Street Spirit May 2006

Award-Winning Poems from the Berkeley Free Box Poetry Contest

Free Box

by Richard Moore, a.k.a. Paradise Freejahlove

Free, like the library and a fruit tree. Free, like a little socialism to breech the chasms and schisms of capitalism's effects on community. Come unity, in a Free Box. The benefits outweigh the predicaments, in a Free Box. Power to the people property, like poetry stocks, free as the air you breathe and the water you see. The sea is a Free Box of fish -- try taking it away from the Fishing Industry. Freedom is not a luxury. You got a problem with the Free Box you got a problem with democracy. I'm speaking publicly for the Free Box, a Free Society, Free Speech and Free Radio as opposed to slavery. All these bureaucracies and hypocrazies chipping away at my statue of liberties. My abilities are being hocked and mocked, cuz you got issues with a Free Box.

How many times have we heard this message before: because some people abuse the system, let's just drop it -- not care anymore? Life is like a Free Box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get or who's gonna get it. If people want to open up dey closets and dey wallets to help the needy, who are you to block it -- unless you' workin' for the greedy? You outta pocket. Make compassion the fashion instead of fascism -- you need to drop it... instead of bombs and rockets... like a puppet, pontificating like you the Pope, but what about the dope when they dock it? You'd rather sock it to the little man and the children and you call this a master plan? Stan, you need to understand before you try to over stand, take a stand other than hate-tan on a freeman and putting locks on a Free Box.

Fools runnin' round with glocs and you' worried about a Free Box? You need to be socked fa trying to keep babies from shoes and socks, just because it don't mean nuffin to yo' folks in the Hollywoods and the Hollyblocks. Poor and working people flock to the Free Box that you dread and lock against the dreds with locks who can't afford a bed or bread without bread. Freddie's dead cuz he didn't have a cap to keep Jack Frost off his head. And you sc'ed cuz you got too much time on your clocks. So you worried about a Free Box.

Protect the Free Box it represents democracy. It's the poor man's Statue of Liberty. America is the Free Box. Nobody said philanthropy was easy, it's just another one of those freedoms... that ain't free. But it's worthy!

Berkeley's Free Box

by Joan Clair

"...there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience...."

"...the principal object is, not that [humankind] may be well and honestly clad, but unquestionably, that the corporation may be enriched." -- Henry David Thoreau

If I were a monk, I'd have one or two robes.
If I lived in a rainforest, I'd have no change of clothes.
If I were a monkey, I'd wear my own back.
If I were a rabbit, I'd feel no lack.

But I'm a consumer, I have lots of clothes,
more than I need in my bulging wardrobe. 

Praise the freebox in Berkeley which reduces the bore
of wasting one's life in a clothing store.
If I give to the freebox I become free
of overconsumption's oppression of me. 

Oh Freebox!

by Maris Arnold

Oh freebox!
Your very existence threatens the foundations of society
That's why you're gone, for now
The day they took you away
Was another day of another crime against humanity
Oh freebox! How very irritating you are to
Deluded deans, confused chancellors
All of them, grand pooh bahs of destructive decisions to
Preserve higher education, they say
Higher, as in salaries and perks
Given to endlessly recycled fat cat administrators
Higher, as in the cost of a free public education
But they're not higher or even high
They've pledged allegiance to the unfree box
The one they want us all in
But, we aren't going in
Let a thousand free boxes bloom!

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