I was fresh off the boat (although it was an airplane)
discovered that the Bowery had moved up to our doorstep
each day three boozehounds staked their spot by sitting on the sidewalk
against the wall just catty-corner facing by the drug store
I used to watch the inebriated triangle play out their sexy games
as she, the Bowery Belle,  stretched out her raddled legs
and flirted bottles from one hand to another
while teasing her two raptured rivaling beaux
I watched them from my window while I meekly ironed his shirts
    (we did that in those days, we wives of Jimmy Porters 
    before we looked back, furious, in our own anger later)
I watched while “Dialing for Dollars” brought me old-fashioned movies
starring Claude Raines with the four blonde sisters Lane.

But sometimes I played truant down to Seymour Krim’s apartment
where once there was this party
   (I had my first puff there, joint fat as a cheroot;
    we Brits upstairs were strictly whiskey drinkers)
 and, as I now remember, quite suddenly this sparky man burst in
 so full of joy that all his words cascaded into and crammed both my ears
 for he had just discovered
    (after years of tuning in the mind mathematically to first conceive and then to calculate)
 the precise vibrations of the airs which predicate
 the music of the spheres ......
 the planet’s chords were now so ringing through his being
 that even perturbations in Pluto could not, and never would, disturb
 those harmonies he heard
 whatever he was on, what did it matter
 that night his eyes (and both of mine)
 were singing ......

As I look back at this, I see these days a very different kind of altered state
I know that tenth street duplex must be gentrified by rent now past compare
I mourn the passing of much penniless art we all accomplished back in those old days
some of us still bear witness that the dialing for dollars we see all around us now
can still be vanquished by we artists who persist writing our poems,  painting pictures    
creating currency that will not lose cost-value when the Koch-stocked market crashes
as, one of these fine days, I bet my bottom dollar that eventually it will.

  They changed the name
but hard to change the mind
the horror and the stigma seems mind set
 even now
when drugs can cure completely in two years
 no sign of a deformity in sight
 the very word
 indelibly ringing with the warning bells
 embedded in our language as a curse
 means that to be a “leper” is to be outcast

“Who did sin,
the person, or his parents?”
 there’s the blame
 some ghastly dirty own-fault must be causing the disease
 this deeply-seated Bible attitude ensures a sense of
 shame
 as if this is a punishment for some disgraceful act
 so that the sufferer is deserving to be shunned.
 Finding a cure for prejudice like this may prove
 more hard than curing leprosy itself.

World-wide, before there was a cure at all
 it was the missionaries who offered love and care;
 my father ran the Leper-Home in Mandalay,
 and then, like Father Damien, contracted the disease.
 When I retraced his steps some years ago
 among his fellow patients, boys then, old men now
 a famous Tamil poet  Mister Arunchalem
 blind, with a noble bearing, swathed in emerald green
 ecites in singing tones a prayer-like poem of his own;
 the Maestro, former military man, bore his disfigurement with upright poise
 My family saw my illness as a blight
 on family honour” he tells me
 How will your sisters ever now be wed, with such a brother?”;
 hese men had spent their lives there in the chronic ward -
 My father, thankfully, was spared that fate, was cured.

Even today, once diagnosis is confirmed
comes with it dread and fear of being disowned;
 the bacillus in the bloodstream can be quite subdued
the drugs completely cure the body, but
“Will anybody ever want to touch me now?”
 is what the heart thinks :
 Jessie, from Brazil, was crying, crying , and she said
 “I thought my family won’t come near me after this;
 by miracle, the doctor gave me a huge hug -
 if I live two hundred years I never will forget that hug -
 it reassured me I’m still human,
 now I’m not afraid”.

 We have been through a prejudice like this, with AIDS:
 the fears, the slurs, the myths, the pain, the bravery of spirit
 the need for touch, embraces, love
for understanding this is just an illness like another
 “Hansen’s disease” redeeming the old name 
 no judgment, just compassion -
 I celebrate the quest for dignity and respect
 for those who have endured the worst and kept their pride;
 I honour the quest for dignity and respect among the many still
 who live with leprosy
 as patients, who are confident of cure
 as doctors, working to put an end to leprosy forever
 trying to kill the stigma that still
 clings ...


Elizabeth  Shepherd  -  Hot  Poets  -  May 6th  2014

They spit on Jack Johnson,
Jack Johnson,
Jack Johnson!
A man who could crush them with one mighty blow.
And later Joe Louis, the so-called Brown Bomber,
despite mobbed-up fight games, still gave them a show.
Cassius Marcellus Mohammad Ali
stood up for his rights as an athlete who was free.
But they took back the title he honestly won
and named him America’s least favored son. 

Greek games reestablished was fascism’s chance
to capture the gold and to watch Hitler dance;
but then Jesse Owens, to the Nazi’s disgrace,
Sieg heiled  with his victory in Der Feuhrer’s  face.
But when Jesse returned to his old home down South,
They said “Just stay in your place, boy,
and do shut your mouth.”

Olympics, Olympics!
Black fists were held high.
Did it end our damn racism?
Did we give it a try?

When slaves were collected by Arabic mobs,
they were targeted often to do certain jobs.
The plantation owners near levies so steep
needed river homes stilted when the high waters seep,
so they snatched them some architects of the Black race
to shore up their mansions
--to our nation’s disgrace.

Now slavers raid high schools in poor neighborhoods,
but their promising contracts can’t be understood.
In place of diplomas false dreams are instilled,
and the teen boys are slaves soon, against their own wills.
 
And then, if they’re lucky, a rich bigot walks by
and promises them everything up to the sky.
Forget that he’s evil and forget all his sins
and concentrate only on assuring him wins.
He gives young men bling and big fancy wheels,
figures they won’t notice the stench of his deals.
As long as they don’t pry or ask or wheedle
as he tries to pass camels through the eyes of thin needles.
 
Great wealth controls athletes throughout the land.
If you fracture your kneecap you can still join the band.
But you can sit in the front when you get on the bus.
Not eating enough? Well, don’t cause a fuss.
You could soon be house-bound and out of the fields,
with houses and cars and Sterling-clad deals.

Rich trustees of colleges can’t write or spell
when it comes to revealing their pay checks that swell.
Two million per annum for their overseeing,
but no lunch or snack time for young human beings.
Caviar, lobster and big Champagne dinners
for coaches that bring their schools national winners.
The kids? They learn lessons of struggle and need,
but won’t even earn Twinkies when their team
wins
first seed. 

Well not anymore, kid!
The clarion calls,
It shakes all sports’ rooftops and rings off the walls--
free agents, free sportsmen, free Black, Brown and White,
you’re not disenfranchised, so take back the night!
A new day is dawning when athletes make rules,
and our first request is: “Dump all racist fools!”


Art Gatti
5/6/2014

We must live closer to the dead. Why should anyone fear them? Silence is the trophy of the peaceful. Bursting open are Heaven’s walls. The contented, the contentious, the wretched among us, it is done for you, you whose bones are no longer even grey. I stand not on soil but on decomposed sighs turned sturdy root.

Mother, babe, architect, Mayor. How can death be proud? Pride is for those still moving and aching and naming. It is ours, with our machinations and grasping love, burdened with dis-eased desire for living and remembering.

And for what? Shrubs here are searingly red and gold, and the pond’s surface provocatively placid — November’s witnesses to planetary jitteriness. Physics is against us but death, we are its glad valentine, full of grace.


Grace Seol
November 2013

They killed Archie.
I never said they could,
but who am I anyway?
No longer a reader of Archie Comics;
I'm not a pal of Jughead’s,
nor a foe of Reggie’s.

I’ve had my Betty and Veronica moments,
lived through decades with each,
one at a time.
Friendly divorces too.

Thank God no kids! How could I explain to them
being in high school for 47 years?

I guess it was about time to say it:
“Goodbye, Archie.”
(I thought you were dead anyway.)


art gatti, 4/15/14

I don’t think enough people go to confession nowadays
To ponder what a devastatingly awkward encounter it makes
between a young girl with a busy body and a busier mind
and a holy old man who is probably bored of everyone’s sins.
Candle lights, the sweetly gleaming faces of Saint Anthony,
the sloping porcelain forehead of Mary –
ah, among them, to do penance, to reconcile with God!
(And what a verb — to reconcile! –
as if we are lovers who have quarreled!)
It is Advent and I am waiting for love’s arrival
with prioritized lists that I agonized over.
My mom is always complaining that I don’t call her enough;
I’ll say, Father, I have been neglectful of those i love most.
As for the troubles that have kept me up at night, I’ll say,
Father, I have not been chaste.
The thin Franciscan who heard me, his efficiency
exceeding mine with his hands open over me, performed:
“I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
I said Amen after him –
the economy of Grace flummoxes me every time.
The phone rang soon after; “your daughter is
sinless,” I chirped, “as of 40 minutes ago.”
“The only one in our family,” she said.




Grace Seol / December 2013