POEM: Nobodies

The powers that be school us in learned helplessness. The powers that be want to convince you that you are a nobody, in their scheme of things. Well, good people, I know plenty of “nobodies” who are awesome wrenches in the meat grinder of posed rulers. We are sow, due the impossible, not bound buy their algorithms and all-calculating mines.

Nobodies

The man
Tolled me
Nobody believes that
Nobody is going to do that
To which I answer
You peer not to know
The same
Nobodies
Such beautiful unicorns
The great unherd
Sow due
The impossible
Schooled
In blank it statements

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POEM: This Poet’s Prayer

This poem reflects my basic spirituality of ever moving toward One’s vision of the good, even as my view is a dim reflection. The One thing that I can judge my progress on is my commitment to this path yearning to be a fully participating member of creation, giving as I have been given, and then sum, which is won.

This Poet’s Prayer

Oh Lord
I soully hope
To give
Whatever thou art
Ever moving
Toward you
Awe that mine
In your image
Mirror words
And yours
Word

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POEM: Gypsy Mother E

Mother Earth has treated us well. Let’s treat her as our one and only.

Gypsy Mother E

We had
A
Gypsy mother
Who lived
As 93 million miles from the light of her life
Who loved
Her wayward children
More than everything ails
Giving her awe
To those unruly siblings
Ogling their eternal wrest
We are gently tolled
In billions of weighs
There is no planet B
Nor C, nor D, nor E
Any grade other than A
Is an F
To our ineffable mother

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POEM: Heir Droppings

This poem goes out to the five Palestinian kids killed when an American airdrop of food crushed them after the parachute failed. This over the top “Operation Breadcrumb” does nothing to stop Israel’s illegal blocking of humanitarian aid by ground into Gaza. There are widespread reports that much of the canned food aid that does get in is rancid. Also, the U.S. continues withholding funding to UNRWA, the only relief agency that could deliver enough aid to Gaza to relieve the famine. The illegal blockage must stop, which likely depends on the U.S. ending its complicity with Israel’s  genocide through bombs, bullets and famine. U.S. complicity is a stain on the soul of America and the bringer of death to Palestinians. Let U.S. end this genocide.

Heir Droppings

Kids are looking up
In Gaza
With the American I deal
With respect to Israeli genocide
As American is the bomb
That pie in the sky
Canned circa 1948
That American apple pie
In efface
Of mañana
From heaven
Delivered today
Fresh squash
Dead on a rival
No arms waving
No chute today
And still
Boxed in a grave
Nothing to see, hear
Soully that press, release
In citing the American weigh

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POEM: Optimism — A Buy Product of Hope

There is a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is about the inertia and trajectory of facts on the ground, while hope is a metaphysical reality that seeps into life of awe kinds amidst a dizzying array of means. Hope has the ability to shine, even most uniquely sow, when there is no reason for optimism. As Leonard Cohen put it: “There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Optimism: A Buy Product of Hope

I can live without optimism
But we’ve hope
The very fabric of life
Oft peering
As well
Used
Work clothes
Not sow much as finery
As the we’d of life
Breaking through sow much concrete
And first on the seen
Striking
Casual disdain
In efface of
Growing numb-ers
Un-till souled in masses
Crapping out
Optimism
A buy product of hope
Creating
Snake ayes
In a garden of weedin’
Your back to work
Or sow they say
Only two begin agin

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POEM: Of Yores and Mind — Owed to Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

Last summer, while visiting Buffalo, which was a serendipitously pleasant visit (except for the bedbugs, see bed bug poem), the highlight of the visit was stumbling upon this grand architectural complex. We were staying in a cool, urban farm Airbnb nearby, and walking through the neighborhoods, the two towers pictured emerged. I immediately set upon getting a closer look, having no idea what it was. I didn’t really care if it might be private property or not; I had to explore. As it turns out, this is the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane, of which a portion has been renovated into a fancy hotel. It is open to the public and a great place to wander around. In contrast, next to this complex, is a large, boxy institutional building which is the “new” state mental hospital — a sad example of 1960s architecture. You can get a bit of its history here and here. Buffalo is considered second only to Chicago for architecture buffs. Of course, the juxtaposition of such grand architecture and the 1888 vanguard mental health asylum demanded a poem:

Of Yores and Mind: Owed to Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

They were committed too
Edifices of stone and mortar
Boarding the grandeur
Of the human spirit
And the epic recesses of mind
Doctoring emptied hearts
Of life’s quest inns
And undeniable whethering
Of wings of men and women
Oh so only
At times
Rehabbed
Surviving
Decades of contingencies
Of what saving
Of what parceled out
Recouping
The state
Of the art
Halfway hows
A pillbox austerity
In stile of prison
As some how knew
Fangled
Yet as ode
Foundations still tower
Of yores and mind
As sum kind
Of ark
A texture
Of humanity
And what
Remainders
And reminders
Hour test
Meant to
Free those captive
And sentries
Of posterity

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POEM: Untouchable

This poem reflects on the divide between masculine and feminine ways of being in the world. One of the most stark examples is “incels” who are involuntarily celibate, often because they have a palpable misogyny that women find unattractive. The irony is that the universal need to connect with other human beings is often self-sabotaged by hypermasculinity.

Untouchable

He would have killed
For a tender touch
Whoa fully
For this very aim
He missed what
He coveted most

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POEM: Redeeming Coup on Pharaohs

God has a sense of humor. Sometimes pompous, hypocritical religionists get their religion handed to them on a plate by the disenfranchised who have a gift of accessing truth in strange places, redeeming that worthless scrip of others. The lords of this world barely have a clue regarding the nature of true religion.

Redeeming Coup on Pharaohs

The plantation proprietor
The slave master
Forced Christianity
As a kind
Of property
The enslaved never possessed
Even oddly discovering
A religion holy unused
Immanently better adopted
For the downtrodden
Than pharaohs

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POEM: What Superpower

Here is a poem about the invisibility of people who are unhoused and living on the streets.

What Superpower

Early on
His invisibility
Would come and go
Until anon
Involuntarily taken
For a ride
For granted
Fully
That feudal wish
Of only aspiring to be
A fly on the wall
Yet no such promotion in store
He had
No plays
No home
And out side
Absent in a crowd
Fruitlessly flagging
Passers buy
In some sort of alms race
And if as much
As pass the hat
Never a head
Efface
As good as gone
As if
A disembodied voice
Yet no celebrity for this ghost
He knew
With all that he was
That everything
Is passible

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POEM: An Eve with Netanyahu

As President Biden campaigns on a pro-democracy platform against the corrupt Donald Trump, he is tag teaming genocide in Gaza with his long-time friend, the corrupt Israeli PM Netanyahu, the “Bibi” brain and heart of the military onslaught and deadly siege on Palestinian civilians. This poem regards this hellish alliance, and goes out to the Palestinian people who struggle to even hope for bread and water, let alone democracy.

An Eve with Netanyahu

Darkness falls unto Gaza
Hellfire on the horizon
As far as the aye can see
Awe hell to the chief
In the AM
And beloved PM
Shalom begets shalom
As hello and goodbye
Greets with a kiss
Violence begets violence
As the buy and bye
Greets with piss
Where right and left
Are helled together
By a dead center
Of treacherous aims
If morality is bread
Israel is starving
If water is life
Israel is bone-dry
As well
Reckoning its settled
No rolling stones hear
That gimme
Shelter
Drunk with power
Helled as just
A shot away
All the time missing
Whatever their aims
Priceless love
Just
A kiss away

To better appreciate the Rolling Stones reference to “Gimme Shelter” you can listen to the song here.

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POEM: Compassion Sidelined

A poem for our collective denial of our responsibility to prevent genocide. Free Palestine! No one is free until all are free.

Compassion Sidelined

An aye for an aye
And a no for a know
A tooth for a tooth
And a truth fore a truth
A moment of distinction begging
A moment of extinction bugging
Rooting out violence
Or rooting on violence

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POEM: A Confession — For the Birds

I don’t have a lot of regrets in life. Still, one of the stupidest and cruelest things I ever did was as a kid when I shot dead with a BB gun a bunch of birds hanging out in a tree in my yard. I am not sure when regret set in, but this memory today serves as a reminder of all the unnecessary death inflicted on fellow beings. May we have the courage to be kind in all situations. May we not be chicken, even when that inescapable law of life and death — you are what you eat — leaves us, killing for no purpose but sport.

A Confession: For the Birds

12 year old boy
Aim true
But not today
17 birds
Fall to the ground
Without a man’s remembrance
Only fated regret
Of cruelty
For the birds

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POEM: Let Them Eat Bullets

Flour power, not bombs. Are we fed-up with forced mass starvation yet?

Let Them Eat Bullets

From ashes to ashes
And dust to dust
Famine sweeps Gaza
And the prison guards feel threatened
By the unherd
Starving fore a tension
Not living by bread alone
But without bread together
Staring into what could be
Their last supper
As well-fed politicians
And pimply-faced soldiers
Unleash the dogs of war
Tanks a lot
Open fire
Drones without souls
Due the devil’s work
No fight in the dog
Only slaughter
No food on the table
As some kind
Of kosher butchery
And the head waiter
The president of US
Cries
“Billions for military aid to Israel”
His money where his mouth is
Let them eat bullets

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POEM: Genocide Joe

Monday mourning. Last week President Joe Biden spoke of being hopeful about a ceasefire deal in Gaza. I must confess, I scheduled posting this last week, expecting the likely outcome of genocide unabated and genocide Joe abidin’ his time. I wish my skepticism was unfounded.

Genocide Joe

Our U.S. support
Makes genocide passable
Israel’s raising Cain
Resurrecting those unmention Abels
Under where Gazans
Have no human rights
Or bettor still
Due not exist
Their greatest hits
A broken record
Civilians killed
Children killed
Health care workers killed
Humanitarian workers killed
Journalists killed
Know worries
Covered up
Gazans grazing on grass
Like the scapegoats they are
A soul starving for political power
Humanity bombing
As uncorrupted as a Netanyahu
Kindler and gentler
Genociden’ Biden
Abiden
A long weak end
And a Monday mourning
Where hope is helled
Out
Totally trying
Agin
Ceasefire

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POEM: Following A Higher Doody

Unfortunately, Christianity is too oft weaponized against our very own siblings of God.

Following A Higher Doody

Their those Christians
Who go to church
They’re those Christians
Who go
Too church

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POEM: Winning’s Everything

We live in an era where everything is divided . . . into winning and losing, souled to the highest bitter. The “losers” of this world will rise up, the great unwatched — the revolution will not be televised.

Winning’s Everything

There is a whirled
Wear winning
Is awe that
Madders
Zealot to the highest bidder
The most stylish expediency
Ever
Fashioning
Rank and rankling
In a world made up
Of winners and losers
Caught in an order
Broke in
The fix is in
Dictating
Number one and number two
Fecund gold and silver
And plenty of coppers for everyone ails
Some beat
There swords
Others into plowshares
And somewhere in the mettle
There are masses who will see
No deference
And it will be time
For the great unwatched

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POEM: I Am Not the Dictater

I often write about difficult madders. This poem makes a simple plea: don’t kill the messenger.

I Am Not the Dictater

Good knews
Bad news
I just
Due what
I am
Told
In shorthand
Write from wrong
And weather you like it or not
Please kindly
Refrain from rejoining
That utter most of killer idioms
An overly simple resolution
To complex madders
Signing off
Quill, the messenger

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POEM: Get Over It

We are a far cry from Patrick Henry’s infamous cry, “Give me liberty or give me death,” which highlights one’s ultimate willingness to put all of your skin in the game. Today’s cry is more of a whine, “Give me liberty and kill anyone who gets in the way of my conception of liberty.” This is a cowardly cry of putting another’s life and liberty, their skin, into one’s own lethal game. America has long been comfortable with using war and violence as an extension of politics, or even as the original sin or “necessary evil” at the foundation of politics. This grand bargain for our own hides, taken out of others’ hides, is the cowardice of raw power, not the courage of one’s convictions. True democracy cannot come from the barrel of a gun.

Of course, today’s moral dilemma “for the soul of America” is the U.S. sponsored genocide by Israel in Gaza, which appears easier than creating potential electoral risk to allegedly saving our democracy; or is that saving our alleged democracy…

Get Over It

Her democracy was over
A barrel
Of guns
That hollowed weigh
Of plenty
Of American patriots
And if you listen close
You could here
Patrick Henry roll over
In his grave saying
“Give me liberty
And give them death”

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POEM: On Fire and Ice — Owed to Aaron Bushnell

Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty U.S. air force senior airman, committed self-immolation by fire to protest the U.S. sponsored Israeli genocide of Gaza. His final cry was “Free Palestine.”

On Fire and Ice: Owed to Aaron Bushnell

Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Aaron on the side of mercy
Incarnates the cruelty to the flesh
Which pales in comparison
To the savagery to our soul
In our uniform response to Gazans
Genocide
Sow demanding
A hard inferno
He unhawks his wears
Crying
Over and out
“Free Palestine”
Now a site be helled
Buy standers
Entertaining his offering
Of ultimate rewards
What kind
Of purchase
Might be required
To get it
This “Free Palestine”
Drinking in the possibilities
Perhaps with a grande beverage
Though if so
Surly it comes with ice
As American as base ball
That spectator sport
Never game
Pain for the whole cost
And what a bout
The service
That national our son
For heir men
Not just
A band of brothers
Rather humanity as a hole
Their hows on fire
Wading for just US
Un-Abel too
Bare the weight
Bye many
Scene as an emergency
Of some mental state
In patience
Out of
It’s mine
Amoral victory
Offed attributed to stallin’
The death of won is suicide
The death of thousands is foreign policy
Carry on
From the hospitable to the morgue
As natural as forced fire
On those
That plan it
On fire
Soully expecting
Ice

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POEM: Dis Quieting Genocide

Talking about US complicit in genocide may be uncomfortable, even a bit traumatic. Still, such discussions have miniscule chances of approximating the horrors of genocide itself.

Dis Quieting Genocide

It was a bad day for propriety
A revolting day for impropriety
And what is questionable
In such alleged riotousness
At the OK quarrel
Perhaps a little
A loud
As a privilege to a void
And what to call the question
What is peace?!
Sored
Torn as under
A neighbor’s thumb
On the scale
Of just US
And what is
Far off
Far beyond
Who’s left
Who’s right
What remains
What upright
As if the dead dare speak
Of helled harmless
As the wrest of US
Perhaps never quiet knowing
What is it that
Still ’em bodies
Good trouble?
Necessary evil?
Culling out
Cries of “Ceasefire!”
A grieving
Such death and deconstruction
Perhaps the soul thing we no
The most grave
Silence
Wear no means
No
Hour greatest faux
Neutrality

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