By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Non-indigenously
falling out of trunks
Climbing onto windows
swimming with dolphins
Crossing sidewalks
knocking on garage doors
Capitalism: A Comparison of Marx and Piketty
By John Lawrence
Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century begs comparison with Karl Marx’ Das Kapital written in 1867. The two books are alike in the sense that they both point out the incredible centralization and concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. They are unlike in the sense that Marx’ book is more exhortatory while Piketty’s is more of a massive collection of historical data presented in the form of numerous graphs and charts.
While Marx was more of a “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” kind of guy, Piketty is a Dragnet’s Sergeant Joe Friday’s “The facts, ma’am, just the facts” kind of guy. While Marx’s solution to the dilemma of inegalitarianism was revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, Piketty’s is a global tax on wealth, something that even he concedes is unlikely to happen. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: The Legend of Hodgee
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Look for me
where mountains are rising
stone circle sun
Dammed river
running beneath burned Lake
The legendary monster
Hodgee
snaking through thirsty trees trunks: [Read more…]
Desert Prognosis
By Will Falk
wrapped in the dark blanket of night
huddled
and feverish with cosmic infections
either I’m shaking
or the sky is [Read more…]
A Look at a “Dangerous Friendship”
By Ernie McCray
A couple of years ago at a showing of “Sing Your Song,” a documentary that highlights Harry Belafonte’s role in pursuits for human and civil rights, I met Ben Kamin, a scholar who has written much about the social struggles of those times. I just finished reading, with delight, his latest book, “Dangerous Friendship.”
The book puts the spotlight on Stanley Levison, a little known figure in the civil rights movement, who fully dedicated his life to helping Martin Luther King.
Regarding this man, Clarence Jones, another prominent aide to Martin, says “I am extremely upset, and I get angry, 24/7, and have been for many years about the glaring omission of the name and history of Stanley Levison in the civil rights chronicle.” [Read more…]
Video Pick: The-Dream’s “Black” and Saturday Poem: “The Great Pax Whitie (Peace be Still)” by Nikki Giovanni
“The Condemnation of Racism Must Make Itself Manifest Now”
By Anna Daniels
Vigilante rancher welfare queen Cliven Bundy’s recent musings on “Negro” history, the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, and NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist “etiquette” pointers for his girlfriend are the past week’s dismal trifecta of old white male willful ignorance.
Yes, Meat with Eyes Sean Hannity quickly distanced himself from Bundy’s “maybe slavery was better” ravings. There was an immediate outcry over everything that was in the Sterling tape and I’m not willing to stick my hand into that particular septic tank to fish out an example. The good news being peddled is that as a society we know an old white male racist when we see him and we won’t stand for it.
But before we get all self-congratulatory, the Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s affirmative action ban shows how little we are willing to deal with institutional racism, which is quite different than recognizing your garden variety racist. [Read more…]
“Dunkirk” by HC Jay Powell
By HC Jay Powell
Dunkirk
Please do for our troops what
the British did for theirs
when they were
trapped:
get them out alive.
The only “surge” we
want now
is a rescue surge
for our brave men and women in service
with their lives on the line to their nation.
Send whoever you need to send
to bring them out [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Santa Ana’s Return
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Santa Ana returns
shooting Bougainville into air
galloping through streets
storming houses … [Read more…]
National Poetry Month: Ending with a Bang, not a Whimper
“Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it but to those who need it.”
By Anna Daniels
So, is “April the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”? T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
or is April when
“the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere…”? Mary Oliver, Blossom
And here we are on May’s cusp– “depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas”–except when it isn’t because a different poet thinks about May in a completely different way.
Poetry is the Big Bang of language, beginning with a singularity of individual expression that spawns whole universes of thought, emotion and even action. Poetry enables the universe to know itself, express itself in an utterly astounding way by virtue of the human capacity for language.
Fleas are incapable of writing poetry about themselves. We do it for them…because we can. [Read more…]
Poem of the Day: “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver
“I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
Introduction by Anna Daniels
SDFP readers submitted more requests for Mary Oliver’s poetry than any other poet. Oliver’s unique form of poetic consciousness blurs the boundaries that separate the human from the natural world. “At its most intense, her poetry aims to peer beneath the constructions of culture and reason that burden us with an alienated consciousness to celebrate the primitive, mystical visions that reveal ‘a mossy darkness – / a dream that would never breathe air / and was hinged to your wildest joy / like a shadow.'” [Read more…]
Poem of the Day: “Just Another Day” by Sandra María Esteves
Introduction by Anna Daniels
Sandra María Esteves is a madrina–founder– of the Nuyorican poetry movement that began operating out of East Village cafés in the 1970’s. She describes herself as a “Puerto Rican-Dominican-Boriqueña- Quisqueyana-Taino-African-American,” born and raised in the Bronx. Her explorations of identify are as informed by the Civil Rights and liberation movements of minorities and women as by her own personal heritage. [Read more…]
“A Moment of Silence” by Emmanuel Ortiz
By Emmanuel Ortiz
On the first anniversary of 9/11 activist poet Emmanuel Ortiz released a poem that went around the world and back. It starts by asking for a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11 and then goes on to ask for moments of silence for victims of American aggression. “This is not a peace poem,/Not a poem for forgiveness./This is a justice poem,/A poem for never forgetting.” Emmanuel Ortiz’s poem is an indictment of American foreign policy and it is reposted by San Diego Free Press. [Read more…]
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