The Lay of the
Land
I.
From your smoke-coughing
cities
to your desolate
plains
The children of Midas have
taken the reins
And left you besoiled in
blood-splattered stains
With none fit to wash you
to purity.
The air-waved cacophony
pleads for a song
That will once more unite
you ennobled and strong
To take back the glory to
which you belong
To wrench freedom from
dreams of security.
The old man, he wanders
through librium clouds
The young take their
distance
to move through the
crowds
And every one fitted for
life-draining shrouds
Reflect only on death's
dance of conformity.
While poisoning rays
permeate land and air
The high class step out
like they haven't a care
They're bound to discover
their world-rending tear
But can they comprehend the
enormity?
Ridiculous sages exhort
peace and love
Say we each have our choice
of reality
So we fight over contexts
and deny what we can;
But reality marches
on.
II.
Journeyman upon the
road
Listening to the jungle
drums
learns to bring it all
together
as nightly his guitar he
strums.
From the Woodstock Nation
on to '84
With his banner of music he
learns to keep score
And the score, as it's
written, keeps costing him more
But it's also what's
keeping him dancing.
With a beat in his heart
and a song for his soul,
it keeps him journeying
on.
III.
Winter creeps whitely over
streetlamp and spire.
Muted to whispers the Grand
Freedom Choir.
A clattering chatter
overtakes the high wire
Pure white like the night
of beginnings.
The children have nestled
all snug in their schools
In joyous rote marching,
they take in the rules
Determined to never be
taken for fools
Or give back an inch of
their winnings.
Silent, the singers are
searching for voice
They know in their souls
it's a matter of choice
They need to find reason, a
cause, to rejoice,
A newly turned path to
felicity.
A new day is dawning, but
where is the sun?
Our freedom and faith are
defined by the gun.
The symbol of power
overrules everyone
'Til we create our own
electricity.
But under cover of darkness
a banner's being stitched
Of patchwork-bright colors
and radiance
To someday soon be unfurled
in the breeze
As we march to freedom's
song.
IV.
High upon a sacred
mount,
Hearing now soft strands of
sound
Journeyman no more, but
quester
Nods benignly; ear to
ground.
He's learned his song
clearly, and clearly he sings.
Hearing an echo, he knows
what it brings.
The time is approaching to
fasten his wings
and swoop down to join the
festivities.
A new day is dawning, and
he is the son
And it's time to rejoice in
the dawn.
V.
But where are the marchers, the pipes and the
drums?
Back in the schoolrooms, relearning their
sums;
Or sleeping with vermin, despised in their
slums
Unable to speak more than mumblings.
From time to time daylight enbrightens their
souls
But most of their time's spent enslaved to the
doles.
The wonder is not the dearth of their
goals
But that they've not given up on their
stumblings.
The class struggle's nothing compared to the
fight
'Tween having it all and doing it right
'cause whether you're black, brown,
red, yellow, or white
You're hooked on the sweet rush of buying.
But the dollar's declining; and so is the
yen.
From swords we'll build plowshares and take up the
pen
For here is the where, and now is the when
And the choice is 'tween living and dying.
Is winter receding? Is spring on the rise?
Do we hear on the air a new melody?
Do we strive to accept; do we try to deny?
Or awaken our voices to song?
VI.
Having witnessed, having spoken
Having reached the cusp of change
Standing midst the still unbroken
Deploying troops throughout the range
A new age martyr need not die
But only stand beneath the sky
And sing each soldier's battle cry
To emanate strength and courage
To keep them true upon the course
-- An emissary of the dawn!
VII.
We shout our faith clearly, without fear or
shame
We've learned to play music -- and not play the
game.
We've let loose our captors and broadcast their
name
That they be captured and cleansed back to
purity.
It's a tried and true story we chant here
anew
Of a born again many set alight by a few
Remember the Beatles, the Stones, Dead and
Who
Back when freedom meant more than
security.
We're learning to share in an effort of
gain
To harness the sunshine and bring back the
rain
To take off our blinders and learn to be
sane
Yet maintain self within that conformity.
Each singing in glory, permeating the air
Feeling good to be cared for, and better to
care
As we mix up the glue and mend the great
tear
Finding courage to face the enormity.
We don't need the sages to find peace and
love
We don't need to fight against reality.
We need to learn rhythm and reason and
rhyme
And raise our souls with song.
VIII.
Knowing now his goal completed
Having given all he'd learned
On his private mountain seated
Enraptured in the peace he's earned
He sings his song clearly, with joy and with
fire
It's all that he has and fulfills all
desire
It's getting him high, and then bringing him
higher
And setting his spirit to dancing.
With a beat in his heart
And a song for a soul
Wafting aloft . . .
And he's gone.
A long and twisty
journey
to find myself where I
started
never having departed at
all...
Half a Page of Scribbled
Lines
Stone cottage, enchanted
forest,
magical fireplace flickers
stories
ancient and new.
Giants and waterfalls.
Flighty energy sprites
cast luminescent nets
betwixt, between.
Sedately walking,
subliminally aware of
omnipresent, unobtrusive
surveillance.
Psychic feelers
sweep for malevolent intent.
Brain shakes. Data bombardment;
tiny spinal fractures emit
memory, reason, the capacity to
love.
Realities
Doorway
I am free to wander
all the stories that
could ever be,
choose the ones I
like the best
to tell myself
in sleepy morning
smiles.
Psyche’s numinous doorway stands
open.
My little house surrounded
in gentle blue heaven.
My landscape bold and bright,
with soft-shaded bubbles
for enchantment.
Voyages, stories
siren call
to blessed peaks of serenity,
eternally
sea-washed
sun-warmed
joined by playful
sparkling sands.
Anytime you ask
I will send you my stories
to repeat, to
interweave, to enhance.
Just outside my doorway
are eternities more.
July 5, 2008
80's legacy (happy
Independence)
Don't blame the GWB
administration, it was Reagan and his merry crew.
Though we protested in the
post-Vietnam ‘70s
hot and sure about every
error
the point is, we had that luxury.
Yes, there was poverty,
discrimination,
groups and individuals in need;
but going hungry was not the penalty
for lack of a paycheck. There was
real community
spirit, especially on the lower
rungs, but philanthropy as well.
There was a strong foundation that
made sense
and listened to well-wrought
reason.
The ‘80s brought in a different
paradigm,
more wide and wild. Days of
cocaine,
champagne, glamour and celebration
for sweet deregulation,
when every schemer
could believe a neo-capitalist
vision of wealth unbound.
Before it was found
that
poisonous as plutonium, in the
gleeful hands of the truly greedy,
just what we
were free to become.
Since then it's been spinning our
balance off to bits of
blast-warped brains.
Such harassing hatred and spitting
disdain. Psychic
Cassandras said at the time, his
numbers are 666.
A man possessed by
Hollywood fantasies of what we all
should portray,
folie a deux with a
nation.
And here are those snowy
yesteryears roosting
in our rafters, laying out
the macabre future of their
disaffected youth.
Who is it, really, that we as a
people choose to be?
Distanced from our history,
adumbrated by convenient lies,
what are our chances
for recovery?
July 4, 2010
Recreation at the End of the
World
The end of the world as we have told
ourselves it is.
Widening eyes align with changed designs,
underpinnings,
first causes, metaphors, stories of
us.
Disruption, distorted transition, fear
and distrust
wildly gallop to trample the field, cry
out the call
“Just let me rest. Just let us lie here,
ashamed, afraid
to allow such blinding disarray. So much
safer
to fall, over the end of the
world.”
Could we edit together songs,
pleas,
harmonize with birds, bees, thunder,
settling sighs,
meme shattering symphony, dilated eyes
happy to see
randomized patterns coalesce, myths
reassessed,
zest of surprise?
Would we recreate deity as an image more
easily
caressing, Empathy for the 21st
century?
July 4, 2012
Freedom isn't free.
Neither need it be paid for by
war.
Freedom demands
integrity,
acting from the core.
Freedom is
not a chore.
It's how we're meant to
be.
July 4, 2010
social
net
to paraphrase that
great poet, Donald Rumsfeld: We work with the Congress we have, not the
Congress we wish we had
Yes, of course we
ought be fiscally responsible.
Yet of far more import
is that we be rational.
Hyperbolic apoplectic,
Apocalyptic rhetoric
reduces us from
politic to stagey raving maniacs.
No need for such
hysteria; learn from recent history.
The flagrant ways of
LBJ, Reagan and GWB
found mitigation in
administrations following.
The People, energized,
expand instead of wallowing.
Exciting industries
take hold, real worth -- not hollow gold.
The conversation we as
a nation need
is not a war of virtue
versus greed
or capturing the rules
to win a game
or playing catch with
sophistry and shame.
We need to ask and
answer in sobriety
Who we best can be as
a society
When the national project was
stolen before our horrified stares
When it became our duty to kill
and destroy for the convenience of profit
When humane policy became
anathema, unworthy economic drag
When the will of the gambling
elite gamed the rule of law to their pocket
Did you scream so loud that bitter
blood poured from your lungs?
Did you set up mourning camps to
gather forces,
to train grief and rage into
worthy opponents against true freedom's foes?
Did you gaze into the cold eyes of
propagandists and say "No!"?
Or did you march along in the
parade, assured: "First they get theirs; then we get ours."?
Prophecy
And He became The One
as we all swarmed together
in His direction
anointing our Saviour.
We, so impatient to be saved
from evil history
from slavery, hunger, hate
to make a better fate
for our kids
(and, don't kid yourself,
ourselves).
Caught up, trapped, in the
trappings
of fashion, co-opted hypnotic
consciousness.
Drugs to cure us of our many
flaws;
because if you're not flawless
you
haven't got a chance.
In marketplace fierce
competition,
a youthful escapade can ruin
you
for a respectable life,
that adheres peers' and elders'
expectations.
And then where are you?
May as well be burning in
eternal
damnation -- at last.
At least Satan wants you
for your sins.
In a mythical colony,
far from their petulant King,
it is said a people
fought and died, and stood their
ground
for freedom.
It is said such pageant plays
are widely performed today.
"Freedom is not Free; but
based
on blood sacrifice." They
say.
Freedom dependent on militia,
on strictly disciplined
troops
firing into pregnant crowds.
Ancient wizards foretold
potent prophecy.
We will not listen.
We insist on martyrdom,
worshipping, as we do,
cults of murder.
Thus human life leads
inexorably
to eternal death,
just as we demand,
when we all come together
anointing yet another One.
We Didn't
Know
Efficient development requires
deprivement.
No profit, no playground to feel alive
in.
Those few groomed for career cheer,
mocking:
"Can't you hear; that's freedom
knocking."
"Work for rent, or stay in school,
dude."
You get no cake for being a
loser.
Orwell warned "Big Brother is
watching."
We didn't know he meant on
you-tube.
We didn't know our life was a
crime
Sentenced from birth to pay all our
time
Cast from the truck to the roadside to
rot
Drawn outside of luck, all about what
you're not.
Media screams their revealed truth
feud.
Sell saturated garbage labeled
food.
Orwell warned; we were warned:
"The best of you will be
co-opted."
We didn't know they meant on
you-tube.
Freedom FOR
Security
Either, by nature, you're plagued with
paranoia
Or you've bought pervasive
propaganda.
I do understand:
It was so cheap, and in your
color.
It wasn't labeled
"Propaganda."
Sold as "News," common
knowledge,
accommodation to the norm.
And it fits your internal dialog so
well
"Danger is everywhere these days of
disorder,
scary change."
Just like all the days
when Freedom seems such a flimsy
wage,
a cheap exchange
for sham Security.
