Welcome to Our

25th Year of Publication

 Issue 299 | Volume 25

 

November 2024

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Animatia

The Art of David Wiley

Aux Barricades!

(for Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

 

What have they told you today?

That a new crop of shortages

is about to be harvested?

That your aunt-in-law will have

to fill out a form 747?

That TV termites

will eat your shoes?

That you should send

NO MONEY immediately?

That the dead fish in California

can easily be replaced

with live ones from Hudson's Bay?

That they are working on

a big project?

That they are transplanting

the timberlands of Siberia

to the Pacific Northwest?

That they are sending

America's reinforced concrete

to Angola and Zambia?

That soon our streets

will be filled with elephants?

That the holes in the ozone

layer can be patched

with seal skins?

That they are working on a cure for greed?

That they have allocated 99% of the budget

to the eradication of stupidity?

That the sands are shifting somewhere else?

That the newspaper and its accomplices

are about to be terminated?

That five years from now

poets will be writing the headlines? 

That whales are beaching themselves

because they want to live in downtown LA?

That halitosis means cancer of the breath?

Aux Barricades!

 

What will they tell you tomorrow?

That they have invented a

kissing telephone?

That the plains of Kansas

were put on Earth

to digest poisons?

That the tuba was invented

by Hannibal?

That we should make plans

to run trains on the highways?

That we should have more children

because they are

the only hope?

That the capitalist pie is not

a pudding filled with ants?

That the poor will have

new opportunities?

That there will be more jobs

in the breakfast food factories?

That cucumber waxers will be

in great demand?

That the legacy of the gun

is all explained in the movies?

That baseball is a

black Sabbath in disguise?

That somewhere in the

bowels of the post office

there is a conspiracy?

That 680 new languages have

been discovered?

That from now on all senators

will hitchhike?

That you don't have a price

on your head?

That ambition is still a virtue?

That all your records were

destroyed in a fire?

That you have nothing to worry about?

That everyone is okay?

That there are no monsters

inhabiting the landscape?

That Walt Whitman was an anarchist?

That there's a last time

for everything?

That the Bank of East Alibaba

owns Brazil?

That driving a car is a privilege

as well as a right?

That ground beef is the food of the gods?

That soon you can do everything

without moving an inch?

That free hammocks will be given

to everyone?

That Prometheus was eaten by a sparrow?

Aux barricades! mes amis

Aux barricades!

 

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Art and Writing Selection
Lissa Tyler Renaud

David Wiley painter-poet: graduate of U. Kansas; studied at Mexico City College and with artist Ignacio Belen in Barcelona. Widely traveled, he exhibits throughout California and abroad. Wiley has published two volumes of poetry: Designs for a Utopian Zoo (1992) and The Face of Creation (1996). Since 2005, Wiley has received large mural commissions in Arizona, Mexico and California. Wiley is a longtime contributor to Scene4: paintings, poems, meditations on art, creative non-fiction.
To inquire about his paintings, click here.
For more of his paintings, poetry and writings, check the Archives.

©2024 David Wiley
©2024 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

 

 

November 2024

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