A Bleeding Screen of Need

Where we once used words

we now send a swarm of electrons

buzzing across hyperreality, wood bees

aerial dogfighting in futile clumps

to simply say me me me

and mark an ever widening aura

of territory in the saturated

air; static grows thick

locked in mortal combat

for the numbers, the handshakes,

the fleeting flow of friends

across a bleeding screen of need,

careful not to fall off the flat edge

into the pit of the unknown—

a nobody who cannot conjure electrons

to save their life—a life is not a life

unless digitized and tossed upon

the flipping tides of lore

The Pieces Fail to Fit

Waiting for the kitchen to clean itself,

I pick up my old rubber band ball

and stretch a loop or two, massing

it into the bowling ball size range—

it takes a lot of loops to grow an inch,

but it’s just a matter of adding it all up;

another dozen bands makes another layer,

but the clock won’t stop,

and the kitchen won’t clean,

and this life won’t live itself,

or perhaps it will, but one day at a time

won’t satisfy a man who needs to shore up

some vague shelter against his end time,

pieces fallen outside the box and fit together

balanced by no real logic,

and the monument I make thus

is all the monument I’ve got

Salamander Tides

Leaky boats bob

with every tide;

any wave that rises

fills the shell.

Bailing, whether you

like it or not,

becomes the only

way to float

Logs pull together

as a raft, so dead trees

rise again, this time

to move free of land,

roots abandoned,

cast off like a rind,

like leaves,

like memories

of a time before

these floods

A salamander sheds his tail

to escape the dog,

slapping its muzzle

like a lick of shameful fire

smoking to conceal its flight

A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. He has published nineteen books, all available through the usual online markets, including And the Trillions (poetry) and The Toothpick Fairy (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.com.

Forever Hustling Bob Marley

I was standing outside a trailer in Ft. Worth, waiting to get paid at the end of a two-day Bob Marley Festival. May 11 is the anniversary of Marley’s death, a good time, I’d learned, to hustle a gig. I’d talked the director into paying me as an M.C. to do a memorial presentation about Bob, and provide samples and music throughout the festival.

Standing there at dusk in Trinity Park along with musicians from regional bands, I was in a disillusioned mood. This festival had degenerated into excuse to sell products. The throng mostly shopped in a sea of booths. The Bob Marley hustle keeps getting stranger. There was one red-headed singer, a gal in tight pants and with a dubious voice, who went into a monologue about Bob, which ended with her shrill declaration: “Bob Marley died for your sins!”

My time finally came and I was ushered into the trailer. Two 30-ish African American women with processed hair were in charge of paying performers. From their looks, their manner, and the R&B on their radio, I guessed they knew little about Bob. Our conversation, in which I described my work about Bob as a “real revolutionary,” quickly confirmed this impression.

The talk turned to money – the real reason we were all there. One woman insinuated that I wasn’t going to get paid. “Didn’t you read the fine print of your contract?”

“No,” I confessed, although in truth I only had an oral agreement.

She told me the contract said I would have to, in essence, sing for my supper.

“Show me what you got,” she said.

I was determined not to take these women seriously, and they were determined to make me grovel. This went back and forth, as I tried to figure out exactly what they wanted, and whether or not I was willing to give it to them. At first, they made it sound like they wanted a strip tease. Or a demonstration of my bedroom techniques. They seemed to be in no hurry, so I finally stood up and demonstrated a “slow wine” to these women. They squealed in delight or amusement, and quickly forked over the money.

I remembered this incident later while living in Jamaica, when Bob’s birthplace was being invaded by Robert Roskind. In 2001 Roskind published a book, Rasta Heart: A Journey Into One Love. After Roskind fell for Marley’s music, he envisioned the Rastas as saviors of humanity. Roskind’s naiveté was comic in the scene where he takes a jambox onto a Negril Beach, puts on Legend, and begins testifying to Jamaicans about the gospel of “One Love.”

I began seeing Roskind’s name all over Jamaica. Penning a letter or editorial for the Gleaner, in full reverse-missionary mode. Putting on concerts all over the island. Sure enough, Roskind found co-sponsors for this missionary work in the Marley family, and the Jamaican government, who together put on a 60^th earthday tribute to Bob in New Kingston (February 6, 2005), which I attended. It had been hard for me to take seriously Roskind’s reports about his various missions, like carrying One Love to the Havasupi Indians in Arizona’s Grand Canyon. But Roskind’s interests clearly intersected with those of the Marley family, and the Jamaican Tourist Board.

We’ll be forever milking Bob, I reflected. I suppose I was as guilty as the rest. I’d written a book with a chapter about Bob Marley, and although it paid me little, it did put me into contact with Marley fans from all over the world. I rationalized what I was doing with the knowledge that at least I was actually bringing pieces of Bob’s voice to public events, sides of Bob that have never been aired in public before. But I was doing the Bob Marley hustle, all the same.

And the Bob Marley hustle continues….in 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that companies including Wal-Mart and Target could not sell items with Marley’s image, without obtaining permission from the reggae star’s children.

But here in Puerto Rico, where I live now, small vendors everywhere sell merchandize with Bob Marley’s face and name. No court of law will ever be able to stem that tide.

---

Gregory Stephens teaches creative writing to STEM students in Puerto Rico. He was born in Ada, Oklahoma, and during the 1980s was an award-winning songwriter in Austin, Texas.

a family history  i’m trying to play it cool with the medical procedure i have tomorrow morning  i’m trying to not think about what they could find when they look at my stomach  that a family history of cancer and god knows what else is nothing to be concerned with  that i’ll simply be a little groggy when my sister drives me home listening to some music, thinking about how much i hate thanksgiving god has all the answers  i laugh when they tell me god has all the answers for me  so, i suppose i was supposed to learn a lesson from my cousin molesting me   or my father never telling me he loved me before he died  trust me i can take a fucking hint  he ignores me and i show him the amount of respect he has earned just not the one i have had more than one woman tell me i am a great guy, just not the one  and on these nights alone  where the world makes it feel like the one for me never existed in the first place  the mind starts to wander back to my youth and the first time i tasted my own blood  where i started to question my will to live and accept the pain  how many times can a person talk themselves out of death  how many times can a man listen to himself cry before enough is enough  it’s one thing to realize being unloved it’s another to stomach knowing that’s never going to change already burned too much  fell in love with a mystic  she was already burned too much by this world  one of these days i hope to find bliss dripping from her lips  and an eagerness for just one special night before either one of us finds the sweet relief of death shopping on my porch  a little over three weeks from christmas  wondering if anyone has the guts to go shopping on my porch this year

Just Being At Peace

Spring,
Suddenly I smelled a watermelon from the sea.
Maybe I miss my childhood-nostalgia when everything was just pleasant and happy.

Summer,
If two people live life together,
there is much more happiness than loneliness because when two people are together, in everything

There’s a feeling of being one, not two.

Throw away haughtiness,
Throw away greed,
and hatefulness, and resentment, and the memories which sometimes makes me sad.
To live happy and beautiful, I ‘m going to have to throw them all away.

I want to be a woman who always misses someone whom I love.
I want to live a beautiful life with someone I love, become the only precious treasure to each other.

Autumm,
Autumm prepares for New Birth.
Leaves are ripening in Autumm sunlight.
I also am ripening, we all are ripening.
I learn to love more, how to be one for two or everyone,
also I’ll keep learning through life .
My body is getting older,
but I don’t want my heart which can love someone who loves me, to grow old.

A couple days ago,
The sun which I had seen covered by clouds,
It looked exactly like a diamond.
How breathtaking was that!!
I was lucky to see that moment.
I feel like that marvelous and  amazing moment has shown me a hint that my wishes will come ture.

And Winter,
Now I feel grateful, everything is precious.
I’ve had a hard and painful time by myself
It was for a long time.

A winter sun to the heart hugs me today too.
The sunshine is so warm ……………………….

  
Marble Icebergs 	 
  	          	                                             
Words engraved on monuments 	      
resound 	 	
from the mouths 
 	of our chosen leaders. 

But these words, 			    
when laden 			          
with deceit—crater, 		          
and our trust descends 		      
   	along with them. 		       
	  		     	        	       
Monuments are more                            
than mere marble       	        
gleaming—buffed by the sun;          
their spirit can be fragile as glaciers   	          
the warmer the earth becomes.           
  						             
When facades of Statecraft	     		    
undermine hope,		         	         	
monuments’ foundations erode;     
statues become like icebergs    			 
that lose their grip			     	
and float away in the fog.		     		

        			
 						    
                                
 

Camp of Dreams

Dreams at dawn fade like voices in the woods
from a gathering of hunters at the end of their trail.
 
There, they huddle in the mist
to trade one last tale of stalking game—
stitching vapor into legends as full of stuffing
as animal heads mounted in a dusty den.
 
Then, as the coals of their fire hiss
and the nest of ashes dies,
the hunters recede into a glen
past the bog of the mind,
just before one’s eyes
open wide.     
 
                                                                                                
                                                                                    
Rural Auction
 
 
The caw and cadence of the auctioneer          
cuts through the din as dust swirls ‘round
farm wives, daughters, cousins, friends.          
Jawbone to ear, they nudge and whisper.  
Their strong arms stretch                             
as they pick through and gauge                             
the hodgepodge of housewares on display:                     
pots and dishes and the many evening hours            
gathered in boxes of hand crochet.
 
Ringed behind them, young farmers listen
as fathers swap gossip, weather and news.      
Their clay-red faces are outcrops of rock                  
jutting under ball caps, atop denim and plaid.   
Afternoon long, they mill and mingle,                         
their ears keenly tuned to the auctioneer’s call.               
They see, but never watch, the objects they want:       
that newly-painted tractor, a tiller, a plow,                
that old sleigh and harness—just for kicks,               
or maybe those bibs lined with woolen fleece.  
 
About the yard, children frolic.       
They weave their families into cloth made whole, 
except for the one kid who sits by the road,     
draws in the dirt and counts the autos
that brake for a look and drive on.                        
 
Under the oaks, the old folks totter
in wooden rockers not yet sold.           
Their faces relax and offload worries.
Humming soothes them, as watches lie  
stopped on their bed stands at home.               
 
Cattle graze in summer pastures.                     
The corn grows fatter as the harvest waits.     
Toil is tempered with patience and tactics     
to outwit markets and partner with nature.     
 
 



These Confounded Desires
 
I felt at ease with my desires undeclared—
I didn’t want their objects all the same.  
 
But they kept lining up like autos
in used car lots,
lies on their meters                                 
and paint layered over                            
their hungry scabs of rust.                               

With so little difference between them,
it took years to see them all.                                  
 
                                                                                  
 

My home on the web is www.johnmiddlebrookpoet.com, and here, you can find the details of my publication history. I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I manage a consulting firm focused on non-profit organizations. I have been writing poetry since I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where I also served on the poetry staff of Chicago Review.