literacy tests and poll taxes?


So it was a tremendous victory when Titus North made it to the November ballot by “rehabilitating” through extreme persistence, two-thirds of the bogus challenges, and having them restored to the “valid” category. In the interest of full disclosure, I give Mike Doyle some credit for using an independent consulting firm to perform his end of the challenge to Titus’ petitions. We made it clear that Titus would go to court and win ballot placement based on our review results; thus, Mike Doyle dropped his lawsuit against Titus. But of course, it was a tremendous waste of our resources to even go through this aspect of the torture.

For Carl Romanelli, we persevered to the end, but without success. Commonwealth Court acknowledged that the statewide Green Party petitions had 58,139 valid signatures, 8931 shy of our goal. The Court rejected any re-examination of the many thousands of “disputed” signatures based on a “lack of time,” turning down all appeals with the stroke of a pen. Rallies and press conferences for democracy were held in the capitol, but for the most part, we were systematically ignored by the media. The trivializing of this whole episode by the media was probably best expressed by Chris Potter on August 17 in the Pittsburgh City Paper:

“My personal favorite Romanelli backer, though, is one “Jack MeOff,” who apparently resides on “Cum Street,” city unlisted.”

Potter also mentions that Robert Redford and Jesus Christ signed the Green Party petitions. My questions to Chris Potter are, does that invalidate the nearly 100,000 other signatures on these petitions? How can you so easily buy into the corporate media (some would say propaganda) machine, without even the appearance of a fact-finding effort? And with only 2000 signatures required of Democrats and Republicans for these same statewide offices, when will we read your words about the biased nature of this whole outrageous ballot access regime? Got democracy? When does it start?

Today, Carl Romanelli faces hundreds of thousands of dollars from a lawsuit designed by the “winners” to recoup their legal fees. That’s right, when you run for office as a Green or Independent, get challenged by the political establishment and get kicked off the ballot, you may also face complete personal financial ruin. This kind of vindictiveness is nothing short of police state methodology. As peace and social justice activists of all political stripes, we need to be fully cognizant of the climate we operate in. The trashing of the Constitution and the bashing of immigrants has become a bi-partisan affair. To simply relinquish the platform in the electoral arena to the major parties, is an invitation to more repression and scapegoating.

A new “muscular” Democratic Party has taken Congress as the voters have emphatically rejected the Bush-Santorum record of endless war and social neglect. How will the muscle be used? These times demand a kind of vigilance and leadership on democracy issues that only grassroots peace and justice activists can provide. Who will stand with the dispossessed?

An injury to one is an injury to all.

******************************************

monongahela

green-brown waters
splashing past the new marina
the very spot the old coal barges
used to dock in another life

the blooming mill is rust now
split up and deported across the world
like a shattered family
lost in the new age

tin lunch boxes roam the streets
of south side
past the galleries and coffeehouses
searching questioning
rationalizing
some see only chaos
some see only promise

black soot from the past digs deep
into the granite along carson street
‘a gift to the people’
the river watches laughs weeps
as it ripples across our bare feet
awakening tomorrow

--- e b bortz

(published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993)

strip mauls

on mcknight road
angry
maybe even drunk
monster hummer roars
from bankruptcy court
all the way to taco bell woodchip landscape
sitting still as lincoln
navigator flex fuel illusion
i smell predators
planning designing assaulting
every earth diagonal
turning lanes up the ass
but no sidewalks
my feet find
an anxious paranoid opening

i run

--- e b bortz

a glimpse of jfk in '62

every row house on columbia place
disappeared a generation ago
ripped level to the ground
leaving the october grass
in the frost
by itself

echoes of the marcels
breaking barriers
bricks & mortar still in small piles
in the corners of the alley
if you take the sacred time
to find it

the stoops held
every tear
not in a song
but an anthem
fearless
in the nick of time
my sadness
his eyes
a throng waves
his ivy league convertible
coming down to rub our shoulders
a broken proletarian haze
between us
no words
but rhythm

a thousand dreams

--- e b bortz

the power went out

and interrupted
early morning internet news
not germane
if that

sitting in darkness
i slip into that bungalow
on the beach
in koh samui in '89
moon lit black reflections on the water
broken by her
clumsy entry into my bed
humid breeze the water breathes
without convention we whisper
love
for the broken souls
who find refuge
from the machinations
of hustlers & money changers
horizon plunderers
the pavers of paradise
are given no space
between us

if there's a single truth left
let's consummate it
build orange-green-yellow-red
buddha visions
rice offerings
bodies in transition

--- e b bortz

it looked like a choice

between the self-righteous
and the sinners
but it was more than that
entire civilizations were at stake
there were the blasphemous ones
with no respect
for order & property
if they had lawns
they never cut them
kept planting new shrubs
to squeeze out the old
unleashed & unwashed
burn in hell you say?
o.k...maybe there's a deal
to be made
even
as the john kerrys still
report for duty

the press reported a study today
655,000 iraqis dead
our war
so far
not counting depleted uranium
graveyards to come
not too stiff a price you say
as long as congress approves

where is your vote
among the living or the dead?

--- e b bortz

a friend said i wouldn't write the same on the internet

it took a few years
to shed the pretense
tho the bones are empty
now
i wouldn’t blame you
if you walked that long mile
out the back door
forgot
the culture as a weapon
or a savior
when all else fails
crows always
fly the most direct route
geese always
know the way home
the broken bottles
hold colors of the rainbow
tho the tops
are a sharp cut
& my lips too weak
to hold the gin

--- e b bortz

no one imagined

that the night
would speak riddles
or that the rules of love
would become
the new order

--- e b bortz

sanctuary

common blood
warm
thawing hidden bodies
immigrants
and soldiers
desperate
for the anonymity
of darkness
their conscience
the light

--- e b bortz

(published in The City Poetry, issue 18, March 2007)

realitycheck

globalwarmingclimatechange
hedgefundstockoptionsenronism
wildfirescaliforniafloridaarizona
floodinglouisianapennsylvania
bigdigbostontunnelcollapse
46millionw/ohealthinsurance

deadfallujahdeadhadithadeadpalestine
deadlebanondeadhaifa
deaddarfurdeadmississippi
deadsagominedead@mexicoborder
deadbypolicechaseand/orshooting
deadbylethalinjection
deadspeciesdeadforests
politiciansinbedwithdeath

consumewalmartconsumetelevision
idolconsumptioncosmeticsurgery
fastfoodgorgeregurge

then the rest of the planet

--- e b bortz

my sons

have tasted the waters
the icy gales of lake superior
the barbed wire
and fallen trees
on the owego creek
racing rapids on the susquehanna
the murky smell of the jordan river
near the great salt lake
the challenge and rage
of the pacific
adventure is always bittersweet
our love is always sweet

--- e b bortz

(published in ptrint 3 x 5, August 2006)
(published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993)

i should have stood in tel aviv

for rachel corrie
with the peace marchers
citizen vigilers
putting bodies against the tanks & rockets
last sunday
rejecting all the pretexts
for siege and invasion
wet dreams from self-inflated generals
made-in-america munitions manufacturers

she died as children all die
from beirut to gaza to haifa

your voice has reason
listen to it breathing

--- e b bortz

(published in opednews.com, March 18, 2013)

there's no security

in the old order
asphalt patched concrete
heaving up
from the mantle
pedestals by definition
are abused visions

broken tar
a melting planet
sunflowers
to be borne

--- e b bortz

(published in The City Poetry, issue 18, March 2007)

earth note 102

kayak cheating
drafting thru the lily pads
behind a dozen geese
snake-like
ripples kick up the carp
screwing in the shallows

by the time i returned for take-out
another goose rendezvous
readying for put-in
pecking shoreline heads
sift thru the grass
white bottoms in the air
wings drip
hot breeze

--- e b bortz

earth note 101

silt trail levee
delaware & susquehanna bowels
another coincidental
hundred-year flood
the piper gets paid
in unsecured
treasury notes

--- e b bortz

corporate personhood

ultimate oxymoron
contradiction epoch
bed of a theocrat
wedding rapture
flesh talkin armageddon

--- e b bortz

(published in split w*sky, December 2006)

earth note 100

marshall trail, pittsburgh

a good number of these stones
have been turned over
a thousand times

there's no record of this
beginnings often go unnoticed
but they look too smooth
to have gone untouched

a storm early this year
put a few hefty branches across the trail
my dog negotiates the path
of least resistance
obediently
i follow

the tent caterpillars have moved on
hemlock beech maple oak
have reclaimed the canopy
the monoculture forests up north
not so lucky
you know the lesson
of monocultures
but it doesn't hurt to repeat it

a few politicians wake up
to the new reality
but they're still debating
whether it will be
fire or ice
next time

our hands link back
to the stories & stones
that go unnoticed

--- e b bortz

(published in split w*sky, December 2006)

earth note 99

who can say which side
of the fine line
you're on
keeping low expectations
or being a cynic
reluctant tulips
sometimes cautiously open
on a dark day
is this a vote of confidence
or are they just covering their ass?

on flag day
can we wrap our wounds
with old glory
without fear
or should we be using
hoods & duct tape?

a guidance counselor
shuffles the deck
another dozen
head for boot camp

a few petals drop
the rest twist
a gray cloak hangs on the maples
across the road
in what should be
their deep green season

inhale
exhale
my cat makes it across the avenue again
tell yourself
you're not a cynic

--- e b bortz

earth note 98

first ninety degree day
breaks with a sweat
twenty year journey
cloudy imaginations
not unlike
that day landing back from thailand
in '89
so many promises broken
& yet
remaining so empty
'cept for a jingo july 4th
sun galloping toward dusty shadows
a dull beige of no distinction

(i remember tasting the mud of a river bottom
in better years)

now there's hesitancy
like a cautious fisher
surrounded in sharp black rock
immobile
only words
& crashing swells
tomorrow

--- e b bortz

advice to new graduates

learning how to kill
doesn't need to be
in your repertoire

i don't know much
about peacecorps
americorps
help america read
that college near you
or anything else
but it's got to be better
than camp lejeune
fort bragg
or life on a submarine
not a yellow one
but the cold gray steel ones
project oil war & empire maintenance

you don't need to accept this
but
your life means
live

--- e b bortz

(published in The New People, June 2006)

the revolutionary act of poetry

turns every mask inside out
so that we can see the imprint
from the scar tissue
the crooked teeth on broken smiles
the original lips
that kissed
a first lover
a tongue & nose
that still tastes
eyes & ears
without borders

there are no commodities exchanged
in the revolutionary act of poetry

--- e b bortz

migration is human nature

a right of passage
with a world of inequity
my litvak sisters
of the triangle shirt factory fire
my boot-maker undocumented grandfather
fleeing the czarist militarists
all shout at the border watchtower lights
nights of iron media fists
twist
in and out
of compromised human facades
abandoning their ancestral liberty
for the mantra of abandonment

we pick the cold sculptured stones
of immigrant stone masons
to weep with us
they did not listen then
we will not listen now

--- e b bortz

when the dollar really crashes

like kaput
like as recognized in
the "oil community"
such a sic dependency
guess it will be time
for me to start wearing
a wrist watch again
the wind-up kind
so i can see
the tics toward
the long winter
burning summer
our discontent not withstanding
nonetheless
our discontent a matter of record
for the journals
of the survivors

--- e b bortz

chant without walls

nu --- cle --- air
nu --- cle --- air
nu --- cu --- ler
no nuclear
if you have a desk
you can climb under it
or
you can join us in the streets

--- e b bortz

(published in The New People, May 2006)

recovering notes from the deep

north side pittsburgh circa 1965

cobblestones are hot in the summer
to the point of burning
with a touch
dropping fliers can be dangerous
scooping them up
as we did so many times
but not as dangerous as being ignored

jobs for youth wasn’t just a slogan
my friend ron L called me from cleveland
in the morning
to tell me that hough was jittery
youth without jobs ignored
he said

phyllis found herself that summer
on the north side for a project
with the words of the good doctor
w e b dubois in her rucksack
sixteen-year-old
rebel girls & boys
bureaucratic conformity
the dominating culture
street lights breaking shadows
on restless stoops
at midnight
rolling stones or maybe the marcels
booming from a radio
my hand touched her shoulder
but it wasn't noticed
that i was giving

the iron gates surrounding
downtown fathers
never opened
they told us to stop using jobs for youth
to incite unpatriotic restlessness
better watch who we associate with
didn't know at the time
we were the test bed
for fbi cointelpro
the old white men from grant street
just dispatched more red squad operatives

never said a word
as we turned in a thousand signatures
on the jobs for youth petition

hough exploded the next summer
manchester burned two summers later
phyllis went on to berkeley
the war spun death for many years
the conformists and apologists
ran out of excuses

i still touch the heat
of a cobblestone
when i get the chance

--- e b bortz

(published in The City Poetry, issue 20, Sept 2007)

earth note 97

spring
still falling down drunk
from last year's binge
swallowed up by
tsunamis
hurricanes
the buds are reluctant
to climb out of bed
sun hides most of the day
chills from a hollow winter
lacking commitment but
nonetheless refusing
to break the habit

--- e b bortz

earth note 96

israel september 1991

i asked a woman
at a crossroads cafe
frazzled in the morning crowd
how's the backroad to jerusalem
pointing to the map in my hand
my quebec campanions gazing through
a sunny front window
french whispers
our bicycles standing together
supporting each other in the courtyard
"many arabs in those villages"
she answered
how's the road i asked again
noticing the workers and customers
packed in at the little tables
rich brown hands and coffee
immersed in hebrew and arabic

only a few kilometers
from a monastery of winemakers
a shalom kibbutz of peacemakers
so how's the road
"i've never been on it"
she said

maps in israel
are purposely obscure
many roads without numbers
letting you wander forever
asking strangers
not that we minded

after a few kilometers of downhill
we turned on to a narrow asphalt road
a simple sign "395" and then a second one
something like 12 kilometers
with an uphill symbol
pine forests covering the hillsides
pushed us in and out of canopies
switchbacks
deep green vistas
rocky loose ends near the horizon

within a few thousand meters
we were all pushing our bikes
steep even for goats
an afternoon sun emptied our water
farmers with olive groves maybe
at the end of the climb?
one passing car in the past hour
we reached the village of zova
a barnyard full of chickens
a water hose offered in arabic
another voice tells us it's almost
rosh hashanah
i should of known that
we listened & drank for an hour
we had much to learn
a plateau in the nick of time

the last leg of the ride
brought us to the jasmine hostel
a crumbling beautiful stone house
in jerusalem
as the sun was setting
the common living room was quiet
a few german & dutch backpackers
in the kitchen
sharing their soup with us
we shared our stories

by midnight
she and i were still on the couch
sinking deeply into the over-stuffed pillows
her traveling mate snoring in the double bed
we needed to make for three
at some point
but right now
our bodies unraveled
merged with the smells
pine forests
chicken coops
cooperatives too extensive to explain here
a simple moment
no past no future

--- e b bortz

poetry without walls 2006

poster by
Adam Brodsky

where are the repentant nader bashers?

you know
the ones that were so quick
to escort the corporate lawyer
whores
forever staining
a voter’s right to choose
they need to drop all derivatives
of the word democracy
remove it from their oblique
identities

--- e b bortz


http://ballot-access.org/2006/03/02/nader-pennsylvania-hearing-2/

Wine & Wireless (plausible fiction)

Seven-day stubble on his face, a nasty northeast wind across West Park, a bottle of red wine in a bag…none of that seemed to take away his concentration from the wireless laptop perched on a park bench…his gaunt
body squatting cross-legged on the ground.

“Believable yet unbelievable, what they’re saying about 9-11,” his face squirming. “The Bushies were hoping for a disaster…anything to give them a pretext to go to war in the Middle East…the cradle of civilization.”

I listened as he nearly shouted out to anyone willing to listen.

“Where do they get this info…guess the information playing field really is leveling…they can only keep us in the dark so long…then it all comes apart…we‘ve been lied to so long we don‘t know what the truth looks like anymore…truth and reality will eventually drive all those bastards out of office.”

It wasn’t immediately apparent, but the guy was probably homeless. The plastic sack with clothes popping out of the top was something of a clue. And then he checked out the line forming for dinner at the Light of Life Mission
across the street…thirty deep already and still growing.

He shut down his computer and closed it up, handed me his red wine saying he couldn’t take that with him into the Mission, and then picked up his clothes bag and started walking.

Weather from the northeast is often like a backlash from conventional prevailing westerly winds. Maybe ideas work like that too.

--- e b bortz

earth note 95

northside pittsburgh

march winds in february
warmest in history
a gutted house with plywood
flaps
the backend of perrysville avenue
a man hides with shadows
desolation eyelids
sees a breakup of cumulus
moving east to the beat
broken drumbeat
promises deceit
the shakers of high politics
say we'll clear out
all the rubble
after the election

--- e b bortz

afternoon in e minor

montreal

winter grey on the riviere des prairies
soupy fog hanging low
bending over and blanketing
the snowy sheet of river ice
staggering downstream
to the emptiness
of the north atlantic

lover and i warm our minds
join our hearts
as the bach lutenist
brings in the late afternoon
sunset

--- e b bortz

(published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993)

there were dreams in america

before corporations had
their faces plastered
on baseball stadiums
public school lunchrooms
prisons
an encoding of our dna for
private profit
public ‘input’ has become nothing more
than particulars
bought and sold on the world focus market
reported on the news hour

i used to dream most nights
(i dunno maybe it's me)
decades before fallujah was phosphorus bombed
by my american dreamkeepers
years before arnold pontius pilate schwarzenegger
put stanley tookie williams to death
where is the justice in death?

dreams in america
were built in communities
public forests
main streets where people actually
gathered spoke
acting out
social animals that we are
how did we let it slip away
into the grime of a strip mall
at a freeway exit?

reclaim the dream
(a mission if you choose to accept)
is a new group
in your town or hamlet
take it and don’t let it get bought
by phonies in deep pockets
sometimes the loudest scream
is that voice inside of you

--- e b bortz

(published in The New People, May 2006)

tapi river, surat thani thailand

thin golden hands
whip the clothes and rocks
together
pounding soil
back to the river bottom
she wheels around quick
to see the scraped knees
crawling crying sunbrown face
hungry
she's a rescuer
wet cool arms wrap
cradle rock
brown river water
splashing
soothing

an orange sun ducks
behind bright green rubber trees
fishing boats buzz away
fade out
downstream toward the gulf
rhythmic lapping laces
a silty riverbank
droopy and glassy-eyed
the crying stops

she slips the whimpering body
into her backpouch
and carries on

--- e b bortz

(published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993)

departure

she drove away fast and direct
across the frozen river
as i squinted
into the winter sunrise
yearning half-expecting
the warmth to rescue me inside

it never did

--- e b bortz

(published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993)

chaos

red and green kites break free
above the yellow haze
watching the river han
labor toward kanghwado island
swirling gray seoul city sludge
convulsions heaving swallowing
spitting

the sun gasps and races to sanctuary behind a cloud

--- e b bortz

published in Voices of a Wanderer, 1993

earth note 14

continental divide northern minnesota

fifteen miles west of bear river
snow squall white-out
a beat up ski trail adds confusion
wind chill angst face
looking for direction
no rich orange signs on white birch
no guide through the valley of peat bog tamaracks
crusty frozen lakes
silent arms of a norway pine
jump out to touch our poles
with the message that we're lost
ducking beneath an outcrop boulder cluster
layered in green moss felt-like & frozen
looking for landmarks
there are none
snow-mask goddess gives up no clues

can't be still in the beauty of the moment
with zero degrees fahrenheit
sweat begins to chill
we replace body fluids with snow
deciding to backtrack
moving to stay warm
intense with every possible detail
a ribbon or paint spot
a piece of trail not yet covered
we stop at another downhill
staying along the ridge
breathe the vista
poplar magic
honor the goddess with silence
maybe coax the white-out into giving up

a peak late afternoon sunray
shoots arrows through storm clouds
our bearings
an unselfish eastward pointer
to the road

--- e b bortz

when the soil of kosovo and serbia is plowed

the new crop will be
herbs
bitter from refugees left behind
by the ottomans
the milosevics
a mother's anguish in korisa and belgrade
dying kosovar gunmen
cannon fodder serbian policemen
nato firebombers refueling
for the next millenium
the chemistry of imbalance that preys only
on the weak
power relationships that claim
the unique human quality
hatred
all to itself
no other specie
can claim hatred
it's ours

where is the living human shield
of conscience
in every desperate village shadow
where is the weapon of love?

assemble at the border!
[the pope, the dalai lama, grand ayatollas,
a wailing wall of talmud scholars, mystical healers,
rainbow and forest people
believers in the land we cohabitate
poets still lost in their own devices]

time to step
over the line

--- e b bortz
(1999)