Dylanesque Eddie/Another Shooting Here/Nice Letter

(P1) Poetical

Pronouncing "Iraq"

Ear Rack or Ear Rock?
What implications?
(dismiss all Eye Rackers
for just who they are)

Ear Ack
Ear Ock
each tick
each tock

air attack
must whack
political hack
wolf pack
kick back
data track
pitch black
media claque
all those youngsters
ripped by flak
yack yack
spore sac

voting flock
cuckoo clock
where's John Locke
in dry dock
mental block
preening cock
full of schlock
writ in chalk
for mock and hock
loss of freedom block on block
despairing race against the clock

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(P2) Political

Please Ban Handguns, For the Common Good!

On a nice afternoon last week, I drove down to Mail & More (on Hopper & Airway) to deliver and pick up my business mail. As usual, I drove by the non-profit organization Community Resources For Independence (CRI) of which I was co-founder. To my amazement, the whole area was ringed with bright yellow police tape. Squad cars and officers were everywhere. I went into Luigi's to see if Edith was ok and to find out what had happened. She was huddled with an employee and no dining customers. She explained that there had been a shooting across the street and asked that I inquire at Mail & More as to what had happened. She also wanted to know what TV station was shooting in the parking lot. Sean at Mail & More told me that 2 kids from the continuation high school had been shot by a shooter who'd jumped out of a car. One victim was a boy shot (not fatally) in the head, the other a girl shot in the hip. The motive may have been gang-related. The school is a "baby-sitting" facility for kids expelled from other high schools.

My mind immediately went to the kids from Elsie Allen HS at a graduation party last year - good kids - one was the star of the rugby team which had just played for the national championship. Six good kids gunned down by party crashers. We all remember party crashers when we were kids. If violence broke out, it was settled with fists. We knew something of knives and chains from Westside Story, but never guns (those were the province of westerns and crime shows). After that tragedy, I emailed all of the City Council members who responded either with the rote "more enforcement" and/or "activities for kids." No one mentioned the fact that much of the gang crime was being controlled from Pelican Bay Prison in Crescent City. Anyway, the issues are big ones, and I don't think that gang violence will be easily solved.

What I did mention to Sean was my belief that handguns simply have no positive value and must be outlawed. He gave me the usual replies about hunting and that "then only the bad guys will have guns." But we've moved well beyond all this. The "guns for self defense" cry is belied by a statistic I read years ago, something like there being a 500 percent greater chance of a violent crime in a household possessing guns. The number of home invasions prevented by guns is an infinitismal fraction. It's simply time to contact legislators demanding that handguns be banned. Once they are off the legal market, certainly some criminals will find ways to obtain them, but with 90% of the availability curtailed, it stands to reason that gun crime will go way down. Gun crime and violence represents an emergency of the highest order. The lives of children are at stake. Let's do something!


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(P3) Philosophical

This lovely letter from the web site of Esther Cameron, editor of The Neovictorian/Cochlea resonates,

I want to write
to all of you, "accepted" or "rejected" this time around, to thank you for your poems, and also to explain in greater depth than I could do in that brief advertisement why I started this review, and what I hope for from its readers and its writers. (This is in lieu of criticism, which some asked for, and of guidelines for next time.) First of all, I am, like you, a poet, but for some time have felt dissatisfied with literary fashions that seem molded too much by various markets, and too little by visions of the world we’d like to make. My view is shaped by memories of a era when poetry was shared with friends who sought to see the outline of a common future. Then I heard poems, not in isolation but as the dialogue of one great play extending over many generations where every one had something to contribute and where the challenge was not to be "better" than fellow-bard, but rather to be true to one's own moment, one's own point upon the continuum of human space and time -- to speak your part, whatever it might be. Too, I've been influenced by Paul Celan, whose work made many voices audible, whose tragic fate seemed not just the result of the past trauma of the Holocaust but rather of a framework within which his word was not allowed to make things happen. Appalled by this, I looked toward other cultures, read Black Elk Speaks, some Talmud, and considered the little that is known about the Druids -- all cultures where the speakers formed a guild with some commitment to the social welfare, to poetry as a common enterprise of understanding and communication. I'd like to think that we could still rebuild this, that it is not too late. For after all the 'sixties were just thirty years ago, the changes which we sought then were far-reaching -- we might have known that patience would be needed, and willingness for long experiment. At any rate, the poems I've selected are those that seemed as if they might fit in to such a dialogue -- that held some spark of true experience or concern, conveyed in words that came alive to tell their tale. I have a certain preference for "form" because I've found the forms a source of strength, although the openness of good free verse is something that a reader of Celan cannot forget to honor. If the above has struck some chord in you, I hope you will pursue the conversation. If I've failed to understand your work, then please forgive me and try again. A sample issue may help you tune in. And last, this publication is funded by no grants. I hope you'll feel the company makes up for modest format, and that you'll want to help sustain this vision by subscribing, ordering extra copies (besides the two contributors receive) and sharing this with friends. The issue won't have a "bio" section, but will print titles of books by the contributors, also your mailing address, if you're willing to enter into dialogue with readers -- please let me know. Wishing you all the best of vision, luck and guidance, I remain yours sincerely, Esther Cameron Please Post Your Comments Here about the above and/or Read the Comments of Others.You can sign in as "blogger" or "other" but please add your name or initials to your text. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net. We need your feedback.