Newsroom Novena -- Dada Poem in Maintenant 3

Furry friends, a flamingo forest and a frosty treat
Begging for dough, zapping depression and musical condoms
Chained to the radiator? For our own good, dear reader!
Coveted, French and now in the super malls in your town
Find a life filled to the brim with still more to add
Dice-K on the gyroball, Dow averaged and more and more…
Goofball ‘Office’ salesman living a city dream, not me!
But a date with destiny on the 7th of July (oh, it’s just a date)
Hitting the road for some hot-man-on-bike action, you bet.
Meanwhile, Wallace and Gromit spearhead citizens’ project
And felons are allowed to work at school for the deaf and blind.

The setting is a gay bathhouse in the mid-1970s, you knew.
Is that an actress wearing her uterus on the sleeve? Is that you?

It’s a novena spending time with sound bytes inside heads.

(Originally published in Maintenant 3 Dada poetry journal from Three Rooms Press. Image from the Internet)

Two Dada poems in Maintenant 3 (Three Rooms Press)

Got final word today from Kathi Georges of Three Rooms Press (http://www.threeroomspress.blogspot.com/), NY. I had submitted three poems for their new edition of Dada poetry magazine called "Maintenant 3". Out of those, "Newsroom Novena" and "When Kali Speaks for Us" have been taken for publication. Maintenant 3 will be released on March 20 in NYC at Cornelia Cafe. Friend and poet Joy Leftow will be reading/performing her work there. Don't miss it if you are there!

Kathi is one energetic poet, performer and organizer and Three Rooms Press is well known as a "publisher of poetry and plays. Producer of unique happenings in New York, L.A., S.F., Las Vegas, Paris, Lublin, Kythera, Marseille, and Cape May."

What made me write poetry that's categorized as "Dada"? Or are my poems really Dada? I've been reading about Dada movement ever since my school days (and that's a long time ago, believe me). Whether the term caters to abstractism or antiart, Dadaism has a wide scope. It lives on in its overtures to a postmodernist trend in art and writing. What I've been writing can be called Dada for a large part, in its approach to our postmodern world and in its critique aimed at art that is ordered, structured and is a subversion. Didn't well known Dadaist Hugo Ball say: "For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in"?

And in this time of worldwide economic distress, ever widening inequality, specter of wars (unbelievable!), Dadaism can be heard loud and clear.

Oh, one little anecdote. How did that word "Dada" come about, I've heard being asked. I'd urge you to see Wikipedia (2.1 Origin of the word Dada).

Meanwhile, I must say I love Tristan Tzara, the very name that embodies Dada today.

And, thanks a ton to Kathi for bringing out this journal and keeping the Dada tradition alive. Check out her site for happenings in March.