'Til it Won't Rise Again

 I noticed them on the April shore

thinking they were done for

but like wine in old bottles

they persevered, preserved:

salvages for the savages, 

and I should have had an axe,

or a torch, something with which to burn

(but O! how would they ever learn?)

Have I seen these trenches, dear?

The outlines reckon, I fear,

with the foundation of an evil place

and could I pour cement on it,

and make a slab where no bunker would 

exist for them, no rathole, no place

to raise this up again--I would.

Do I know these cornerstones?

Yes, though they were tossed away like bones.

Now rolled back, rolled here, rolled there.

Building a wall, a tower, a church--

I know the names of such places, and the 

way of the work and they should be broken.

Broken. Powdered. And the dust

should white out every 

lie of their making. 

And I will make ink of ashes and tears,

I will make ink of ashes and blood,

I will write for them:

You have tried since the flood

and every time your tongue confounded,

every time your walls did fall,

every time you trampled the young grapes,

every time you burned our harvests,

every time you poisoned our water,

every time you stole our youth,

every happy home you broke with poverty,

every bird you made fall from the sky--

these are the new stones 

that will hold down the slinking Beast,

the Leviathan city you hope to build,

I will heap them up,

I will heap them up,

until your champion bloodred curse will lie

until it won't rise again.

For Christmas

 That we were living 

unforgiven, 

the days dark and long

and knew no respite 

from the fall of night

but the hope of

something strong

enough to stand against

the terror,

self-made

that we were not enough. 

The child was born to 

tell the world we are

worthy of his love. 

Whomever, however.

We are here to love and be loved.

And he said

what you have done unto others

you have done to me.

And they did him dirty

for breaking it down like that. 

And for what they did to him, 

I have stayed angry. 

For every hungry soul unfed

for every true martyr bled,

for every hard skulled saint

who blessed the world 

for wanting it to be what it ain't. 

For those who so willing to cough

up nails to hammer into

human frail

flesh, the Herods and 

Pilates who don't understand--

but present themselves in charge. 

I have loved him,

the one I don't worship,

for saying it aloud

in words that shamed the pompous and proud,

the rebel teacher

who said love one another

and meant it enough

to go down for the words. 

I have loved him, detached from the mystery absurd.

And through all of it

I can wish love to you too. 

In the way that injured prophet 

wanted me to. 

For the great tidings

are that life is now, and forgiveness is near

as the asking and 

we are commanded to love,

and if we do,

follow in the way

the light we throw will lengthen the day,

push back the dark, 

rebuke the fear.

This is Christmas. This is rebirth.

The Great Work of bringing peace on earth,

I weep for those who have 

championed his cross

and for all the world, rejoiced at his loss.

And all our many losses too. 

Still peace and good tidings come to you.

And to all your family too. 

But we can not guarantee the good year. 

For the faith you have is not without its fears. 

And the ransom of your soul

has been in arrears,

for what blood was ever enough? 

If not his? 

But sin persists. 

And the lack of love,

and the promotion of it,

and if the Spirit was a Dove

it would baptize you in its shit. 

A Parody with Apologies to Elton John

 Elon wears his ego like a crown:

some people call him genius

at least that's what they say

with degrees from the finest schools around.

Elon, Elon has some money it fluctuates these days. A digital gold Midas on the information superhighway.

He bought Twitter on a whim on a tragic day and the Twitterverse said the site is dead and the flight's begun-- no one pwned or won that day.

And he shall be Elon, in the pose of a bad man, And he shall be Elon, With a longtermist family plan. And he shall be long gone if this site had a backup plan... He still is Elon

Elon tells bad jokes by the pound, he likes to meme all day. Fanboys laugh like they don't know what's getting thrown away.

The genius, wants to go to Mars or Venus, and leave us peons far behind and Earth will be like Twitter, we can watch it slowly die.

He bought Twitter on a whim on a tragic day and the Twitterverse said the site is dead and the flight's begun-- no one pwned or won that day.

And he shall be Elon, in the pose of a bad man, And he shall be Elon, With a longtermist family plan. And he shall be long gone if this site had a backup plan... He still is Elon.

1

What Breaks Me

 What breaks me is knowing

that under their roofs

there were 

carefully hidden

thoughtfully chosen

beautifully wrapped gifts

waiting for them,

to fill with delight 

those children's faces,

eyes shining,

missing baby teeth,

and they never came home 

to see them

and someone had to figure out

what to do

with gifts

like those.

The Limit Does Not Exist

 To those who would say 

this love is not 

(in your mind) 

a love divine,

what measurement did you use 

to fathom the heart--

either of God's,

or mine?

For I would go

on bended knee to the one I love,

but for you

I would not crawl.

And I would give my life

to the one I love

and care nothing for your words

at all.

If I would fight with angels,

what might I fear from the words

of men?

If I would lose the world for my love--

what of love could you say then? 

My love more visible in deeds

than in the salty tears of spite

of those who claim that love is not right

denying the basic needs

of those to love and be loved.

We are enough for that,

and survive the risks--

those that limit love must learn-

the limit does not exist.

This Ocean Earth

 The fish are all canaries

in our climate taxonomy. 

The ocean is a coal mine,

and we are too dim to see

that the vanishing pods 

the diminishing schools

reveal that we too are doomed,

made victims and fools.

The dying places in the sea

are deserts made of wet.

 They are where the germ of life

was once made--but yet--

the toxic bloom, the deep sea drill,

we farmed the earth and the sea

too deeply and in the still

of the tides, wrought havoc on the world to be. 

We should dig no further

in this salty mine

lest we pierce the heart 

of the world divine. 

The Moth

 The moth

beats

beats

beats her wings

beaten

by the 

space

between the window

and the screen 

so tight

and straight

she could not

have seen

the fatal flaw in the screen

where she came in,

so paralyzed by fear and doubt,

she cannot see

the way to get out.

Mercy is the opening

of a space that never was before

to let a trapped moth soar.

late fall

 the late fall

chills all

with sodden rain

and bleary pall

of the late sluggish gleam

of the light

of day

and the heavy slump

of night.

we feel in our bones

in the fall of our time 

the dint of the seasons 

in the throes of the 

clime

and wonder at how the winter might be--

not too soon,

not too heavy,

hopefully.

Bomb Your Phone

 

Bomb, 

blitz, 

bonfire your phone. 

Your $1500 phone you use

every damn day. 

(I use android myself,

I am not fancy. I call

my work and my spouse

and get text messages to confirm

my bills are paid.)

Are you relinquishing 

a consumer good

to signify 

a cultural bad--the desire to 

make whole companies perform

"Free speech" to suit Some one's ideology

instead of making a rational decision

re: the free market? 

How not conservative and specifically weird. 

Are you signifying you might surrender

the specific cultural good in your hand that you paid for because you are

a fucking schmuck who doesn't know

how the first amendment or 

the free market

anything else works, and 

lie in your teeth for clicks and likes? 

I think you should bomb your phone from space

to never Tweet again., being

bad at Twitter, history, the understanding of the moment. 

And also Tom Wolfe is overrated and that movie kinda sucked. 

Tears

 The burning tears of my anger

no longer flow,

but become steam

straight from my eyes.

They propel an engine 

of motion

so bespoke

no other fuel would do,

which moves as my 

emotion 

sometimes bids me to.

The Black Dog of It

 You must hate your life 

Rilke said--and it's true,

I do.

I would pull myself up by my roots

if I had to

and I have no one but me to be

bad to.

Sometimes.

The fury I feel 

is fear: 

a fire trying to make a light

to ward off the dark,

but any random spark

can set ablaze all I hold dear.

I see my black dog and pet him

even knowing he bites.

Both for love, and spite. 

Unknown

Will I see you again

anytime this side of the earth

if the frugal cosmos recycles

instead of dispatches 

souls to some other place

or, worse yet, disposes them?

Because I walk with

the unknown, alongside

the memories of those

I do not see

and while I know that they have ceased to be

they can not,

have not,

stopped being with me.

And what is left of them

and what is left of me, 

seem quantumly entangled,

and for the life of me,

I wonder about the life of you

having gone out to 

the unknown.

The Price Tag

 The price of Freedom(tm) is sometimes

littered bodies

abandoned strollers

walkers tossed aside

with no "hallelujah"

under a red white and blue banner

spangled with blood.

The price of Freedom(tm) is sometimes

a nation so gun-harrowed

we flinch at the early

rocket's boom

in the last gleam of twilight

and wince at

a siren's red blare.

We have purchased the freedom

to shelter in place and call

it brave;

from sea to shining sea

all around us is

a grave.

What You Are

 I am defining myself for myself

and not for your easy use

and handling.

My definition takes up pages

and increases while

I take up space.

When you define

some corner of me

to try and grab me whole,

it tells me less about me

than it does about

what you are.

The Sweep

 The inheritance of 

any of us is dust, and the 

birthright to settle anywhere

somewhere, 

the length and breadth from

scalp to toes, 

and the city ordained it wasn't so--

settle your dust elsewhere!

And in the cold of night

surrendered the meager things

of warmth and comfort to so much dust

and scattered belongings and persons

to the winds.

To the winds. When earth was the only home

that man would ever lay his form down,

of earth made and nurtured and all these

scattered dust motes once were enumerated humans

man and woman born. 

Where would they go, these forgotten children of your 

own ribs?

Where would they go, these houseless sparks of life

Once nurtured in human arms and human breasts

to be embraced by asphalt and condemned

by appearances and propriety to 

be embraced by the dust from which they came--

though in their dignity and vulnerability, they are

the same? 

The shame,

to deny a place at the table for those 

upon whom so much has been imposed.

To sweep away with indifference beings of 

dust, but sentience. 

and call it anything but violence. 

The Field of Yellow, the Field of Blue

 The earth tells the truth

the grain is true

to the soil that nourishes and the water that 

grows it, and in the stem and 

straw tells the tale

of the richness of the place:

the gold rising to the blue of a sky 

untroubled by fear and terror,

though fear and terror 

surely exist. 

I wish your skies so blue,

so clear, 

no trouble could exist even in the imagining,

I wish you fields so golden,

no one there would ever know famine,

Even though this fear is always

in the blood and muscle of our dwelling even in 

the richest time. 

The gnashing of teeth hungry for bread,

the gnawing of stomachs that have not been

lately filled. 

And I wish you would not know the tremor

of the terror by night and the sound

of the deaths you have escaped, but someone else 

surely knows. 

I do not know how to love you, but with 

baleful warnings and my entire heart. 

For if mankind suffers, we suffer all, though our experience

is not the same. 

I am bowed by your courage,

and will always recall this blue sky, these amber waves. 

This nation, made dear to me in a brutal struggle. 

I stand with you, and 

keep you in my greatest esteem. \