| March 2008 |
All work copyright
the owner. No
reproduction
without consent.
the owner. No
reproduction
without consent.
POEMS
Poems by Don Coorough (Arizona)
Support Our Troops
A seedy looking, white-bearded beggar
Stood daily on an island
In the street serving as the entrance and exit
Of a shopping mall parking lot.
The man always held the same cardboard sign;
Indicating he is a veteran,
And pled for money to help him survive.
I watched car after car
Each stop at the light, awaiting green permission
To leave, ignore his presence.
None of the drivers even gazed in his direction.
When he was young and full of vitality:
He ought to have dated his one true love
He should have waxed his first car every Saturday
He could have played ball in the park with his friends
He dreamed of being present for a Koufax no-hitter
He would have bought the new Beatles’ album
He longed to share eggnogs around the Christmas tree
He missed shooting the curl on that board in the garage
He was absent for barbecues and beer in the backyard
He didn’t get to add his voice to Thanksgiving prayers.
Instead, the draft board sent him a notice
And then sent him to ‘Nam.
His one true love put on love beads
And gave her virginity to a hippie in the Haight.
Koufax retired.
The Beatles broke up.
His parents sold his surfboard and car,
And placed no presents with his name under the tree.
These thoughts climbed around
The jungle gym of his mind
As each driver refused to glance his way.
“I went there for all of you,”
He wanted to yell in anger,
“Then you shamed me
And left me a broken Humpty Dumpty.
I can’t get a job,
Couldn’t feed my wife and kids;
Now they left me
And won’t take my calls.”
He just stared plaintively, pleading
Into each implacable and non-responsive,
Sun-glared windshield of smugly superior voters.
“Show me your thanks,
Your Christian charity!”
He longed to cry out;
But stilled his voice,
Trying to get what he could.
They pulled up beside that island
In Mercedes and Beamers and SUVs
With bumper stickers on the back
Saying, “Support Our Troops”
Upon the image of yellow ribbons.
No one gave him one thin dime.
He remembered when people stateside
Used the same phrase during ‘Nam.
Now, he knows what they meant:
Keep them over there to die and be disfigured
Keep them there to kill and destroy
Send more to join and escalate the violence
Make them suffer from agent orange
Send even more to witness the horrors
Make them stay ‘til incapacitated by PTSD
Keep them there so nightmares will haunt them
The President’s will must be imposed.
I pulled up in line next to that island
In a beat up van awaiting the green;
There was no yellow ribbon on my back bumper
Just a peace sign on my hat as I looked in his eyes.
I reached in my wallet and pulled out a five
And noticed the hesitation in his gait
As he wondered, “Should I take money from that old
Hippie, someone too chicken to join me in ‘Nam?”
With each slow step of his defeated stride
He saw no smugness, no distaste in my gaze;
The vet wanted to eat, buy a bottle, score some bud,
So I just smiled and told him, “Take care.”
Then in my mirror, I saw mall security
Approach that veteran with sign in hand;
They pointed and prodded and pushed just a little
And ushered him off like a stray dog with no tags.
Amerika
Amerika, you’re clad in golden garments
With glitter and gold paint on your face;
Amerika dyes its hair fiery red
While green blood flows through its veins;
Amerikans drown in a modern tar pit,
While white phosphorous clouds their brains.
Amerika, go ahead, wall up your borders
And put invading immigrants back in their place –
Amerika, as you succumb to fears of mosques,
Listen to me, men named Abdul cringe from your plastic, tolerant distaste.
Amerika forcibly exports Thomas Jefferson’s bastard children,
Then tells Palestine, Lebanon and Venezuela their vote’s a disgrace;
Amerika, the flame from the shining torch in Liberty’s hand
Flickers in systematic winds that blow the Bill of Rights into space.
Amerika, proclaim yourself as the land of opportunity,
Then leave the homeless, ailing and needy on the curb, un-embraced;
Amerika, you’re a black widow, weaving your web across the globe –
A political and economic order with you as its ace.
Amerika, you stoke a planetary furnace
Fueling climate change with your waste;
Amerika demands the respect of all others,
But offerings back? I see not a trace.
Amerika polices WMDs in other countries,
But uses its own, stockpiling more just in case;
Amerika orbits our Earth with spy satellites
And argues now it must weaponize space.
Amerika, you once were the hope of all people,
But now you’re a threat to the whole human race.
Contamination
Single tenement fluke:
Contamination
Of what remains.
Its remains
Stain the ground
With a stench
From the decaying
Agèd of the kulchur.
City dweller flies
Buzz out a search
Through squinting eyes;
Narrowness of vision
Is a proportionate reaction
To reading “the good book.”
Ignorowledge consumes and devours,
Leaving a sand dune landscape
Populated by the sad,
The lonely, the disaffected,
With all their incomplexity.
Hey evangelical assholes,
Your reverences are misdirected
And selfish aims reflected
By cockroach infested
High tower edifices imaginatively erected
Upon liquid foundations’ – uninspected:
Superstition, reigning supreme.
High prod tension entangles ganglia
Until synapses are packed away,
Hidden in a box somewhere – a safe
Depository generates no interest
Upon account ledgers or property
Values, repudiating net worth.
Wharves of tears
Crystallized echoed voices
Of penguins, enflamed
Upon polar ice caps
to
mere
cries
of
the
hopeless
anguish
enveloping
existence.
EXAMINED SENSATION
MUST REMAIN
THE UNDERCURRENT
OF ALL!
Borne indignity
Is always
Born in dignity.
Time’s Up
The time to view the world with protozoan eyes
To balance our gait with the knuckles of our hands
To grunt and snort monosyllabic responses to the fear mongered exhortations of charismatic charlatans
To lasciviously lap clean crimson palms stained by innocent pools coagulating in occupied lands
To ignore the rotting entrails of our fervent dreams while corporate willed solutions enforce military
commands
To suffer unredeemed agony’s heartbeat in mourning’s longing
To rise above the clammy pile of carcasses now standing for civilization
Yes even the time to ask forgiveness for desecrating this world of holy creation
Elapsed twenty minutes ago
Did you not hear the alarm
The echo screams even now in the plaintive wails of children dying of starvation
In the final crystallized tears of newly etching fossil records from species becoming extinct every day
In the incessant whirring of engines that paint the sky with a murky brown wash
While darting through streets and choking highways
In the furtive glances of frightened eyes glancing over hunched shoulders
For an unrelenting amorphous evil that only exists within ourselves
Who created all good and evil in our own image
Will you choose a dullard’s cowardice that knows not when to discard
Life’s training wheels nor how to stop grinning maniacally
At the lying phantom Narcissus who winks back from beyond the mirror
Of monumental edifices erected to glorify humanity’s imagined supreme majesty
And mastery over a habitat that gave birth to us
Sustains us
And which will out last us by eons
We cannot create a workable master plan
To subdivide the entire planet
No brand of make up
No amount of collagen
No form of plastic surgery
No style of architecture
No designer label on our apparel
Can mask the decadent Hyde lurking within the Jekyll
Of our desires which taint our efforts to dominate creation
We cannot subserviate the laws of the universe
To economic models designed to centralize wealth
The quality of mercy has been constrained
It splashes down as acid rain
Which writer calls the sky clear blue
It’s browned by smog and hazed with gloom
Who sees the stars on moonless nights
When dark’s diffused by city lights
Which wilderness helps wild to teem
In factory poisoned dying wild streams
The ocean’s extinction we make
When plankton and reefs lives we take
The veiled screens reveal in parting
That all are one and one is all
Not bits of
Not imbued with
Just different branches
Of one same tree
There is only one instant
The fleeting illusion of now
So fertile with options
That beg “Redeem
Life in this now
The only now which exists”
As each now passes to not-new now
Just more of the same now requiring
A not-yet now slipping
Through regretful fingers
He is I as I am you
We are they as she is free
Life’s a maze interlaced yews
Someone’s the sky so anyone’s the sea
The dog, fox and hunter, too
Shine like stars eternally
Not life, death, nor sad adieu
Obscures cozmic Unity
Nutopian Creed
“Time wounds all heals.”
- John Lennon
I
Our world eats
Away at all the plans that youth can dream
And jumbles thoughts from consciousnesses’ stream;
First light of dawn unmasks, as rays unfold
Across a sweetly honeyed marigold,
As every dreamer opens, blossoms, yearns,
No government should dare suppress sojourns.
Who holds entitlement to any land?
Migrations will not stop by despot’s hand!
II
The natives of the western hemisphere
Allowed the Europeans coming here
To share the bounty of this grand expanse
Without demanding they must lead the dance;
But then a doctrine reared its ugly head –
And manifest a westward destined spread.
In iron horses, wagons, or on foot
No care was given to those they’d uproot;
The rotting meat from herds of buffalo
To starving natives dealt a fatal blow:
A sacrifice to leather goods that gold
Insisted must be made so they’d be sold.
Soon rights to corn fields’ harvests were usurped
By filling reservations of dry earth
With natives, owners’ rights demurred to guns;
Religious freedom did not mean heathens,
So onward Christian soldiers, convert more.
And those refusing? Lead them to death’s door!
III
Soon even sovereign nation’s land was wrest:
California, Texas, the whole southwest,
Were spoils to be bought, or had by force!
This was, of course, God’s manifested course.
Why did He care which Christian government
Should manage taxes on this continent?
From Jackson, Taylor, Seward, Roosevelt
Men heard proclaimed this was the hand God dealt.
As Mexico receded in defeat,
So residents’ subjected to deceit
Found home, respect and honor sacrificed
To hues of flesh revealed as most white.
Indigenous: native and Mexican
Were called inferior American;
Tell Debbie Reynolds “How the West Was Won”
Was not by song, but at the point of gun.
IV
Potato famined Irish migrants came
As well as Jews who fled Hitler’s endgame.
On Ellis Island dreams were dared once more
By huddled masses hoping to explore
The path of freedom and equality
But they were met by ethnic bigotry.
V
Is this the land where all can speak their mind?
Take care, one’s thoughts must be of the right kind!
If one was on a presidential list
Of enemies, they’d extract like a cyst;
But one refused to let himself be hushed
And spoke out that the rights of man are just:
That freedom from armed conflict is a right,
Correctness finds no measurement in might.
No harbor statue stands for liberty
When people are sent back across the sea:
For merely singing songs of love and peace
The Lennons were harassed by state police
VI
Indifference lives in all the attitudes
That stand opposed to long held platitudes,
No selfish needs will ever light a road
To any presumed heavenly abode;
Erecting walls will not keep capital
From oozing through your fingers, after all,
If all one does is save, economy
Will dam up into scum ponds stagnantly,
Americans cannot, by right of birth,
Too ostentatiously display net worth.
When poverty and homelessness abound
Migrations will seek out a higher ground,
One wants one’s servants, gardeners and maids
But will refuse to pay a living wage;
Extol America, the paragon
Of every hope; ignore “What’s Goin’ On;”
Denying disaffected any hope,
Just gives the terrorists extended rope
With which to hang you in the coming years…
Protectionism still allays your fears?!?
How do you think you will escape effects
Of climate change as nations that it wrecks
Will mostly be in northern latitudes?
With technological designs subdued,
Which higher culture will survive intact
When they cannot find food already sacked?
VII
All planetary life came from one tree,
The Earth’s gene pool stewed from a soupy sea;
We all were born ‘neath African blue skies,
With migrant footsteps, Earth, we colonized.
No one arose to bar us from pursuits;
Life wandered freely, tasting varied fruits.
No artificial lines were drawn in sand
Demarking regions under some command.
This is the natural order of life:
No human alterations built by strife
Will interpose in permanence a scheme
Since humans lack a universal theme.
No god, no country ever has unslaved,
Believers march toward freshly dug graves;
In capital, humans misplace their trust
While capitol leaders slightly adjust
Their careful edicts of myopia
Instead of revealing Nutopia.
Barrel OrangeSunshine
Swallowing a tab of barrel orangesunshine
That May of ’72, I stared at a poster of Jimi Hendrix:
His face placed amid splashes of color.
Out of those splashes, a fireworks display!
Boom, oooh; bang, aaah… twinkles
Of incandescence rained all around.
I reached out and touched it! The sky,
Man, it was a sacred orgasm.
Turned on, after the fireworks, I went looking into a mirror –
What a zoo! My face loomed huge, as though peering
Into a magnifying glass – discerning
Every pore, every curve and every crease. Features morphed,
Exaggerated, bizarre, grotesque forms. The mind I perceived
And thought through shrank to about the size of a molecule.
Dig it, man, penetrating into my own skin and muscle tissue webbing…
All that was left was the skull. Images telescoped
Into melting illusions. Consciousness dove deeper. The skull loomed
Larger and larger until the atoms making up the structure
Of the bone dwarfed my mind. I traveled in the space
Between the atoms. Electrons zoomed past in all
Directions. “Indeed, I am in allusion.” I realized
I meant, “An illusion.” Or did I? Tuned in? For sure, dropped out.
I dissolved inside a hungry
Vacuum. Awareness groked one thought, I was
Surrounded by an immense expanse of pure, empty
Blackness as if I floated in a void. From the center of this vast
Nothingness, a consuming, swirling
Vortex of diffused, gaseous, grey light inhaled:
Cloudy, but still; formless, like an energy
Field. Zzzzzzzapppp! In the middle appeared another
Black, empty void of simplicity.
Everything, including my own consciousness, swirled
Around that inner, black, formless void that Pope’s once called
The Earth. The speed and force of the swirling strained my imagination.
Freak out! A swirling, whirling, turning triad
Beyond time and nowhere in space,
Mindless resident within, alien
The realm of was/is/will-be,
Eleventh dimensional….
I groked the eternal turbine,
The energy force at the core
Of this circus. What a bizarre bazaar!
This energy-force and I merged, silently, effortlessly,
Two empty slates converging in a no merging zone to a single
Point. Fulfillment. Breathe man, stay cool. I awoke
From immaculate comprehension into the illusion of form.
No time, no space
Just infinite thoughtless grace:
The root of love. Groovy.
Helen of the Agora
Long, breathy wisps of moonbeams
Wind together, weaving honey into strands
Of hair, braided and cascading over alabaster
Shoulders, shimmering with amber’s aura. Aqua
Pools ripple upon opalescent gemstones,
Hypnotizing, luring, like whirlpools that suck
Down every revolving body drawn into
The magnet’s pull. Caressing tones waft
Seductive silence from cords never drawn too
Tightly, nor left to hang limp; vibrations
Insincerely flutter jingles in rhythm to the parting
Of veils which hide no iridescent
Gems of truth. Clandestine commerce inhales
Amorous scents, inferring flesh is alive, arising
With the goosebumps copulation incites upon
Lingering daydreams of sensuous onenightstands
And even soulmates’ eternal monogamy. Eons
Elapsed before the arrival of spicy incense
Trails without dooming everyone to death
By ennui, contradicting longings, induced
By sirensongs’ temptations, uttered
Incantations commanding that no one can live
Without. Prim asylum guides the tillerman,
Who steers his ship past rocky straits – navigable
Only by the hearing-impaired, sightless
Connoisseurs of the most delicate flavors. Calm,
The still air is, as rocky shores retreat
In the presence of bucolic, pastoral leisure
Found moored in a leeward harbor
At twilight, after tempests fail.
Rant on Evangelism
Decanted from Lourdes, yet another youthful fountain of insipid liquid.
Oh, Christian Evangelicals,
As vacuous ex cathedra tyrants
You eviscerate humanity on your rack of Inquisition.
Why torch free thinkers as witches and sorcerers?
How can you repudiate civility
Within civilization?
With missionary zeal
Every culture you loot and rape!
God’s glorious conquest provides
Thy bounty. Your compassionate
Christ, the loving Lord,
Vomits in your opulent edifices
To obscure the stench of hypocrisy.
Moses sought not to obliterate Egypt
Nor to convert Pharaoh’s loyal subjects;
His goal of liberation retained modesty
And obeyed the coming Commandments.
Respect and love others as yourself;
Is this not the meaning
Of “Do unto others”?
Can you practice what you preach,
Or are words just devices
Creating pretexts for aggrandizing conflicts?
Covetousness of souls is a sin;
Destroying cultures is a crime against humanity!
By demanding everyone succumb to your immorality:
Refusing to bless the loving fidelity of some couples,
Denying abortion as a choice,
Restricting access to contraception,
You give the finger to God given free will.
But your ultimate blasphemy
Lies in breaking
The Commandment known as,
“Thou shalt not kill.”
Especially by doing so
In God’s name.
War is a sin;
So is capital punishment.
When Jesus says that
Whoever is without sin may cast the first stone,
Why do all of you hurriedly cue to cast it?
“Judge not lest ye be judged,”
Means God will be less forgiving
To those who are unforgiving.
Think of Jesus in Jerusalem
Cleansing the temples of money idolaters;
Imagine his reaction to televangelists and hat passers today.
Vengeance is a sin – even for 9/11,
Or did Jesus err by suggesting we turn the other
Cheek? Pre-emptive war is blatant murder.
Perpetual war is Hell on Earth:
The reign of Satan.
Vitriol defines you
From your garrulous gospels.
How did love cease to be
The core of your religion?
Would you even recognize Jesus
If he did return today?
Back to Main
Poems by Don Coorough (Arizona)
Support Our Troops
A seedy looking, white-bearded beggar
Stood daily on an island
In the street serving as the entrance and exit
Of a shopping mall parking lot.
The man always held the same cardboard sign;
Indicating he is a veteran,
And pled for money to help him survive.
I watched car after car
Each stop at the light, awaiting green permission
To leave, ignore his presence.
None of the drivers even gazed in his direction.
When he was young and full of vitality:
He ought to have dated his one true love
He should have waxed his first car every Saturday
He could have played ball in the park with his friends
He dreamed of being present for a Koufax no-hitter
He would have bought the new Beatles’ album
He longed to share eggnogs around the Christmas tree
He missed shooting the curl on that board in the garage
He was absent for barbecues and beer in the backyard
He didn’t get to add his voice to Thanksgiving prayers.
Instead, the draft board sent him a notice
And then sent him to ‘Nam.
His one true love put on love beads
And gave her virginity to a hippie in the Haight.
Koufax retired.
The Beatles broke up.
His parents sold his surfboard and car,
And placed no presents with his name under the tree.
These thoughts climbed around
The jungle gym of his mind
As each driver refused to glance his way.
“I went there for all of you,”
He wanted to yell in anger,
“Then you shamed me
And left me a broken Humpty Dumpty.
I can’t get a job,
Couldn’t feed my wife and kids;
Now they left me
And won’t take my calls.”
He just stared plaintively, pleading
Into each implacable and non-responsive,
Sun-glared windshield of smugly superior voters.
“Show me your thanks,
Your Christian charity!”
He longed to cry out;
But stilled his voice,
Trying to get what he could.
They pulled up beside that island
In Mercedes and Beamers and SUVs
With bumper stickers on the back
Saying, “Support Our Troops”
Upon the image of yellow ribbons.
No one gave him one thin dime.
He remembered when people stateside
Used the same phrase during ‘Nam.
Now, he knows what they meant:
Keep them over there to die and be disfigured
Keep them there to kill and destroy
Send more to join and escalate the violence
Make them suffer from agent orange
Send even more to witness the horrors
Make them stay ‘til incapacitated by PTSD
Keep them there so nightmares will haunt them
The President’s will must be imposed.
I pulled up in line next to that island
In a beat up van awaiting the green;
There was no yellow ribbon on my back bumper
Just a peace sign on my hat as I looked in his eyes.
I reached in my wallet and pulled out a five
And noticed the hesitation in his gait
As he wondered, “Should I take money from that old
Hippie, someone too chicken to join me in ‘Nam?”
With each slow step of his defeated stride
He saw no smugness, no distaste in my gaze;
The vet wanted to eat, buy a bottle, score some bud,
So I just smiled and told him, “Take care.”
Then in my mirror, I saw mall security
Approach that veteran with sign in hand;
They pointed and prodded and pushed just a little
And ushered him off like a stray dog with no tags.
Amerika
Amerika, you’re clad in golden garments
With glitter and gold paint on your face;
Amerika dyes its hair fiery red
While green blood flows through its veins;
Amerikans drown in a modern tar pit,
While white phosphorous clouds their brains.
Amerika, go ahead, wall up your borders
And put invading immigrants back in their place –
Amerika, as you succumb to fears of mosques,
Listen to me, men named Abdul cringe from your plastic, tolerant distaste.
Amerika forcibly exports Thomas Jefferson’s bastard children,
Then tells Palestine, Lebanon and Venezuela their vote’s a disgrace;
Amerika, the flame from the shining torch in Liberty’s hand
Flickers in systematic winds that blow the Bill of Rights into space.
Amerika, proclaim yourself as the land of opportunity,
Then leave the homeless, ailing and needy on the curb, un-embraced;
Amerika, you’re a black widow, weaving your web across the globe –
A political and economic order with you as its ace.
Amerika, you stoke a planetary furnace
Fueling climate change with your waste;
Amerika demands the respect of all others,
But offerings back? I see not a trace.
Amerika polices WMDs in other countries,
But uses its own, stockpiling more just in case;
Amerika orbits our Earth with spy satellites
And argues now it must weaponize space.
Amerika, you once were the hope of all people,
But now you’re a threat to the whole human race.
Contamination
Single tenement fluke:
Contamination
Of what remains.
Its remains
Stain the ground
With a stench
From the decaying
Agèd of the kulchur.
City dweller flies
Buzz out a search
Through squinting eyes;
Narrowness of vision
Is a proportionate reaction
To reading “the good book.”
Ignorowledge consumes and devours,
Leaving a sand dune landscape
Populated by the sad,
The lonely, the disaffected,
With all their incomplexity.
Hey evangelical assholes,
Your reverences are misdirected
And selfish aims reflected
By cockroach infested
High tower edifices imaginatively erected
Upon liquid foundations’ – uninspected:
Superstition, reigning supreme.
High prod tension entangles ganglia
Until synapses are packed away,
Hidden in a box somewhere – a safe
Depository generates no interest
Upon account ledgers or property
Values, repudiating net worth.
Wharves of tears
Crystallized echoed voices
Of penguins, enflamed
Upon polar ice caps
to
mere
cries
of
the
hopeless
anguish
enveloping
existence.
EXAMINED SENSATION
MUST REMAIN
THE UNDERCURRENT
OF ALL!
Borne indignity
Is always
Born in dignity.
Time’s Up
The time to view the world with protozoan eyes
To balance our gait with the knuckles of our hands
To grunt and snort monosyllabic responses to the fear mongered exhortations of charismatic charlatans
To lasciviously lap clean crimson palms stained by innocent pools coagulating in occupied lands
To ignore the rotting entrails of our fervent dreams while corporate willed solutions enforce military
commands
To suffer unredeemed agony’s heartbeat in mourning’s longing
To rise above the clammy pile of carcasses now standing for civilization
Yes even the time to ask forgiveness for desecrating this world of holy creation
Elapsed twenty minutes ago
Did you not hear the alarm
The echo screams even now in the plaintive wails of children dying of starvation
In the final crystallized tears of newly etching fossil records from species becoming extinct every day
In the incessant whirring of engines that paint the sky with a murky brown wash
While darting through streets and choking highways
In the furtive glances of frightened eyes glancing over hunched shoulders
For an unrelenting amorphous evil that only exists within ourselves
Who created all good and evil in our own image
Will you choose a dullard’s cowardice that knows not when to discard
Life’s training wheels nor how to stop grinning maniacally
At the lying phantom Narcissus who winks back from beyond the mirror
Of monumental edifices erected to glorify humanity’s imagined supreme majesty
And mastery over a habitat that gave birth to us
Sustains us
And which will out last us by eons
We cannot create a workable master plan
To subdivide the entire planet
No brand of make up
No amount of collagen
No form of plastic surgery
No style of architecture
No designer label on our apparel
Can mask the decadent Hyde lurking within the Jekyll
Of our desires which taint our efforts to dominate creation
We cannot subserviate the laws of the universe
To economic models designed to centralize wealth
The quality of mercy has been constrained
It splashes down as acid rain
Which writer calls the sky clear blue
It’s browned by smog and hazed with gloom
Who sees the stars on moonless nights
When dark’s diffused by city lights
Which wilderness helps wild to teem
In factory poisoned dying wild streams
The ocean’s extinction we make
When plankton and reefs lives we take
The veiled screens reveal in parting
That all are one and one is all
Not bits of
Not imbued with
Just different branches
Of one same tree
There is only one instant
The fleeting illusion of now
So fertile with options
That beg “Redeem
Life in this now
The only now which exists”
As each now passes to not-new now
Just more of the same now requiring
A not-yet now slipping
Through regretful fingers
He is I as I am you
We are they as she is free
Life’s a maze interlaced yews
Someone’s the sky so anyone’s the sea
The dog, fox and hunter, too
Shine like stars eternally
Not life, death, nor sad adieu
Obscures cozmic Unity
Nutopian Creed
“Time wounds all heals.”
- John Lennon
I
Our world eats
Away at all the plans that youth can dream
And jumbles thoughts from consciousnesses’ stream;
First light of dawn unmasks, as rays unfold
Across a sweetly honeyed marigold,
As every dreamer opens, blossoms, yearns,
No government should dare suppress sojourns.
Who holds entitlement to any land?
Migrations will not stop by despot’s hand!
II
The natives of the western hemisphere
Allowed the Europeans coming here
To share the bounty of this grand expanse
Without demanding they must lead the dance;
But then a doctrine reared its ugly head –
And manifest a westward destined spread.
In iron horses, wagons, or on foot
No care was given to those they’d uproot;
The rotting meat from herds of buffalo
To starving natives dealt a fatal blow:
A sacrifice to leather goods that gold
Insisted must be made so they’d be sold.
Soon rights to corn fields’ harvests were usurped
By filling reservations of dry earth
With natives, owners’ rights demurred to guns;
Religious freedom did not mean heathens,
So onward Christian soldiers, convert more.
And those refusing? Lead them to death’s door!
III
Soon even sovereign nation’s land was wrest:
California, Texas, the whole southwest,
Were spoils to be bought, or had by force!
This was, of course, God’s manifested course.
Why did He care which Christian government
Should manage taxes on this continent?
From Jackson, Taylor, Seward, Roosevelt
Men heard proclaimed this was the hand God dealt.
As Mexico receded in defeat,
So residents’ subjected to deceit
Found home, respect and honor sacrificed
To hues of flesh revealed as most white.
Indigenous: native and Mexican
Were called inferior American;
Tell Debbie Reynolds “How the West Was Won”
Was not by song, but at the point of gun.
IV
Potato famined Irish migrants came
As well as Jews who fled Hitler’s endgame.
On Ellis Island dreams were dared once more
By huddled masses hoping to explore
The path of freedom and equality
But they were met by ethnic bigotry.
V
Is this the land where all can speak their mind?
Take care, one’s thoughts must be of the right kind!
If one was on a presidential list
Of enemies, they’d extract like a cyst;
But one refused to let himself be hushed
And spoke out that the rights of man are just:
That freedom from armed conflict is a right,
Correctness finds no measurement in might.
No harbor statue stands for liberty
When people are sent back across the sea:
For merely singing songs of love and peace
The Lennons were harassed by state police
VI
Indifference lives in all the attitudes
That stand opposed to long held platitudes,
No selfish needs will ever light a road
To any presumed heavenly abode;
Erecting walls will not keep capital
From oozing through your fingers, after all,
If all one does is save, economy
Will dam up into scum ponds stagnantly,
Americans cannot, by right of birth,
Too ostentatiously display net worth.
When poverty and homelessness abound
Migrations will seek out a higher ground,
One wants one’s servants, gardeners and maids
But will refuse to pay a living wage;
Extol America, the paragon
Of every hope; ignore “What’s Goin’ On;”
Denying disaffected any hope,
Just gives the terrorists extended rope
With which to hang you in the coming years…
Protectionism still allays your fears?!?
How do you think you will escape effects
Of climate change as nations that it wrecks
Will mostly be in northern latitudes?
With technological designs subdued,
Which higher culture will survive intact
When they cannot find food already sacked?
VII
All planetary life came from one tree,
The Earth’s gene pool stewed from a soupy sea;
We all were born ‘neath African blue skies,
With migrant footsteps, Earth, we colonized.
No one arose to bar us from pursuits;
Life wandered freely, tasting varied fruits.
No artificial lines were drawn in sand
Demarking regions under some command.
This is the natural order of life:
No human alterations built by strife
Will interpose in permanence a scheme
Since humans lack a universal theme.
No god, no country ever has unslaved,
Believers march toward freshly dug graves;
In capital, humans misplace their trust
While capitol leaders slightly adjust
Their careful edicts of myopia
Instead of revealing Nutopia.
Barrel OrangeSunshine
Swallowing a tab of barrel orangesunshine
That May of ’72, I stared at a poster of Jimi Hendrix:
His face placed amid splashes of color.
Out of those splashes, a fireworks display!
Boom, oooh; bang, aaah… twinkles
Of incandescence rained all around.
I reached out and touched it! The sky,
Man, it was a sacred orgasm.
Turned on, after the fireworks, I went looking into a mirror –
What a zoo! My face loomed huge, as though peering
Into a magnifying glass – discerning
Every pore, every curve and every crease. Features morphed,
Exaggerated, bizarre, grotesque forms. The mind I perceived
And thought through shrank to about the size of a molecule.
Dig it, man, penetrating into my own skin and muscle tissue webbing…
All that was left was the skull. Images telescoped
Into melting illusions. Consciousness dove deeper. The skull loomed
Larger and larger until the atoms making up the structure
Of the bone dwarfed my mind. I traveled in the space
Between the atoms. Electrons zoomed past in all
Directions. “Indeed, I am in allusion.” I realized
I meant, “An illusion.” Or did I? Tuned in? For sure, dropped out.
I dissolved inside a hungry
Vacuum. Awareness groked one thought, I was
Surrounded by an immense expanse of pure, empty
Blackness as if I floated in a void. From the center of this vast
Nothingness, a consuming, swirling
Vortex of diffused, gaseous, grey light inhaled:
Cloudy, but still; formless, like an energy
Field. Zzzzzzzapppp! In the middle appeared another
Black, empty void of simplicity.
Everything, including my own consciousness, swirled
Around that inner, black, formless void that Pope’s once called
The Earth. The speed and force of the swirling strained my imagination.
Freak out! A swirling, whirling, turning triad
Beyond time and nowhere in space,
Mindless resident within, alien
The realm of was/is/will-be,
Eleventh dimensional….
I groked the eternal turbine,
The energy force at the core
Of this circus. What a bizarre bazaar!
This energy-force and I merged, silently, effortlessly,
Two empty slates converging in a no merging zone to a single
Point. Fulfillment. Breathe man, stay cool. I awoke
From immaculate comprehension into the illusion of form.
No time, no space
Just infinite thoughtless grace:
The root of love. Groovy.
Helen of the Agora
Long, breathy wisps of moonbeams
Wind together, weaving honey into strands
Of hair, braided and cascading over alabaster
Shoulders, shimmering with amber’s aura. Aqua
Pools ripple upon opalescent gemstones,
Hypnotizing, luring, like whirlpools that suck
Down every revolving body drawn into
The magnet’s pull. Caressing tones waft
Seductive silence from cords never drawn too
Tightly, nor left to hang limp; vibrations
Insincerely flutter jingles in rhythm to the parting
Of veils which hide no iridescent
Gems of truth. Clandestine commerce inhales
Amorous scents, inferring flesh is alive, arising
With the goosebumps copulation incites upon
Lingering daydreams of sensuous onenightstands
And even soulmates’ eternal monogamy. Eons
Elapsed before the arrival of spicy incense
Trails without dooming everyone to death
By ennui, contradicting longings, induced
By sirensongs’ temptations, uttered
Incantations commanding that no one can live
Without. Prim asylum guides the tillerman,
Who steers his ship past rocky straits – navigable
Only by the hearing-impaired, sightless
Connoisseurs of the most delicate flavors. Calm,
The still air is, as rocky shores retreat
In the presence of bucolic, pastoral leisure
Found moored in a leeward harbor
At twilight, after tempests fail.
Rant on Evangelism
Decanted from Lourdes, yet another youthful fountain of insipid liquid.
Oh, Christian Evangelicals,
As vacuous ex cathedra tyrants
You eviscerate humanity on your rack of Inquisition.
Why torch free thinkers as witches and sorcerers?
How can you repudiate civility
Within civilization?
With missionary zeal
Every culture you loot and rape!
God’s glorious conquest provides
Thy bounty. Your compassionate
Christ, the loving Lord,
Vomits in your opulent edifices
To obscure the stench of hypocrisy.
Moses sought not to obliterate Egypt
Nor to convert Pharaoh’s loyal subjects;
His goal of liberation retained modesty
And obeyed the coming Commandments.
Respect and love others as yourself;
Is this not the meaning
Of “Do unto others”?
Can you practice what you preach,
Or are words just devices
Creating pretexts for aggrandizing conflicts?
Covetousness of souls is a sin;
Destroying cultures is a crime against humanity!
By demanding everyone succumb to your immorality:
Refusing to bless the loving fidelity of some couples,
Denying abortion as a choice,
Restricting access to contraception,
You give the finger to God given free will.
But your ultimate blasphemy
Lies in breaking
The Commandment known as,
“Thou shalt not kill.”
Especially by doing so
In God’s name.
War is a sin;
So is capital punishment.
When Jesus says that
Whoever is without sin may cast the first stone,
Why do all of you hurriedly cue to cast it?
“Judge not lest ye be judged,”
Means God will be less forgiving
To those who are unforgiving.
Think of Jesus in Jerusalem
Cleansing the temples of money idolaters;
Imagine his reaction to televangelists and hat passers today.
Vengeance is a sin – even for 9/11,
Or did Jesus err by suggesting we turn the other
Cheek? Pre-emptive war is blatant murder.
Perpetual war is Hell on Earth:
The reign of Satan.
Vitriol defines you
From your garrulous gospels.
How did love cease to be
The core of your religion?
Would you even recognize Jesus
If he did return today?
Back to Main
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few monetary expenses that love on its
own does not pay for. Any small token
is greatly appreciated and will be put
towards good use.
If you like the magazine, or any
content in particular, please take a few
moments to share the link with your
friends.
Feel free to join our Mailing list or our
Facebook group.
