Colores Primarios: Rojo
a 1945 bottle of Romanée-Conti, a
telephone booth in london, a rouge
sunflower, a covered bridge in green
river, vt, a basket of juicy ripe tomatoes,
a branch of cherries bearing down as
ornaments, apples bearing all shades
thereof, autumn barberries, tori’s hair
after clairol torrid torch crimson &
clinique’s sebastian potion no.9 has
been applied, color of the sky at
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Pledge No Longer
after watching films like "The Killing Fields, "
"Apocalypse Now, " "Full Metal Jacket" &
beginning to think long and hard about what
his country had really been doing in Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos,
this high school senior refuses in early morning
home room
to stand up & say
The Pledge of Allegiance
to the flag hanging from the corner of the wall,
where all his classmates, holding their hands over their hearts
mutter along the words that they have repeated
day in & day out,
since they can remember-
his homeroom teacher takes him aside when the rest sit down &
he is told that he needs to say the pledge just like the rest of the kids,
but he sits there staring up at the teacher with
fierce eyes that the teacher sees other classmates already being inspired by at that very moment,
and he utters simply,
"i'm not pledging any longer."
poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Smile Copper, Smile
for the coppers
harassing folks in the streets
smile copper,
smile-
for the coppers throwing us against the car
with arms round our backs &
face pressed into the metal with one hand gripping
the back of the neck
savagely
(like you had all the power in the world) ,
we
gotcha
on
camera
now
copper,
so smile, copper, smile-
Android's NYCLU app. makes it so
easy, to find you not doin' the job
our tax dollars pay you to,
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Sympathy For The Visitors
though i've no sympathy for the 'devil'
(as there exists no such thing) ,
i got to feel that one must have
sympathy for the visitors-
if any self-respecting alien
felt the need to stop their space cruiser
on the way to some interesting place,
here,
on this intergalactic equivalent of a
foul smelling
highway
rest stop-
whose graffiti laden vending machine
sitting out front,
doesn't even hold cans of the
outdated soda pictures &
whose bathroom filled with ex-pop stars
jerking off to pictures of little boys,
meth heads insufflating their life away,
prostitutes sucking off old men or
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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A Bitter Baton
the glimmer of all possible change
found in the eyes of youth
the rage & wonder
the romance & foundation of all peaceful & loving possibility
wash over you when you encounter it,
because it's just something that you remember
being so valuable
when you yourself knew it
so very long ago,
but the wrinkles replace the wonder &
anger takes over the romance,
as each passing day brings less possibility-
there is most certainly a vitality that may not leave
but it has encountered so much loss &
gained so very much pain that a numbness lurks
just behind the eyes
that have forgotten how to tear up,
so when encountering this young person
who has a world to change &
a whole lot of energy to change it
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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The Squeezing Of The Stone
dad waited 8 years
to tell him that
cancer had infiltrated his body-
dad waited 8 years to tell him that
he had done anything about it-
dad had to stop working &
when he put money in the market
under close supervision of someone
whom he thought would help him out,
the whole fucking thing
collapsed,
like the house of playing cards that it was,
leaving only the kings & queens as always
to walk off scot-free
at a brisk pace
holding bags of money &
plane tickets-
dad's money gone &
inability to work as he once did,
he began to watch all that he owned
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Suffocation
most would say that a suffocating feeling
would be produced by being squashed in a small place
for a long time &
thus the metaphor would make sense
when speaking of the city
where so many people live side beside &
on top of one another,
without a moment of silence to your day,
without a breath of the privacy
which comes when you move out to the burbs or the
countryside-
but a suffocation is bred by space as well,
when the city mouse makes their way out of the concrete jungle for
whatever reason &
when the sounds go away &
the plethora of conveniences that come with a metropolitan area
drift away,
all in an exchange for
distance from everything & everyone,
where privacy is what reigns so heavy
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Big Boy Romney
watching the politician's dick get
bigger as he
proclaims that
he's got more money than
mr. hope & change,
WOW-who would have thought
that a business tycoon who came to
our eyes,
based on the fact that he had a lot of money,
now,
STILL has a lot of money,
in fact, he says he has more money than
mr. hope & change, which in this
bewildered empire
means a lot-
because people here worship money,
they see the man who has a lot as being
superior,
as being somehow
impenetrable to bullets,
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Exhausting The Exhausted Exhaustives
4 adults in a room
discussing something or other
they've just met or they've known each other for years
either way they have nothing to talk about
one is a lawyer
one is a doctor
one is an analyst
one is a stockbroker
babbling away about the food
talking about their kids as if they were the ingredients on the side of a
cereal box
the need to keep money in order to
'stay afloat'
masks the fact that they were born into it &
the accumulation of things
keeps them together
because the hassle of divorce
just doesn't seem very plausible
given their schedules-
none of them have slept with any of them for years &
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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Sandusky
our culture of revenge has
struck another blow,
locking up Sandusky &
throwing away the key,
knowing full well that in
prison,
this guy might last a year
before he is stabbed a few
dozen times by a group of
guys pissed off because
they probably knew someone
growing up who'd been
molested, or worse, they had
been themselves &
when he is killed in prison,
people will scream an even
louder hoorah! than they are now,
as he gets taken away in the cuffs,
sentenced to a minimum of 60
years in prison, with some
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poem by Andrew Delapruch
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