How poor are the people in your poems?

there's this place on the census form

where it asks your race? did they mean

i'm wondering, wandering out like

objects do from circumstance

did they mean the intervale bottom

land, the business end of atoms

and rain? perhaps tis the basis of

all creation.

I remember the farmer in "The Grapes of Wrath"

kneeling to grasp a handful, handsful believing

a fibrous ring encloses the inner

pulpy nucleus of life.

if you live and die on anything at all

that thing (earth lets call it)

permits safe passage, blistering between events,

rest and water

a waving over your head of the old testament

intertextuality of time travel

like dragging the dead from

good advice to harvest; eventually you get

to ride the old mule bareback

until the torrent

behind the tintype twists and fades. 

Reviews

[Beccy]

You should put Homo sapien in the little box that asks for race, pretend you didn't really understand the question. Sadly though, I would bet that the pointy heads who drafted the form in the first place probably wouldn't get it. :))

Your words always fascinate.

Beccy.

[h d e rushin]

thank you belatedly my love...… I lost my internet access for a few (AT&T a******s..) Back and bold as ever.....dana

[Ana Papaya]

I can understand the reasons why we do things, I just don't think the reasons make sense is all.
And sometimes I think we try so hard we harm rather than help. I enjoyed this dana.

[Corset]

Not till you have picked up the trash of a mans world will you truly know the habits
of any skin. Blunts, empty brown bag beer cans, condom wrapper, tiny plastic bags
that could only hold a nights entertainment adorns mother earth the morning after,
chicken bones, pork chop bones, dollar general plastics floating on the wind,
styrofoam plates and containers, demolished cell phones, shock collars (just kidding)
If you feed that mule well and treat it good It can carry you a long ,long way across
this mother earth, be happy to have hooves to carry you?

[h d e rushin]

Your voice is that of a true revolutionary. "Sometimes I think about those lace-cuffed anklets my grandmother made me wear with black mary janes each Easter" Emilia Phillips wrote in her recent poem "Scabs". "I spend so much time looking at scars in the mirror", she wrote. So do I. Poetry (the stuff found here, being told from diaphragm to under-eye bags) is so far removed from "Washington Post" politicization to be fraught with dreams of the earth actually getting better. Written within our nervous hubris is this thought that if we just pick up the blown plastic that has gathered against the fences of our own yards, pollution will forever be wrestled away from the excesses of mankind. Thank you my love for always sharing your views with me.
ps: I have actually never seen a mule/ dana

[Corset]

I wore those too when young and what I remember most at my mother's funeral on Easter, the dew and lace made my ankles itch and was called down several times for fidgeting.

[G. Cedillo]

Ha ha! great enjoyable read - - the thoughts are as playful and political as they are pressing and satirical!
i recently wrote something like this - i''ll post it shortly

thanks so much

[h d e rushin]

cant wait G......glad to hear your still among us and writing.......thanks again my friend....dana

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this is phenomenal...how can man be measured? by race? by what he or she owns?
by what he does for a living?
i think the nucleus of life is what's inside us...what we believe and how we treat others...that is the current...how we deal with circumstance?
what we make of just a little bit given to us?
you are so philosophical.
j.

[h d e rushin]

I think your calling philosophical old age my friend. anways, thanks to you I think so much. dana

[sette]

i like the wit displayed in the poem, it speaks strongly about certain issues that sometimes we seem not be affected but still in the long run make us realize many things. thanks for this piece.

[h d e rushin]

thank you sette for those words of inspiration my friend. daNA

[sette]

you are most welcome dana

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

This poem took some serious wit. I enjoyed the existential questioning and the challenge of reclaiming the mind.

[h d e rushin]

Thanks for stopping by to visit Zeitgeist......dana

[Phill Oz O'fee]

Interesting write; metaphoric, biblical references and plenty for reader to ponder over - good job of wordplay :-) PS If I fill in a form asking for race, I usually just enter 'Human' .... bless you!!!!!