E. Martin Pedersen

Cinque poesie

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Morning News

 

A big ship turned sideways blocks the Suez Canal

North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un, shoots two missiles into the sea

the US has doubled its vaccination speed 

and that's it.

Thanks to, Uncle Joe Biden

the world is sane again

we can look out the window

we can go outside in the rain

we can pull potatoes from the garden

and store them in barrels of hay

although many of us are still sick

we may get through; we may be ok

love might return to Earth

love for the Earth might return

don't we need somebody to love

and to reverse global warming

start global cooling

refreeze the poles

time-travel back to the 70's

when we were warned

plant trees, save the bees

get our human act together

push aside the pathetic

no-maskers and Nazi nostalgics

back to Nature = forward to

Nature = living in/as Nature

very third world chic

pre-industrial

a little house, all organic

a little garden, a little work

know the names of birds flowers

and children -- each laughing

each special, not one obsessed

with bad news every day

for normalcy

not without distress

and all the rest:

Thank you, Joe.

 

One Eyed Monster, 2020

 

A virus wiping out humanity

I saw that in an HBO movie

with the guy who tries, during the firestorm

to take over the United States by force --

Chris Walken, I believe, with that weird hair --

the fraud enough people believe

to jump off bridges to their deaths

the bridgeless poor left to beg and you could

be next, the riots I saw those too

fascists in camouflage, the press

the politicians bought and sold

earning their bread and jelly.

 

who will save us, give us back

what we don’t deserve, what we

shouldn’t want in the new world

of robots and lab experiments

a thousand yelling ‘over here’ 

and piles of corpses on every street

corner, until only a few survive

hounded by memories of what they

did to get here, climbing over dead doctors

men/women of action 

off the psych couch in punishment 

against going out absorbed in TV.

 

marathons, binges, addictions, spot, not 

running except in their minds, spot, where 

so many things go wrong before we finally prevail, spot

except the opening for next season

the doll’s eyes open, spot,

we’re stuck in a loop

playing and replaying, spot, spot,

fictions until they become

our reality and television is

alternate, inferior, boring.

 

When President Lincoln said

on 60 Minutes: "You can fool

some of the people some of the

time." he meant pro-slavery rebels

claiming bogus states' rights

to hold onto money in the form

of human beings, slavery which they

knew was wrong because they'd seen

Roots and Julia.

 

But what, what now

of the people of Burundi, Ruanda, Malawi

Niger, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and

the Democratic Republic of Congo? some

without TVs, some without PCs, some

without water, food, or wood for heat and shelter?

they all have family units of love and sufferance

whereas Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Central

African Republic, Madagascar, Sudan and Chad

starve

we watch them

we do nothing.

 

Africa, like North America, starves for entertainment

for dancing girls in tight sequined costumes

sent from Europe where on Eurovision

everyone watches each other's shows

like boys going blind watching underwear

on the clotheslines of pretty women

pretty women, rich or poor

who hang out their underwear

grabbed by the pussy then

tossed like paper towels

after a hurricane.

 

The Purpose of Nothing

 

an action shot

life as it is truly lived

as it is meant to be lived

like each day

day could be

be your last

last action shot

candid hey

preserving the genuine

look at me, over here, I exist

in a world of posers posing.

 

all advertising

even self-advertising, even nothing

I ADVERTISE NOTHING®

imagine 

an image of no existing photos

of John Lennon (oh yes

there are) 

imagine t-shirts 

before some genius

transformed them into marquees.

 

imagine choosing which

vegetables based on recipes

accompanied by mouth-watering

airbrushed photos of near

nakedness, the sheen of the

bell pepper skin

kiwi green

beet red

goblet of wine &

fresh-baked bread

 -- all is porn

scorn, forlorn, reborn.

 

I may say I'm sick of the

game of two-dimensionality

or even three-dimensionality

because I just took a selfie

in front of my new TV

broadcasting in twelve di-

mensions.

that's a lot better --

that's progress!

 

I was six years old

when we got our first TV

so I'm a rep of the last

lost pre-tech generation

no mental stimulation

no entertainment

you think it must have been

terrible to grow up

outdoors, with the gang

inventing games

throwing rocks

digging holes

climbing trees

playing tag

running.

 

no, I don't feel deprived

but rather nostalgic

for deprivation

before the age of

constant everything.

I long for the nothing

of my youth

that will never ever return.

 

Smokey's Friends

 

California ablaze

no escape from smoke

evacuation routes designated

traffic jammed, metal twists, plastic melts

pet shelters and soup kitchens open

video proof shows brush

previously soaked in gasoline

the entire state sprayed

in flame-accelerant

then an arson match or random spark

short circuit or lightning bolt

everything transformed: solid to gas,

liquid lacking.

 

Smokey's friends don't play

with matches from 1955

Me and Smokey, we slept embraced to 1965

he told me things, real things

like a public service reminder

during the Mickey Mouse Club

between Fun with Music

and Spin and Marty

when so little intention

causes so much destruction

Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse!

 

Why is our state made of newspaper, cigarette paper,

old love letters written with fountain pens on onionskin?

it was maple hardwood back then

redwood cottonwood oak willow alder ash

aspen cedar birch walnut cherry -- stuff that resists

now cardboard homes burn in seconds

welcoming in the hellfire

extra cars in driveways explode

dwarfs crack, flags flame

and the screaming covered by the crackling

except refrigerators and chimneys of brick or stone razed

like in 1906 San Francisco, east of Van Ness Avenue.

 

65 years ago, I hoped to live in

the pine forest someday

in retirement, like now

me and my buddy

but there are no forests anymore

no trees alive

only burnt matchsticks

what the bark beetles left

no future, only today's

ashen climate disaster

incendiary conflagrationary everything.

 

Sit alone and cry.

We did this.

 

Stormcoming --*

 

I've been up all night following caffeinated news shows

I feel nauseous, norm life will not continue either way:

I am already in voluntary quarantine

add voluntary exile to make it official:

Goodbye, you have let me down

Farewell, and I may not return, except in a shoebox:

to the Golden Shores, Golden Gates, Golden Corral

 

so it's important, but now I must sleep, coffee over

the resistance can go on without me

for a few hours, then I'll get some sad

info on either a partial victory

or a partial defeat, each its own disappointment

like waiting long hours with a terminal patient

a father always in competition with

 

Freud gave the son the blame

I wish I could talk it over with Dr. Freud

but he died in England in 1939, I did go 

to his Vienna home, quite ordinary, like mine

my home, my mind concluding in shock

and disarray, deep rage

the masculine

 

I want the feminine

to guide me from now on

women, tell me what to do, where

to go, tell me to go to Hell

or back to California

if any flights exist

if California still exists.

 

* number 46 of The Limbo Reports

 

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over forty years in eastern Sicily, where he taught English at the local university. His poetry appeared most recently in Avatar Review, Canyon Voices, Slab, SurVision, and Helix Literary Magazine, among others. Martin is an alumnus of the Community of Writers. He has published two collections of haiku, Bitter Pills and Smart Pills, and a chapbook, Exile's Choice, from Kelsay Books. A full collection, Method & Madness, is forthcoming from Odyssey Press. Martin's poem, "Gull Eggs," was nominated by Flapper Press for the Best of the Net Award 2023. Martin blogs at: https://emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.com  Bienvenue au Danse, Martin.

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