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WHEN THE WORLD IS LARGEST


 
It is the winter of 1595 and the winter
of 2017 and everything is dead or dying
and lights are on the trees and houses,
even in a town where only white
lights are hung.
 
But it is the summer, at its height, when
the world is largest, when flowers are in
full bloom, when the sun is hottest, when
people shed their clothes, when women
in their bathing suits remind you
of the fullness, the pleasure, the hope of life.
 
And at the bottom of it all is the center,
that place where all men sit, even kings and princes,
the place where love happens and the earth
is the paradise it has always been.
 
 
Rich Quatrone Dec 5 2017

HOW TO DEAL WITH UNGRATEFUL PR


 
First, since we don't really consider Puerto Rico a part
of the United States, view it as a foreign nation.
 
Second, since the inhabitants of this foreign
nation don't really speak English anyway and since
their skin is fairly brown, see it as an enemy nation.
 
Third, mobilize the army, navy, marines, and air
force for combat.
 
Fourth, declare war on Puerto Rico.
 
Five, instead bullets and bombs, load up our planes
with bundles of food and medicine to be dropped
all over the enemy.
 
Six, send in thousands of troops who carry food
and medicine, instead of munitions, and have these
supplies distributed.
 
Seven, send in tractors and trucks and cranes and
anything else needed to immediately rebuild roads,
bridges, schools, hospitals, and senior citizens centers.
 
Eight, "kill" this new enemy with love and kindness,
which will be much cheaper than literally killing them
and destroying their homeland.
 
Nine, residual benefits include American troops coming
home with smiles and healthy hearts and souls.
 
Ten, makes sure the world media witnesses our attack
on this defenseless island so they see what America
can do when a foreign nation has starving and homeless
people.
 
That'll teach'm not to mess with Uncle Sam.
 
 
Rich Quatrone
Oct 18 2017

​LAUGHING AND CUMMING TO MONA WALES


I write my remarks after watching the scene.
To all the prudes out there, to all those who don't think
they're prudes, you simply don't know what art is, the value of art,
the truth of art, the reflection of art, the meaning of poetry, of literature,
of being fully human and fully alive.
The pure joy of it!
The happiness!
The danger of it in a world that would have us march like wooden soldiers
in love, in relationships, in marriages. 
Marriage, yes, but marriage of all that is, of all that exists in us, the good,
the bad, the profound.
The end of world hatred.
Of world anger.
Of world domination.
Of starvation in every form.
Heaven on Earth is what we want and what we all should have
and could have if we only opened our eyes and hearts
and released our hungry souls.
​

Rich Quatrone
Dec 29 16




BLACK ON BLACK

Was on Facebook earlier and commented on black
on black crime, which was the topic of this morning.
Now my email account is inundated with black folks commenting
and discussing the issue. I delete five or six and immediately
five or six more comments appear in my email.
This is a big issue.
Black people are discussing like crazy.
My remark is that white men kill white men all the time,
with my implication that racists use black on black crime
as fuel for their racism.
A man replied what does white on white crime have to
do with black people?
And he's right. Black folks have to solve this problem
of violence among themselves by themselves for themselves.
As a well meaning white man, I can talk all day about the history
and influences that create such violence.
But this won't help or mean much at all.
We all know the racist roots of America and the ongoing
racism here.
Malcolm X knew and preached that the black man had
to take care of himself. He had to create his own businesses,
his own community organizations, even his own religion.
These truths remain true today.
A white man like me can only support from the
outside.


Rich Quatrone
New Year's Eve day 2016


MOM YOU WERE SO BEAUTIFUL




Mom, how could you be so beautiful?
How I miss you now more than ever.
I weep now, alone here, in my apartment
here in Spring Lake.
How you would have loved it here!
You, above all people, more than anyone,
would have seen, appreciated, loved the
beauty and art and passion of my little home.
The thing is, Mom, I'm about to lose it.
And I cry as I write it to you.
It's all here, Mom.
You.
And Dad.
And Bob.
All the early days in Jersey City.
The difficulties.
The struggles.
The passion and passions.
The intense, unbearable love.
All here.
I was forged back then, Mom.
By you and Dad.
By your impossible marriage.
The marriage that you and Dad never
ended.
It's all here.
Holding onto things of the past.
The hope and beauty and tragedies of the
past.
And the present.
All here.
The present, so utterly alive.
Intensely alive.
A bastion against the outside chaos.
The outside ignorance.
The outside hatred, and stupidity, and emptiness.
Because it is not empty in here, Mom.
It is full!!
Full of life.
A circus of grand proportions.
A Church!
God is most certainly here, Mom.
And I am here.
Where I am alone, days, afternoons, nights.
As if people don't know I'm here anymore.
Where I commune with the dead.
Where my ancestors circle me.
All of them.
My grandmas and my grandpas.
The ones I knew and didn't know.
Your own brothers and your sister.
Dad's brothers and sisters.
Bayonne!!
Jersey City!
Lyndhurst!
Even Clifton is here.
All of it.
How lovely it all is.
And you, Mom, smiling on it all
from a little photo booth picture taken
in Keansburg when you were just 23 years old.
What dreams are in your eyes.
Italy and Naples and Africa in your eyes.
Spain and the Moors in your eyes.
America in your eyes.
America, smiling on me as it once did.
I will honor you, Mom.
And honor Dad.
I do not forget
and never will.
 
Love,
Richie
 
 
Rich Quatrone Sept 20 2017



NIXON'S TREACHERY

Just read a piece in today's NYTimes.
Johnson wanted to begin peace talks
to end the war in Vietnam in 1968.
Nixon undermined these efforts
behind the scenes, through Republican
allies, and through direct communication
with the South Vietnamese government.
At this point in the war, the Times reports,
America had lost 30,000 soldiers,
28 thousand less than we eventually
lost when we finally pulled out in 1973.
Of course, there's no mention of the 
3, 000, 000 Vietnamese killed in the
war, or mention of how many of those
lives would have been saved had Johnson
prevailed.
Why write a poem about this?  Poems
should be pretty things in language read
by those at Harvard, Yale, or even poor
cousin Rutgers. 
Poems should not be written directly to
the people.
Just as Johnson had no business trying
to avoid so much unnecessary death.


Rich Quatrone, New Year's Day, 2017

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015


  Fourteen years since that terrible day,
the day that changed everything,
the day that West said "niggerized" America,
the day Baraka said "now America can
take Everything," the day my son
called from his high school to
say the first plane hit and then
the second, the day Thuy-Duong
called and asked what to do and
I said go to your husband immediately,
to which she replied that I was her
husband, which I was not, the day
the buildings came straight down
into themselves defying the
laws of physics, the day a Hispanic
janitor heard internal explosions
and when he tried to report it to
the media was entirely silenced,
the day America became a fascist state,
a fact the Blacks have known for
400 years, the day we became frightened,
gullible children, begging our stern
father to tell us a fairy tale,
the day before Bush permitted
the entire Bin Laden family and
their associates to take off
from Boston's Logan airport
to leave the country while
all the skies were closed to
the rest of us, the day
just one month after the
American delegation walked out
of the Durban conference on world
poverty, the day two jets flown by
Arabs somehow penetrated American
security, somehow were not scrambled
by our fighter jets, which was routine
protocol, the day Americans stopped asking
sensible, courageous questions, questions
which if asked publically would lable
the sensible ones traitors, suspicious,
unpatriotic, anti America, would cause
them to be ostracized, to lose jobs,
friends, family, the day that began
these fourteen years of increased
international violence, increased violence
on American streets, the day a deep,
pervasive mental illness and despair
and fear grabbed America by the throat
and shook it silly, the day pathology
became the unspoken national anthem,
and now, 14 years later we are that much
further removed from the truth,
from our minds, from our hearts,
from love.
 
 
Rich Quatrone
September 11, 2015 
A review of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEROI JONES
by Amiri Baraka
 
A Guide To Manhood
 
What's great and important about this book is that, yes, it is about one very special man's, a great, fierce poet's journey to manhood, but it is also one version of, if read closely, the journey every black man, even black woman, must take in America to become whole. It can almost be read as a guide in this regard, the peeling back of the huge, violent, false weight of white supremacist America from the backs, minds, souls of American blacks, or African Americans, or simply Africans who find themselves in a foreign, strange, unloving America for 400 years. Although Baraka would finally say, no, we are not merely Africans (just as I, the reviewer, am not merely Italian), but we are African Americans, as painful as this terrible fact has become the truth.

This book should be required reading in every high school and college in America if we really want to have one powerful look at what ails this country, why we continue to be so utterly violent, what the repressions, suppressions, lies we tell ourselves about who we continue to be.

Rich Quatrone
Nov 4th, 2015

“I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.”

“I ain’t draft dodging. I ain’t burning no flag. I ain’t running to Canada. I’m sta...ying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain’t going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I’ll die right here, right now, fightin’ you, if I want to die."

"You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won’t even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won’t even stand up for my right here at home.“

~ Muhammad Ali ~