Where is Martin Van Buren
now that America needs him?
(Glaring up from a creek
bed in Novato California)
A Martin Van Buren Frottage!
© 2024 by bob plainwilder
A Martin Van Buren Frottage, part one
//Category: New Arts & Letters from SF Bay Area & Beyond
//A Martin Van Buren Frottage, part II
//
(Where is Martin Van Buren, now that America needs him?)
When Martin Van Buren appears
we give a toot.
We are the only duly recognized
Martin Van Buren authority.
We’ve learned well from history
what would Van Buren wear?
what would Van Buren say?
what made V.B. presidential?
The Martin Van Buren look.
The Martin Van Buren way.
Martin Van Buren’s greatest hits —
A Martin Van Buren Frottage!
Martin Van Buren’s hairline
Evoked his life and time.
His bulbous nose and pointed chin
the world might never see again…
A Martin Van Buren Frottage!
© 2024 by b. plainwilder
Edward Hopper Appliquè
//
Film star Dennis this is not
Edward Hopper Appliquè
Sports a deep sea dive brush play
Pulsing light and shadow blodgets
over diners in Chop Suey
from that place and times yanked out
a marmelade Kablooey
Gruffly puffing cigarettes
Tapping mystic slats
characters on dingy platform
sporting porkpie hats
Trumpeting the sketchiest of
sketchy urban scenes
Nighthawks blasts into some cloud
a storybook of Dreams
Carving clever sculptures
the snappiest of ways
a twisty track through Nyack
the Cape Ann shore line sways
A glow in Hopper’s windswept spray
plasticene daubs remind
Coast the mind blowingly vast
azure sea of Time
© 2024 by Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder
–Hear b. plainwilder read this poem
More Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder poems:
–Thuh San Francisco Beat (this one’s dedicated to all the visionary painters out there)
–A Spiritual Muckrake (dedicated tor artists interested in free speech and making social progress thru art)
Grosz Gonzo Grosz
//
This wild mongoose of an artist
Snapping in the social fray
turning lights on everything
a prophet of his day
A thoughtful and extremely rare
artist Visionaire
his particular winning shine
showed its detail for all time
A civilization in Decline
the Nazi rise it would unfold
in his paintings big and bold
Grosz unequaled social critic
Prescient foretold
Casting poignant imagery
Cultural degeneration
bureaucrats misguided
drippy grifters waving fists
Authoritarian Decadence
Grosz would be confronting this
Dramatizing evil snipes
who’d wipe the goodness from our midst
Courageous artists like George Grosz
today are sorely missed
© 2024 by Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder
Thuh San Francisco Beat
//Not sure how this Happens
something in my brain
on a windswept corner
Pounding silver rain
Tete a tete with la dee dah
a storybook Gypsy Rose Lee
riffing Surreality
getting off with me
Steering an unlikely Craft
across a windswept sea
showing up in nameless joint
Promulgating mystery
Backlit by some har dee har
Inkity dink rocket car
pulling off a wild frown
i spacewalk down the bully vard
a character who’s carving footprints in the Margin’s Edge
Flippantly i postulate in some far out bar
Ricocheting otherworldly
sparks from my guitar
Weisenheimer stains on shoit
Getting down with righteous doit
Blowing open vintage
wobbly paths to creativity
My message for eternity
Boiling down a white hot seat
Tony rice a roni
Thuh San Francisco Beat
© 2025 by Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder
bob plainwilder music:
– IMPACT!
More Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder poems:
–edward hopper appliquè (this one’s dedicated to all the visionary painters out there)
–i grew up a muckrake (dedicated to artists interested in free speech and making social progress thru art)
Ode to Soho Zat
//At Soho Zat
fair minded Stan sold my Bad Newz
fanzine from a spinner rack
5 or more he’d move each month
Stan turned stuff around
Stan would actually pay
an EZ going operator
Out there in his way
Pre social media
Zat supported edgy culture
Stan dealt books & zines
not a single cell phone then
messed up peoples minds
This place extraordinary
nicely packed in Soho Zat
Klumps of arcane history
r crumb & Robert Williams
Coleman / Eric Stanton too
It’s fun to recollect
the Vintage Fauxbrow Kulture Klatch
That was Soho Zat
© 2025 by Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder
More Rob Sienna / b. plainwilder poems:
–Edward Hopper Appliquè (this one’s dedicated to all the visionary painters out there)
–A Spiritual Muckrake (dedicated to artists interested in free speech and making social progress thru art)
Welcome – The San Francisco Review
//
uniquely dandy radio
//for Ken Freedman
tuning into old skool style
dial catching FMU
broadcasting essential spew
WFMU
uniquely quirky radio
a pillar of community
home to surreal flights uh fancy
FMU’s the best
celebrating east and west
ingeniously inventive
tuneage that inspires
fires all new takes on life
wiring up communities
FMU unmatched
espousing cool inventive ways
WFMU
© 2023 by bob z plainwilder
Music and Poetry Audio
//The following tracks are performances by author Robert Lane Wilder with music by Anthony Sepulveda.
To check out free audio clips from this author, click here
Da Defiant Ones
//Sidney P. & Tony C. playing
Da Defiant Ones!
a tres significant filmic comment
1950 Jim Crow south:
one man black, one man white
a desperate bedraggled pair
In a tawdry deep south chain gang
racing off one day
brutal lawmen closing in
aiming to blow out their brains…
Sidney P. & Tony C. playing
Da Defiant Ones!
Insane existential threats & terror
dis film did address much that’s still not done…
sadly social problems
keep so many on the run!
Hats off to its shiny points
Hollywood’s inventive drum,
dis shtory told a poignant way…
Sidney P. & Tony C. playing
Da Defiant Ones!
© 2023 by bob plainwilder