Featured image: Resistance. Acrylic on canvas. 2008. By Travis London. “With the successful devastation of the Washougal River watershed through intense logging and mineral extraction, there was only one thing left to do: install hydroelectric dams. In the early 1920s, construction of a third dam began down river from the outlet of Cougar Creek. The night the dam had been completed it was blown up. Dynamite reduced the structure to rubble and once again the salmon, eels, and crayfish passed unhindered.”

To this day, the Washougal River remains free flowing and supports populations of chum, coho, and chinook salmon, steehead, and cutthroat trout.

Truth

By John McGrath, 2004

Who will be the keepers of the flame,

when shepherds shame their flock and mock

the truth with every new transgression?

Should we be surprised to find a fork in every tongue

of young and old, when those who lead us

feed us daily, lies of such a size

we barely blink at indiscretion any more

from rank deceivers rotten to the core.

Yet some would call them heroes, after all

they’ve said and done

with word and deed, the very need

to justify themselves long gone.

Who will be the guardians of the light?

When might is right and wrongs are sanctified,

when innocence is maimed and sacrificed

in Freedom’s name,

when none will take the blame,

when every lie is truth and truth is lie,

Who then will be the keepers of the flame,

save you and I?

No, we are not going to Mars

A poem about stupid ideas

By Monique Milne

Some philosophers say

You define a thing by the context it’s in.

So, what then … is a polar bear in a zoo?

Or a human on Mars?

Am I the sum of my parts? Something more? Something separate?

They say bacteria are us

Or we have bacteria.

A sterilised planet has no life

Has no bacteria

Bacteria are life.

What do you call a human on Mars, going to Mars, dreaming of Mars?

Is a machine alive?

When every machine and computer rusts

We’ll still be here!

If the Earth turned to rust

No more humans.

Can’t make humans from machines.

LA hipsters know all about machines.

Use them to ‘hack’ your body.

Watch out for cell towers

The illuminati hacking you

Our bodies are meat-suits

That our soul inhabits

Our beautiful natural bodies

Meat Suits!

What part of you is your soul?

What of us is and always will be our body?

Breathing, laughing, crying, blinking

Breathe.

Your feelings are the real you

What does the feeling?

No, your real physical body is immaterial

Better hack your meat suit

Be better looking

Live a lot longer

Your true identity … Martian

Such a spiritual experience.

What ever happened to seeing?

Rejecting our bodies

Rejecting our Earth

Put your meat suit

In a space suit

And fly to Mars

Where you belong.

But you are not an alien

You belong here

You deserve your body.

They

By Jeremiah Potter

They drug them

by their necks

away from the sacred

Fire

to the televisionThey murdered

the buffalo, deer

and bounty itself

to feed them Wonder Bread

and pork

They poisoned their

rivers, streams, lakes

and oceans

to force them to drink

swimming pool water and liquor

They beat them

with Bibles

and the cross

in fear of

the beauty of worshiping the earth

They stole all that

sustained them

to smudge out

their freedom

to tax them

on the land

that was loved and defended-

their land

that can never

be owned or divided

Sitting here by this smokey fire

under the winter dogwoods,

maples, birch and hemlocks,

in the vivid sun,

I divide myself.

As I always have.

Vowing to not be like

they-

colonist thieves, rapists and murderers

I vow not to

bury and squash

what has been,

and still is,

being done.

I vow,

to like them,

love the land and its

Inhabitants.

To turn my shoulder

to what they say

is right and wrong-

things so displaced

from actual honesty.

I vow to stand

against the utter

insanity of they-

in pure want of excess

and unchecked desecration.

Salmon

By Max Wilbert

Seen on a sign

at the Quileute reservation

“the salmon helped us for thousands of years

now it is time for us to help them”