Two Centuries and 50 years ago
People of diverse circumstance
braved vast Ocean’s chaotic mystery,
chanced unknowable dangers,
to gain release from those
who would chain their destinies;
to escape
a world enmeshed in hierarchic
lines defined by brutal histories,
power maddened monarchies;
became awakened to take a stand,
demand freedom to create their own
ennobled lives.

A people with hard won wisdom to believe,
the righteous course for humanity,
to honor each as sacred selves
while interacting loyal family,
requires solid resolve
expressed loudly, plainly, repeatedly,
proudly:
No Kings!
No power obsessed sovereign
cruelly to destroy hopes and will
No self-entitled right to rob, rape, kill,
enslave, incarcerate, instill divisive hate,
chill any possibility of rebellion
once let in to over rule.

The time is Now to rise together,
do whatever we each can do
to further, to improve our never ending
fight, to keep long-cherished
liberty
“No Kings!”

4/19/25

Rape, angry savagery
these have been weapons of war
since war began
since we began
Send out young men with everything
to prove
in a world where masculinity
means obdurate strength to crush all
labeled enemy, no mercy, no soft sensibilities.

Mere politics can’t abolish such brutality.
Leaders, chosen or proclaimed, are caught up
in their social norms. Only cultural shift
will move human behavior to a place of greater sanity,
those better lives we visualize to labor toward.

Hate, meant as protection against pain of betrayal,
is too potent, too important an emotion
to harbor wholesale.
Hate ought be intimate, one to one,
based on true harm.

Behold, each and every of us blessed
with vital roles,
to discover, invent, conjure, devise
suitable strategies to become,
each and all of us, imbued with
kindness, compassion, the enlightened
self-interest of win/win/win.
This humane grace we may attain,
as any future mankind might plan, promote,
carry through,
that each and every me and you
has a hand in, our literal skin in,
shareholders all.

The price of war is abhorrent.
Will you choose to be wise,
go forward with your precious lives
waging peace?

Final Dissolution

I get it.
You don’t want the responsibility
of democracy
You would rather get back at those you hate
A society of revenge
Violence in the streets
Mini civil wars everywhere
So much more exciting
We can blow ourselves up
Avoid the ultimate devastation
of climate destruction

not so easy to be green

I want to be green,
but I’m blue.
(What might that mean to any you?)
I want to be Life nurturing,
a force for healing of this bitter world.
I want to grow organically, infuse
beautiful truths throughout our
human dreams.
What I want to be — not who
I get to be. Entangled beyond
my ability to cut through,
and be true to my higher desires,
relentlessly blue.

post-reality

There is no control
Because we are post-reality
Where nothing can possibly matter
So, we may as well relax,
Let go

*

There is told an iconic story
of a brutal raging war,
massive manmade tragedy,
suddenly suspended as soldiers
laid down arms to join in song.
Magic! Enchanted season
where we imagine Peace.

Today, oh Today, my people,
take our pain, our pride, our
preventable wars and tribulations,
take back our place, our Earth,
our wilds and fellow life. Open
eyes, hearts, minds, to kind
regard, respect for every self
who wanders, wonders, hopes
to find righteous happiness,
fields of joy and love.

Gather our higher sights in
Magic! Conjure with the ultimate
joy of shared commitment.
Imagine unending season
manifest as Earth replete in Peace.

Beneath Us
(Mass Kapital)

Why consider the poor,
noxious maggots infecting
our city streets;
ugly, depressing.
Let them rot, or, better
use as targets for our sport
and ire.
Let them starve, for our
entertainment, or,
better, strike out violently
against their own, competition
for whatever they scrape
together.
A few may amuse, be
risen as pets — thus we exhibit
benevolence.
Or fate may provide
conditions to allow bombardment.
Irradicate, that we reclaim to
invest in those places they
infest.

Perhaps we are in the hallway
of a great reckoning.

Mad Earth grumbles loudly,
threatens to rescind Her bounty.
Men of ill will, men of destiny,
no interest in acting honorably as good
stewards of God’s Creation,
proudly proclaim their birthright
to pillage, to plunder, to prey upon
chaos, annihilation.

That element missing from accounting calculations,
Earth and her hordes, a separate salvation?
Wherever did you hear that enmity
would take you anywhere but desolation?

On the hate wagon
enjoy this wild horror ride
to the end of Earth.

The Earth screams.
People die before their time,
or never get much life.
Species die, their music silenced.
Crazy theories of wealth
belie obligation or simply seeing
the laws of consequence.
Scream Earth!
Pierce the cosmos with your
terrible cry.

we are not our ancestors
we are not religions
we are not lines on a map demarcated by war
we are earth made vital
we are seeking minds inviting partners
we are seed and core as skin sheds and grows anew
we are me and you and all we become, alone and together
we are as we agree, composed of dissonance and harmony

Thriving lives matter
Peace matters
Living Earth most greatly matters.
Let the profiteers leave, and give us back our
common Earth.
Let them enjoy the angry rip of tribal sheathes,
repurposed scythes rising, colonial histories.
Let them eat the falsely filling cake of lies, forced miseries
that defile practical fulfillment, and
breathe the poisons they agree fit for our
common atmosphere, elsewhere.
Let us help them out the door, as we make
for ourselves a world worthy of all
who value terrestrial vitality.

Peace on Earth we seek in song.
Dear lurkers, please sing along.
Expand our voice, let all hear:
Peace is a choice, so is fear.

lark tavern

red tabletops                         think of cold
black floors w/                      objectivity
thin red lines                          emotion says
dividing blocks of                   SCREAM!
black.                                so back off —
striped drapes                   objectivity
old newsprint                    think of
wallpaper                           cascading blood
an atmosphere of              severed limbs
antiquity                             shots and swords of
of people gathered             murder
for raucous amusement                 held in stasis
i drinking molson’s              think of revolution
— discriminating                   in this albany tavern
   distinction                          plots and politics
think of eisenstein               as argued long ago
in post-revolutionary            revolution
russia                                      in form and style
“mother russia”                     that’s all that
visions of snow and ice         changes
cascading water                    are they here tonight
held in stasis                          fomenters of tomorrow
brutal massacre on the          would I be of them
steps (steppes)                                           if i knew?

Litha


   Lifted from responsibility
Soft slow fade into the Sun
and shade
Wither to go, flowing like water,
like wind a'sail
remembering bees and swift
furry beings that pepper the
wild of perfume and petals,
willowy beach along light
scattered pond endeared in
sweet smoke, sweet dreams
spiraling.
Penny + Peter + Gary + Liz
named faces smiling, raging,
emerging to wander, wend through
-- does it matter?
now that they vaguely remain like
tattered threads of volumes long ended.
Today may well depend on those dusty
pages, remnants rendered, dramas
past.
Today, instead of those or
possible tomorrows, laze.  
Indulge in the Sun and shade.

This is what we do at the
end of the world,
we play.

Eyes closed
seated upon a wide-cushioned surface
I could be anywhere
any when
any one
far and away from this inexorable
slippage

Cracked and creviced, consistencies
fail, fall, suck in with such brutal
gravity.

Taken
more love, beauty,
joy, repose;
less left to quell daily
misery, to recompense
for raging insanity.

Disintegrating

No continuity
Nothing to scan; naught to matter
No more responsibility,
no chores or habits, just defensive distance,
release from conscious-made reality

Flail, fall into capricious fantasy.
At this age what matters is
to feel wrapped in that
cozy blanket of home, family,
simple love
while time continues, lazily
drifts over, sucked into
the end.

Requiem on a Friday Afternoon

Requiem for the masses
Requiem for a dream
And why remember what
we might have been,
who we were in our minds
back then?
How the change parade eroded
while blazing bombs exploded
grasping all we’d ever known
into shards and pain.
Did we gain? Did anyone gain
an iota of grain or water or wine
an aeon more time
to cry in, to more slowly die?
Why hold our trust in
a past that betrayed us?
If no future is nigh
we can still look to the sky
to the stars
to dream.