Tag Archives: cooperation

Your Right

for Merle Haggard

I’m an easy-going guy as far as that’s concerned
I tend to only simmer where another fellow burns
Let live and go on living is the lesson that I’ve learned
I only ask for the same in return

Some fellows look for reasons to get into fights
They claim its just protection of their natural rights
But that’s no call to start a brawl near every night
When I’m trying to relax and just get tight

You’re free to exercise your right to party
You’re free to get real loud and cause a scene
You’re free to get attention by stating your intention
To go through life big, ugly, dumb and mean

This country was built in the name of freedom
and to protect it, I will come to blows
Your rights mean something to me,
but don’t bring ’em too close to me, ’cause
your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

I’m patriotic, and I’ll wave the flag now and again
My country’s enemies are mine, and its friends are my friends
But there’s a way that breaks, and one that merely bends,
and it looks like you’ve confused them once again.

You’re free to exercise your right to party
You’re free to get real loud and cause a scene
You’re free to get attention by stating your intention
To go through life big, ugly, dumb and mean

This country was built in the name of freedom
and to protect it, I will come to blows
Your rights mean something to me,
but don’t bring ’em too close to me, ’cause
your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

16 JAN 2006

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Celsius 488.33

What is the point at which the conscience burns
and thus consumes the mind with thoughts to act,
that in its darkest recess for truth yearns
to separate illusions from the facts?

And the externals that provide the fuel,
that pile the planks under the stakes we seek
upon which to transfix ourselves as fools —
how much do we require before we speak?

These embers that now scorch the gathered crowd,
how long before their heat is burnt to ash
and we, again, will curse the cold in loud
vehement wailing in the last light’s flash?

How many will bewail both fire and dark
that dare disturb their dulled complacency
while others see engulfed in the first spark
the basic tenets of democracy?

And this conflagration we now build
to smoke some evil hornets from their nests —
at what point will its appetite be filled?
Once it’s begun, the bonfire knows no rest

’til it devours all things within its touch,
its raging tempest void of care or sense;
and then, too soon is gone without so much
as a faint flicker of experience.

Unless the fire outside is taken in
and used to fuel a greater flame inside,
the burning of externals is just din
that drowns out reasoning in fratricide.

So watch that flame with care that you ignite —
with caution, choose your victims for the pyre;
and know that he who claims his match most right
is likely both mistaken, and a liar.

25 JUN 2005

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A Shared Vision

What I see is there for every eye;
it does not hide that well, it seems to me –
for although present in a clouded sky,
it is shielded quite ineffectively.

Beyond the veiled illusions it exists
and waits, expectant, ’til we catch a glimpse;
it is both light that hides, and hiding mist,
both door and hinge, both shadow and footprint.

I write about it, yet my mere words fail,
as well you know who see it clear as I;
my loose description does but mark the trail –

a fleeting flash of color passing by.
Sometimes, when we both look, our eyes may meet
and in that instant, the world is complete.

21 JUN 2003

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