The Blackout

The streets are filled with idle, itching hands,
their owners on the prowl in vain pursuit
of some pastime to fill the vacant hours
in darkened rooms enswamped with summer heat.

Without their cellphones, TV sets and games,
and fast-food fare likewise beyond their grasp,
how will the city’s folk be entertained?
On what diversions will they spend their cash?

Driveways are strewn with fallen trees and wires;
on front lawns, baking in the noon-day sun,
we sit in wrought iron chairs, and just perspire.
And wait. There’s not much else that can be done.

Who wants to light a flame to cook a meal,
and add the stove’s hell-fire to this malaise?
It’s better to go hungry than to broil;
besides, the food’s gone bad. It’s been two days.

Tonight, the house is hotter in than out;
by candlelight, perhaps I’ll read a while.
I miss the air conditioner’s white noise;
Too bad such silence has gone out of style.

11 JUL 2005

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Against a Greater Evil Than the Dark

I do not fear what terror comes by night
and would with malice trouble fitful sleep;
such bugaboos may cause a moment’s fright,
but fade in cowardice as daylight creeps.

More brazen ne’er-do-wells parade by day,
and mask their ill intent with angels’ tread;
it is such foes as these, that seek to prey
on those awake, yet unaware, I dread.

A winning smile may hide an evil heart,
and artful praise so sway the doubting mind
that where truth ends and outright lying starts
would take a trusting soul lifetimes to find.

Too often, those who harbor foul design
use some imagined pretense to impose
their will, and lay their claim to me and mine.
They are like wolves who dress in lambswool clothes,

and in broad light of noon steal with a pen
or briefcase what no midnight thief would dare,
proclaiming all the while to be a friend.
Against such brigands, too few are prepared.

As teachers, senators or men of god
they pry into the storerooms of the crowd;
with words of velvet, hide their iron rods
well-used to beat down those who protest loud.

Foul hypocrites! Your speeches that divide
the poor crowd’s reason from its tender soul,
reveal you have no meaning left inside
save for your selfish need to wield control.

If you would speak my piece, or use my name
to justify your actions or your cause
and then when failure looms, leave me the blame,
do not expect from me grateful applause.

You will condemn me, should I speak my mind,
or cause one hapless stray to doubt your means;
Regardless, I will point out where I find
your acts a danger to my truth, or dreams.

15 MAR 2005

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When They Come for Us, Who Will Protest?

Against such foes as ignorance and greed
what good are merely human flesh and bone?
In which fierce battles waged to rule the soul
of a proud nation shall the victor be
its best and brightest minds, its stoutest hearts,
when fear and rank injustice swell the rolls
of those conscripted soldiers armed and aimed
by puppetmasters who would work unseen?

If in such times as these, the few who sense
a wrongness in the aims of governance,
instead of crying out are meek and mute,
what hope have those blind masses, huddled there
for warmth in the great blanket of deceit?
If those with minds still clear give little thought
save for their small domains and precious selves,
what hope have they when their turn comes to pass?

When poison finds the bloodstream, all is lost;
there is no purpose then to treat the wound.
Once tainted, can a cause that once was pure
be ever cleaned again of evil stains?
The names of gods, if used to claim the world,
unless they touch more than the tongues they loose,
become pale, haggard shadows of what truth
they may have once possessed, and are no more.

If what we do not exercise, we lose,
reduced to merely wisps of once brave words,
then what good are proud speeches or parades
except to eulogize the selves we’ve lost?
What point in our lamenting the forged chains
that by our apathy we choose to wear,
and through our lack of action help to build
a prison we were told was not for us?

How loud do we protest the slightest thing
that limits our convenience and our ease,
yet quietly accept far greater ills
that jeopardize our prized integrity?
We guard against the slow, menacing creep
of some imagined danger with such pomp,
yet when the wolf, well-dressed, knocks at the door.
we smile and offer him our favorite seat.

What hypocrites we are; what grand buffoons!
To think we find ourselves somehow evolved,
and self-possessed with intellect and poise
equipped to teach the other fellow truth.
No wonder half the world begins to laugh
when as the grand messiah we approach;
while huddled in our shadow, the rest wait
for hubris to collect its karmic toll.

07 MAR 2005

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Thoughts on the 9/11 Report

Well, I have done it. Purchased the “official” 9/11 report. And read it through, at least at this time on a cursory level. I will re-read it in detail, of course.

There are a few things that trouble me. They are as follows:

1. A war on terrorism will not succeed. That is because terrorism is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is a state of global affairs that gives rise to the belief that terrorism is, for many, a justifiable and perhaps the only viable alternative to advance their agenda to the point where it will be considered.

2. If we are to engage the problem of alternatives to terrorism for those who now employ it as their sole means of communication, we have to start looking hard at the fact that we are a single human family. National “rights”, and boundaries, really must have no meaning if we are to address, fairly and honestly, the grievances of one group of people versus another. The fact is, that as a human species, we are in effect a single family — albeit in some cases only distant cousins.

This makes EVERY war in effect a civil war. Brother against brother — for the majority of religions on this planet accept as one of their tenets some degree of universal brotherhood.

3. With respect to that universal brotherhood. The United States must make a statement to the world, and must lead the other “so-called” civilized nations in one very important point. We must accept Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Druidism, Wiccanism, Sufism, Voodoo, Santeria, Ba’hai, Sikhism, Confucianism, Atheism, and all the rest, as absolutely equally viable paths to that exclusively human (at least, human-claimed, for none of the other species that have evolved and existed for millions of years on this planet have found it necessary to indulge in the nuances of comparative theology) province, enlightenment. If we are capable of being enlightened (as we claim), then we need to accomplish it. That means returning spiritual truth where it belongs — to each and every individual.

4. We need to focus our resources not on exerting our influence through military might, or covert operation, or corporate interest, but through demonstration of our principles by enforcing them upon ourselves. Eliminate special interests. Eliminate preconceived biases. Restore (or, rather, considering our own systematic programs of terrorism that checker our own historical national agenda — vis a vis the Comanches, for exampl?) “justice for all.” Not justice that meets our needs or serves the expediency of the moment, but justice that punishes our friends when guilty, and praises our enemies when they are courageous and in the right.

5. Finally, we need to think long and hard about something that G.I. Gurdjieff once said, that was almost echoed in Obama’s recent speech at the Democratic convention: “As long as a single person is in prison, no one is free.” No matter what the reason — because prison population, like terrorism, is a symptom. And to address the cause, we cannot continue to just build more prisons and graveyards. Or schools that teach rigid ways of looking at the world. Or churches that preach hatred and xenophobia in the guise of building their own brand of “chosen people” to pit against the rest of the world.

Ah, I could go on.

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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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No Surprise At All

She said that she was longing for the life that she once had
The changes they were coming fast, and some of them were bad
Said she could not believe it
Maybe she was going mad

And I saw just what was happening
And I wasn’t much surprised
That the laughter was now missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt at all
More like autumn blues when leaves begin to fall

She said she wanted happiness and things as they had been
For life had started laughing and the joke was quite obscene
I shook my head and tried to say
I know just what you mean

For I saw the road she’d taken
And I wasn’t much surprised
That the laughter was now missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt just then
More like longing for the wisps of might have been

She spoke of that long trip she made somewhere into the East
And the times she spent in turmoil wrestling her inner beasts
And of all the men that failed her: businessmen, and clowns and priests
And I wasn’t much surprised, not in the least

She said she wanted more to life than memories that fade
For going through the motions seemed like such a sad charade
Said she felt like an old record
That was scratched and overplayed

And I noticed what was happening
And wasn’t much surprised
That the happiness was missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt at all
These things happen when your past decides to call.

1988

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A Different Kind of Shore

When one looks out past
the breaking waves at ocean’s end
those across the sea

seem much less remote
connected by this expanse
of constant movement.

Away from the sea
In a great endless valley,
peering at the edge

of the horizon
where the sky and land connect
the mountains rise

dark blue and somber;
they separate more clearly
expanse on both sides.

Yet the more finite
space of the wide sprawling plain
is not the desert

hugeness of the sea,
it does not shift and not shift
change without changing

it just dries to dust
and then turns again to green
is lost in deep snow

and each spring flowers;
the ocean’s chameleon
greens, grays, blacks and blues

breed deeper hungers,
suckle darker fears and dreams
and know their own gods.

religions are born
of the deserts and the seas —
seeking to fathom

the underlying
pulse that moves without travel
swallows with no trace.

14 JUN 2004

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