all the worthless things in one place being bought

all the faces here hawk their wares
to the next
               buyer, memories for pennies
nickle & dime you, at tables, in stalls

toys, cards, coats, stickers, some appliance
i can't guess where to put, pillows, clothes
a velvet Elvis or ten, movies, road signs,
clutter to shift one house to the next
     flea-ing the market

& him,

Library Walk: Longfellow

Born on this day in 1807, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote classic American poems; The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline and most famously, Paul Revere’s Ride. The verse on Library Walk is from, The Day is Done, the proem to an 1844 anthology of poems collected by Longfellow in The Waif. In 1874, his poem, The Hanging of the Crane, was sold to the New York Ledger for $3000. At the time it was the highest price ever paid for a poem.

PEN International Writers in Prison Caselist

PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee has released the latest edition of its Caselist detailing over 870 cases of attacks on writers, journalists, poets, publishers and editors. A key campaign resource for PEN International as well as other organisations, the WiPC Caselist details our most up to date information on writers who are detained or otherwise persecuted for their peaceful political activities or for the practice of their profession.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Steinbrenner Field: Spring training home of the New York Yankees.

Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry sou
Katie blew.
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said "No,
I'll tell you what you can do:"

The Law of the Jungle

Have you heard the one about the guy who went to a hockey game and a poem broke out?

Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Death of a Sportsman

Give us something to believe in
We'll give you millions and praises
Your face will be splattered on covers
Fame will follow you everywhere you go

Run for us with non-flesh legs
Win seven tours, beat cancer!
Play that football game with a broken heart
We want a hero, you must be our hero

Poetry Burrito

Thirty people chew
On catered trays of lunch
Before they even open their mouths

Polite closed mouths
Move from side to side
Move up and down

Picasso and Chicago

Picasso's Mother and Child. The Picasso and Chicago exhibit runs February 20, 2013–Sunday, May 12, 2013

A century ago, in 1913, the Art Institute of Chicago became the first art museum in the country to present the work of a young Spaniard who would become the preeminent artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso. This February the museum celebrates the special 100-year relationship between Picasso and Chicago by bringing together over 250 of the finest examples of the artist's paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and ceramics from private collections in the city, as well as from the museum's collection, for the first large-scale Picasso exhibition organized by the museum in almost 30 years.

Virginia Poe's Valentine Acrostic

Ever with thee I wish to roam —
Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care

The Beginning of the World: An Excerpt of Love

An Excerpt of Love.

Long, long ago,
Before anything was,
Saving only the heavens,
From the seat of his golden throne,
The Sun-god looked out on the Moon-goddess,
And found her beautiful.

The Disappointment

One day the amorous Lysander,
By an impatient passion swayed,
Surprised fair Cloris, that loved maid,
Who could defend herself no longer.
All things did with his love conspire;
The gilded planet of the day,
In his gay chariot drawn by fire,
Was now descending to the sea,
And left no light to guide the world,
&But what from Cloris' brighter eyes was hurled.

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Ghostly Apparitions

Terrified Innocents…. Departing indigenous lands,
Afraid to end with a sad Ulla-gone.
Merchandised as cargo, once money exchanges hands
All hope is gone… as they are herded onto ships in
The empty docks. United through a desire, a longing,
Everyone’s dreaming of peace, education, family and love.

Curbside Haiku of New York City

Car stops near bike lane
Cyclist entering raffle
Unwanted door prize

Aggressive driver.
Aggressive pedestrian.
Two crash test dummies.

Haiku for the urban masses. Who says that safety campaigns have to be boring? New York City's Department of Transportation (DOT) commissioned artist John Morse to build upon his bandit haiku campaign in Atlanta. The DOT's goal was to raise traffic safety awareness.

Imagine a world
Where your every move matters.
Welcome to that world.

In 2010, New York based artist and writer John Morse installed 500 haiku bandit signs at busy intersections in the ATL. What separated Morse's signage from other bandit signs that blight the country offering get-rich schemes, junk removal and dating sites was that his bandit signs were written in haiku.

The Life of a Fisherman

From dusk to dawn
is the life of the old salt,
the fisherman.

The gloomy mornings
wakening to the slow swell
of the sea.

A meager breakfast
before the long haul
for his livelihood.

Walks of Life

Langston Hughes. Poet. (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

There is the poet from Joplin
who clears out the drunks at last call in Montreal

There is the artist from Cuba
that dives through dumpsters in Greenwich Village

There is the child prodigy from Kansas
stocking the shelves at the supermarket in Key West