by Hilton Obenzinger

Holy Garlic

Gilroy Garlic Festival
July 29, 2019

Holy Garlic
Bloody Garlic
Stinking Rose now stinks of Death
Gun madness makes its way to Gilroy
Make a prayer for the garlic on our bread
No thoughts, no prayers
Remember the dead
And fight for the living

Sacred Garlic
Murdered Garlic
Garlic doesn’t kill people
People kill people — with guns, mainly
Brooklyn mass shooting same day
The shootings happen so often
Like the president’s racist outbursts
Ordinary murder, ordinary hate?

Laughing Garlic
Crying Garlic
Scream out our hope for Garlic
Free of murder, free of hate
Wear Garlic around our necks
To ward off the vampires in DC
Wear Garlic to keep the shooters away
Wear Garlic to fight for the living

Holy Garlic
Bloody Garlic
Sacred Garlic
Murdered Garlic
Laughing Garlic
Crying Garlic

by Hilton Obenzinger
     from Chronicles

Houston, We Have a Problem

Hurricane Harvey
Sept. 2, 2017

Houston, we have a problem.
Houston, are you there? Houston, do you have a problem?
If you have a problem, what the hell are we supposed to do?
Houston, you’re the one to guide us, and now you have sunk.
Earth to Houston, are you there?
Come in, please.
Earth to Houston — please stay alive.
Houston, it’s 106 degrees in San Francisco, unheard of
Never been that hot, ever.
Houston, the fires surround us, the smoke closes in
And you are swept away in a storm
Houston, you are sprawled across the Gulf
Like a patient etherized on a table
We laugh for you, but we know the ordeal continues
We laugh with floods and fires and earthquakes,
With gases and flows
Maybe Houston knows
Houston, will you guide us to another planet?
Houston, we have a problem.

by John J. Trause

On the (L)Edge

     I liked looking at other people in crucial situations. If there
     was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a
     laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I
     never forgot it.
                        Sylvia Plath [Victoria Lucas], The Bell Jar
                        (1963, 1967, 1971)

Behold the Eighth Wonder of the World and
the Most Beautiful Suicide, Fallen Body,
iconized in death and in Life and Life and
screen print, whirling around her May Day
maypole atop the Empire State Building or
nestled on her funeral bier, a crushed limousine,
with gloves and pearls intact, in fact, arrayed
in chic fashion, fashionable and modern,
legs crossed at ankles, made up and perfect,
serene in her slumber, a little Eve tempted to the
edge and ledge, a hedge against survival, a rival
icon for the icon of iconic architecture      

Ben–Day
Day–Glo
Pre–Pop
Pop

a hop, a skip, and a jump, a drop,
the most beautiful slump of slumber.

And west in the Westbeth
at rest in the tub,
other photographs shot,
never arranged on a contact she
CLICK  CLICK  CLICK

by John J. Trause

Teaching funk music and
dancing to white people,
pumping her neck while
moving her body,
Adrian Piper,
artist, philosopher,
exile and teacher,
now bops down the streets
of Berlin in her exile.

“What is she like?,”
asks a museum visitor.
“She’s just like that,”
claims the museum docent,
pointing up towards a
video monitor:
Adrian Piper,
dancing and grooving,
now bops down the streets
of Berlin in her exile.