dad's page

   DREADFULLY NEAR
How miraculous
is the elemental spirit - air.
Active element
carrying the cosmic embryo,
it wanders freely
in the dark labyrinth of our veins.

And, in the airborn seed,
already ancient,
sequoias shadowy domain,
self singing spheres
the breezes property,
which it devours.

Flying since time began
an intimate of the inner spiritual being,
which knows the boulevard of stars,
like dust settling at home.

From the exiled flotsam
bedrock over which the current time flows
whose measure is our heart:
but, which beats
the distance to eternity
dreadfully near?

   TO A LADY, MARGY
Sapphire placed in a golden etched setting return to us once more.
White doves fly from beneath bridges,
the crimson of Jerusalem spreads slowly along each fold
from blazing head bands to your marble feet.

Sometimes Columbia is seen splashing in her cool waters
relax and lower your gun barrel, garment embossed in gold thread,
for I?m the roe returning up stream, the Canadian geese flying over Willamette slough
and the sea glints bright with multi-colored sheets of brilliant winged butterflies.

Margy! cover the waters with your veil,
present your bouquet to the timeless turbulent currents -
the snows of Everest merge with those of the Cascades,
in the fecund womb that is the Pacific;

while youths on their missions are never allowed to know themselves & be alone,
as their elders dreamlessly slumber under the shadowless archway of 12:00 o?clock;
the recent cyclical events have disturbed their founding fathers,
as they walk and hold their varied discourses on the somber portico.

   BY ALL THAT?S HOLY
By all that?s holy, by all that?s good and great - stop & listen!
Enough of your bitter hate, gather around and consider.
Why have you hurt me so wantonly?!? Now, answer me honestly,
if you still can! Don?t speak with false and empty words.
Reason this through with your brain and your heart.
I know it wasn?t honestly and happily done.
First, you had to be willingly deceived,
and then, I had to be vilified.
Did you ever treat me decently? Or, fairly?
I who have never hurt you, except to speak the truth:
which proves yet again the old saying
to be disliked lie about someone, but to be truly despised speak the truth.
But, enough of this, before it digresses into recriminations.
Life, I thank you: it was enough
to have loved and been loved in return.

   WILLAMETTE REVISITED
On your emerald banks, my Willamette,
I hear your dove murmuring waters
drowning beneath the city?s surface of sounds;
in quiet homage it moans to its many small sadnesses,
and one great consuming sorrow.

Softly surfaces the adolescent,
whose still remains
is towed matter of factly to shore;

while its spirit
is happily playing -
with gentle loving God.

Mutable death mask,
her face shines in the dance of light,
quickly retrieved,
no bruised swelling mass of vegetal grume.

Floating over the mysterious deep currents
She reflects each moment,
bearing within her death the virginal seed
no nuptial here, her veil is a shroud white.

God, witness what was done,
to the swelling tide of human blood!
Recycled remains, vain flesh,
plunged in a darkness devoid of stars.

Sterile black sack zippered fast on infinity,
who?s received the last laugh
echoing through eternity.

Plunging over the concrete edge
into oblivion?s cool black abyss.
She lies on a grass couch;
the loved one is a silent shadow
eternally existing between
ticks of a clock.

Sweet creature,
a fixed pupil
dilated convex mirror,
they deal in dreams.

   VIGILANTE CAPTAIN
He strolls complacently down the Portland boulevard,
while the tower tolls the morning hour
to the lugubrious sun & rain faded facades of the neighborhood.

He strolls smugly outside his new furnished house of Usher,
the affluent attired director,
dictating advice for operatives, & providing funds from a pocket warmed by farts.

One of many that the bloody bounce of fate and hate
has vomited from the tax exempt bank account, with a prior religious affiliation
which is carefully concealed, as it tumbled from the second generation captain?s wallet?

God forgive them! The dunciad?s flinty stare,
as he counts out the obscene green with the prodigality of other people?s money
minted on dissidents? skulls.

And, now, in my car, I speed away!
I haven?t the temperament nor the time to suffer the fools gladly let alone their puppet master knaves, whose wives and children amuse themselves working the streets.

And, isolated and tormented, I need the proverbial solace of my waking dreams,
since the end of the evil empire
has imprisoned me in my home.

               THE MIRROR SURFACE
Our world floats on the surface of this existence,
where we see only the mirror image of things;
beneath we?re wandering somewhere among meadows,
under green leafy canopies by sylvan streams
where somnolent summer stretches and blinks its clear blue eyes.

A ponderous, pale pendulum,
time?s secretive sweetheart
decapitates conspirators? attractive heads
with a flash and swish - now its done!

Roads bathed in moonbeams are buried beneath
dust that looks like a light powdering of snow,
and shrubs tremble anticipating their desire,
where tedious old days totter along burdened by grotesque chimeras;

and, where populations of depraved seraphim?s
clamorously argue with the degenerate cherubs,
unfortunately, their incessant contention
has deprived us of our magic carpets.

Darling, today, only in your secret sorrow
is there any sweet numbing pleasure;
and, in this damned blasphemous place,
it?s like a sweet solitary refrain from happier times underground.

Where everything was alive, where everything was lyrical and bright,
where we lived discretely free, and raised our children - you & I.
But, here life is a furtive reflection,
in a black stagnant swamp.

       CROSS TO BEAR
With my cross I?m driven
writing each word with my blood,
let those without crosses to bear
and who scourge us,
trying to wear us down
and drive us into despair,
erase our rhyme
and obliterate the truth,
which we?ve arduously written
on this hard bench:
painfully word by word,
in these bitter lines.

       SPROUTED GREEN
This dream sprouted green, with leaves etched at the edges;
its sick grey air advisory, alerted by denizens, for tomorrow.
I?ve come back to my roots, a tough river town,
scarred and grim visaged after a life of arduous pilgrimages.

Casually attired, I sit stunned at the changes,
a skyscraper across the street from my parents home, its burnished glass
reflects the neighbors shades which are drawn -
behind blinds yesterday furtively peeks out at a hot morning.

The manicured yard is monotonously the same, only more so.
summer singed aid smells of melted tarmac,
rising from the river green fingers grasp at the empty blue
the whole stage is filled with a warm welcome for this world weary wanderer.

Out side suburbia, pinwheeling over fields of purple speckled lupine
swallows playfully dogfight with yellow flashing meadowlarks,
higher in the sky hawks are black specs floating in the blue eye of heaven;
while below homeward turn berry pickers burdened by containers brimming with berries.

Trudging back through time returning to green dreams
I wear purple berry stained clothes
walking waist deep in grass, when converging
berry pickers rise out of the feces fed brambles.

Grotesque gargoyles, from years spent hating and hurting,
waiting in ambush, amid snarling canes and flesh tearing thorns
the border brambles who help imprison independence,
to entrap the wayward youth, at play in the fields of the Lord.

Now, stealthily they isolate and surround
their intended, innocent young victim,
who continues down his path; and, with steel eyes fixed,
on their next human sacrifice?.

               RUMOR MILL

A government of a people only has meaning and reality if it is autonomous. Any attempt by one people to rule another results in a false position that can not long endure, without corruption and coercion becoming systemic. A people can only keep another state as a ward or, it can keep it for its own exploitive purposes like making money, a farm where humans are herded like cattle and worked for the owner?s private profit.
   However, if the good of the people is the goal of good government, then it?s impossible for another people (or small exclusive group within a larger population) to directly control it even through indigenous minions. The best that can be done is to provide some of the groups most talented individuals to attend to it. An endeavor doomed to failure, for the best guide available will be subject to beliefs held by the dominating group, which is not much help in conducting their responsibilities; because, it isn?t a concrete judge nor valid criteria for determining what?s to be done. If we examine Iraq?s basic government structure we, with our Western traditions of separating church and state born from Europe?s religious wars, conflict is encountered with Islam?s rich cultural heritage of centuries of successful government experience where church and state were integrated. Even this fundamental example provides an inadequate comparison to demonstrate the difficulties involved, for a people apathetic to politics; and, in the case of Iraq, where the people are just ridding themselves of a tyranny, with the window dressings of democracy, the people are extremely politically active trying to establish a Democracy worthy of the name. They will try and assert their independence, efforts erroneously characterized either as subversive or as terrorist actions; and our efforts will be doomed to be perceived as interfering and almost always wrong. The real causes of their perceived improvement and/or deterioration will be outside the ability of this administration to perceive let alone deal effectively with, beyond a simplistic, superficial brokerage of power, and/or the corrupting of local parties acting in pursuit of large right wing economic interests, and, whose gains will equate real loses for the Iraq nation. Unfortunately because of these administrations bungling incompetence any efforts to align US with the right wing interests will be a disaster for the broader base of US economic interests. And, our international image has been seriously impaired, with the US now being perceived in both Europe and Asia as the primary threat to World peace.
   IT IS BOTH INTERESTING AND FRUITFUL TO NOTE THE NEGATIVE IMPACT THAT TYRANNY PLAYS ON EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT?S LABOR FACTORIAL INPUTS. The kinds of people attracted to government are not of the first caliber. The people attracted to tyranny are sycophants, who function as useful tools but are not the brightest and the best in terms of comprehending complex circumstances and developing adequate policies. If a person is talented and corrupt they will go where they can make the most money and that is not government. If they are concerned with having a positive impact then they will be driven away by the corrupt practices of tyranny. The current US chief of state has the unenviable record; in the private sector he managed a savings and loan company into bankruptcy. Then, in the public sector he managed a state into providing the worst health care in the Industrial World for families and children, the most polluted place in North America, created an education system that in spite of eliminating its lowest under achievers (which the rest of the nations states did not do) still rated in the bottom ¼ of the nation. Not exactly a record of sterling achievements, but very representative of the type of help attracted to tyrannical models of government.
   The purpose of US political intervention is primarily dichotomous. First, it forces the ideas of our radical right down the throats of native populations. The obvious example pertaining to church and state provides an excellent example. The misinterpretation of political action by Iraq?s political activists is another. What is intended as an attempt at self determination is interpreted as an act of terrorism, because it opposes our military presence and political puppets. This in turn is misrepresented in American media and the effect is public opinion based on ignorance which tends to force political solutions that are expedient at home while being basically erroneous for Iraq. Thus one mode of intervention in which the domestic opinions of the dominant country opinions predicated on misinformation, cultural bias and ignorance tends to act injuriously on the conduct of the deputed governors, which in turn tends to function detrimentally for all parties involved.   Second, it causes US policies to be implemented where most pertinaciously demanded, and with contemporary realities of media dominance by the radical right in terms of ownership and informational sources that equates policies that are designed to benefit right wing factional interests. These interests have disproportionate influence domestically in the US and have access to public opinion organs and government officials who influence policy for Iraq. Even if no unjust influence is intended experience has taught us that policies will tend to be implemented that will reflect parties who have special interests, rather than policies encouraged by disinterested individuals who have more objective perspective of the country. They always represent one of the chief difficulties of good government. Now, it must not be dodged the historical fact is that after a country is conquered those individuals in most need of restraint are attracted to the opportunities that the conquered country represents. Armed with their arrogance and power they proceed with all the feelings inspired by absolute power without any of the legal restraints and moral safeguards necessary for a meaningful sense of responsibility.
   After years under the tyranny of Hussein, Iraq hasn?t the enough individuals who will function to protect their country?s oil and natural gas reserves. The weak will be plundered by the strong international oil industry, who is currently dominated by US right wing interests. These interests think of the citizens of Iraq as dirt under their feet to be walked on and exploited. What started out as an ambiguous exercise supposedly in part to protect Democracy, now transforms so that any rights of the Iraq people are perceived as a monstrous obstacle to their smallest pretenses. The most basic civil rights, which restrains their raw exercise of power that they view to be of utility are judged to be a threat and sincerely seen as an injury. This attitude has, with the passage of time, become so ingrained that it is no longer even perceived, let alone discouraged among lower leveled bureaucrats and junior officers. The current administration has institutionalized this attitude rather than tried to root it out in an effort to develop more effective foreign policies.
   The preceding observations have documented dynamics, which while blatantly obvious are scarcely observed; and, document the underlying principle that the responsibility to the citizens is the corner stone to good government. The unfortunate fact is that to be responsible to others is as likely to produce bad government as good government. What is needed is for the opinion of the knowledgeable few to be correctly weighed against the attitudes of the ignorant many. The problem inherent in this is
central to the survival of democratic forms of government. What seems to be necessary is for questions like this to be called to the public?s attention, who need to comprehend the basics of the issue. We as a nation must realize that we are each responsible not to ?the nation? but to each and every citizen as individuals. Only then will we make the correct moral decisions.