I AM
My journey is as long as time, its whirling way is interminable;
I departed on the comets tail at dawn’s first light,
and wandered among a wilderness of worlds leaving the imprint of my eye
on every planet and star my voyage visited.
Its interesting to note, the most remote reaches is where you reach nearest yourself, and those lessons that are most complex usually result in complete simplicity.
I’ve sojourned through every alien land, knocked at every stranger’s door
before I found my own; and, discovered one has to travel all the outer galaxies,
in order to reach the inner most point at the alter in your heart.
I traveled searching both far and wide, living behind my eyes, before
finally realizing: at last, I’m home!
The haunting question sounds like a startled cry and
merges my tears with the cold shinning showers that deluge the world
with the torrential streams that sing out strong and resolute: “I am!”
RENAISSANCE MAN
Dead hours ripen
and with them my heart.
Self-pity
is the last feeling we know.
Reflecting from the glass of urns
lachrymal light:
dark mutations mutilate me,
undeclared cannon fodder: in frowning furrows
scattered seeds groan green grubs:
my Winter ravaged visage
is their red budding Springtime.
A miserable memory of dark dreary days
born in the bottom of safely covered wells,
the still deep abyss,
where water dreams of clouds and the open sea.
I’m your renaissance man,
your anachronistic individualist.
THE POPLARS FELL
They’ve felled the poplars! Gone is their shade,
and the soft sibilant sounds of the cool colonnade
the wind no longer plays melodies made from its limbs and leaves,
no freeway’s distant din performs duets with the notes it receives.
Over a devoured decade since I last saw the view
of my favorite aviary high-rise, from the lofty overpass next to where they grew;
and, now in the alder choked draw, I look down at where they staid,
and a tattered canopy of leaves greets my gaze,
where once there was majestic trees, songbirds and shade.
Perched on the black limb
a disgruntled wet rook
arranges and rearranges its dusky rain soaked plumage.
I’m not expecting miracles
or a sign, like a burning bush,
to ignite the eye.
The desultory weather
is symbolic portent enough,
left mottled leaves fall randomly where they will
without ostentatious fuss.
However, it would be fine
for some occasional sign
to crack the mute sky;
or, maybe an incandescent
minor mist might
emanate from some
empty corner or blank wall,
as if heavenly intervention
occasionally now and then
took things in hand.
Then, perhaps largesse
might justly be bestowed, just once;
or, honor be discernable,
or, perish the thought,
one might observe – love.
Any way, I now warily walk,
anything’s possible you know,
even here where the barbaric and monstrous
rule over dull, dead landscapes;
skeptical, cynical and profoundly ignorant.
Why should an angel suddenly, appear, here
in my face, up close and personal?
I only know a rook preening its feathers in the rain
so it looks black and shining
and immaculately groomed.
As for me,
my senses are on the alert,
eyes and ears wide open;
its not to long since dissidents
where placed suspended in cages
as carrion food.
But, today things are different,
Extortion stands holding signs.
Perhaps we’ll have a reprieve
from fear this year.
A period of absolute Democracy,
or, is that what we’ve got?
With luck, sojourning through
this depressed season of sales,
I’ll construct a composition, whose content
can convince even incompetence and greed.
Daily miracles occur, if you call
life’s spasmodic radiant gifts miracles.
And, so I sit back in the stands and wait
for the rare, random decent to occur…
How absurd.
VICTORY
We won, while his wail of birth
filled the hospital room with a gale;
and, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief,
as our apprehensions eased.
She marked the end of the spectra eruption
with a brave, tired smile. And, quietly we celebrated our victory.
Grief receded and slyly lay in wait for other days,
while the wonder staid and grew daily.
Truly it was a mark of grace,
this hard life that made him strong,
a season of pain past with teething,
and at times life seemed to be one great maw.
Then arrived the first birthday,
with his shy smile and bright eyes,
and the great lopsided cake
that our parental looks shared confidences over!
Knowledge grew geometrically,
in direct proportion with his experiences;
he was so sweet and gentle, and wore such amazing little costumes,
which she prepared with such infinite care.
She was tired and slowly healed
from the great woman’s mystery.
And then, there were the funeral flowers, we buried our parents;
and, she was no longer spared the funeral veil.
We headed the family.
And now, I think back at our earnest youth,
when radiant you ran, in your verdant dress, to your spouse and into the future,
wise with woman’s fore-planning.
And, spectral time has born witness,
to my strong will and steadfast desire;
all our plans and youthful dreams have been broken,
before the foul fecal breath of hate driven spite.
A SR. SERVANT’S REPUBLICAN SOC. SECURITY
“
And, upon arriving, the senchal tried to restrain the two German Shepards, who were fiercely fighting for a lamb bone, by pulling them apart and putting them in their place.
But they wouldn’t cooperate, tearing his somber black pants and snarling at his paten leather shoes, knocking him head over heels, like a tottering senile person tumbling over his walker.
“Help! Help! Help!” And a passing patrol car came rolling up the drive, though the slavering jaws of one of the shaggy creatures had already ripped off and riffled the wallet of the good old servant, which had inadvertently fallen to the ground in the struggle.
The lady of the house, however, was reeling with peels of laughter at the window, in her interior decorated room, as formal and cold as a museum.
“And why
were they fighting
- to
I’ve spent many hours in ancient civilizations in times of old,
and witnessed the brave and heroic deeds of great men;
disappearing into the pages, traveled many dangerous miles accompanying them,
listened, while singing bards told their tales and took their true measure under Apollo.
Repeatedly returning across the chasm of years
to where the
blind, black, poet
as demesne;
and, yet never understood all that those wonderful stories could mean,
until I had read Pope’s pure verses which moved me to tears.
Then, I felt like some learned scientist who discovered what it all meant,
like eccentric Smith wandering absentmindedly around town,
or, Galileo gazing at the night sky and understanding the profundity of its beauty,
but, unlike the others who uncomprehendingly blindly blink all around,
I could never be content-
as silently, I look past the fields of stars into the heart of matter,
destined never to explain what it was I’d found.
SHE
Perhaps the Sun
nestled in the infinite blue sky
shines as bright,
as her gentle dancing eyes.
Or, maybe the vague quality of fine porcelain,
when viewed slightly out of focus from the stratosphere
matches the paleness of her naked body
only softer, like a rose petal first coming into bloom.
And, though she’s the essence of goodness
and loving kindness; her embrace
is fierce with hot blooded passion,
which rises in the tempest of her honest desire.
And, she is utterly transparent,
like the slavery of this sad and bitter land,
whose freedoms have already said goodbye,
and disappeared beneath a contemporary coat of whitewashed abject servility.
ANOTHER AFTERNOON
The Northwest dissolves metal, streaks glass;
teaches the consecrated cancer of cruel deceit,
I was raised under a huge homogenous gray cloud,
To preserver in pursuit of freedom, or at least its fair faced dream.
Perhaps the cloud isn’t all one homogenous mass,
maybe its really countless small clouds compressed featurelessly together;
taught by the rain to resist ambition, temptation and desires,
which blindly drive the herd to the slaughterhouse.
A slaughterhouse of so called prosperity and respect
and something we’ve long since forgotten,
in daily rituals of meaningless routines,
where I’ve witnessed the brutality of my species.
Shivering I briefly see the red Sun slice through the curtain of clouds
and quickly set; there is not a soul in sight,
to share the secrets that capricious fate has entrusted me.
I’ve stumbled on the thorny path and felt the world lurch sharply away tangentially
from my sole.
And, to fill in the infinite silences between the ticks of the clock
I’ve learned to wrap my fingers around a pen,
where suffering bores to distraction, and poisonous hate displeases
audiences and author alike, and saccharine sweet is nothing if not nauseating.
Besides, life should smile like a flash of sunshine on a bleak Winter day,
not some false valor but an earnest effort towards freedom should be the norm
and not the terrible monstrosity of mammals murdering each other
or the destructive reflexes to torture, too, which is the perverted ambition of lazy minds.
And, so as the rain grows steadily louder
and goodbye darkens the dreary room,
I’ll embark on an invisible frigate
and set sail beneath the cold, cruel blasts of a Winter storm.
THE HEAD OF THE OPERATION
The name of the radical right capt. – I think it was
led the operations team, dispersing them through out the woods
and along the trail head at the parking lot all the way to the distant falls.
When they, with good natured grumbling, had at last returned
from their stations, for their targeted victim had already fled, and
they stood around idly waiting at the head of the State Park trail.
The captain showed them a fellow calmly sitting, whose job was to spy
on the good people who came to commune with Nature and enjoy the park.
“Listen up people,” called the captain, “see this unobtrusive older fellow,
how he sits there at his ease, and copy his plan. Pick a park, and
watch all the citizens as they come and go. We’ll make our Fatherland
drug-free, where we’re safe from the likes of them with all their sins and crimes.
And, everybody’s children will grow up to be just like we want.
The Sr. citizen smiled and slowly stretched back in his chair and said,
“My friend your words are nonsense – they’re neither heads nor tails.
Its true, I sit here and spy on these good people who’ve never done me any harm.
But, so far this year I’ve grossed a cool $25,000 and all of it is tax free.
Things aren’t like at the start, when we went after junkies and crack freaks.
Now, we’ve become corrupt and pick on pot users because its profitable and we’ve
kind of gotten used to the idea of telling everybody else how to live; besides
it reflects the bosses bigoted biases, which is different than our victims being bad.
And as for sin and crime, of the people I’ve fingered for the radical right; two were set up
with professional child prostitutes, and four others were fired from their jobs, driven from their homes and starved, while two others were driven into committing suicide, and three or four more were induced into committing violent crimes.
Why hell, our whole operation is
all based on sin and crime, we’re nothing but an organized crime wave. And, as for me
And, as for Satin, as near as I can tell: He’s never had it so good!”
All the statements expressed and positions developed in this publication are the opinions of its editor.
RUMOR MILL
Problems With The 04 Election
The
state of
This
is a separate issue from the compelling ones which confronted Americans during
the last election. What was at stake
during the election was the direction that the country was going to take during
the next four years. Would the right
wing Republicans continue its highly profitable adventuristic
military policies, while lying to the public?
Would the Republicans continue pursuing policies which benefited the
industrial military, while devastating the rest of the country’s finances? Would the Republicans continue making the
In the wake of
the election, the most important issue facing
In
an adjacent state these so called black box machines created significant
problems, too. One local commissioner
race, supposedly won by a Republican, was challenged and after a manual recount
the Democrat was shown to have won. So, these
errors do effect election outcomes! In the state which used MicroVote
machines the errors were characterized as follows, “This problem is not an
unforeseeable problem it was utter incompetence”. Currently, the state is using machines with an
established record of error. The company’s
voting machines had all of the state required features, but couldn’t guarantee their
machines’ performance. And, the State
official who serves as the Hamilton County Administrator has stated their
intention of purchasing more of these machines.
The person in question is a Republican.
Further, the company has a record of making $1,000 campaign
contributions to the Republican party. It donated $1,000 to the Republican candidate
for Senate, an individual who happened to represent the company and its
employees in a bribery lawsuit. Also, it
contributed $1,000 to Republican State Representative,
The
voting machine technology is unacceptable as it currently exists. The following two facts are important to
know. First, in a study by Cal. Tech. Diebold machines, which manufactures voting machines that are
representative of the industry, were found to have an accuracy error rate of
8.2%, which means that all close elections are being decided by the errors of
the machines. Second, in
If public malfeasance is going on these machines’ error rates make it almost impossible to catch the perpetrators. The prohibitive cost of testing the machines means most aren’t being tested. And, conducting recount elections are expensive, too, which means mistakes are more than likely, in fact they are becoming increasingly well documented. Unfortunately, challenges are very difficult to conduct on a wide enough scale to apprehend wrong doers. Who will pay to force enforcement of fair election laws? These computer voting machines open a Pandora’s box of legal problems. There are billions of dollars at stake in government budgets, which provide ample motive for corruption and crime. Besides, consider the potential savings in election costs if you know you have an unbeatable advantage? The race for President, one national office, cost over $300 million in the last election for one candidate. And, each Senate seat costs over $1,000,000 in campaign costs. Multiply that by over 100 races; and then, there are the costs for all of the House of Representatives races, too. And, we have not mentioned state and local elections. This is an issue which must be carefully addressed, or Democracy will be a thing of the past.
Some people are
saying that they smell a rat in the last election. If the computer blackbox
voting machines’ errors are random a few questions arise. Why are all the errors in favor of Republicans? If the errors are random, then they should be
half for Republicans and half for Democrats.
Clearly, the fact that no approximation of a 50% distribution of errors was
present is troubling. Further, the fact
that all the errors that have been reliably documented favor the Republican
Party creates the impression of deliberate foul play. Also, these mistakes not occurring in
isolation is a significant factor. Other
mistakes were made, machines that were said to hold 9,000+ votes only held just
over 3,000 votes; and, the overwhelming majority of these machines went to
Democratic districts. Other machines,
with limited storage capacity, were used in heavy Democratic districts after
they had already been filled, which resulted in losing large numbers of
Democratic votes. There were recorded
instances of efforts made in
Another election should be held. As it now stands there are gross problems which have tainted this election. If we can not clear up these questions satisfactorily with a bipartisan panel, then another election should be held. A free and honest election conducted, without the help of error ridden machines.