Cannibals wearing necklaces of knucklebones,
facepaint, and nothing else
only kill as many people as they can eat.
They dance around the fire while tattooed women
their long hair strung with large amber beads
season the screaming meat with pineapples, mangoes,
papayas, onions, wild mushrooms and hot peppers.
After a battle they'll keep prisoners for future meals
but not too many-
bound men without guns are just an invitations to wolves
and wolves take cannibals' children.
They love their children and sharpen their teeth into points
and give them a pile of vertebra for building blocks.
Cannibals eat every day, that's a lot of people.
The cooking pot is always hungry.
But not as many as civilized war.
No bomb victims, wasted meat covered with flies.
No minefields, small pieces blown in all directions,
not enough left for hors d'oeuvres.
No missiles aimed at a map, can't eat a map.
And cannibals don't torture anyone for information;
they fatten captives up into food for thought.
Cannibals love their food and don't hate anyone.
Cannibals sing at the smell of dinner cooking,
drumming and licking their lips.
Listen to their happy music.

Yes, I've met the devil, most people have,
he gets around.
Not at the crossroads at midnight
and I didn't summon him with rituals.
I've got nothing to sell,
I can't call my soul my own
since I started writing.
But I've got a big dark leather chair
in the corner of my room
and last night there was a darker shadow in it.
He laced gloved fingers together
and looked over them at me as if I were a fireplace
for his dancing memories.
"I fell from loving God too much, not from pride,"
he whispered, like a schoolboy at his first confession.
"I can't share God, I never could.
I don't want his throne; I want him.
When heaven and earth and all of you are destroyed
he'll have no one left to love but me.
I can wait."
He was about to disappear then changed his mind.
"I can't expect you to understand," he shrugged.
"I'm called the Father of Lies and I lie to you
but never to myself.
No angel can, however fallen.
While you,
you lied to yourselves all the time.
What can you know about love?"






                                            JERUSALEM DURING A SUICIDE BOMBING



Jerusalem strolled thru an outdoor market
during a suicide bombing.
It rained fingers and oranges
and blood bright as summer cherries.
Strawberry ice cream cones blew straight up
and knocked birds off their course,
then fell back on a little boy's scabbed knee,
the rest of him was gone.
the wind of the blast
blew thru Jerusalem's prayers,
her hair roared back like a lion,
like 2 lions mating in mid-air.
Jerusalem's eyes half-closed,
her lips parted, gasping a little,
lost in the moment like any woman in a bed.
Ritual men with bags go thru the scene
collecting body parts
to be buried together like jigsaw puzzles
but Jerusalem is a puzzle whose pieces change shape
when the wind blows.
She smiles and yawns,
her hills breathing like breasts.
Jerusalem remembers when it rained frogs
and men fought
in chariots with swords
and died calling her name.
Feathers knocked off birds that don't care
wind up pressed between pages
of the Books of the Law.
Jerusalem's naked feet leave the scene of love,
nothing changes.






Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published 53 books of poetry, and won the American Book Award of The Before Columbus Foundation. She has three poetry CD collections: "Bubbles and Bones", "Eye of the Hand", and "The Book of Jerusalem". She received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award form the City of Berkeley. She won a Pushcart Prize for her poem "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS". She was one of four editors of the anthology "New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco-Poets from Hell."

To view and purchase Julia's work please visit: HERE. Julia does not own a computer, nor does she use one. She has never published online, however, some of her poetry has appeared online in articles and  has been referred to and posted by other writers. Take a peak at Julia's impressive catalog of publications available through Zeitgeist Press. There is no way I am able to provide proper representation and justice to Julia's work from the few poems I have chosen.

-Melissa Hansen

"Serial Killers", "Cannibal Music" ,"The Devil"  and "Jerusalem During A Suicide Bombing" have all been taken from "Cannibal Casserole: New & Selected Poems 1996-2006"  Zeitgeist Press, 2006.