Colin Mutchler (London)

the markets are starting to question themselves

the bloggers exposing our blisters

and the everyday words of everyday people

are shifting the tone of the televised speeches

and the artists are starting to question themselves

the poets are speaking like leaders

and the everyday choices of everyday people

are facing the storms and curing diseases

so go skype an ipod, premix some wages

but don't forget to make a version for the sages

because when we look beyond our next meal, our next post,

we are responsible for our everyday votes,

the ones we use to buy our shoes, to buy our homes, to buy our tunes.

yes I'm talking about our dollars, our euros, our pesos, our yuan

because what if the next 20 years are happening again?

what if we've we already arrived, it's 2025?

and the doomsday duos, the war and peace heroes

haven't avoided the global cooling,

the flu grown zeros, and the forgotten people

yes the markets are starting to question themselves

the bloggers exposing our blisters

yes the everyday words of everyday people

are shifting the tone of the televised speeches

and the artists are starting to question themselves

the poets are speaking like leaders

and the everyday choices of everyday people

are facing the storms and curing diseases.

(fm album Premixed - Words and Music for a Free Culture)

Bob Potter
Arlington West, Santa Barbara
October, 2007  

Exactly three thousand white crosses
Symmetrically fixed in rows of forty-eight
Aligned at attention across a sandy beach

Vastly understate the reality.
Fleeting symbols of a Sunday afternoon,
Garnished with California seagulls, and a soft breeze
Coaxing tiny sailboats from the yacht harbor,
They shine in the sunlight, astonishing the tourists.

Passersby from LA and the Valley, gawking New Yorkers,
Aussies and Londoners, Dutchmen and Turks,
Gabblers in Farsi, Japanese, Hindi
And all varieties of Spanish pause to contemplate
The irresistible photo opportunity of Death.

As the digital cameras whiz, zip and flash,
Catching the poignant sight, disposing of its brief shock,
Children wonder if there are bodies in the sand,
Then, reassured and disappointed, are led off for an ice cream.

If there were three thousand deaths here
Instead of these chaste memorial place markers,
Three thousand rotted blood-soaked dismembered corpses
Of former American boys and girls from the small towns and barrios,
The squandered assets of bemedaled Generals
Riddled with bullets, blown to pieces, mouths agape
Strewn chaotically, catastrophically across an invasion beach
Of reality, crashed in our midst in a terrible tsunami
Flooding the beaches and the streets, dashed
Across our suburban lawns, stinking up the schoolyards,
Polluting the supermarkets, poisoning the churches,
Assaulting our ears, offending our nostrils, raping our eyes
With an obscene actuality not seen on TV
This atrocity dutifully unleashed on our orders well then,
Something would have to be done about it.

But as it is, the crosses and the grizzled veterans
Who tend them like a flowered garden of regret
Are the matter of a brief moment
For onlookers with other destinations,
And the ignorant carnage grinds on,
Eleven time zones away, receding

Into the forgetful future of a careless empire.