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)