POEM: Going, Going, Gone

Posted on March 16, 2016 by

Scores of politicians
Going for green
As peddlers of pabulum
Powered buy vicious cycles
Going for blue
As admirals of addled ad mirers
Sailing cynicism
Going for red
As wore, wore, wore
Posing as knew
Gone adieu this
Until nothing left
Gone adieu that
Until nothing right
Going, going
Too too mulch
For tender truths to sprout
Gone
With the win
Un-till effacing larger truths
Over taking
And out with the owed
In with the new
Re-coup-ing
Awe that was lost
A hearty evolution
And overdo revolution

Here’s another election poem taking on money in politics and politicians who use deceptive and hypocritical generalities to engender just enough support from party loyalists, ironically called the “base,” and from the remaining few who vote, enough support from those who dislike the other candidate more.  I will pass on such centrist and cynical electoral politics that serves few except those already in power.  I vote for a hearty evolution where citizen activists create the change they truly want to see the world, with unrepentant idealism.  We can do better!  I pledge to work each day to create a life for myself that when overdue revolutions arise that I won’t be hesitating between my current privilege and a better future for all.  I will plant and cultivate tender truths amidst the excrement that passes for mainstream electoral politics.  Hope is in our nature.  And Top Pun never sells out!

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POEM: Ferry Tales

Posted on March 15, 2016 by

Buy politicians
We have been tolled
Ferry tales
From bank to bank
Holding no water
Liquidating assets
Left and right
Sow gully able
As they desperately wanton
US to believe
The chosen few, the elect
As top down
Driving in convertible submarines
Celling down the river
As whatever
Thou dust
Having already
Drunk
The KoolAid™
In effacing endless boos
As given the owed college try
And in curable desperation
Quipped to say
Bottom up
As no need to take any ship
From any won
Upright
Nor bail
For yawl

Here is an election day themed poem for Ohio’s presidential primary elections today.  While it’s easy to be cynical about politics, the adage, follow the money, is a powerful tool for understanding politics and power.  The political class, overpopulated by the aristocracy, has well developed strategies and tactics to appeal to the notion that they are on your side.  Inevitably, moneyed folks have a way of perpetuating their economic interests over less economically endowed folks.  These strategies and tactics are built into our everyday life — appealing to crass celebrity as distraction and chasing money (and its attendant addictive cycles of debt and over-consumption) as the unquestioned path to the good life — but during campaign season the high rhetoric typically pushes the limits of hypocrisy.  Unfortunately, the United States electorate is the most uniformed electorate among so-called advanced industrial democracies.  Plus, with brazen gerrymandering, corrupt party politics, lack of universal voter registration, and a whole host of practices degrading voter participation rather than enhancing it, our democracy has been bought and sold.  Our so-called democracy would be more aptly described as an oligarchy, plutocracy, or even kleptocracy.  Voter turnout in the U.S. is the lowest among so-called developed countries.  While increased voter turnout could offer modestly better results, a poorly informed electorate does not have the essential immunization against propaganda and manipulation that would make for a functioning democracy.  I strongly suspect the the bulk of effort needed to revitalize our democracy must occur outside of electoral politics, with social movements that force changes in our political system alongside cultivating positive changes toward a more just culture that respects human rights and dignity for all.  Voting matters, but if we rely primarily on voting, whatever is left of our democracy will matter little.  Vote with your feet and hit the streets; organize; and be the change you want to see in the world.

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FREE POSTER: Only You Can Prevent “For Us” Fighters — Hillary Clinton Feeling The Bern

Posted on March 14, 2016 by

Yep, I couldn’t resist — just for the pun of it!Hillary Clinton Feel The Bern

Feel free to share, download or print out this Hillary Clinton Feeling The Bern Poster.

If the message of this poster doesn’t make immediate sense, then welcome to my whirled of multiple meanings, well suited to presidential campaign politics.  My first intent is as an anti-Hillary Clinton meme.  Though, skepticism about relying on anyone else to fight our fights is a good starting place for active, direct participation in democracy and politics.  Most every politician claims to be fighting for us, but we have been burned before.  May the people take back their country through direct action.

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POEM: Zombie Apocalypse — Carry On

Posted on March 14, 2016 by

In habiting
That thin lyin’
Between living and undead
Pray and prey
Plodding for survival so chaste
Eerie reverence
For awe virtually unmoving
They’ve got
You’re numb-er
Too many to re-pulse
To take account of
De-sending from cubicles and proto-calls
Contracting art and sole
As-certain
As a ballad to ahead
Or souled heart for a song
Forging for a meal ticket
Having mist
The notice
Of the zombie apocalypse
Having all ready past buy
As things sow sterilized
And humanity’s fate sown up
In arms and sordid extremities
Have eaten
Half alive
Only too whither the storm
The moot in one’s eye
Of learned haplessness
And ever abating brains
Until getting the best of you
As present itself
As in genius solution
The just
Walk away
Hope realized as traveling light
And renouncing
Carrion

If a zombie apocalypse poem is particularly relevant for you on a Monday, then you may be suffering the blurring of your existence as living or undead.  The popularity of zombies in current culture strikes me as an apropos metaphor for the deep and abiding alienation present in much of everyday life.  Alienation is endemic in multiple spheres: alienation from our own humanity by being submersed in artificial and virtual realities; alienation from others by having life mediated by impersonal institutions and technologies; and alienation from nature and the natural world by working in cubicles, living in self-contained boxes, and traveling in mobile cages of steel, plastic, and rubber over rivers of petroleum byproducts.  Zombies seem to be the incarnation of our collective ennui and existential angst over our preternatural penchant for mistaking motion for progress and our banal disability in distinguishing between any vital life force and inanimate matter.  The titillating trepidation of slow, barely animated monsters overtaking us in our hurried existence gives freakish flesh to our fears.  The undead have some surreal power to overtake the caffeinated, if not sublimely discerning, protagonist humans slash food.  Their sheer number or inexplicable relentless hunger — fed by their will to unlive? — overwhelms any resort to our keen or ken.  We fatally mistake our presents as mere fuel or fodder saying chow to our humanity.   This helpless and hapless existence is, in fact, the fantasy, a projection of our fears, that inanimate forces haplessly set in motion are the ultimate arbiters of the human sphere.  Without resort to stale arguments about free will, human freedom and the like, I will only say that if the posers of zombie powers that be come to my door, I intend to say “Eat me!”

Carry on.

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POEM: The Yeast Of These

Posted on February 23, 2016 by

Wile there is much bred
Daily preyed for
Ample for awe concerned
That seemingly still
Fomenting swell times
A mist repleting agin and agin
In dubitable motifs
Giving ascent to
That for most ingredient
A telling signature of homme
The yeast of these
Which will provide
That effervescent up
Rising
Without flail
Soully as flower and water
Well grounded
Flourishing in a rest
And taking the heat
Toward its full realization
Satiating more than just us
And peace meal gain

This poem is about hope springing eternal, utilizing the metaphor of yeast responsible for the rising of bread.  Hope often strikes me as a reality grounded firmly in both necessity and possibility.  The faith that hope is comprised of the stuff that makes for a juggernaut gives me profound comfort.  This fuels a much more joyful social activism. The subtle and permeating workings of hope inspire the artist in me.

The metaphor of yeast rising, the smallest portion of the bread — the yeast of these — responsible for the very nature of a successful outcome, speaks to the infective and catalytic role that hope plays in social transformation, in social uprisings giving results often surprisingly larger than the sum of the mere parts.  That the uplifting power of yeast is invisible to the eye is far from insignificant.  Even the penetrating scientific mind will likely lead to a disgust to our human sensibilities: the gas released by yeast that expands to rise the dough is the waste product of microbial fermentation, yeast farts if you will. To add insult to injury to some, the pockets of dough that successfully capture these farts so well is attributable to the much demonized foodstuff called gluten — be afraid, very afraid!

Beyond the world of bread-making, in the human world, the downtrodden, dispossessed, and disenfranchised are the necessary ingredient and driver in social justice movements.  The sanitized conventional wisdom that it is an elite class of intelligentsia or highly formally educated “managers” who guide social transformation is simply wrong.  In truth, such conventional forces are typically beholden to making a different kind of “bread” — or bred.  Bread Not Bombs Flour Power Its the Yeast We Can Do-FUNNY PEACE BUTTONThe lessens learned in the school of hard knocks are fertile fodder for street smarts and a built-in “skin in the game” that powers authentic personal and social transformation.  The primary purpose of so-called social success and “middle-class” living may very well be to erect a firewall between one’s own success (and kin or clan) and the milieu of the messy, grungy, and sometimes vulgar “lower” classes.  This firewall is the very barrier that creates and perpetuates social injustice.  The sanitized, impersonal, distant injustices of the board room and bedroom communities are normalized as “civilized,” even though they are responsible for far more human lost potential and suffering than the “barbaric” physical acting out of street crime and “bad” neighborhoods.  White collar crimes go unpunished or perhaps dealt with “as a cost of doing business ” — on occasion there is a slap on the wrist, more like going into the penalty box within a blood sport.  Almost without saying, waging war is a patriot duty, not a human tragedy.  “Street” crimes involving actual people — as opposed to corporate people — are an almost exclusive focus, to protect property and mostly respectable people.  People of color, those lowest on the social ladder — or any “other” — get the book thrown at them by erudite, costumed judges and enforced by less-erudite, armed, uniformed police.

This poem alludes to nonviolence, Rising/Without flail, but this is not simply a comfortable nonviolence of safe pacifists.  On the receiving end of violence by the state and the powers that be, its victims eventually realize that you can’t beat the state at its own game.  Besides being outgunned, “non-sanctioned” violence is used to discredit social movements and serves as a convenient excuse to violently suppress — in a “civilized” way of course — social revolutionaries.  When rising tides of resistance reach critical masses, violence is what the state knows best to put down resistance.  The usually unbroken veneer of civility is deeply threatened when persistent nonviolent resistance bares the brutish, overwhelming power of the state.  This is a highly effective weapon in manifesting true civility.  The solidarity needed for such a daring and dangerous venture is rooted in the shared experiences of the many disenfranchisements that the powers that be yield.  The equation of having more to gain than lose in such a venture presents the palpable opportunity and deep root for real social change.  Privilege works against such opportunity, when the status quo favors one’s own personal interests.  Plus, beyond any simple equation, the humanity gained by living in solidarity restores some measure of the humanity robbed by injustices.  Long the weigh, many realize that peace is the way, and such folks offer another way of living that doesn’t re-lie on the dehumanization of others.

May you find peace long the weigh and bare its many fruits…

POSTSCRIPT: On a somewhat more vulgar, and perhaps somewhat embarrassing, note, this poem can be red quite well as a sexual poem.  This was not my original intent.  If you read it that way, you are probably a man!  This is a fine example of how it is possible, particularly for a man, to sexual eyes most anything, any metaphor.  Hopefully, this multiple meaning will harm no one.  Enjoy!  I hope to never lose my touch…

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POEM: Slow Mo’ Bettor Blues

Posted on February 22, 2016 by

Is it awe
A gambol
Sometimes you git
Their faster
In slow motion
More rarefied
Then a tortoise and its hair
Relegated to children
Of God
Knowing nothing
In the phase of fabled
Head weigh
Breeding like
Rabbits
Countering undeniable cullings
Sow cruel
Hour nature spurning perpetuity
As if
Life is
Allegory mess
And too the victors
Come the spoileds
Certifiable
That the hole
Whirled
Plodding against them
Wading for ascendancy
As not see
Wee are just
Critters in the for us
Peering as equals
On the wrong aside
Of hasty formulas
And breakneck algorithms
As mirrorly xenophobic creeps
Seeing what
Formerly cannot be
Seeing
And hearing what
In the passed
Was beyond what was winced imagined
And in deed
Awe
The more
As silence speaks
Volumes
To those slow enough
To listen

This poem is an ode to the adage that sometimes you get there faster in slow motion.  It is a sad lot who careen through life hanging on to the notion that you succeed by getting there faster than the next guy — and yes, it’s usually a guy.  As Gandhi so aptly noted, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Speed is close kin to efficiency, that typically impersonal and depersonalizing practice that produces alienation with grate efficiency.  Modern, capitalistic, consumer culture cons us into trading manufactured goods for the perennial goods understood and revered by most cultures through most of human history.  Xenophobic nationalism icons us into perpetual war.  You can’t buy authentic, healthy human relationships.  Alienation from our own human nature and one another arise from buying the better part of employees lives and buying off minions and masses to bolster won’s usurious interests.  Earning friendship and offering radical hospitality to all has little kin to urning enemies and sending radicals to the hospital.

Overrunning natural boundaries is almost the definition of modern civilization.  There are natural processes that can only be ignored at one’s own peril.  Things take time.  If we don’t take time, then things will take us.  Buy weigh of example, baking a loaf of bread or growing a seedling takes a certain amount of time and follows a distinct order.  Baking a loaf of bread by only letting it rise half the time or baking it at twice the temperature does not result in either a speedier or even satisfactory outcome.  The final state of a seedling is more related to the nature of the seed than even the earth in which it is planted.  A seed may die prematurely, but a tomato seed will never grow into a rose bush.  Western civilization seems in deep denial about a natural pace of human life or a prudent ordering of manufactured goods over perennial goods.  SLAVERY Is The Legal Fiction That A Person Is Property - CORPORATE PERSONHOOD Is The Legal Fiction That Property Is A Person POLITICAL BUTTONPerhaps the most illustrious example of this is our equating, or even favoring, corporate persons over actual human persons.  When things are of equal or greater importance than people then the sphere of human life will be locked into the equivalent of a flat earthers worldview, or worse yet, relegated to subterranean living, with social sanctions for humanity raising its beautiful head.

Deeply listening and keenly observing are hallmarks of both the material sciences and the spiritual sciences.  Such noble ventures, discovering truths about the natural world and human nature, take both time as well as respect for the guidance of the accumulated wisdom of the ages.  Silence itself is considered by many as the language of God, reality experienced directly and unmediated by the handicaps of human language.  Words will always fail to completely embody such experience.  Material sciences have the advantage of studying a sum-what less-elusive “dead” world of things and impersonal (objective) forces.  Spiritual sciences aren’t sow lucky, tempting to elucidate the nature of humans (subjective) and even more daring to mumble of God (Subjective, with a capital S), that most precarious of places, where awe may be said and knot holy done.

May you find a pace of life that gives you a supple foundation for participating fully in the perennial goods of humanity and the awesome world in which we live.

This poem’s title includes a reference to mo’ better, a slang term for making passionate love to the point of exhaustion with someone who wants you as badly as you want them.  Of course, the better is transformed to the pun bettor to allude to the precarious reality that passionate love for another person, a loving creation, or loving God, will entail risks that the risk managers will most certainly recommend that you manage.  Perhaps the only mortal sin in postmodern existence is to be out of control — as if we are in control of much anyway!  Are you willing to bet on the seductiveness and elusiveness of love, to live a life beyond others’ sensibility of control?

May you find loving passions that spill out uncontrollably over the whole world.  And as in any great lovemaking, may it be long and slow…

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POEM: A Whole In The Wall

Posted on February 19, 2016 by

The man
Reproached
With muscles taut
Just as I stood up
With a plank beyond question
A clear-cut match
To the breach in the wall
As an unwanted chink in won’s wooden amor
As if adore rendering useless
In efface of stock aid
An other bull work
Only offering
Stiff generosity
To mortals unlike
As can and able
Mirrorly as allot of frat aside
Thinking knot necessarily evil
Doing the best they clan
As the beam in his I gleaned
He commanded
In some grate atone
For his manly timber back
Or he would forest me into much the sane stand
Or abettor yet a fence of steal
As he was
The executer of my state
And equity would be his
Bye this time I had already gotten board
Having lumbered away
And considered the whole madder
As water under the bridge
That I was building
From a hole in the wall

This poem tells the story of someone taking a wooden plank from a barricade. At first glance, this may appear to be a destructive act. Yet, this singular action links two positive enterprises: creating a hole in a wall that divides and transforming that barrier into a bridge. The threat of “The man,” doubtless backed up by a passel of formal authority and police powers, is rendered irrelevant by the more nimble plank-gleaner and bridge-builder. Could this be a tale of anarchism wagging the dog that is state rule?

This poem also gives a tip of the hat to “The wall,” which has gained iconic status with the Pink Floyd album of the same name. Here is a sampling of lyrics from that iconic album:

All alone, or in two’s,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.

And when they’ve given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wall.

Banging your heart against the impersonal apparatuses of the powers that be may seem feudal to sum, yet this may be the most humane response-ability given the alternative of simply being banged by an unjust status quo — and banged in places not limited to the heart.

May you in great generosity take advantage of too for one specials that make for a world where one side fits all.

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POEM: Flocking Boss Leaves Behind Their Helm

Posted on February 17, 2016 by

He new
Not the least bit sheepishly
Just saying
I am not the boss of ewes
And ewes not the boss of me

This is perhaps my first poem that might be best read with a New Jersey accent.  This poem may very well be a tribute to a budding anarchist, one who newly recognizes that life is best lived as neither the boss of others nor the subject of bosses.  Such a way of living springs from a humility and holistic perspective that bossing others around is an insult to the fullness of life of all.  Plus, throwing off the rule of bosses demands courage and fortitude, perhaps not a little bit ironically, “like a boss” — though channeled to being the boss of one’s own life, not a boss lording over others.  This poem also accents the boss-like oppression of sheepishly following other sheep, where cowardly complicity in the face of bosses diminishes us all.  If you should seek to master such boss-less living, may you find ever new ways to live as equal partners with other people and all living beings, neither lording over or shrinking below.

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POEM: To Be, Sow Fly

Posted on February 5, 2016 by

Could it possibly be
A cliff hangar
She jumped
In what felt
Like
A free fall
The feint of art
Closing their eyes
Thinking this only is
For the birds
Or perhaps angels
Or butterflies borne by the wind
For life is never a breeze
Fore the heavy
Thinking
Too much
Wait
Never suspect
Beyond
A cruel goad
Only trying
Too flutter me
Amid fleeting heir
In the grip
Of only that
Which can be
Grasped by wings
Feeling confidant
Enough
To be
Sow fly

This poem is about the lightness of heart and soul to take off in life.  This poem is also about the courage needed to let the seemingly ethereal stuff of life lift us up.  Our highest hopes can offer a birds-eye view of what is often a harsh landscape.  A higher perspective can reveal paths and possibilities outside of the realm of those anchored only in concrete reality.  Plus, flying can be real fun and absolutely invigorating.  May you find flight for your dreams and be a beacon for those looking for a way.

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POEM: More Than Just, A Tinkle In The Pants

Posted on February 4, 2016 by

Sum people say
Show me the money
Only taking
That folding
Money
Maid of paper
Illegal to ink for won self
You’re money or you’re life
Weather helled up
Or razing heaven
Our soles speak
As bodies of evidence
And life stiles of the rich and famous
Calling out
Be the change
Beholden to common cents
More than just
A tinkle in the pants
Pissing off the powers that be

In my book, any poem that can incorporate wetting won’s pants and pissing off the powers that be can’t be all bad.  This poem taps perhaps the most fundamental divide in moral life: do we serve God or mammon, the worldly powers, the powers that be.  In this poem, I don’t mention God per se, but instead referred to “you’re life.”  I’ll give a tip of the hat to those uncomfortable with any notion of God.  “Life” or “love” is a synonym-spiced confection more palatable to some.

In this crazy postmodern milieu that we live in, the revered field of of science, with its deep commitment to smoking out causality, has mysteriously led to widespread convictions of randomness.  This perhaps began its accelerative phase with the genius of Darwin pinning his monumental theory of evolution to the notion of randomness.  Concrete evidence has proven the theory of evolution as a powerful scientific tool for accounting for the origin of species.  Of course, explaining things backwards is much easier than predicting the nature of future evolution, other than predicting that we will evolve in some random (sic) way.  Randomness is a notion at least as resistant to a coherent cosmology and worldview as the notion of God.  More troubling, randomness, that which has neither antecedent or predictability/causality is exactly the mythology that science is designed to debunk.  While inserting a “miracle” that cannot be measured by science by either observation or in principle may be irresistible if you can convince others to go along with it, but it is not science.  Randomness is no more a scientific principle than God.  Randomness is not a scientific principle — as God is not.  This facet of the philosophy of science can only be ignored at our own peril.  Quite telling, the field of mathematics has failed to identify any form of mathematics that gives adequate support for the unproven assertion of randomness.  Randomness can rightly be pursued as a hypothesis within metaphysics, the realm in which God is explored.  Still, randomness strikes me as antimatter in the matter of coherency.  We do know that any complete coherence MUST contain more true statements than ANY possible logical system can contain within itself.  This is a space that is in principle incompletely accessible by science and mathematics.  This is a space big enough and unknown enough for God and free will to reside or originate.  Is such a neighborhood the zip code for randomness?  At best, it can not be proven by science or mathematics.

Here is a little more on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, the mathematical proof under-girding such thoughts:

“In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn’t be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms… of that mathematical branch itself. You might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system by going outside the system in order to come up with new rules and axioms, but by doing so you’ll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements. The implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules.

Moving to a cultural level, the affection for randomness has brought us to an infection with randomness in everyday life, reflecting both some nihilistic sense of life and sense of humor: “That was so random.”  Our sense of life and humor has been moving from being centered in an elegantly interconnected system to a severed existence plagued by events “coming out of nowhere” — the antithesis of both scientific and religious worldviews.  Is it any wonder that we are possessed by notions of a zombie apocalypse, a world populated by those who are both dead and alive — or is that neither dead nor alive?

I think that Bob Dylan may have stated it about as bluntly and poetically as anyone, in his song, Gotta Serve Somebody (full lyrics below).  “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord/But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”  Of course, the popularity of the devil or the Lord seems to be in decline.  So, for many, the love triangle between self, neighbor, and the mystery of mysteries is reduced to self and neighbor — and perhaps nature (creation).

Well enough, such truth is still great enough to fill many lifetimes. Wee fight for one another to a void being reduced to a mirror monetizable entity.  Most have a palpable sense of what money is, what worldly power looks like, and the rules into which it invites us into its service.  And still, what is the opposite of serving money?  Is serving money just a vain vocation for the terminally unimaginative?  Perhaps the opposite of serving money involves living a life free of attachments to material security or cultural status.  Whatever there is in life that money cannot buy, I see as that which is truly valuable — able to bring a present with authentic integrity and a future that cannot be bought, only given to one another.

To me, money seems to be one of the least interesting things in life.  Personally, I am in wonder at both the abundant curiosities present in scientific discoveries to date and beyond any imagined horizon AND the mysteries of the heart, my own and others, which inspire countless souls to risk life for more life, and to go where no mere scientist dares.  Can we serve awe and give that which can only be proven to exist by giving it.  Life and love awe weighs fine a way. Serve it up!

Gotta Serve Somebody (by Bob Dylan)

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You might be a rock ‘n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a construction worker working on a home
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

Still, you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

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POLITICAL CARTOON: CEO Jesus Retirement Plan

Posted on January 28, 2016 by

CEO Jesus: You Had Me At The Retirement Plan

CEO Jesus Retirement PlanAfter a long hiatus, CEO Jesus is back.  This comic was inspired by a poem I wrote recently:

At Jesus, Inc.
I came for the love and mutuality
I stayed for the retirement plan

This poem and political cartoon is a parody of the often namby-pamby, first-world Christianity that passes for following Jesus these days.  I sometimes joke that I wish there was a religion where the founder was a nonviolent rabble-rouser crucified by the state, perhaps even as their fellow clansmen stood complicit.  That’s a leader to which I could relate.   I occasionally wonder what Christianity would look like if we amped it up so that, say, 1% of Christians were killed as a direct result of their radical love challenging the powers that be of this world.  What if Christians seriously risked destitution or death for the cause of love more commonly than building “secure” retirement plans?  These are the kinds of questions that haunt me and in which I find little traction or resonance within the walls of American Christianity.  Ahhh, for a Church that boldly embraces such questions; this is the Church I long for…

Peruse more political cartoons featuring CEO Jesus, General Jesus, Comedian Jesus, Dr. Jesus, and Palestinian Jew Jesus

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POEM: Love Making

Posted on January 25, 2016 by

I was mistaken
All those years
Those sweetest ours
Thinking I was making love
When in truth
Love was making me

This love poem, as most of my poems, can be read several ways.  Of course, the simplest reading is a testament to the transformative power of romantic relationship love.  Love is more than something that we, as individuals, “make.”  Love is something larger than ourselves that we participate in.  Love makes us better humans, much more so than could be designed by our minds however clever, or imagined by our hearts however large and open.  Certainly, love makes us better than we could ever be outside of human relationships, on our own.

When thinking of poetry, I suspect that thinking of love poems is the most common and iconic.  Love, the mystery of mysteries, is at the heart of poetry, trying to put into words that which can’t quite be put into words.  I have described writing poetry as the heart and mind making love.  The melding of the workings of the heart and mind is a struggle for balance and wholeness that pervades every human endeavor.

Psalm 85:10 describes this as peace and justice kissing.  My intent in writing this poem was also to allude to such a wide theme, that of loving the world in a way that makes the world a better place for all.  Peace and justice kissing is the way this becomes a reality in the world.  Practicing that discipline of love makes us better humans, even if the reciprocity of that love is not immediately evident.  Describing such ventures as love of God — love of Love — is a common spiritual discipline to carry us through the dry patches of of unrequited love on earth.  Such love lives in the hope that the way of love (God’s will) will be “on earth as it is in heaven” (from the Lord’s prayer).  Of course, the demands of justice are trans-generational, perhaps perpetual, requiring a patience and perspective beyond our own life.  We don’t work simply for ourselves, that is if we are working in love and for justice.  It strikes me, sometimes in the face, that love of enemy is the gold standard spiritual practice for melding peace and justice, holding fast to perfecting love, in creating a world where one side fits all.  Every loving act brings us closer to peace and justice, no matter how far off they seem.  Every loving act engenders hope and courage for both the gentle patience and bold courage needed for peace and justice to kiss.  May you find love in every personal relationship, within your community, and in every conception of God you may have.

 

 

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POEM: For Awe Inclusive Crews

Posted on January 15, 2016 by

In this backwards god-eat-god world
In the phase of gratuitous violins
Love surpasses all of the prose
In the ultimate hatch it job
Super seeding awe conceptions
Overrunning all of its boarders
Teeming with those borne agin
Depraving those of what little they halve
Razing hell
Only to make everything
Beyond accost
As be stowing
Such sublime vouchers
For awe inclusive crews
Who take up
The cause

This poem is about the tenaciously subversive workings of love and the sublime benefits of orienting one’s own being and doings with transcendent purposes.  The breakneck, in-your-face cynicism shilled by consumer culture and tribal goading runs roughshod over the deepest and most satisfying harmonies in life.  Actively and collectively working for good in this world may be best centered around these awe-inspiring forces in life that bid us to meet gratuitous violence with gratuitous love.  May love upturn any low impulses that may interfere with boldly welcoming a way of life big enough for awe and small enough to meet every child within.

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Free MLK DAY Poster: Peace, Justice — Is It Just a Day Off?

Posted on January 11, 2016 by

I prefer celebrating the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. every day.  Still, the annual MLK Day holiday gives U.S. pause to reflect on the ever-present message of America’s most notorious prophet of peace and justice: Is it just a day off?  Peace and justice are ours if we want it.  Feel free to download this free MLK Day poster and share it with friends and enemies.FREE MLK DAY POSTER Martin Luther King Jr. Day PEACE JUSTICE Just a Day Off?

This free poster is based on my MLK design, available as buttons, stickers, T-shirts, etc.:

MLK Day design

Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day every day!

 

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FREE CHRISTMAS POSTER: Homeless Refugee Nativity

Posted on December 10, 2015 by

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…with all of those homeless Middle Eastern families.  This free poster offers my take on the hypocrisy of Christians in a co-called “Christian” nation worshiping xenophobia and fear rather than the radical hospitality and unconditional love that Jesus modeled from his birth.  The widespread and sniveling calls to limit refugee immigration and brand all Muslims as a threat to national security is a national shame and a profound shrinking of our humanity.

Homeless Refugee Nativity Christmas -- FREE POSTERPlease feel free to download and/or share widely this Christmas poster to help launch conversations about what it truly means to have love and compassion for all of our neighbors around the world.  We might want to stop arming and bombing the Middle East for a start…

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POEM: Open Adore

Posted on December 2, 2015 by

Awe
That knocks
Me too
My knees
Shaking
Hands
Earth below
Heaven above
In articulate silence
And still
Hear
I am

Awesomeness is often met through silence and with silence.  There is a power greater than words dare speak.  Experiencing the power of such awesomeness is a bulwark for my highest hopes and that which incarnates most deeply my daily peace and joys.  Awe flows from this.  May such awesomeness visit you and enliven awe that you are.

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POEM: The Rein of Hope

Posted on November 30, 2015 by

A tsunami of hope is coming
Are you preparing such a weigh?
Will you be caught looking
Through shot glasses
Only to be decked out with eyedroppers
For blood shot eyes, those cynical vanes
Ill quipped to see arose
As a master of heavy arts
Uprooted by a juggernaut of serendipity
Leaving ewe to find won self
Oar reel state underwater
In the bust of surf and turf
As well sculpted ideologies
Serve up anchors and chains
In efface of assail boat
Occupying the same
Regardless of weather titanic cap size
Kicking buckets down the road
As if
Awe is to be fathomed
Only too arrive
More than any won dare expected
Even as some specious of large-mouthed perch
Will settle
Just enough
Too fill one’s lunge
In a whirled turned
Upside down
As big fish in a bigger pond
And still
Hope floats
Not even holding water
A parent as sow much hot air
As a cloud to water
The sores of life cleansing
Bound to witness new arisings
From such a gossamer point of you
Not to be governed by stars
Returning only amor
Gentle reign on earth

This poem addresses head on and heart on one of my favorite themes: hope.  Cynicism is easy. Hope is often somewhat more elusive.  Courage, enthusiasm, and an open heart are prerequisites for hope to flourish.  Change is happening awe the time.  Do you see it?  Don’t get caught looking through shot glasses or nurturing any of the many chronic dis-eases characterized buy the hardening of the attitudes.  Love is skulking about working its way into the seemingly hermetically sealed hearts of the ignorant and perversely-incentivized, and when the time is right, love will flood the vacuum in such vacant souls.  Things will suck in anew weigh for those not paying attention in tuition of life as a topsy-turvy whirled writes itself a new future.  Feel free to spice up your life with such advent seasoning…

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FREE DOWNLOADABLE POSTER — VETERANS DAY: Let’s Leave War Behind Not Veterans

Posted on November 10, 2015 by

Here is my tribute to Veterans Day.  Please feel free to share this downloadable VETERANS DAY poster or meme.FREE POSTER: VETERANS DAY Let's Leave War Behind Not Veterans

This free downloadable poster is based on these designs, available in buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, laminated posters, and more:

Support Our Troops - Work for Peace - Justice for Veterans - Bring them Home NOW--PEACE BUTTON

Support As Few Troops As Possible PEACE BUTTON

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing enduring can be built on violence. Gandhi quote PEACE BUTTONPeace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew. John Greenleaf Whittier quote PEACE BUTTON

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FREE DOWNLOADABLE POSTER: Gandhi’s Seven Social Sins

Posted on November 5, 2015 by

Gandhi does it again with this genius taxonomy of social sins.  Feel free to share widely and/or print out this free downloadable poster:

Gandhi Quote: Seven Social Sins FREE POSTER

This free poster design is based on this Top Pun design, available on buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and of course, a laminated poster:

Gandhi Quote: Seven Social Sins - POLITICAL BUTTON

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can view more great Mohandas K. Gandhi quotes here.

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POEM: Living Between The Pages

Posted on October 23, 2015 by

He wrote
She read
Studiously massaging
Fact and fiction
And in between
The pages
They lived

This poem addresses both the role that storytelling plays in the narratives of our lives and the need to move beyond fiction to incarnate into our real lives such truths as stories may impart.  Storytelling through literature and theater serves more than mere entertainment.  Storytelling can model character studies, cautionary tales without the real life tragedies, and heroics of all types without constant personal risk.  The emotional catharsis of vicariously experiencing the many and varied lives of others, biographical or mythological, can inform our own exploration of our highest ideals and darkest impulses.  Still, storytelling, even at its best, is no substitute for living.  At some point, we need to author and act out our own narrative on this stage we call earth.  And life has all the complications of live theater — and more!  There are no dress rehearsals for life; this is it.  Life does not offer any assurance of a Hollywood ending, and you can’t read ahead in a script to nuance your motivation.  In life, tragedies are real and heroics are risky.  Of course, such a precarious situation offers a much more spellbinding way of living than recounting even the best “studiously massaged” story.  May you cast yourself into the lead role in your life, and may your story be original and lively enough to bear repeating.

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