Michael Grover is a founding member of OW.  He has contributed three poems to the Agit Prop 101 series.  You can find more of his work at his site, www.covertpoetics.com.

Here is the first Agit Prop 101 poem:

Maybe if they gave me

Some psychotropic drug

To calm my rage

It would help me sleep at night.

Traumatized,

Chained like an animal

By three white cops

Me just a little black girl.

Am I ready to be an example

For police state torture around the corner?

Am I ready to he an example

To draw racial divides?

No, l am just a little girl.

I should have been playing.

Mama was working to pay the bills.

She could not protect me.

Now they will go to court

To decide if this treatment was acceptable.

Will they forget I am still just a little girl?

How will I look authority in the eye again?

Michael Grover is the fella behind www.covertpoetics.com. 

The second poem for Agit Prop 101 kind of explains why we need an Agit Prop 101. The third poem, about living in Florida, is subtle, and ends with a very nice kick.

Poem Written Upon Reading An Academic Review

I was reading an academic review today.

It spoke of how Jazz is not a valid form of Poetry.

How Kaufman failed at everything that's why he was a vagrant.

Including the art of Poetry.

I began to react then caught myself.

This man surely is entitled to his opinion.

It is his opinion.

I would like to tell him my opinion.

A story about how finding Jazz and Kaufman changed my life.

As I chased the ghost of Bukowski

Through the cold hard streets of Hollywood.

He would just call me a vagrant

That writes shitty Poetry.

I searched for this man's Poems.

Knew what I would find

Had to see it with my own eyes.

I found a Poem by his wife.

A Poem about a fox running in snow,

A Poem that was workshoped to death.

Until there was no life left,

That life that comes with giving birth.

I could sit here and say

No wonder people find Poetry so boring.

We know nothing of foxes.

Foxes they don't make it into the urban jungles we call home.

I have come to the conclusion

These people live on a different planet.

Cannot hear the Mingus I hear right now.

Could not live this way hand to mouth.

My old friend the academic Poet,

He tries to convince me we're not that different.

Academics struggle like all Poets do.

True, he is a bouncer in a bar.

Tells me when they become professors

It is only a job.

I wonder if he would agree with this academic review.

If he would shoot down my hero,

If he would shit in my temple.  

Saint Lucie Canal

-1-

Calm Saint Lucie canal

Lazily flows by

Hot, humid, stagnant

Florida morning.

Birds skim the surface

Large crane passes by.

Loon sticks head up

Swims back under

Canal's murky surface.

Slick, black, oily feathers show.

Fish are jumping.

Life does not stop

At this lazy canal.

It makes me think

Even if we were all covered in water.

Life would go on

In spite of us.

-2-

Pelican flies over.

Rising higher to the sky

As it flies.

Flying over the trees.

I am stuck here on the shore.

Eating pistachios,

Waiting for that perfect scene.

So I can capture it like a camera.

So I can paint it with worlds,

Adjectives as colors.

Trees on the other side,

Far away from civilization.

-3-

Fish are jumping

From dark, murky water.

Flashes of silver

Streaking through the air.

-4-

I took my shoes off.

Root myself with earth.

Meditated in nature

On a bed of pine needles and dirt.

Only sound the wind

Whipping through the pine trees,

Sound of things falling from them.

I felt the energy of the water passing.

Rooted to the earth.

This is how

We were meant to be.

My ass in dirt and pine needles,

Fish jump from the canal plop.

I dread to return

To a land of concrete and asphalt

Keeping Earths energy from us.

Root myself to the Earth,

Become one with the nature surrounding me.

This is how we were meant to live.

This is not a city Poem,

Full of synthetic energy.

This shit is pure.

-5-

I can see the houses

From where I stand in these woods.

Societies sprawl

Closing in on us.

I hear the leaf blowers,

Mechanical hum.

-6-

Bells ring,

Water rushes through locks.

Nature and water

Controlled by mechanism.

-7-

Birds feed in bird feeder.

Flowers sway in the wind.

Flag hanging

Like it was limp and sad. 

Last update : 24-04-2007 20:14

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