One way that folks avoid deeper awakenings is by settling for “good enough.” I suspect that the disturbing nature of seeking higher goods, by their claim on paying a cost for our “values,” is one major reason that we lean into denial and “getting by.” This poem lifts up awe as the payoff for fully “funding” our values…
OK Corral
They mustered and catch up
Awe the relish of life
Yet the masses
Mostly settled
Merely for good enough
Collected and caught
In the OK corral
In post truth social media, we must be vigilante, my friends!
Relax, Into Propaganda
Red in
Their sacred texts
ALL CAPS know less
For whom much is give in
Much is re-choired
In
His image maid
Such hollowed ground
As grave in
As craven
An echo of truth
There is overwhelming public support for increasing taxes on the richest Americans. This stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s proposed second round of huge tax cuts for the richest, mostly paid for by borrowing, that is increasing the debt, and a portion from cutting public spending. Since we don’t really have a democracy that enacts the will of the people, this doesn’t surprise me. However, I am vexed by the popular sentiment of wannabe-ism when it comes to wealth; especially since upward mobility has nearly evaporated in the last couple of generations. This vain sentiment does seem to interfere in the body politic holding the rich to paying their fair share — which isn’t another huger tax cut for them! This poem arises from this…
Eye Wannabe Rich
In a see of losers
If there is won thing
They want
It’s awe a bout
Loot
The I con of billionaires
It could be you
No surprise as all guise
As idol eyes
The all might
He buck
And Bambi trophy wife
Show me the doe!
Weather two
Three
Or four
Who keeps
Score
If only
At any rate
A king’s ransom
Or soully dead presidents
In your buy and buy
Is his in vest
And in your foolness of daze
Down right left
Right left right
Only wanting
Just
Comfortable
That conundrum unbeat
One of my pet peeves is illustrated by the phrase, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” We seem to be in a reign of babies as severe critiques of a problem are adopted and the labor of birthing a reasonable alternative is casually subjected to infanticide. Tragically, America’s absurd first agenda is grotesquely grave.
A Sorted Tale
Speechless
I couldn’t say
I was surprised
At the rain of bathwater
Yet nothing compared
To the rain of babies
A final solution of sorts
The rubes are lining up for the bounce back…
Rubber Ball
Welcome
To the rubber ball
What
Bounces
Off me
Sticks to you
Words will knot
Hurt you
But the stoned will
Using
Conned ‘em
Screwing
There is more than won way to respond to winning the existence lottery…
Post Lottery Win Syndrome
Halving won
The existence lottery
I could know more
Complain
The profits speak, for themselves.
Make Moses Grate Agin
Trump ass ends
His throne
Of porcelain whiteness
And what can
A profit say
Butt
Let my people go
And do do it
Rashly
In the end
Won
Among many plagues
In doo coarse over
Throwin’
All that he can
Unlimited money in politics guarantees that the rich will run US, and assure that one person, one vote is contorted to the point of knot democracy.
Lucky 13 – Owed to Being Played
The Trump regime
A poisonous glut punch
Of 13 billionaires
And countless confederates
What are the chances
Of a bettor America
Gambling on oligarchs
Self-fulfilling profits
Run!
The government
The effluent
Of corruption
Living up to its repetition
Of awe white men
Born of others’ labor
Fat cats with un-exorcised possessions
And endless means
Too own capitol
On top of capital
The first person in a decade to die of measles has been an unvaccinated school-aged child in Texas. Our useless HHS Secretary, Rob Kennedy, Jr. echoed the under-recognized epidemiologist Tom Jones in declaring the ongoing measles outbreak, “Not unusual.” Here is a poem as a sign language to those who have not heard immunity can be induced much more safely than by getting the disease to prevent the disease you don’t want to get. Hear, hear!
Vaccine-Preventable Deafs
Measles razed
It’s ugly ahead
Parently naturally
The doctor declared her dead
Have you herd
That witch is
But a little human
As inevitable as death and Texas
Never to be schooled agin
In that knew normal
If only they had
Had
This dreaded disease earlier
Perhaps after rolling over
Or before toddling
Wee could almost feel
Our nation getting
Stronger
As we herd
From guise named Eugene
And that alchemy of owed
Eugenics
A little human sacrifice
For a master class
In viral propaganda
And medicine shrugged off
A cross the atlas
A head full of dead white men’s thoughts can be a dangerous thing. Perhaps we should diversify into a whole new world. This poem also is a tip of the hat to Winston Churchill’s comical but useless quote: “History is just one damn thing after another.”
From Shakespeare to Churchill
He had
Collected himself
A skull full
Of dead white men’s thoughts
Of history
Won dammed thing
After
An other
Another poem honoring the open and expansive experience of living a life of awe.
The Whys Entrance
Come on in
Entranced
Ever sense
A child
For aging
For the whys
Till the point
Pardon me
If
Kind of
Maddening
Cared away
Too sum wear ails
So ill licit
Awe weighs wondering
Woo who
Summon some out
More than life
Ajar
In composing my poetry, I find a generous portion of “stream of consciousness” writing as popularized by Jack Kerouac. This form of writing leans into the unfolding of the real-time flow of consciousness as a style versus a heavily edited and “perfected” form of writing.
Recounting Presents
Jack Kerouac
Blue into town
Taking insights
And incites
Long the way
Recounting presents
The road scholar
Had nothing on him
And when he left
He write
Peering read
To some
This style of writing is also portrayed in my poem: The Dog Edit My Homework
I see God as too big for any one religion or worldview. I discover truth in so many forums, of awe kinds. I see a transcendent abundance inviting me into overwhelming gratitude. The wrest is details of any given branding project.
That Most Slalom Prey
My God
Isn’t
Big enough
Fore won religion
To be fare
A perennial brand
Like Coke
Or IBM
Awe the same
Patently falls
As truth begs
Me ails wear
In treating me
Stern and aft
To what
It’s awe a boat
In a fathom less see
As ponder us
As wood be
Soully axing
That wee
Follow the ruse to the maxim
Wile drunk on port and star bored
Just saying
Know soliciting
In pre-paring
For the buy and buy
A veritable alms race
Of never enough
Calling up
On me
That most slalom prey
Of undistinguished power
Peaked
As summit
Afar a field
Wear heaven metes earth
Until holy grounded
Loser that I am, I have learned, often the hard weigh, that not getting what I want can bring forth good, even better. May we not be suckered into that tempting bettor of insisting on winning all the time.
Pre-Mature Ends
He wanted to win
Sow bad
He could almost tase it
Daring you
To have too
Pry it
From his cold, dead hands
And awe involved
Holy for gotten
The point
As means
Overreach
Their buy way
There pre-mature
Ends
War is a failure of humanity at so many levels. Certainly, mass violence favors authoritarians and constricts and degrades all things progressive in the body politic.
The Biggest Flail Ever
With ravenous waist
Warmongers
Gut it out
A triumph of right supremacy
Whatever
May go wrong
The war machine is billed
The biggest flail ever
Their arms
Bequeathing buckets of fingers
And severed dreams
Their hollowed canons
Securing a moral bankruptcy
And leaving spent
Shells
Of human beings
Swearing
On your mama’s grave
A raze for every won
A phrase oft repeated in our household is “Some people have too much money.” I subscribe to the ancient wisdom that you can’t serve two master: God AND money. The dividing line between these two worldviews seems to be about “deserving” when it comes to money and about overwhelming gratitude when it comes to serving God. Here is such wisdom in a more poetic form:
De-serving
Sum people
Have to
Much money
Parently not
Having received
From above
That memo
Re: can’t
Serve money
As well
As God
And what
A greed
Buy awe
Concerning
De-serve
You can’t idiot proof wisdom. Or, perhaps more aptly, as Mark Twain is reported to have said: “Don’t argue with a fool. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
The Gulf of Wisdom
Can won
Idiot proof
Wisdom
As sum wholly con quest
Bred for succors and loosers
That gulf in under standing
As par
Take
Or fore
Give
Down the fair way
As some kind of genus
A fateful stroke
Awe weighs fancying
Some club hows
Exclusively their own
Insight of their elusive
Hole in won
Making anti-fascism great again is a life well spent.
What Can Save US?
What can save US
In the dawn of mourning
At high noon
Or the mettle of the night
Hanging on for deer life
In the king’s forced
Retreating into cavemen manor
A fool frontal assault
To gather behind
The genus of general strike
And the uniting of thousands of others
As sound judgments
What might you due
To show the weigh
Perhaps awe of the above
Is the hole greater than
Sum of each
Whatever that might be
You embrace
It’s awe attest
As you
Out
Come
Sow affirm till the end
How ever
Long the weigh
Saving nothing
Accept
Well spent
When experiencing brutally disruptive forces, even violently traumatic forces, it can seem nearly impossible to sow creative, life-building seeds needed to grow a better future. I suspect that one of the reasons why violence “works” is that it is a powerful invitation to its victims to contract their vision, typically leaning into terms and perspectives desired and defined by perpetrators, rather than expanding won’s vision beyond violence. May we transcend the shit thrown at us.
Sow Over it
The shit hit the fan
Wince again
Only what life
Mustered
Time flies
Swarming
The scion of lies
A tract to crapping out
Wresting in cruel fete
As see of it
Still
That small voice
From heavin’ above
Bids us here
Take a look see
Fertile eyes
Sow over it
The current political shit-show seems to be a Rorschach test for every right-winger and white-wringer to project their darkest ambitions.
As Rorschach Attest
Does this ass make our country look big?
Taking
Shit to the limit
Closely abutting throttling
To what end
A banned width
Crowding out others
Of each and every kind
By sum fecund distraction
Not with standing
Butt by living by breadth alone
A grave shallowness
Immune to depth charges
And with awe the sucking up
No oxygen
To be had
As ape X-predator
Extincting to high heaven
Weather T-rex or T-rump
The only won that madders
Is but a stain
Under wear
As Rorschach attest
Ample means
For our foulest projections
