Poetry
From what's left of the White House...
...Trump has made it clear that he's thrilled the Reiners are dead...
...and that he wishes the same for all who would dare oppose him...
...re-confirming that Trump Derangement Syndrome festers because he's deranged.
By the Karmic Reaper
YOU WILL NOT BE IN POWER FOREVER!
YOU WILL STAND TRIAL!!!
A message from
Adolph
Goering, Goebbels,
Himmler, Heydrich,
Keitel, Ribbentrop,
Speer & Rohm.
to
Donald
Vance, Miller,
Witkof, Patel
Bondi, Eric
Junior & Noem
YOU WILL NOT BE IN POWER FOREVER
YOU WILL STAND TRIAL
The Extreme Court may have struck down affirmative action, but nevertheless, 2023 is shaping
up to be a superlative year for debuts and revivals of Black-themed dramas treading the boards of
Los Angeles’ stages. This bumper crop currently electrifying L.A.’s theater scene include: June
Carryl’s police brutality two-hander Blue (see https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/); Katori
Hall’s Dr. King one-acter The Mountaintop (see: https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/); plus an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starring African American thesp Max Lawrence in the title
role (in repertory at https://theatricum.com/).
Now we can add to this already auspicious list Will Power’s thought-provoking, perplexing
Fetch Clay, Make Man, directed by Debbie Allen. As the newly minted Muhammad Ali (Ray
Fisher, reprising the role he first played a decade ago) prepares for his 1965 rematch with ex-
champ Sonny Liston, the heavyweight champion summons Stepin Fetchit (Edwin Lee Gibson) to
Acording to a Billboard interview Barbara has decided to add politics to her music. She's hgas written 15 for the Huffington post, why not just sing it. You don't have to be in Italy to sing :)
Love you Barbara, you do it best!
The Wallis Studio Ensemble’s The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a stage renditiion of Douglas Adams’ sci fi send-up that has been adapted for radio, books, television and the movies. This fast-moving 90 minute version minus intermission is performed by around 10 youthful, colorfully costumed cast members. While today’s auds are used to state of the art CGI, Galaxy deploys low tech special effects on the mostly bare boards of the Lovelace Studio Theater. The FX include puppetry and masks by Alex Sheldon and Bosco Flanagan’s lighting design, which would have warmed the cockles of Bill Graham’s heart at Fillmore West rock concerts. Speaking of music, there is a little bit of live accordion and piano playing by Sheldon during the show, as well as recordings of songs such as Disco Inferno.
“. . . no real security, just powers of retaliation.”
This was Norman Mailer, four-plus decades ago, writing in Miami and the Siege of Chicago about the obsessive security measures – “helicopters riding overhead like roller coasters, state troopers with magnums on their hip and crash helmets, squad cars, motorcycles” – at the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which . . . uh, didn’t actually provide security, but sure allowed us to get even afterwards.
This is still the unnoticed insanity haunting the American news cycle, whether the story being reported is domestic or international. As a society, we’re armed and dangerous – and always at war, both collectively and individually. We’re endlessly declaring bad guys (officially and unofficially) and endlessly protecting ourselves from them, in the process guaranteeing that the violence continues. And the parallels between “them” and “us” are unnerving.
Your heart was out there blowing in the breeze of
The Spring, how have you become forlorn to picture
The Summer heated the earth frenzied and droughty?
Together with viewing shady trees on gray mountains
Open your insight and see the dejection of my mind
The rock-strewn yard covered with the tiptoeing rosemary
That stands before your eyes, with aroma returns our sanities
Must I feel the gravity, illustrious arroyo of love that you nurture
At heart for years, as I took it to mean your moments of denial
You lived at; still you urge to soar high in the blue like a seagull
In the star studded twilight memoirs of me say obviously
Sweetly sad sounds the flute Sonata played a wonderful
Way to falling in love stroked you deeply from far and away
Over the moon else lit up in me no ebb but the flow of lust
On highways of my core a red carpet reception for you solely
Ignoring all social medians and preferences we know risks
Us becoming the outcasts, still we’ll float on romanticism
To poems, awake to hear human heart beating,
Making it out of being, trance, agony and bliss
The shape of heart rejoices, shudders to verses
In perfect harmony between the poem adorned
By me in aspiration and the soul who reads
Perhaps some are poets, not we all but
To the heart paramours take it by surprise
Odes chosen to the meeting of minds fair in love
Known to protesters a language of slogan to rights
Or a lullaby calms a baby to rest and quiet
Merging with many minds, poetry stays alive.
I'd roar more over day and night
It heals a muster of my anguish
All I know you cannot sojourn
On cloud nine leaving me alone
With pleasure shadows my pain
I’d do by my ego for sure, but
Age and prayers bow my laps
Beseeching you, God!
You can bid peace I know
If there is no cries in paradise
Why on your wrought earth?
Where goodness pays in ordeal
As you gather in the place
All Your lovely creations