The Siege

A Poem by Aaron Howell

Luscious cauchemar ostentatious comme suite,
The lotus et lost sheep,
And a coup de traître ravishing contentment (contention)
Into an eye-sore, then extinct.

Et Amoré? Love = Adore: adoré …
Jé rêve of she,
With those enombrable eyes
Diluted in LA beauté du diable,
Et lips as rouge as a rose!

Hors d’haleine with the sol se tourner
Et se retourner above the
Virgin day.

Caractéristique of Sunday …
A beautiful day à la cherche,
A belle morn in the sun
As a ladybug flaps its wings …
Landing gently on the rep lips
Pursed lovely with desire,
A kiss.

Aaron Howell is a student at Santa Monica College

A Poem by Matt Gillam

You drowned me down to a spinning haze,
a cloud that hurricaned
with little fizzles of flashes in blue,
a single vicious notion that the number
of two was one number too many
and must be destroyed.

Skin soaked in with twisted grins,
a head of wine
and fingers panged
with a hunger for a new secret fold
of flesh and fluids and solid bone.

And your tongue,
it talked to tame the ends
of nerves that twitched in freckled sparks,
electric silk that wove in me
a soft handed song
with a muscled arm
that I could not help but bite
my teeth into.

A Poem by Matt Gillam

I carry a velvet violin
in the case
where you left it
padlocked
by my
eardrums

You meant to throw it out,
to leave it shattered
in the trash
when your fingers had finally
betrayed you,
too

But I kept it safe
from you
(in me)

and play it
the way you used to play

No one but me
can hear the sounds you made,
the sounds that only I now make
in recollections
and forced memories

- but I play the damned thing
anyway
as I walk along the streets
and wait in lines
and end my days

A Poem by Matt Gillam

he gave me a riddle
I couldn’t solve
a koan a puzzle of pretence
of desire and intent

he touched my arm in the dark drunk bar he
le let me lead him to my house he
let me look as his back was turned he
let me touch his head but not my bed he
licked his words to confuse my verbs
he winked

and he refused

the rubix cube
only a simple square of squares
the trigonometry
only a string of numbers and signs
the labyrinth
only a simple path to the end

A Poem by Matt Gillam

Behind dark sunglasses
and behind my eyes
I watch

the bodies move
across concrete
and above the sands
that feed the waves

The bodies move
and I, sitting,
watch them pass
through dark eyes
and opened eyes

I am still
and they see me
in a glance

They move
(and I watch)
the bodies
behind my eyes

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.

NEWS: On Thursday last at 11:15 am, there was a “spoken word” event at the Santa Monica College Clocktower, sponsored by the SMC Associated Students, ICC and the campus club A.L.A.S.(Association of Latino American Students). Billed as “Celebrating Spoken Word Through Unity and Diversity” and featuring paid performers “Tiwatunali,” plus unpaid performances by SMC students, the event was a mix of poetry and words of “revolution.” But the real drama featured the repressive and intimidating misconduct of SMC officers Malone, Hearn, and Champagne.

(click to watch)

The video above is just a two and a half minute snippet of footage taken by this author of the three officers. Watch, in particular, how Officer Malone reacts to SMC student Gaily Ezer, 19, as she shares a particular passage (Article 19) from the pocket edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) on December 10, 1948) she had with her.

During the first half of the video, the audio of the exchange between the officers and Ezer is overwhelmed by the public address system amplifying the words of Tiwatunali. But during the second half, you can hear Malone bully and threaten Ezer with arrest, coupled with his unwillingness to respond to her pleas for clarification of his words.

Formal complaints are being filed with the Santa Monica College police department, the Los Angeles District Attorney, and the California Attorney General based on words and actions taken by the aforementioned officers this day.

Furthermore, well-known civil rights and police misconduct expert, attorney Steve Yagman, is being sought for representation.

A Poem by Matt Gillam

and so I knelt on sand
and let fall upon my skin
the sea

in waves and sheets
of salty silk
it rained from the hooves
of the black bison
migrating mindless
over
the beach

and so
I knelt in the face
of the western storm
and let beat the heat
from my cheeks,
the rain

and yet I settled still,
I knelt on sand
with no words to say

I made still my skull
so that I could see out
to the edge
of the earth where

the winds kicked up the ocean
–the winds like raging sirens

cast their spells
to summon the salt
to rise the sea into the sky

and so I
knelt in silence
in stillness
in
the sphere
I knelt

I let the water roll
down from me
I let the sea return
to the sea

and I saw
in the stillness
of the skull

I saw the sea fall
back
to the sea

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.

A Poem by Matt Gillam

I am Venus today
in the still of an icy morning,
when the sky was painted
a placid
baby blue

and the earth had yet to rise
and meet the sun face
to face

She was bright
and close
and utterly dead

Yet this morning
she was
alive
with the fires of the sun

caught across our own
anonymous sphere
to burn a small light
inside my skull,
in the empty space

of a synapse

she burned

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.