David S. Pointer's Ice Age

Mr. Pointer’s chapbook Ice Age is book three in the Pocket Protector Series of Alternating Current’s Press. If you didn’t catch details last week, all royalties go to the author and each of these Pocket Protector Series chapbooks cost a mere $3.00. Check out Alternating Current’s site for more detail.

Ice Age is a collection of poems that are political in nature and happen to coincide nicely with the novel I’m reading at the moment, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The poems Mr. Pointer produces mention the complications of living on the border of Mexico and also uses sarcasm against our governmental system. I enjoyed the collection quite thoroughly and highly recommend it to you. As always, I will share several of my favorite poems with you:

Commerce As Chameleon

The telegraph wires of
wisdom have been cut

The bully of economics of
bygone eras have returned

The system has been up on blocks
Ice blocks melting money fumes

As the economic hit men play
truth of Ghengis Khansequences

while Senator Larry Craig gets his
for a little goo cannon collegiality

and at my temp job the biometric
employee hand scanner radiates

us into real early wage slavery and
the pallets of waiting e-waste.

The anger is evident in the use of words such as “bully of economics” and “Ghengis Khansequences” which makes this poem sound more emotionally raw, I think. I also like the reference to “e-waste” in our era of internet where we can waste quite a bit of our time while ignoring real world issues. I enjoyed this poem because its angry political without sounding too “preachy” or being so lengthy the reader would lose interest.

The Find

At a yard sale,
I see a scuffed
schoolmaster’s
desk made possibly
from birch and
birdeye maple,
and know with
a monumental
makeover this
could become a
poet maudit’s
perfect work
station with
a secret wall
or compartment
to the elevated
writing world
working the
literary corridors
of late stage
economics with
an old Bull’s-
eye lamp for
building up
valued verse
blowing the
small press
reader away
with the crisp
literary pop
of a fine
dueling pistol.

This poem romanticizes the writer which I’m always fond of, but instead of being too sappy about writing poetry it romanticizes the desk in which a writer may sit. Even though it sounds dreamy in the beginning it ends with an unexpected closing of a dueling pistol, violent compared to the beginning lines, which I also love as a technique to startle the reader.

Cardboard Sign Cowboy

A wage slave’s
hands were dirty –
some said it was
just the cagefungus
of capitalism under
his fingernails, and
there weren’t any
Shepherd’s bread
crumbs in the
sidewalk cracks, so
he got a cardboard
sign, and stood
under the Bannister
Mall bridge bringing
in three decades of
house payments
in a year’s and a half
becoming a titled
homeowner hurting
the homeless picking
up most of the post
payment tab as an
angered public
withheld offerings
to others, and our
newest neighbor
orders a gypsy
onion omelet in
olive oil over easy
as asking for help.

This poem brings different imagery than what I’ve ever seen to bring to light the prejudice against the homeless. Lines such as “cagefungus/of capitalism” and “Shepherd’s bread/crumbs in the/sidewalk cracks” are fresh compared to the rants we usually hear on the news or in office conversation. The neighbor at the end is clueless about the whole dilemma and asks for a meal that most homeless people could never expect to eat bringing around the clash of the man who siphons funds off the public to pay his mortgage while others starve and are ignored by the public angry at this discovery. It’s a very good poem of contrast and comparison and I always admire poets who can squeeze so much into relatively few words and lines.

There are many great poems in the collection and if you enjoy the poems shown here then please click on the Alternating Press Link to find out more. Also, each purchase comes with a free random chapbook from Alternating Press’ archives! So you get more for your money and all royalties go to the author which deserves support so that all poets can get paid for their hard work.

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…