THE RICH GET POORER
In this world of unmitigated woe,
we must now pity the poor rich.
Just when we thought being poor was hell,
we learn being rich is a...terrible thing.
Until recently I believed
paradise was ten million in the bank.
Now I learn it causes status angst,
and I have the NEW YORK TIMES to thank.
In a recent article about the rich
in Silicon Valley and their money,
the TIMES compared the merely rich
with the superrich, and it wasn't funny.
Disgusted by superrich extravagance,
one millionaire in an auto-da-fe
purchased a Toyota Prius
and sold his Porsche away.
Citing IRS data on the top
one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers,
the TIMES said these folks lost 17 percent
of income and made just 5 mill a year.
Meanwhile, the WORLD WEALTH REPORT states
millionaires throughout the nation
felt losses from the Fed's interest hikes
and Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
Amid all the news on Katrina,
who among us had a clue,
while the press spoke of the homeless,
the real victims were the well-to-do?
So, what's the point of giving tax cuts
to the rich if it doesn't boost their wealth?
How can we now help the poor rich
to improve their financial health?
Perhaps we can give them real poor folk
to help make their lifestyles more savory.
Then let's hope no media pundit
calls this aid what it is--slavery.
- Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Front Yard / Yazoo County
FRONT YARD / YAZOO COUNTY
Five girls in Yazoo County dance
in a circle of joined hands:
five skinny girls in dresses
dance for the joy of knobby knees
and the breeze up their skirts, dance
in the dirt of the yard.
Their shadows have joined hands
to dance below them, real feet
tapping shadow feet,
and the old folks back in the shade
sit and watch,
but their hearts dance—
in the deep shade
of our bodies
our hearts dance.
-----------From a photograph by Eudora Welty
- Polly Brown Thursday, June 21, 2007
Migrations
Birds at summer's end answer the season's call
and the sky becomes a river of wings.
Everything changes, 'though nothing ever really ends;
today's clear and empty sky
echoes, faintly,
the wingbeats of our former lives.
- Charles Coe Friday, June 08, 2007
Starfish
Strong, solitary star
you are
wearing a crown
of gilded thorns
that is shining
makes me wonder
where do you come from
in the above?
Your arms outspread
in silent pain
from being out of element
as my daughter in her never-ending
quest for truth
pulls you out of the cold blue
for closer inspection
like a star that has been sucked
out of the galaxy
only to find you
radiating out your
cosmic holiness
into this other place
writhing and throbbing
in your crucifixion
until lowered
into the waters of rebirth
still being held
you transform into saviour
with arms outstretched
in grace instead of pain
causing awakening
by those who
behold you
with the innocence
of a child
- cheryl perreault Thursday, May 31, 2007
It's Really Hot Out There, Ain't It?
That's what they keep telling me
but I thought it was just my brain.
Sometimes its voices sound like others,
though if they were talking from a rat
hole and crap filled the insides of my ears.
I try not to alarm anyone about it,
it's just the way it is. Of course,
it could be the ninety degree summers
inside my skull that are to blame.
I could grow rice or a tropical fruit
in the membrames. It doesn't matter
that the heat index is full of anger,
or that love can't find room in the shade,
under a fern burning off compassion.
A conversation of unhappy people
will be splashing in my shallow pool.
"When will the waiter come back to
take my drink order? When will he
give me a glass to crack on the edge,
push it in someone's steaming eye,
or into my heart? Either one will do."
- Don Illich Tuesday, May 29, 2007
LOINS AGAINST THESE LOINS
A dozen years of days and nights
Behind her belly like a sleeping eye
A green level of lily leaves
Below, the river scrambled like a goat
A hoist up and I could lean over
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
A speck of dark at low tide on the tideline
By mid-century there were only two left
A stately room chaise lounge and easy chair
The waiting room was full of "characters"
A thin willow hovers there
And yet to see her nimble strength
A wildcat, fur-fire in a bracken bush
Citizens of the polished capital
After a little I could not have told--
After the light has set
You'd know that she was young, her soul affronted
Against the burly air
My cold hand surprises you
Along the long wild temple wall
Sleep peacefully, strange creature
Your mouth is dry, excited
The figure lithe and frisky
- Jim Behrle Sunday, May 27, 2007
Hot Steam
I do talk sweet dirt about desire
drunk beneath a java sky. Rain --
hot steam
The ground moved delicious --
bubble, sizzle, boiling
hot steam
Milk spilled making white puddles
puddles for just a flash until the
hot steam
Mud mingled into sepia. Just
a memory, that afternoon of desire --
hot steam
Drifting away like the heat from
cups served outdoors at 3:00 a.m.
fingers curled for warmth to catch
hot steam
- k. lona lymen Thursday, May 24, 2007
Since Pandora
Since Pandora
let loose all those miseries
and their antidote
from Zeus’s painted urn,
she has been buying bottles and jars,
looking for more hope.
Liters of nectar at night let her believe
that witty sophistication can exist out
in the sticks. E.B. White had it. She
once read that
every night at 5:00 he sipped a
martini from a silver tray, even when he
lived on a chicken farm. Surely nectar
of the gods, even in a plastic cup, should
liven up the night. She dances with Dionysus
to disco on the radio.
Before bed she applies lotion and creams
scooped from fat porcelain jars. The lineless faces
in the ads, fresh as Aphrodite, appeal to her.
She knows the white gunk is not modeling clay
made to resculpt her face, but sometimes,
putting it on makes her feel lovely because
she is lovely.
Each morning the new day arrives,
brought by Apollo bejeweled in pink-gold light
or pearled in clouds. Pandora
seldom notices him, of course.
Instead she sees the toaster and
the coffee maker. Pandora
half-listens to the news and feels the hope
that she once set free
delivered daily with the fresh sunrise.
- molly saccardo Monday, May 07, 2007
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