Saving the planet and the life that inhabits it is not a spectator sport. What is your personal action plan to help save Mother Earth and her children?
Audience Participation
Now
For our next death deifying act
Matched only buy
The fossil fuels running this show
Bought too you buy
That increasingly hot mama
The won and only
Mother Earth
Wile on fire will
Be cut to ribbons
Can she survive
On this ultimate realty tell vision
Religion stands in, the bind of wrapping vivifying experience. The spirit is reported to be as the wind, not knowing where it comes from and to where it goes. Still, when the spirit shows up, you will be rapt.
Clerical Counter
I had
Arrived
At the bazaar
To spirit away
That ultimate order
My God serving
In good
Standing
At the clerical counter
I was met with silence
I felt a warm breeze
As passing wind
Then silence
And more
Silence
Only broke by
“For hear or to go?”
And as I returned
Silence
“Would you like that wrapped?”
That breath taking in quest
Soully won answer
I would like that
Rapt
This poem is a tribute to the kerfuffle of President and candidate Biden’s recent debate performance. If I were to pick an alter-ego other than “Top Pun,” on some days I might choose “Cassandra” the Greek mythological character fated to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. Of course, even Cassandra’s curse is limited, as no one can predict the future reliably. Still, America’s chronic collective amnesia yields innumerable tragic repetitions of history. Simply knowing a bit of history seems like staring into the sun sometimes. May we make a future steeped in the lessons and wisdom learned from our collective past, weather that future be ours or daze.
The Age of Know Surprise
Cassandra shakes
Her head no’ing
Countless ages
And fated futures
Cursed to sea
Those unfathomable tears
Of typhoons waving
Still waters running deep
And ships flagging
Due too unseen lessens
This idiomatic age
Biden its time
Sublimely approachable
As beer goggles undated
A bombshell from afar
And debatable performances to come
As know surprise
As confusion says
Mystifyingly clear
Despite the mass portending
Who could have divined such a fete
A kingly hole
The soul of a nation
Vacated
Even beyond Cassandra’s sight
What will arise from that?
Bared deep in our psyche
In tuition
And fruition
This poem goes out to the sniveling sycophants known as the majority of the Supreme Court. I miss the days when The Supremes were just…a Motown sensation…
Courting Corruption — Owed Too Presidential Immunity
Shot on Fifth Avenue
Shot of bleach
Flashlight up the rear
Illicits immunity
Enacting write supremacy
Courting corruption
With party hats on
And confetti constitution
In fest
The ruse of law
I find that silence speaks volumes. My greatest thoughts are humbled in silence’s presents. Listening is the better part of communication.
Knot Quiet Myself
Lying there
I broke
The silence
The emptiness
With thoughts a loud
Notions of God
Laid out exquisitely
As some sort
Of whisperer
Only to be answered
No need to holler me out
I AM
Standing
Write hear
A solstice poem…
A Day of Longing No More
The longest day of the year
And nothing too due
He was well
Grounded
Sent to his roam
Bye know won
On the level
Of ants
Who never cry “uncle”
With blades broken
Beaten by the sun
Sow green
With envy 93 million miles away
As feeled of dreams
Quiet awe around
Un-till
The king dumb
Of man
Clamoring agin
Want mow, mow, mow
Wanting soully
Ever more
Do you ever get the sense that politics is following some inextricable, absurd, and perilous coarse? I find American politics increasingly resembling that nightmare where a slow-walking monster is chasing you and no matter how fast you run it is just behind you. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case even if you are woke. Will we be able to tell the difference between being undead and living?
Zombie Politics
The dawn of the dead
An origin story
From necking the dead
Getting ahead
With shotgun solutions
Only dead
From the neck up
Or the neck down
Only fallowed buy
Wear wolves in sheep’s clothing
Bringing on those silver bullets
And our last act
Bloodthirsty
Vampires feed
On a body politic bleeding out
As wood stake their life
Knot sow much living
As undead
We live in a world with far too much “US versus THEM.” Partisanship and division reign chaos. Tribalism breeds violence. This poem wakes to a different dream…
US Verses Wee
Won quiet mourning
I awoke
There was no US
Every partisan notion
Them
Had melted
Into an unbroken see
There was soully WE
This poem reflects a bit on my skepticism of skepticism and my deep yearning to witness and participate in the long arc of love.
Woo Who
Their is
Know subject
Greater than
You who
Suspect
Life as a Job
Only as sum
Nefarious abet
Voiding that
Which is
Elusive
Yet divine
Wholly
Up in the heir
Too much
To forebear
Doing it
In the woulds
And knot so tender weigh
Of shoulding
Still their is
An unflailing power
Enduring for good
The root of all woo
Who
Wanting more
Than lukewarm wavers
In efface of unbelieve able
Courts us beyond any owed law
That good will
Prevail
And go won better
Than every sin ick
Wandering
As if
Love is a sham
Rather than mirrorly a veil
Harboring overwhelming
Love
Which is
Awe the ardor
As run through
The grater
Then the hole
The sum of aparts
Soully made whole
When I’mpart
Withal
Who avail themselves
This poem borrows from a Zen story where a monk is in a boat quietly meditating with their eyes closed in the middle of a faraway lake. When the monk hears a loud sound and the boat rocks, the monk opens his eyes and turns to see what is presumably another person who let their boat hit the monk’s boat. The monk sees an empty boat and realizes that the monk’s anger is inside themselves, simply provoked by a outside trigger. The notion of an empty boat triggering one’s anger instead triggered the monk’s enlightenment.
A Bout Zen
His bout
Skimmed long
In the mourning fog
Until P.O.W.!!
He spun
In anger
Than seeing
An other
Empty bout
He was a loan
With his madness
Of would that could
Only know one too blame
That tragic given
And unwilling
To take it
Fore won self
“Building on a foundation of sand” is an ancient cautionary metaphor that our modern, so-called civilization often seems to run over roughshod. Literally jumping from one unsustainable practice to the next unsustainable practice often seems like a fair characterization of modernity and the ultimately brutal logic of capitalism. This poem resembles the apocryphal saying that the capitalist will sell the rope for their own hanging…
On Sand They Billed
On sand
They billed
Their civilization
Only then realizing
The price of sand
So moving
Their civilization
To less substantial grounds
Sand in merchant eyes
Anchoring their future
As purveyors
Souled out
Have you ever had the universe wink at you?
The Universe Winks
A thousand millennia ago
Before you were
A twinkle in your parents’ eyes
A son of another galaxy
Shone brightly
In that precise direction
Of whom you would be
Array of light
Fore what peers
Across time and space
In the smallest of presence
Awe for me
A gift of note
I am
Delivered
Just saying
Look up
Look up
In case you were wondering why anxiety and fear sometimes seem to creep up on us humans…
Snugly Lodged
I was wresting
Quiet comfortably
In my nice warm bed
Pondering the seeming conundrum
Of why wee humans are
So offed
Anxious and afraid
When it struck me
We are travailing 15,000 miles per hour
Threw space
Wile spinning 1,000 miles per hour
Living on the thinnest of crusts
Between a sea of red hot molten iron
And the frozen vacuum of space
And we are reduced
To spend hour daze
Making sense
It occurred too me
I may want to re-considerate
Wearing that fine
A peril
Of the whys
Snugly lodged
Between denial and terror
This poem goes out the young climate activists demanding a livable world who made a federal case out of their constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happy nest dismissed by a federal appellate court.
The World’s Youth on Fire
A generation burned
By fossil fools
Over seeing their children’s
As well
As grand, grand, grand
A ground zero of end less grands
A generation sow owed
We got hours
In this age a Biden
As for you
Will
Get
Your climate daze
And green years yearned
You are now
The sentries of ages to come
Once again bidden
The highest prize
More than
Your own
A brood
Out classing
Your grave cradlers
If aiding and abetting genocide does not make you unfit for the highest public office, then I don’t know what would. I am sick and tired of being told we have to vote for the least totally unfit candidate for office. Whatever fear we have of experiencing domestic abuse or perpetrating international abuse, we need to unite for something that resembles our collective liberation. We can do better. This poem goes out to all of our Palestinian siblings and global citizens everywhere yearning for all to be free from injustice. Let us demand leaders worthy of our humanity.
Our Fear Less Leader
Our clan was frayed
He was the staunchest of alloys
The highest cocktail of militarist and civilian
He trafficked in arms
As well as dismembered legs
He killed my brother
He killed my sister
He killed their children
He
He
He
The worst of led poisoning
No ordinance could stop such ordnance
His motto was “Know won above the law”
A proprietary formula
And when me and my kin
Cry, “OUT!”
Hoping to set a boundary
Regarding relations
A tale as owed as time
What due wee here
From our commandeering chief
And awe his partisans
Listen
To what
I say
Not due
What ails
Can be tolled
Perpetually un-stated
Razing any question
Of being
Considered holy
Unfit for highest office
As totally un-presidented
This poem is based on a traditional Zen story of two very different perspectives on what was seemingly a straightforward thing, revealing the importance of our inner lives. The story pits two Zen monks, one who is a monk smoking, and another Zen monk who is anti-smoking…
Proper Preying
Fore seasons unend
At the break of daze
Two monks sat in the courtyard
One with his cigar
Resting in hand
And rhythm inhaling
For seaming eternity
The other more well versed
In mourning prayer
Wrested his mine
With thoughts of smoke
Desiring to clear the heir
By weigh of their mutual master
With separate metings
The master showed compassion
Toward the complainant and his perspective
Giving him satisfaction
Then taken aback
As the one monk peered
As well
With parent satisfaction
The one monk said to the other
Seeing his dis affection
Pray tell, what was your quest in
Which was razed?
The other pro claimed
“Is it proper to smoke while praying?”
To which the master replied, “no.”
Did you not take such a rebuke to heart?!
Well for me, that was not my quest in
I inquired, “Is it proper to pray while smoking?”
Other than for hardcore atheism, my spiritual beliefs ran the gamut, something for everyone. I am a spiritual mutt. Probably the most apt description would be “unorthodox.” I detest fundamentalism. I was raised Christian and spent most of my life practicing Christianity. I am deeply infused with Christian perspectives, imagery, and sacred texts. I find truth and God as far too big and mysterious to be adequately captured by one, or even all, religious/spiritual perspectives. If some may consider this a cop out, I say, “Out with cops!”
The Beat of Exclusive Clubs
The other day I got kicked out
Of an atheist’s exclusive club
Tolled in know uncertain terms
There is science
And no other!
Wow, where did that come from?!
I was razed
A Christian
A long story (some may say tall)
Which makes some short
Red chapters
Heavenly verse
To love
One, an other
To bless
Not curse
A Palestinian Jew
Called Jesus
We could do much worse
I once heard as Muslim
Of five pillars spoke
Coming down to one
And as a Muslim
I woke
Then along came Buddha
Who said: Don’t follow me
Experience it first
Which made me want to follow
This unslakable thirst
Too fined compassion and justice
A home
Hear
On this suffering earth
A little man
Called Gandhi
To kingdoms united
He spoke
I am
A Hindu
A Christian
A Muslim
A Jew
And undoubtedly a Sikh he
So many will accuse
Well
Me too!
I’ve heard that the longest distance is from the head to the heart. This poem is one take on this. I’ve been known to get stuck in my head, even well-intentioned, disconnected from my heart.
A Head of Belief
He stood
Up on his belief
Only to find his head
The furthest from its foundation
Looking at myself seems to be a common denominator in successfully working through interpersonal issues. Reflections from others and the world around me can be very instructive on the nature of my inner life and its knotty workings. Taking care of by own busyness with honesty and grace frees me up to be a better me, which quiet reliably improve my relationship with others.
A Mirror Student
When the student is ready
The faculties peer
Only too make an inordinate seeing
In the mist
Of those knot ready
With sheer class
And silver linings
Sow thin
They are only culpable
Of reflecting
Won self
At a time
That is right
For a job I be looking…
Job One
My job
Is to see you
As God sees you
Nothing more
Nothing less
