santa claus arrives in cleveland

First Mark Kuhar's poem, a Cleveland poet and  publisher of my book The Dawn Tree..  I wrote santa claus arrives in cleveland as a *dance* with his poem.  Both poems were published here, in deep cleveland....http://deepcleveland.com/poemoftheweek.html .  I don't often write Cleveland based poetry, but have several archived here... and several in 2007..
Here's Mark's poem:


steal this poem & eat it

they say the soup kitchens
& food pantries in cleveland,
are getting mighty crowded
their ranks swollen up like
a bad knee or bone bruise,
hundreds of victims of the
bush recession out on the
street and looking for salvation.
& donations are running low,
canned goods, lunch meat
& bags of potatoes going out
the door so fast they can't
keep the shelves stocked.
well it's true i cannot send
them money i ain't doing
so well myself these days,
but i can offer up some words
on a plate of love, & walk
away from it, maybe just
leave a note saying, feel
free to steal this poem, &
eat it. it's not much but
right now it's all i got.

~Mark Kuhar


santa claus arrives in cleveland


You’re right as rain Mark,
(and so was Abbe Hoffman)
now that
more and more
coffers are empty and
coffins are full of
dead soldiers and starving babies
Cleveland no longer
warrants a laugh at anyone’s
expense;

it’s going to take a whole lot
of right to undo all that is wrong:
all those “us’s”
who didn’t really
“give a shit”
or at least much more
than a perfunctory,
“who gives a shit”
check sent, of course, with
calculations of a “good”
tax-write-off, pre-2008,
now that everyone’s
a bit compromised
though big wheels keep
on rolling…

Santa Claus is coming to town
having
pulled in his belt a couple of notches,
he’s not as fat as he used to be.