looks like what was once a walnut street pre-gentrified high when i was on second shift most every night we dropped in for a pitcher & chess sometimes a joint in the little alley off ivy street and then the animated talk & hand gestures as my opponent castled i looked away wondering how i could just walk away blow this grimy town grow my hair down to my ass find a new way to survive a war-weary country & hardhats that embarrassed even the company stooges
and if it was friday night the sidewalks overflowed into the streets and every few feet an impending draftee would bump into you stoned or drunk and you’d see the fuck-it attitude or fear on his face that a ride to canada could fix
there were the broken old men then too who said the kids had no work ethic and that the country was going to hell anyway they were right about the hell but missed the civics lessons that were never taught about who owns what and why and who stole whose land
i wouldn’t say all this if it didn’t happen or thought it wouldn’t happen again
are still moving up the ohio today six heaping barges pushed upstream maybe mined near bellaire ohio making their way to the cheswick power station on the allegheny
it was one of those sticky hot august days in ‘69 as jock mounted a makeshift stage in the middle of a beat-up football field in bellaire to speak to a couple hundred miners and their families about the most radical of all notions in these parts union democracy
the sweat poured down his face across a hoarse open throat and slumping tie and every once in a while a pointing finger came at us making sure we heard the cry of the thousands who came and died before us
gk repeated it like a mantra that this was only the beginning the miners were just awakening from the long terror of the thugs and that jock was the catalyst messenger the brother from the early dark cio 30s when solidarity wasn’t just a word or a whisper but a way of life
the union election was stolen jock & his family were murdered new year’s eve in ‘69 a few thugs went to prison miners for democracy wept & carried on
after years of continuous mining machines mountain-top removal black lung tens of thousands a coal miners’ diaspora spreading broken bodies like polluted chewed-up forests & streams climate havoc foreign oil wars betrayal
solidarity lives and dies in the veins of jock yablonski
of dress shirts surreptitiously walk past starbucks i’ve never been here before but know there’s gotta be a wash & starch drop-off nearby for the corporate courtrooms boardrooms land speculator trysts movin & shakin down every loose financial instrument not bolted down
the front page of the daily has three burly policemen clubbing down & holding head & arms a housing demolition protestor new orleans drips blood on the street
is insular protection our choices are limited in survival mode but not powerless a kind of self-preservation the soul stays above the pit as fire singes our faces outmoded tools to the open hearth
before the big melt & cross-country skis go washing down a mad river maelstrom thread snow packed trails again touch deepest quiet breathe weeping ridges find the last surviving hellbender and river otter seek higher ground meditate whitetail free
a couple of young alberta spruce small spiral dense green needles having wandered home to a wet ground sanctuary & mission to hold body-block a slipping hillside interdependence tho the paranoid rail all is futile we’re lost ‘cept for the waiting
it seems keeps poking itself into morning or is it night as every voice speaks in the past tense though it may be the present
a glassy gulf of thailand heat wave gathers water drops find secluded orchid patches to breathe but i’m afraid of nodding off & missing sunset
snow crust creaks at zero degrees f ski tracks weave minnesota poplar pine & peat bogs perfect shadows mostly cloudless blue a small strong sun chases storm clouds east
the voices only have faces mouths that move but no sound i’m thinking these must be perfect love songs no one can hear least not me lips shaped full wet smooth dark hot red silence
against war with another eleven days to go couldn’t shake the frat boys into anything close to what’s beyond their next beer
but some were reached like a weepy eyed grandmother some veterans a whole lotta deep hippies deep green deep believers a new counterculture revolution earth goddess gaia to jesusmohammedmoses
we stand with the fasters not fasting ourselves a military recruiter gazes away quick maybe thinking why they’re still here trucks & buses spit unburned diesel over crowded streets emerging & broken dreams the here & now is the message don’t wanna even visualize a resurrection
Of course, there are Republican and Democratic politicians who abuse the memory of those who died on Sept 11th for their own agendas of war, empire, and vengeance.
Of course, there are Republican and Democratic politicians who use the climate of repression to further repress...breaking up immigrant families with brutal detentions and deportations. It’s hard to determine who screams the loudest for the watchtowers and walls along the Mexican border.
Of course, there are Republican and Democratic politicians who whine in panic about the shortfall of military recruitment...they lament the ‘good old days’ of an endless reservoir of human beings...cannon fodder for the death machines provided by military conscription. No Draft...No Way!
Of course, there are the real power brokers of Republican and Democratic administrations...the war machinery and weapons manufacturers, the military base builders, the fossil and nuclear energy corporations, the sicko health industry and pharmaceutical lobbyists that block national single-payer healthcare, the forest plunderers and mall developers... these are but a few of the corporate paymasters masquerading as political contributors.
And then, there is us...who remember those who died on Sept 11th by rededicating ourselves to a just, peaceful, and sustainable world by demilitarizing and democratizing our own society. On this and on all future Sept 11ths, war-makers will shrill at the wind... but WE must build community.
--- e b bortz Sept 11, 2007 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh
when the iron ore strike began in august 1977 i suddenly felt a huge decompression a liberation coming i was out with thousands from northern minnesota & michigan upper peninsula no more swing shifts 4 a.m. getups radio calls for electrical troubleshooting
my kids began talking to me more throwing the ball around we grew
and as the picket duties lapsed into the fall i dusted off an old underwood typewriter and began recalling and observing maybe for the first time what was around me or had been dormant for years
i saw the hay fields go to seed and the ground freeze up a movement of canada geese with better formation than our picket line
the quiet of the north woods broke through watching a snowshoe rabbit run for cover frost covering the tamarack on frozen wet lands
still i thought back on the decade before on the streets of chicago in ‘68 the un-democratic party convention refusing induction into the u.s. army the slippery cobblestones from pittsburgh’s north side and all the teenage heartbreak jive five still ringing from those back alleys
the alberta clippers came my chainsaw worked overtime to grow the wood pile it was either that or no heat
everything became retrospective the new age hadn’t emerged and this strike was becoming more defensive than anything else trying to keep up with the cost-of-living we stayed out four months and if nothing else won respect
the words beaten out on that underwood somehow got misplaced & lost there were some sleepless nights over that
but i guess i’ll just move on & make up what i don’t remember
--- e b bortz (published in The New People, Nov 2007)
the climate change movement musicians closed up their cases and went home or back on the road some of the reunited bands stayed together others went separately
and then everyone listened for the groundswell that has yet to come
of course that’s the problem waiting for what your neighbor might do for what so-and-so politician might do the paid-for will only go so far the paid-for have agendas to keep them paid-for
but you already know this from the many times you pledged allegiance without reciprocation
selling comfort zone crash insurance has its limits
lifetime fleeting moment what’s a legacy? what will be passed on? last tree on the plain cared enough to even think about it when will we wake up? is there a tomorrow in today? compromises make empty promises in every death there must be life
when there’s recognition those still anesthetized sleep thru the alarms
for the conscious ones a nation’s self-respect must be reborn from love by those willing to walk lonely hollows back street dumpsters death bed confessions
93 degrees 93 percent humidity bannasan suratthani province thailand raises a mountain cliff of clouds & rainbows equator rock tear leaving a few nerves upended just after ditching my bicycle at the base to get a better view
a spontaneous jolt to even go there that sunday hot-under-the-collar road down from the stalls & markets of suratthani city rolling past sweet coconut smell of a sun steeped in orange blaze a couple of tuk-tuks sped out around me a field of farmers hold their scythes in resignation
avoiding the straight-up rock face cathedral without priests i soak with the rainforest of miniature buddhas
plays the china card allegheny rigor mortis of history will ignite tomorrow’s blue haze a story awaits a muse
let sumac & grass sprout in rusted hulls of old coal barges as we cut the wake on a distant point see crumbling pilings abandoned fuel tanks speak haiku morning visualize yet another dawn
blinds the face of a transparent backpack a nosy (nebby) officer gives it the once over there’s nothing for you here don’t wipe it clean just some personal stuff best kept hidden stowed but not forgotten beneath desolation angels a place on earth who would of ever thought anything close to exposure would come years after the dust settled
like the space between the stanza don't bite your fingernails let the words grow under them first speak everything into an inner ear floppy tongues can make dull bedfellows
--- e b bortz
(published in The City Poetry, issue 20, Sept 2007)
from the water tower it’s a short hike to a dried out ancient little colorado even the omnipresent flyash tailings pond hissing at the wind bullying it off its natural course can’t muffle the original pueblo spirits protectors of the canyons stringing north to the grand one thru rock like windows perception is all in the keepers of the vision
in front of a congressman’s office the comfort of an empty cold rain is at least honest as the “ayes” have it another paymaster 100 billion for death rows iraq & occupier embassy walls boots choppers build a monolith of broken flesh
there wasn’t one written way back that needs to be disowned is probably in some kind of protected witness program like incognitos anonymous redundancy for shitty writing
i looked one over this morning head was still clear wondered how a recall might be advertised anonymously
has lost its stuffing nothing left to soften the real yet we look everyday self-reflection words of sages distorted but still cognitive a broken mirror can be a message in itself
