Irises

THE DEAD

Without any respite, for months on end, it had been raining
a deluge all over the Earth. And now the wind was
swiftly sweeping off the torn shrouds of clouds,
leaving the scoured sky raw, while it tore muted screams,
and large tears, from the fall tinged,
despairing, mutilated, ominous leaf thinning trees.
Emptiness was everywhere. Silence reigned supreme;
a silence saturated with moisture, seeping into
the deepest recesses; a silence absolute and vast
after the interminable pounding rain.

There was only the void, and a blank nothingness
lay heavily on the Earth. Buried beneath it an infinite
number of dead lay in their graves in neat little rows,
they too were in various stages of decay
busy transforming almost earth, and yet simultaneously lying
with humanity was their pain; dead pregnant
with their tortuous deaths; dead writhing with the horror
of their unnecessary deaths dead devoured by the absolute
perfection of their innocent desires; dead mutilated corpses
record of another degenerate age; dead.

Quickly interred and hurriedly forgotten, among the hungry roots-
served as the next course to the greedy insatiable plants
whose bony fingers are hastened by the concrete melting rain
that oozes between the cracks and crevices of the concrete cocoons,
womb of bones

And what of the dead, those that lay buried beneath their anguish,
censored from the world, murmuring in subterranean discussions,
without beginnings without end, delivered in a never ceasing
monotone, no sets just total blackouts; or, is it a soft cobweb
delivered in dampened voices, like the footfalls along the corridors
of a plush carpeted corporate headquarters; or, the near silent step
on a forest floor covered with leaves, disintegrating into the mud
of a never ending Winter.

One corpse collapses melting into darkness, its clawed hand
sinks to where it’s heart once beat, did it belong to a father,
or a husband, or a friend, or a brother? Its self-declared
enemies put it to an end. The gnarled hand
always there invisible in the dark oppressing my heart,
what does the final gesture lying there
frozen for eternity mean to me.
The question inherent in that embrace transmitted into infinity,
the anguish of a life deliberately tortured to death by sadists,
gives it a simple definitive truth.

Another victim declared simply- it’s finally over.
We are one. The Earth joins us in one common denominator.
It unites us, in our loves and hates. Our common destiny makes us
all one family of man. We receive our birthright
of equality. A irony as senseless as it is bitterly profound.
All of us out here in neat little rows. Not only those who hated
one another, and loved one another but those who where utterly
indifferent and just happened to be convenient or expedient.

Then there are those who were driven by greed traveling
from place to place profaning the land only to end up
falling on the thorns and thistles of the own sowing,
whose cruelty they could never conceive.
That is the way it ends in democracy: all equal.
And all ending in nothing.
All paths head to this one great truth,
all one in this vast abyss, forever not knowing.
Under the wheels, the wind, the rain and snow.

And what are you now beside so many
trace elements and ounces of dirt?
Earth nourishing the humus of history
into the distorted vainglorious pride and pain
of those who think they still exist
and struggle , and who shall come after?

But does time still tick after? Are there those others?
Does the universe fade away into the self same nothingness?
Gone are the mountains, gone is the sea
and gone are you and so too with me?

The countryside teems with brilliant flowers, larks still sing suns up
in mornings, butterflies flit through formidable brambles,
and every streams alive with pebbles
that will reflect soft evocative moons;
but out of the danse macabre of death comes death.

To live! But what base trivialities,
what insipid tastes are found in the days endured
after principles have expired
and liberty and equality return,
whenever the bitter gall and glorious aftertaste
of days lived freely return to reminiscing mouths.
No, such a life can not be lived but merely endured.

Nor does it exist in reality.
For will meets will, and even though they seem to live
like sentient human beings, and perhaps their delusions
even lead them to think that they are;
but they are only shades warped by pain,
chattering about nothing, wandering, oppressed and terrified.
They are all rolling corpses;
their souls are already dead.
They exist among us as projections of ourselves,
ghostly apparitions, nothingness.

If they say anything it is an empty echo devoid of sense,
Their words confused and irrational.
The sound of their voices
is shattered crystal carried by the wind.
One can feel the dirt already filling their mouths
with words never said and which now never will be.
Their laughter is even worse, its the malicious laughter
that comes from the sepulchral chambers of their skulls.
And their eyes are already hungry,
drawn towards the material things,
to prove the worth of their existence.
They stare blindly strait ahead shunning each others gaze.
Poor people! What pity such a base servile existence deserves!
These coerced men and women
pretend to escape with their lives:
when life has escaped from them.

But at least they can remember their dreams.
The lives that were amputated from them.
They can retrace their footsteps from this house of mirrors
where the enemies, living lives of deceit,
try to look and act like them.

And yet there are substantial differences
the folly of the shades continues,
by profit and corruption their criminal patterns persist,
they still pervert, they still prostitute children, they still kill,
abetted by unbridled power
and corrupted by no moral restraints;
with unsatiated hate, with unleashed passions devoid of reason,
and spurned on by bounties undeclared as revenue,
the twentieth century inquisition continues.

In all this there is some kind of existence,
because they are part of an insidious populist movement;
but, what about the narcs who live the living lie,
the fools, and the sadists, the fanatical lunatics
who are always attracted to these movements
and are free to walk among us.
Then there are the masters
responsible for this travesty, the murders,
the technocrats who wield the new technologies;
what about them? They are saved
by their pyramid dispersion of profits and guilt,
But the core of their beings are rotted with corruption.
Those leaders who are blinded by pride
and who perpetrate the treasonous assault on our rights
and insulted by sycophants and their own superficial minds,
which allows them to accept without thought
idiotic ideologies expressed in cliches-
a sarcasm in any reality based on truth and reason-
with which they hurriedly try to cover crimes,
except the ones they subliminally induce others to commit.
As for their herd that despicable pack of cowards,
bankrupt in soul, brutal in their needless paranoia,
deficit egos, and barbarity, one their baseless fear
has been sated with cruelty:
They receive an almost perverse sexual release.

More grievous is the fate of their leaders.
They must assume ever greater corruption
or weaken and be confronted with the sad responsibility
of their vice ridden guilt.
Those who retain any tatter of decency will constantly
be confronted with the realization
that their victims blood lies forever on their hands,
and makes a hell of the inevitable conclusions
the torment of even the most rudimentary analysis
must inevitably yield, thus their victims
will publicly continue to be pretended evil,
and they, while sinking into even lower depths
of corrupt tyranny, will project themselves
as the saviors of defenseless children-
a pathetic irrational excuse for the inexcusable.
The crimes must continue
grating on their consciences,
while they manufacture ever more grotesque
incidents for their Goebell propaganda machine.
Once can only pity them as they are burdened
by the ever increasing weight of the burning truths.

And what becomes of their victims,
the furtive persons broken in spirit
afraid to look you in the eye.
Those who perpetrated treason for lighter sentence.
They too ceaselessly ruminate on their guilt,
the weak of will, the oppressed, the passive,
the repressed, the omissive who now released
are spied on in their cars and houses for two years
and then intermittently for the rest of their years.
What a sad torment their insights and analysis brings.
Afraid they too would be crushed,
given jobs, prestige what more could they desire?
And the secret groveling gratitude they feel
toward their masters who have transformed
the freedom loving public into a docile populace of corpses!
Yes they too are alive
like amphibians slithering in the human slime.

Just because they were born and breath,
doesn’t mean that they still are not just as dead.
The sycophancy of their intellects,
of their programmed professionalism,
of their pretenses and contrived controversies
could fake it for brilliance of life,
having never been more than tapers for the dead,
the right wing prostitutes’ whore house conceits,
and decorated Qlippoths.

Beneath the metropolitan racket -
They can hear the dense mass of the world’s silence
the obdurate shadows that wander
over the cutting edge landscapes,
the rivers of scorn toward their being
-the silver gold and green nausea.
Just as others still feel the hate splattering their faces
like the hot steaming gore of guts
and speckled red freckles of blood.

It all deserves our compassion. On either side you lose.
Just because the lunatic does not see their insanity does
not make it less pathetic.
For in each individual we are commiserating
the plight of the whole human race:
the babies tottering toward totalitarianism,
the pathetic innocence of the virtuous,
the elderly who can’t comprehend our great loss of public liberty,
to whom the whole world has grown corrupt and strange;
the blind groping of everyone toward a truth
they can never understand being deliberately
lied to, misinformed, and programmed on every important issue.
The universe that they can never hope to know.

And who is pitying whom,
those of us who must eat the shit of tyranny
or those who feed the trees.
We who ponder them,
united in the great common denominator,
and the anonymous wonder of it all.
Their blood is still splitting
never quenching the thirst of the Earth.
They join us in our contemplation
of the immense, impassive truth,
joined forever with the silent majority
each of us insignificant except in the greater glory of us all.

Yes we, who with torn clothes still sticky and wet,
the ropes still constricted on cold blue corpses,
yes we, who with torn clothes still sticky and wet,
the ropes still constricted on cold blue corpses,
whose exhausted holes jagged around the edges no longer bleed,
and pins emptied, the terrified butterflies
have already settled into a severe and soucient
insectorant promise of a distant immortality.

Yet how can such horrible deaths be the foundation
of anything but infamous tyranny,
beyond the pity of watching stones
and exploded buildings and burned boats?
There can be no honor, on top of such desolation.
The country beneath the opal sky, county by county
is all of one giant topographical map that is its geography.
The map of a giant cemetery.
A cemetery of estuaries,
a cemetery of suburbs and cities,
violent valleys, and mountains, the blood stained beaches,
the red rivers, the raging highways.
And the people themselves are maps
of the cemeteries that contain all the dead.
They keep contained within them;
the rotting corpses of friends, lovers, parents, children.
And carrion. Yes even those foul carrion,
for they reside in the heart,
fetid enemies that make rancid the breath,
those who have killed them with their hands
and help, with their blasphemous usurpations.

The earth has been foully exploited,
the homeless roam everywhere
from the cities clear across the countryside,
they have nothing except for large portions of ineffable sadness.
They walk on the steps of people
who no longer exist, they endlessly loiter
in clean clothes given to them to make them less conspicuous
but they live in cars or under bridges,
exhausted, yearning, hallucinating,
driven crazy by their would be masters,
without a home where their spied on,
without the omnipresent shadow.

Such is the soil that covers us with a layer of greasy grime
forever vomiting up violence, prickly brambles, shores lapped
by polluted waters, stormy seas, slippery with slime
and leaving exposed every conceivable type of garbage.
No insinuating mirror, silent, sardonic, ironic river.

We have fertilized the Earth with our blood
and the filth of our murders too. We lost our lives
when the rights we had taken for granted
disappeared neglected -like someone you love
but never seems to find time for. So life
becomes one sterile existence, hopefully servile
sycophantic and meaningless as T.V.

In the hope of remaking our country
we have destroyed ourselves and our heritage instead.
Corpses dangle from the talons of eagles
and the miserable memorials are monuments to manure
and though made of precious metals and white marble
no less a fake for all of that.

And the fury of the Eumenides can out be out run.
A time of atonement shall come. Examples
of abysses of resignation, and eternal rejuvenating joys,
they see our anger and frustration and the endless patience
of the people and their infinite capacity to endure.
One can not be totally cynical
when confronted with such unflinching resolve,
abrogation and voluntary self-sacrificing virtue.

And the ghosts of the dead are ever watching,
the passionate fervor of the young martyr
who resists the brainwashing
and embraces his would be torturers with scorn.
The stoicism of one who has salvaged his honor
in the face of unrelenting horror,
and who has witnessed hundreds of deaths.

And the lives filled with faith in the ideal of quality
resound like distant laughter. We believe in love, and liberty
with intense passion even after so much wanton destruction
until all that remains in these smoldering ruins of today
are towers of soft delicate ash.

I stand firm without hate struggling against
the corrupt conspiracy spawned by tyranny,
innocents inspite of being set up and slaughtered yet remains,
the malice taught children, the grief of people proud of their pain
the silent endurance of the old, the maintaining beliefs
of democratic ideals devoid of hope,
steadfastness without outlet,
private virtue maintained at great personal cost,
public duty without recognition and sacrifices penalized.

All of this remains more noble because of its futility.
It is not a cemetery or a monument to the dead,
but of a formless unformed tear in a child’s eye.
The only thing visible in the dark night is a full moon rising.

RIGHT WING OPERATIVES

I don’t care for the arrogance
in their struck poses
their assumed airs,
their borrowed assurances.

They could have been created by third rate writers
working for T.V. or movies:
superficial, banal, dishonest,
reeking of decaying autumn rains, where leaves spin in whirlwinds.

Fairness is their private domain, a monopoly,
which they wield with absolute power, corrupted;
before they come- or go
they check their instructions.

Deadbeats at honest studies, they know nothing! But hunting humans
who soar up shear cliffs and fly through alpine meadows
and torn with joy and blessed with pain
shoot the cartridges of their thoughts at the sun.

THE TIMES CRY OUT

The times cry with anguish.
Be patient with me.
We will endure it,
Enthusiastically extracting every nuance from life-
for people have an infinite capacity to endure.

Let me hold your small hand:
we will ascend and suffer,
we will celebrate, we will feel.
But most important,
the life we dream will be our own!

More than the sum of its parts
we are a couple,
who has lived in vicious places
in dangerous thorns, in harsh rocks.

We have made our nest.
These are hard times. Be patient with me
in our garden with my pruning shears,
harvest basket, sprinkler and shovel.
You with your clothes line, shoes and children’s clothes.

A duet singing in harmony
we need each other to be complete,
not just to aspire for golden honey,
nor for lilies striving to be roses-
we need our hands to do our chores,
to fill our home with life.

And if our times are hard,
so be it: let it stand up to eternity
with these four eyes, four hands
and two hearts that beat as one.

TWO SKULLS

Skull on skull arranged by chaos
in solemn silence in the front seat of a car,
and I realize that here locally that makes five
mothers driven mad with anguish in eight short months,
who have used a gun to kill their babies
before killing themselves.

And I thought, what is causing such unnatural acts?
Never, in years past, has anything ever come close
to happening like it before. Is this the fruition
of 30 years of mind controlling technological research
conducted by the CIA and military intelligence;
where, transferred into private hands it has run mad?

Their corpses are locked in an embrace,
smooth skin limbs delicate, struck down by deadly strife
lying slumped together on yet another
car’s blood stained fabric seats:
and still the wielders of power’s rage are not quenched.

How soon shall the Mother’s and the child’s bones become disjointed?
What once was her right to happiness
now is supposed to be avoided, in mindless fits of paranoia:
there is power for you!
And the graceful limbs, hands, and feet,
how soon will you lie dismembered immobile.

So all in vain you sought to live your little lives,
poor grief stricken ones! They would not let you live in peace.
And now near neighbors will gossip a few days
about your strange case.

And then no one will care for the dead,
specially when the right wing paper tried to hide it
by burying the story in the back pages
and the curious circumstances plaguing the land.
Five contrived heinous events
inside of eight months:
all the stuff of Euripidean tragedies.

What glorious wonders your eyes once saw.
Yet there you lay when you were first found
already in a preliminary state of decay.

It has begun, ants building nests around tombstones,
a chipped plate, utensils and cutlery, picture albums,
boxes removed filled with personal effects.
The house repainted. Bang!
gore hangs from your babies fine hair.
Bang ! again, and wasps gather around the two corpses
to feed on the sticky bloody flesh.

The day is dark, the streets barren.
Rain falls from slate grey clouds.
The sky is weeping. Everywhere the ground is muddy.
Trees solemnly stand like mourners reciting a Kaddish.
Sometimes the world is a dreary place.

The laws of statistics make the incident rate, in the time frame in question in a limited geographical region, noted above "extremely" improbable: other extraordinary mitigating causatory factors have to be looked for if justice is to be served: five parents have murdered their children and then themselves all in the exact same fashion!

MERCHANTS OF DEATH

Crabs take possession of the skull,
a perch nibbles at the toes.
It is finished: the quick tear, the bloody cushions.
It is finished: the spilt coffee, wood, flooded engines,
salty foam over fiberglass, loud radios spluttering out.
Dilation from the incendiary match
the burning human flesh and hair.

Crabs crawl into rib cages,
carps gnaw at pallid flesh.
Torn is the paper, the blouse, curtains,
and broken is the glass.
The deck and wheel house are an inferno of flame
and blistering heat sizzles everything to the waterline.
Now there is only the sea, sandy bottom
rippled with tides, with one burned hull.

Slowly the sea worms begin boring intricate patterns,
as they make their way, within the dark.
A shrimp touches the burned body, counting to make sure
that there is only the one then ambles on,
he distinguishes human flesh by its scent.
Crabs camp in the pelvis
Rock Cod strip pieces of flesh from along the black backbones.

I am not so much afraid of the murder,
or the domiciled crabs, as the ones who
are responsible for the contrived killing
and who will never go on trial.
They sit like Patriarchs who justify themselves
and their power with our courts.

What will be said about this tyranny
and the bigotry that usurped our rights
only in order to steal the liberty
of the generations yet to come.

Of course I will speak the truth to our savior
after the millenniums of awful waiting for an accounting.
My broken body will be quite a spectacle by then,
but, will he count my feeble efforts enough
to save me from being included among
the damned merchants of death.

SUMMER THOUGHTS

Margy, sits at home alone,
doing a thousand chores,
sheltering the humble happiness
in her soul.

Hour by hour,
day by day,
the sun the eternal clock:
like a tumultuous torrent
life hurries on.

She hears the wonderful wind
whispering in the garden
and the intermittent rainfall
of the sprinkler.

She sees the apple trees, in the afternoon,
heavily laden with green fruit,
while the faint trill of songbirds
pierces the city’s noise.

Margy,
sitting at home alone,
is seeking that which she has lost;
she doesn’t know what
now when, but it is gone
even though it exists
in all she sees and feels.

Margy,
if only I could share
with you the happiness
I feel
that makes its home
within my soul.

For even though
I rarely say it
in words:
Margy,
I love you!