This poem is dedicated to a little girl, who, it can be argued, was brutally murdered by the radical right; who subliminally destabilized and induced an emotionally disturbed person from their list of unstable individuals, which they keep for propaganda purposes such as this. The bloody death was the fifth violent murder committed in a small rural pocket of our state in about as many months, a Democratic controlled area which has not experienced as many deaths in the preceding 20 years.
One would reasonably expect such horrible atrocities to be randomly distributed throughout the state, but the rest of the rural districts of the state combined do not even come close to matching this terrible record, and no ________ held district has experienced such a litany of terror.
We as a society are used to seeing, in the mass media, political deaths occur in third world countries, with their oppression and death squads; where, the mutilated corpses of victims are dumped in neighborhoods, in an overt attempt at intimidation. However, in the United States, with the exceptions of the Civil War and the Native American experience, we have been blessed with a relatively peaceful political process, which has protected our precious civil liberties and in part made possible our abundant prosperity. But, today in our brave new era, in what could arguably be called political murders designed to further the factional interests and private social agenda of the radical right, we witness, in the mass media, an endless stream of carnage committed for their Herr Goebel propaganda machine, with its insatiable need for ever increasing acts of terror.
The damned souls in the fiery bowels of hell
have no other diversion than the spectacle
of the devils' and demons' faces.
The contemporary right wing Christians,
who dump the excrement of their inequities
on the alters of their faith, do provide
one positive service; they enable the rest
of the good God fearing folk,
to conceptualize the tormentors in hell.
At the airport there are bays for planes to come easing in,
mundane air waves, flat geometric planes, the traveler sees
(his carry on luggage discretely tucked under the front seat)
and hears, the throb of idling engines taxing,
his arrival spurted into long carpeted corridors.
And you and I aroused from dreams to where,
sense sleepy amidst arrivals and departures angry
in the dark distance-
prickly dilemmas at the gate again.
This way, your carefully orchestrated choice has been prearranged;
and so we two get up. And on into the night they go,
Announcements call to travellers, in a variety of languages;
the soon to be departed, "Goodbye", they all cry, "Bye"...
And we are eased into discomfort, never realizing
how totally unnecessary everything is ,
or if, in this morning, happiness too is departing.
Perched upon the thin wire, high above grey glistening
freeways, the pigeons huddle together against
the desultory rain from the West that beats down
on each bowed head and tucked wing.
Shivering over the ways which afford them the greatest warmth,
'till Winter storms weaken and their silhouettes
gradually become diffuse against cinerous skies.
Soon the filtered light from an intense wandering moon,
peeking behind the fast scudding clouds,
shows them dark as their shadows, still sleeping.
When was the last time
you went outside
and sighed at the moon.
Threw open
the shutters of your heart
and filled it's rooms
with dancing moonbeams,
whose tiny delicate feet
stir dust years deep.
Felt the little breeze
run her fingers playfully
through your greying hair.
Admired the night's house
with it's roof of stars.
Watched the dew condense
in white shinning pearls.
When was the last time
you left the easychair
entombed within your mind
and stepped outside shivering
in the cold night of late Winter.
A double rainbow, twin expansive
arcs in the Northeastern sky
straddle the indigo river
bothered by choppy waves,
where the thin sunlight
West of the city pours over
shivering from the forested hills
somnolent to the cold wind
which is impatient and can't
waken anything but herds
while desultory smoke from factories
violently streams towards the Southeast.
Children gather close together
let's play a game.
Now when I count ten
we will all be still.
No we're not going to play statue.
For once there will be no borders
on the face of the Earth,
and smiles will be the only language;
for once let's let the minutes rest,
and not be so restive.
Wouldn't it be wonderful
without so much bustle, without noisy
smelly cars; we would all be together
in a strange place, on the back side of consciouness.
Moms and Dads would stay home
with their children,
and everyone would learn
all about their neighbors.
Lumberjacks in the woods
would not hurt trees
and the people harvesting food
could stretch their aching backs.
And those that destroy for pleasure
and profit, those who spread fear,
those who spread hate and oppression
would have to wear white clothing
and walk with their victims
in the pleasant sunshine doing nothing.
Children, don't mistake what I want
for a boring, total inactivity.
This is about life; and the
peaceful transformations
of relationships not a living death.
If we weren't so narrow minded
about living lives in barren little ruts,
and for once didn't do anything
perhaps a huge tolerant silence,
might interrupt this lonely sadness
of constantly misunderstanding each other
and not coming to know ourselves,
would then stop this madness that threatens ourselves with death.
And perhaps we would learn
the lessons the Earth is trying so hard to teach us,
as when Winter drapes the ground in its mantle of white
and everything seems dead
only to later prove it merely was sleeping.
Now, children, count to ten,
and keep quiet
I love you,
but I have to go.
Grey shadowless people sit in stark parks,
or walk beneath peeled trees,
their children are incubuses,
hurriedly herds of docile clouds are driven,
hurriedly a chickadees cry pierces the air,
and veiled the anemic Sun,
scurries out looking like the Moon,
looks down on me coursing my way,
through cross town traffic,
an indomitable desolation.
Winter, with its stern countenance,
lies about the bright red swellings,
lies about the merry singing of a thousand tiny rivulets,
where a pregnant Earth prepares
for exuberant Spring's careless profligation.
And, we spectators who
watch the seasons precessional,
whose circumlocutions path becomes foul and fetid,
whose greedy power is now quite corrupt.
I will never forget
after countless dreary days
of Winter rains,
the golden flash, skimming
Bacchanal meadows filled with
wild colorful flowers
who dominate the nearby
passing road escaping
form the slumbering suburbs,
while towering poplars
and huge mounding blackberries
finish the scene,
their beautiful bullet bodies
splitting the shimmering waves,
their pursed beak lips
piercing the morning air
with their rhapsodic song.
Glory! while the lithesome birds
flit about displaying their
astounding aerobatics
cavorting along
the green sleeping sloughs
from poplars to meadows
from meadows to poplars
like Winter,
a bear wheeling in its tracks
back and forth
getting ready to flee.
Softly,
during
dreary
showers
glistening
among
black
old
branches
again
comes
sweet
green
Spring.