Thoughts on the Execution of Troy Davis

At first, no thoughts.

Just the numb. The blood moving slow, like sad slush.

An innocent man. Same day as a guilty man.

What was the message?

To poor whites: Don’t drag them behind pick-up trucks.

Let US do it by lethal injection. Legitimized.

By the courts. The Governors. The parole boards.

The INjustice Thomas, black mask of white supremacy.

The message: only WE have a monopoly on the means of violence.

On arbitrary. On taking what is most precious. Irreplacable. Irreversible.

This is the meaning of power.

But it’s not. It’s the meaning of madness.

Power would be the ability to bring him back.

I think of his last words.

To the family: I am sorry for your loss.

I did not take your son, your father, your brother.

Dig deeper into this case to find out the Truth.

To the prison staff: To you who are going to take my life,

May God have mercy on your souls.

May God bless your souls.

I think, in 2011 they would frame brown Jesus.

They would bribe witnesses, poor saps

Looking to reduce their own sentences.

Looking for some small favor from the State.

They would wear their crosses and honk their horns and

Yell out the windows, kill him!

By lethal injection.

By electric chair.

Whatever.

He is not one of us.

Indeed.

I think, heaven help us all.

This morning I am Troy Davis.

I

AM

Troy

Davis.

Heaven help us.

We are ALL Troy Davis now.

mary oishi

22 september 2011

Upcoming Performances

Wednesday, April 6, 2011, 7-10 pm MT
Hosting The Blues Show
Interview with Rory Block, Swamp Daddy & Hoodoo Jeff LIVE in the studio, Interview with John Lee Hooker, Jr. (pending)...Lots of great music!
KUNM-FM 89.9 Albuquerque/Santa Fe
www.kunm.org - Live streaming & 2-week archive under "Listen"

Saturday, April 16, 2011, 3 pm
Reading/Booksigning
Bookworks
Flying Star Plaza
Rio Grande Blvd., Albuquerque, NM

Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 12 noon
Reading/Booksigning
UNM Bookstore
Campus of the University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM

Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 7-10 pm MT
Hosting The Blues Show
Featuring Willie Dixon, Poet Laureate of the Blues - A National Poetry Month Special
He wrote over 500 songs. We play him performing his songs, and other great blues artists interpreting his songs.
KUNM-FM 89.9 Albuquerque/Santa Fe
www.kunm.org - Live streaming & 2-week archive under "Listen"

San Francisco rain has 181 x federal limit for radioactive iodine

I read this morning that the water in the San Francisco Bay area has 181 x (that's 18,100%) the federal limit for radioactive iodine. Had to write this poem:


hiroshima is coming home
how could we think she never would?
she rides high winds across our borders
stealthed by our leaders' lies, our reporters' silence
she's coming down in gentle violence
a million soothing drops of poisoned rain
she's rolling down our streams
landing on our fields in rainbowed spray
staking her place in our babies' bottles
hiding out in our thyroids, our breasts,
our prostate glands, our DNA, our california tomatoes
hiroshima is coming home, my darlings--
there is no less than hell to pay


mary oishi
3 april 2011

Interview on Santa Fe Radio Cafe

On Monday, March 28, 2011, this interview aired on KSFR-FM in Santa Fe, in advance of my reading/book signing at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe.

http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=1097

This is all I can muster...

black swan suddenly

sails in on a tsunami

the whole world trembles




mary oishi
19 march 2011

Mary Oishi ABQ Poets Against War

when i asked how my mother could give me away

dad always told me:
she loved you that night i drove through
a goddamn pennsylvania snowstorm
to get you to the hospital
that time you had pneumonia
XXXX your mother holding you
XXXX crying, crying the whole way
i plowed that ole '53 buick
straight through snowdrifts
fast as i could go

i don't know what to tell you, girl.
she loved you that day
that much i know


mary oishi
16 january 2011

post-election haiku

i like tea parties
i just don't like revolvers
near my fine china




mary oishi