PSH: Poets of the Week

Bio (auto)

Jan Oskar Hansen is a poet from Portugal.

A Way

I saw a narrow side road unused now but
scars from cartwheels are still visible. On
both sides' walls have partly fallen down,
no longer protecting or guarding anything,
obvious except, perhaps, memories; yet
the walls, with yellows spring flowers on
looked graceful as the easterly softly blew.

I followed the road, half an hour or so, till
it ended on a field of cardinal poppies and
Spanish bluebells. The road, pointless but
lucidly romantic, tells of a time gone by,
but whether it was a good or hard time it
stays quiet, leaves it up to me to make
sense of the past and remember it gently.

Sunday Dinner

It was on an impulse I went to visit
my brothers' a fine Sunday noon,
No answer, but the door was open
I walked in food on the table, still
warm. Mary Celeste, I thought and
served myself.

Their garden looked enchanting
bushes full of red berries, I turned
on the water sprinklers and left;
heard a scream, thought it came
from their neighbour's garden and
took no notice.

Corrida de Touros em Portugal

The bull, led into the arena knows no fear, its
rage is against the man and horse it sees as one.
Elegantly the Pegasus evades the bull's horn,
the beast snorts, has no sense, bleeds dark blood
from wounds inflicted on the neck by its taunting
nemesis' banderilhas. The bull, blood on muzzle
takes a break, Pegasus takes a bow, what a great
show. A group of men, dressed as cowherds of
yore, jumps into the arena, the unwilling beast is
provoked into attacking them, but weakened by
blood loss it is soon subdued, and much praise is
heaped on the bold group. Cows are brought in
to the ring, the bull meekly follows them out, later
it is butchered, its meat given to the poor its ears,
I presume, is nailed on the wall of the cowshed.

Mel C. Thompson
melcthompson@yahoo.com

Bio (auto)

In 1989 Mel C. Thompson moved to San Francisco and formed Cyborg Productions, a well-known underground press in the Bay Area in the early 1990s. His own work has been published in many mainstream and small press magazines such as the Bay Area Guardian, The Chiron Review, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Lynx Eye. Thompson’s civil rights work for free speech and his legal work for California workers resulted in worldwide publicity in such outlets as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, NPR Radio, Canadian Public Broadcasting and KRON Television. He was later a radio personality and musical performer on KMEL and appeared on several other radio stations. In recent years his essays have been published in the East Bay Express, Salon.Com and the Tokyo Progressive, and his poetry has recently appeared in The Texas Poetry Calendar Anthology and The Poets From Hell Anthology of Bay Area Poets.

Visit Mel on the web here: www.melcthompson.com

Love Song For Santa Monica Boulevard

I started out on the Avenue of The Stars,
Myself an utter cypher among cold towers.
I was a dead man, a zombie, a commuter.

Feeling like a soiled post-apocalyptic angel,
I stumbled into a Starbucks sarcophagus
That housed millionaires and burnouts

In a kind of final resting place for the living.
Some pondered tens of millions of dollars
While others fussed over crumpled trash.

The holy light of the God of our Fathers,
Who still serves at the delicate leisure
Of the God of our Mothers, shone morose

Beams of pure Buddha-body-light over
Us due to the Divine mercy clause which
Is still applied randomly over millennia.

The busses roared past Wilshire where
Towers are drenched in fiscal pornography
And sex is a measurement of horsepower.

At Beverly we all made prayerful appeals
To be reborn as hard, profitable playboys.
Hypocrisy, once nauseating, now resonated

With a sort of upbeat sensuality. Idealism?
Why? No one could remember. It was
Another mythology a future Joseph Campbell

Will explain in academic pan-cultural detail.
I stopped in an internet cafe near Melrose
And texted Bubba Free John who replied

By channeling pure white noise into my cortex.
My worship is blind, cultish, smarmy, pathetic.
People kept offering me free caffeine. I was

Blazing in the manic throes of quasi-prophecy.
The final truth must emerge in pink hot pants
And must involve an annunciation to Barbie.

I'm divorcing my archetype to marry this
Stereotype. This is a new Lamborghini.
This is a new Maserati. Credibility is so

Straightforward. At Doheny my resume
Began to look a bit thin. It seemed like
Casting agents wouldn't take me seriously.

The technology exists to screen me out.
At Robertson and at La Cienega it became
Clear I was headed toward a black hole.

Around Fairfax the situation deteriorated.
True caring seemed impossible. A prostitute
Persuaded me. We fornicated to Wagner.

It was degrading, but we both came hard.
La Brea depressed me in a soothing way.
At Highland I accepted a higher power.

Monks of all religions were chanting
The Twelve Steps as we turned toward
Hollywood Boulevard. Sunset evaporated

Into a gamma-ray-infrared anxiety attack.
My love is a golden, shiny rot of smiles.
How hot and filly, my tender Hollywood.