The Manhattan Project
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Announcements
We held the Manhattan project in our blood line,
So we danced around New York City lights like we were born to,
Electrons with an affinity for lamp posts and all the glowing things in this world,
Tell me how to get closer to you,
Because I believe in a science called fusion,
And I want the atoms of our hearts to mingle,
To create energy and explode starfire into the night,
“Yes this means I love you,”
And I thought we would glow in the dark forever,
But I was just a boy,
Caught playing hookie in one too many science classes
when you were already three grades ahead,
And I was just too good at fakin’ it with the advanced curriculum.
So I never learned that even the sun will burnout sometime,
No longer able to kiss two protons into one helium smile,
She too will die,
A collapsed star,
I never liked how black holes sucked all the light from everything,
I said I’d rather not go out like that,
I think there’s more energy in parting,
It’s best if we go our separate ways,
And you said gladly,
Just give me what’s left of my love back,
But I never realized that breaking hearts is like splitting atoms,
How chain reactions fill chest until it weighs critical mass,
Until ribcage becomes radioactive chamber,
And my heart, a nuclear reactor,
Erupting into the three mile island of my sternum,
This is the stuff bombs are made of,
This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
This is Doomsday,
Screaming “My God what have done” from the Enola Gay, with mushroom clouds in our eyes,
This is fallout:
When the nuclear winter blocks out the sun,
With the ashes of everyone,
because everyone is dead.
Reminds me of times I wondered if you would be with me if I were the last boy left alive.
And it’s a curse to survive,
Radiation’s fried my immune system,
So I’m left defenseless,
To rot in my skin,
The napalm of my bones burning me from the inside,
Only I will know what pain is,
The horror of amputated limbs,
After my family tree returns from war,
And fate hacks off all the branches of our future children,
My genetics feel more like genocide,
And I’m not quite human anymore.
So lets start over,
Bring me back to the Stone Age,
And show me my basic instincts,
Whether cavemen throw rocks at storm clouds to pierce nimbus for sunlight,
Like shooting through fog for the moon,
Like cigarette burns in Brooklyn back alley ways,
Like rockets blossoming in the sky at midnight,
as if we could replant our love with explosives,
Remind me what fire feels like,
Because I’ve forgotten how to glow,
And I’m the only living boy in New York,
And you were more than just another “F” on a science test,
But even Einstein flunked out of chemistry,
And look what he gave us,
Limitless energy and a nuclear holocaust,
So I don’t know what about this project scared me more,
The possibility of success or the chance for failure,
But I’m willing to accept the consequences now,
I know you’re not here tonight,
And I know it’s my fault,
But when all seems lost in this experiment,
Lay by my bed and teach me,
That even uranium, rapidly decaying in half-lives not lived,
Does not die,
It just grows old together.
Army of Gods
Posted by David Warner | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Sit still
Sit still
Sit still
Two words that hit like “kill yourself”
As her toes tapped during math class
She didn’t look like much
Just a shy little girl
clothes too big for her
And a smile too small for her age
But lil did they know…….
The clothes were still too small for her soul
And the smile was the wry smirk of warrior
So she tapped her feet
slow and steady
til the tap tap became a BOOM BAP
and heaven could see the vibrations
Now she’s a goddess
The ground shakes under her
Rattling like the space between lovers
Jittering like the tips of fingers hanging
from hands waiting to touch someone new
Quaking like lost hearts
Rumbling like a war zone
As she floats like an angel deflecting bullets
And saving soldiers
Moving with every boom
like a speaker pulsing with every beat
Like bombs were bursting in her abdomen
And shrapnel was bouncing off her ribcage
Carving her heart into a dagger sharp
enough to cut through diamond mines
she doesn’t dance
she marches
toes pointed like AKs
shouldered by rebel soldiers
never holstered
ready to give everything til she’s empty
and her body lays limp in the hushhhhhhhh
SHHHHH
Shhhhhhhhhhh
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Just a sound to most
But to me a death sentence
As I whispered rhymes
over a dirty mead notebook
with my eyes closed
to a distant toe tap on the other side of the school
No matter what my age is
I was made to blaze stages
11 yrs old and already spitting lasers
I’m the king
There was nothing intimidating about me
6’ limbs hanging from a 5’ torso
all tied together by braces and ugly glasses
but the truth is
those glasses were x-ray binoculars
used to see into the souls of everyone around me
the braces were to hold in my teeth when I spit
cause I always had a voice bigger than my lungs could carry
With a heart bigger than my brain and a mouth that intercepted the words
before the two could communicate
Now I’m a God
And I chuckle at the days when teachers tried to stifle us
Everyday another suggested suicide
Every period another death sentence
Chalk flaking off pointed fingers as they asked us
To fold our wings under our backpacks
Fasten our lips
And walk and talk like everybody else
Squeeze in with the mortals
lol
the two of us
we’re an army of gods unto ourselves
this is our Mt. Olympus
So next time you see a kid tapping his feet
Or scribbling in a notebook
Or doodling on his hands
Or fidgeting with a broken watch
Be quiet and observe
You’re witnessing a god in the making
Like Names on Bathroom Walls
Posted by Aysha El Shamayleh | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
We were children…
Born alive,
we survived some nights only prove to you we were odd looking miracles.
He was hardheaded like our dictators,
often found running clinch-fisted
feet stomping the concrete paving our playgrounds.
at mid day, we would write our names on the walls of narrow alleys,
let the sun rays stare at them.
they were everything we could call ours.
Besides…
We were just like our countries,
Arab, and messy.
our kings treated world maps as if they were high school bathroom stalls,
signed I was once here Mr.
As if the world ever gave a shit.
well, unlike our kings,
we were no fools.
we wrote the names and then laughed at ourselves.
“unapproved sovereignty”
we hid under our beds waiting to get caught by the parents.
like Saddam hiding underground waiting to get caught by America
it was only a matter of time.
but we…
we laughed,
and I wished the world would for once take notice of something beautiful before its gone.
Because after that mid-march night they held him down.
too much of a coward I watched from a distance,
Never seen him this fragile,
look,
never this weak,
cuz this time he wasnt stomping with his feet scaring the kids around,
his face was pressed against the concrete,
we was bent down.
arms and legs spread apart like a 9/11 airplane crashed on ground.
One older man had his pants down,
and the others were keeping the boy in place.
I was only a child but old enough to know
This isn’t how it should go,
Men would push in and out in the wrong places,
and they would alternate on him,
his screams might’ve been pleas
I dont know,
they were hesitant, they would break,
and then sound.
I hear him break under their weight,
If you were standing in my shoes, maybe you would’ve swallowed the silence too,
But maybe not, maybe you would’ve joined them,
They were done with him now,
his crevices filled with more semen than they could hold so it overflowed,
promising no children,
no legacies of whatever this is.
please understand we used to walk around with lollipop rings on our left hands.
I guess we were kids
naïve enough to think the world ever owed us something.
Maybe a dream, or a future,
After all, we were fools to think the world ever took notice.
They walked out on him,
one by one,
no one looked behind.
he stayed laying on his belly for a while
mind conflicted,
then he stood up and i wished he didnt
eyes pouring.
He’s naked
rectum burning,
and blood barely dripping down his thighs…
tell me what is there for us to love now,
we were curious kids, but we never wanted to know
we were as fragile as this,
left behind with
only disgust,
only nausea,
only stench of blood and sweat,
and semen
and wrong sex,
he was suicidal,
like civil wars raging within his skull’s confines.
untaught how to love,
we were beasts
no longer children
after this
not knowing what to expect from anyone around,
all we wanted is that they keep their fucking hands off us.
he survived that night, then chose to live though the ones after it,
only to make it to the day when he can look you in the eye
and tell you I was once here Mr.
like a name on the wall of a high school bathroom
begging you to take notice.
But on world maps he would always sign his name
Iraq.
see its you who’s doing it…
raping him.
see people and countries are the same thing,
he’s bent down,
and he has blood barely just barely dripping down his thighs.
…you’re pulling out now…
..walking away.
Like You, Joan
Posted by Enmanuel Martinez | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
St. Joan of Arc, you managed to preserve your self,
died at nineteen: a virgin—
having given your self to God.
What all did he whisper to you
in the fields behind your house
as you tended to cattle and adolescent dreams?
Did he say that he was love?
Give you of his body and tell you to eat—
what ecstasy! Did he leave
stigmata on your feet and palms,
as he has done to so many other girls?
Why do men hurt that which they love?
This was your first calling,
though you were not his first.
Where you his last?
Unlike you, Joan,
I had no cattle or sheep to tend,
only the heavy solitude that is inherited
by middle children and only sons.
No fields to run through or pastures
in which to hide, only then to be found by God—
only concrete and crack-house-corned streets.
Playtime was in the basement.
There, I often danced
alone in front of a ceramic statue of Christ.
His eyes we empty, hollow,
hiding everything yet nothing.
But his eyes were always on me, so
I danced for him, giving
of my body—Eucharist incarnate.
He was always willing to watch.
Never did he look away, never
told me to stop. Always observant,
silent.
Nighttime: parents out of the house,
my face pushed into pillow and sheets,
arms and legs outstretched,
palms placed up. My body,
a human cross—juvenile crucifixion,
though I prayed long and hard
for God to save me and
give reason to my suffering!
He response: silence.
No divine intervention.
His hands we rough,
smell of smoke and taste of wine on his lips.
Told me I was special.
Like you, Joan, I was to be a vessel.
In me, he implanted his divinity.
I alone carry that burden,
knowing that, one day, it will be the death of me.
But Joan, you were the special one,
not I. God was always with you,
led you through all harm and danger
and into Heaven.
I was forsaken—a sacrificial lamb maybe.
My dream had always been of martyrdom.
Little did I know that I was destined
to play the role of victim.
Like you, Joan, I too was not spared.
But where was my God,
as I screamed and squirmed,
supplicating him to stop.
Maybe it was that he could not hear me?
Was his mind unhearing to the shrills
that one omits when skin stretches,
rips and bleeds?
Maybe it was that he did not care to?
I listened to the example of God
and learned to keep silent.
Did not speak out for the fear of being called
a heretic, a liar, insane, demented…
by those I loved.
Kept lips and eyelids shut.
I would not be burned at the stake like you, Joan,
but suffered the pains of betrayal all the same.
I was no martyr
but an outcast nonetheless.
I too now carry a cross, so
I call to you, Joan.
Tell me, how does one come to forgive
that which they fear and hate?
Be my staff and help me rise.
I have been bent over praying on knees
to a deaf God for far too long.
Your weapons were a banner, armor, an army, horse and sword.
My arms: penn, paper and this weary voice.
But I would trade mine for yours any day
if doing so came with the promise of victory
over past memories and
every man that prays on children.
I would wage a war,
its clamor so loud it wakes the dead
and God, who dreams on,
incognizant of his children calling.
Joan, will you be my saving knight,
the voice that does not abandon me at night,
in fire, burning coals or in the midst of mobs.
You don’t have to say anything just
yet. Only, give
me fruit that will not spoil and
grace that will not slip out from my hands.
