Archive for the 'Verse' Category

Sep 30 2007

The Rape Room

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

vulture

For Labor had won nothing but a royal reaming from a scheming cabal of Vultures who were succeeding in picking the corpse of the American Working Class clean…..

By Vi Ransel

9/30/07

That craven caricature of freedom, the weekend,
along with the minumum wage
and their insidious partner, the 8-hour day,
which Labor pretends to believe it ripped
from the Vultures of Great Wealth’s
rigor mortis-like grip
and touts as a hard-won victory,
are simply Pyrrhic palliatives of symptoms,
not the cure of the underlying disease.

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Sep 28 2007

WHITMAN RECIDIVIST

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

bigwalt

by GARY CORSERI

9/28/07

I know I am restless and make others so…
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws,
to unsettle them…

~ Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman can’t remember
what he did with America.
It was there in his back pocket
yesterday or the day before:
caroling, brawling, lusty, democratic;
stretching its broadbacked plains
in the sun between seas.
He walks from door to door
selling subscriptions to the Universe.
Who are these sad-eyed does,
this tamed race, moping proletariat?
What are these buildings
yeasting on the plains,
that drone of the cities—
ennui echoing ennui?
Men on the moon, rockets,
telethis and telethat—
but what Vision?—
all the wires entangling:
some hydra-headed nullifidian
sucking the wounds of the eyes,
eating democracy, spitting it out—
these people this land
lost O lost lost.

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Sep 16 2007

HOLDING THE LIGHT

Published by cyrano2 under Poverty, War on the Poor, Verse, Poetry

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

neworleansbab

by Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

9/16/07

What is a gooseneck lamp doing in Carl’s meadow?
Why are the geese crossing the two-way street in suburbia?
Could it be something to do with the jiggy society,
so much pompous and ignoring the circumstances?

Urgency removes doubt,
a human being lifting a car to save a life–
divine adrenaline has not been studied enough,
nor altruism, nor buy one give one free.

Opening an inner door…

towards the end of summer and eyeing October
peppers red as apples
apples red as whatever you want them to be red as…

from New Orleans to Dharamsala to Baghdad to the ghettos of America
the obvious are being overlooked: the poor, the reincarnated, the childlike,
the ones who do not tan from sun because they have been here so long…

and they are all holding the light, in the dankest corners
and in the shallowest pockets of economic warfare they are holding the light…

as a peach on the ground, as a red brick-wall in the afternoon glow,
as the eye in a vision, and the sparrow who grabs on
to the middle of the long, tall stem of a sunflower…

holding the light.

Mankh is a poet, essayist, and small press publisher.
He is co-editor of the forthcoming primal sanities! a Tribute to Walt Whitman an Anthology of Poems and Essays.

His website: www.allbook-books.com

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Sep 07 2007

WHEN PAVAROTTI DIED

Published by cyrano2 under Verse, Eulogy, Memorial

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

pavarotti

BY GARY CORSERI

9/7/07

When Pavarotti died
No Statesman made a statement.
(They were embarrassed by their voices.)
No Officer of Meddling meddled
In another man’s affairs.

The skylarks fell from their windows.
(They had been admiring
Their own reflections.
Now they cried in unison, “He’s gone.”)

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Aug 25 2007

Tête de Cinéma

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

bush montage

“imagine pornographic
montage…”

By Adam Engel

8/24/07

That time she said
alright
the future
was a movie
about
life death
prismatic choices
between
life or death
but not like
nothing like
this.
Never
tête de cinéma
imagine pornographic
montage
such
so much of
such
ineffable,
crushing.

Adam Engel is a contributing editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online and can be reached at

donttrust

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