Welcome to "In Our Own Words," the Ezine from BBBooks. We publish and distribute books, list "Calls for Submissions," Contests, and Writing Classes here on our web site.

We are a grass roots organization, not a corporate entity, so we don't dance to the dollar sign. You can expect to find thought- provoking, creative, alternative writing, information and politics right here. We offer the "People Before Profits Poetry Prize" each year and offer all kinds of other stuff for writers, poets, students, educators, spiritual types, feminists, humanists, and activists. We're people who follow their conscience, but like to have fun too!

The writers in this edition of "In Our Own Words" range in age from their teens to their 80s.

Our editorial philosophy is simple: Writers respond to life; they chronicle our times and remind us what it is like to be human.
Extraordinary writing strikes a truth and reflects how events in our nutty world affect us. While vulgarity is often a part of our daily lives, vulgarity for the sake of shock value doesn't benefit anyone. We accept all styles and forms of poetry and prose. While the writing we've chosen reminds us that life isn't always pretty, we will always dream of it being extraordinary!

Kafka Time: Please Charge Me With A Crime
©2002 Amanda Majestie
This piece was written in response to the constitutionally-questionable rules to detain American citizens without charges in military detention on secret evidence if they have been named enemy combatants.

A.
We have evidence that you are planning to commit a crime.
We can not charge you with a crime because your crime has not yet been committed.
We can not reveal our evidence because it will jeopardize national security
You are an American citizen who has been labeled an enemy combatant.
Although you have not been charged with a crime, we have to stop you from committing it.
You can see now, don't you? that we must hold you in military detention...
Your rights are being overruled by our right to national security

B.
Who has collected the evidence and has it been acquired objectively and impartially?
Why should we trust anyone who failed to process info. that could have prevented 9/11?

A.
You will trust us because we say you will trust us.

B.
We know YOU are in process of committing many crimes.
We can charge you with these crimes, but your power prevents the public from knowing about them.
We write and publish our evidence, but no one is listening because they are afraid of you
While you are American citizens, we have labeled you "tyrants against humanity"
Although you have and are committing many crimes,
it may be hard to stop you from committing more of them while you are in office.
Your right to make war are not greater than our rights to a free society.

Center City
©2002 David Beard

There is a city within this city
where schizophrenics,
their hopes muffled by voices
are not made to feel like lepers
and the homeless have value.
A city the spoiled, self-indelgent
worshippers of fortune never visit,
keeping untainted their fresh white
collars and abundance of dreams.

Crises
©2002 David Beard

The radio spills
news of more
layoffs,
shouting rises
to the raftersk,
like a loose thread
my mother
begins to unravel,
"there is too little
money and soon
too little food,
promises are
wasted words."
Father says,
"the streets
beat you down
make you feel
like nothing."
At supper all
is quiet
we eat slum-
gullion,
a recipe born
of relief food.
Father lights up
a cigarette
walks out into
the yard
stares into the
orange sky
believes we could
not love him.

Reading Poetry in Bed
©2002 David Beard

You want a room where the moon makes
a long bridge and the sky explodes in
asterisks of lights above the window,
a room where routing is vague and
grief is a silent bell,
your lover reading by candle light
in a slow methodical voice,
bringing in the river,
cerulean and vast,
the greenwood crowded with birds
and meadow grass tangled with wild
flowers vermilion and rich yellow.
She is wearing nothing and is bringing
in all of China,
polite and brutal like the white poppy,
she is bringing in Africa,
the tigers in the trees ghostly and
weightless like smoke.
She is making love to you,
her words like the heel of a boot
tracking in falls luminous leaves
painted over in carmine and lemon,
bringing in the sweet smell of rain
and the quiet tender dark,
for your short gasps of pleasure,
for your silent brooding heart.

State Hospital
©2002 David Beard

Down this alley of cottonwoods
my life is waiting,
out past where the angels
guard the high gates,
where each night in closing
their hard wings drag the wind,
out where stars throb in their
still circle of deep blue air
mystic and weightless with delight.
But inside this fence the wind
gets tangles and the trees
draw long foreboding shadows
into the long dark.
Here you get pumped full of holdol,
to quiet the voices in your head,
and only a litany of promises
gets you released.
You must drift deep inside
yourself in search of insight
and a glimpse of your illness.
The ghost that haunts me
doesn't like me much,
but he uses the same path
my blood takes,
I put my arm into a jacket
and out comes his hand,
and where the delicate kiss
of my finger leaves its oily mark,
so does his.
His laughter has taken root in me,
what antibody can protect
me from his cells,
his face that looks like mine?

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation wants crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will..."
Frederick Douglass 1857

full quotation in context: http://www.publiceye.org/buildingequality/quotes/frederickdouglass.htm

 How You Can Be Published:

There are several ways. You can also send in poetry or short prose of your own to be considered for IN OUR OWN WORDS, THE EZINE FROM BBBOOKS. We also recommend looking at the Classifieds in Poets and Writers Magazine, visiting our Calls for Submission Page, or entering one of the contests like our "People Before Profits Poetry Prize". Only entires that include a SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) will be returned, so be sure to include this with your work. See our editorial philosphy above.