Poetry from Mahbub

Blows On Me For Stealing Some Money

Once I stole some money from my father’s pocket

It was long since I had done that

At one point my father came to know the matter

He caught me seriously to be a thief

I became nervous but I denied

When I denied he became more furious and dangerous to me

Suddenly at the time of speaking with him

He started to beat me

Again I told him I didn’t

But he couldn’t believe me

And nothing could make him believe

His blows on me over body and head

Took me to the world of death

He beat with sandals and sticks

With what he got beside him

At one time I was going to die

Suddenly I confessed I took the money

He stopped beating and with his burning eye

He warned me if I would do such kind of work

In the next time he would teach me more

That I’ll never forget

How can I forget the torment, my father, you rained on me?

It was not because I took the money for any serious purpose

Only to buy any toys according to my choice

But my father took it to be otherwise

And taught me a lesson to be remembered from time to time

In life.

 

 The World To Me

 

This is the world

The world to me strictly as it is

Where we are played as a ball

Dance on the legs

Kicked to the goal posts

Directly enters into

Sometimes it is caught by the goal keepers

Sometimes the kick is missing

We are all played by the players of the world

Everybody wants to supersede on others

We perform our duty as subservient wearing the mask over

Trodden on and suppression

suffocating as well as severe humiliation

By our upper ranks and positions

It’s an uneven area

Where we fall down to walk

It’s not dark but more than dark condition

I’d not like to stay here any longer

I am a ball, not to be played

I’d  like to shift  the place

and want to live

Where love and beauty play

With the objects of nature.

Continue reading

Poetry from Michael Robinson

Saturday Love Making 
Are you kissing me?
Did I say no?
I meant to say no!
What was I thinking?
Why did I believe I could make love to you?
I’m captured by the memories of my rape.
Yes, I did say it was in my childhood.
I screamed, but no one heard it but me.
No, I cannot be with you tonight.
I will hear my own cries again.
It will shatter my own eardrums,
I will be deaf again.
I will crawl in the corner and die alone with the shouts.

Saturday Night 2004

Slowly the camera follows me across the room,

Each movement that I make is watched.

If only I could have avoided those moments of insanity,

Those moments when it was the darkest in my life.

The nurses wear those white uniforms and smile,

Only if their smiles were real then I could smile back.

One Kiss  2004

She kisses his forehead and holds his cold hands,

Tears fall down his caramel colored cheek.

Essay from Donal Mahoney

Caseworker, 1962
 
In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had a degree or two in social work and was qualified to work with the poor. A caseworker usually had a degree but not in social work. And a caseworker usually had too many clients to have time to do social work even if he or she had a social work degree and knew how to apply it. 
 
To be hired by Cook County Department of Public Aid as a caseworker in 1962, all one had to have was a degree in anything and the ability to pass a test. I passed the test and was assigned as a novice caseworker to Cabrini-Green, perhaps the “toughest” housing project in Chicago at that time. I was assigned to two high-rise buildings with 458 families. I remember their addresses as clearly today as the address of my childhood home. Some things one always remembers.

Continue reading

Cheese from Yeast: essay from Cristina Deptula

When I was growing up, a common dairy advertising jingle on the radio went, ‘Cows in Berkeley? Moooo.’

There may not be many cows around the Oakland and Berkeley area, yet there are several people involved with creating cheese at North Oakland’s Counter Culture Labs.

According to the Water Footprint Network, a global group of researchers and professionals dedicated to analyzing the world’s water use, a pound of cheese requires 381 gallons of water to produce.

Even after the Bay Area’s rainy winter, many people recognize that our state is prone to droughts. So molecular biologist Craig Rouskey and others are developing cheeses less reliant on heavy water use.

Continue reading

Short story from Mike Zone

Sam Against Time

By Mike Zone

Samuel K. Drexel stood in the hallway, facing down two doors on the second floor of the locally esteemed and moderately priced Cauliflower Hotel. Neurons bouncing around his brain like a wild pinball, trying to determine which room his wife had entered with Coach McMurphy.

Asymmetrical beads of sweat decorated half his boyish face of cut sharp fine features almost like a lady but not quite, having an Adam’s apple and all, he pondered that as he bit into his feminine lower lip but the moisture soaking into his light brown lanky hair snapped him out of it, forcing back into his calculations, factoring variable to no avail determining whether the couple had entered behind Red Door #206 or 208.

Christ, McMurphy! Coach Nicholson McMurphy. How typical, the high school football coach, former semi-pro football player turned philosophy teacher who didn’t know a thing about philosophy; stealing the math teacher’s wife. The kids would be posting this all over FaceBook, tweeting memes or whatever they instagramed; as their parents fondly reflected on the teen McMurphy and Drexel years, in which the same thing happened at least twice a year with Samuel Drexel winding up drenched in toilet water, missing his belt and one shoe but brandishing two black eyes to make up for the lack of accessories.

Continue reading

Poetry from Dave Douglas

Designed to Love You

 

I was designed to love you, but —

Betrayal arrived with my first breath;

I committed treason on a cosmic scale

And for that I must be put to death.

 

I was designed to love you —

Molded clay from which I stand,

But I destroyed your masterpiece —

From Paradise to a wasteland.

 

I was designed to love you,

So I worked to gain your favor,

Then I carved gold into a calf

And glorified in all my labor.

 

I was designed to love you,

But I left you like a prostitute,

And wallowed with the swine

Until I was stubbornly destitute.

 

I was designed to love you

But I spat slander in your face,

Pounded the nails into your hands

And disregarded your embrace.

 

I was designed to love you, and —

Although you drew me to your waters

And I followed you out of the boat,

I denied you over, and over, and over …

 

A mystery from the beginning:

I was blind to your eternal view,

But because you loved me first

I am redesigned to love you!