consensus constrained

in The Beginning
a Spark of Truth
spread through
Our World
proclaiming peace
without indemnity
blocking annexation
blotting out
the conquerors
and unbranding
the conquered
but the olive
branch lies
upon the ground
yet undelivered
consensus
constrained

The Morgue at the Buddhist Temple

The morgue at the Buddhist temple

included news crews' oglers
after six Jesuit priests tried to revive
Russian television in a city bus.

People walked onto the highway
consuming the first fetuses.

An overpowering stench
began handing out
six-month sentences
for a water-only fast.

At the gates where people cross, thousands
gather to mourn exposed potential.

The Chinese news media died
in a chic blazer of sagging standards.

Largely censored
and threatening delay,
a divided Parliament
trivialized critics
with a non-binding,
but embarrassing, gaffe –
censure for old timers making bail –
pleading from the stage door.

A warning may not be enough.

For the most part,
life goes on.
It always has.


The following is a commentary which I wrote to accompany this poem:

Individuals encounter restriction and repression. The most basic and natural social desires among all individualized living creatures is for freedom of movement and choice - in other words, self-determinism.

As greater forces of repression, restriction and homogeneity of character and socialization are exerted within any nation, religion, society or culture, the more tension and pressure builds up within the individuals comprising the unit of socialization until an explosion threshold is ultimately reached.

The history of humanity can be categorized as progressive in that it has been marked by a constant movement towards empowering self-determinism and spreading freedom of personal expression and individualism.

Senses perceive motion. Minds perceive motion through space and time. As the motion of a body through space increases, its corresponding motion through time decreases. In the same way, as governments and cultures increase their restrictions on individuals and the pressure to conform is commensurately heightened, the urge to assert greater individual autonomy also grows. However, the desire for self-determination and individualism always remains a hidden undercurrent because it wells up from within individuals and remains mostly unspoken until a dynamic leader appears (capable of expressing what the individuals feel inwardly, but which they, often, either have no conscious awareness regarding the feeling or are unable to articulate it to either themselves or others) who excites and energizes masses of people beyond the explosion threshold.

With the perpetual transition from moment to moment and season to season, the vine of liberty blossoms with more and more flowers, yielding the fruit of self-determinism. The vines of liberty line the pathway toward the liberation of those collectives of people.

Liberation is a currency. Self-determination is the product that currency buys. Wealth, in such a socioeconomic system, can only be defined as transcendental harmony - which reflects the wisdom of individuals to respect all other living creatures and the understanding by social collectives that individuals' personal liberty must always have primacy over any and all collective interests.

A Cold, Stone Edifice

A cold, stone edifice lurks at the edge
of daybreak. Soldiers’ boots crawl
across blood soaked streets in hazy
half-light. Bats screech through un-peopled
underpasses in the between-world – killers
above corpses below. The mostly asleep
undead dreamwalk through turnstiles,
depositing their productive years
into token slots as they pull the gas pump
triggers of Uzis and smart bombs.
Wealth’s stranglehold grips newborn
fantasies by the jugular, applying pressure
while insatiable appetites ooze a putrid,
envious and lusty stench. A blind moment –
no one’s eyes read the inscription, so a cold,
stone edifice shrugs deliriously, mutely aware
that technological advances erect no signposts
indicating lethal lessons latently linger learned.

And Create a New World

Who decided America's

beauty should be hidden

beneath asphalt and concrete?

Profit motives serve up

excuses for the swallowing

of all natural, pastoral

pleasures by corporations,

cities and suburbs.

What happened

to the wide frontier?

It seems to be missing

along with the teeming

herds of prairie wildlife

that once scattered

across the open plains.

When did this nation stop

being Woody Guthrie's

promised legacy, your

land and my land?

As fences caged

wilderness, reining

freedom of movement

and lifestyle, individual

choices and opportunities

narrowed into servitude

to one corporate

master or another.

Where does all poison

polluting our rivers

originate and spread?

Dams wall up

waterways fish travel

to spawn and feed,

while factories dump

their sludge and cities

flush chemical waste

right into the aortal

veins of earthly life,

lapping genetic deformity

and pestilence up

against muddy shores.

How can so many

just sit back and allow

so few to set every

agenda and determine

the world's future?

The power of change

vests in the crowds

who gather together

and speak with one

voice, creating a clamor

which cannot be ignored

as they pile out

of offices and cease

filing income taxes -

standing up to wealth

and looking suffocating

waste and consumerism

right and the eye

as they boldly cry out

"I'm mad as hell

and I'm not gonna

take it anymore."

Why is it all we hear

spoken anymore

are discouraging words?

From newscasters

to radio personalities

to politicians to bloggers

to everyone on the street,

didactic opinion unwilling

to listen to anyone else

dominates the American

soundscape, promoting

one point of view

or another, but always

serving the personal

interests of some group

of the wealthy class.

No one seems to understand,

acquiescence is acceptance,

and the failure to take back

your own birthright: freedom,

liberty, natural beauty, a clean

and pristine landscape

with a widely diverse

teeming wildlife, cooperation

of effort for the benefit

of everyone, peace and security

without violence, eradication

of all weapons of mass destruction,

yes the failure to demand

and obtain hope for tomorrow

through true human destined

legacy is your own doing

and expresses greed and lust

and envy and anger and pride

and laziness and gluttony -

and you raise them to the nth

degree of exponential power

as humanity overpopulates

the planet like a virus or cancer;

yet, the mass of you together

can change course anytime

you decide you want

and create a new world.

The phrase, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore," is a quote from the 1976 released and copyrighted movie "Network," produced by Howard Gottfried for MGM, written by Paddy Chayefsky, and directed by Sidney Lumet and is used without anyone's permission.

Globalization's Demented Domination

lead me to a world without all this... killing

Secret agent cabals fester with dispassionate malice,

devising sinister plots to behead elected officials

and advance conquest's master plan: globalization's

demented domination. Freaking button-down, Johnny

Appleseed wannabes strew iMacs across every rain forest,

converting indigenous farmers into multinational

corporate serfs, while concrete pours and asphalt

paves over forests, forever staining green with gray.

Beady-eyed Clinton clowns left over from coups

of Latin America past gleam with eyes sparkling

and hands rubbing together like the forearms of flies

pondering their pounce on the next pile of shit

that smells like money. Meanwhile, the land of once

golden streets, merely a glittery mirage, dilapidates

into ghetto streets where drive-by shooters fail

to grasp that the gang from the turf next door

ain't their enemy, it's the circus freaks running

things in State Capitols and Washington, D.C.

who pit brother against brother, dividing

to make conquest all the easier: the same old

Conquistador strategy, selling notions of fountains

of youth to the masses while the wealthy stake

claims to the imagined El Dorado under the next

oil well or in the patent office mines once proud

people slave in and still can't make ends meet.

The virulent strains of contagious opulence

already swim in the veins of elitist pigs who snort

in filthy sties spreading a corpulent pestilence

of narcissism and desire. Who among you will pick

and share flowers from a new garden, fertilized

by the rotting remains of withered capitalism?

Your Reign of Love

The sun beats down, boiling the landscape
into a thick stew of fertile potential, while sandy
pathways wind through mesquite bushes as
saguaros and chollas scrape at the hiker's bare
legs. He dares to trudge along a ridge separating
a sere, summer, waterless gully from the lush
hillside vegetation marking off islands, pockets
of rich habitats where hares and quail scurry,
carefree. But in the gully's dry streambed, lizards flit,
here and there, slurping up insects, ants and flies
while rattlesnakes curl and shake, poised to strike
at any warm-blooded creature passing nearby.

Overhead a lonely Red-tailed hawk eagle-eyes
a ground squirrel and rapidly dives, claws clutching,
talons piercing, squeezing the life out of its prey.
The rays of the sun sap the hiker's lifeforce,
sweating it right out of his pores as he seeks
a middle ground between predatory strategies
of elitist succubae and the quicksand foundation
of the gully's waterless, streambed floor. The hiker
hears echoes of formative suppositions taught
by society's professors of conventional wisdom
in the cries of the hawk carried on the hot, dry
winds over the gully, "Predation is the natural
order of the world." But the hiker dreams
of a spineless cactus, harmless and medicinal,
spiritual and psychoactive, to calm the savage
inclinations of capitalist, territorial barking dogs
expressing their infantile demand, "Mine!" All
they want is to eat everything in sight alive!
Fear induces all living beings into stonelike
catatonia. The searing heat stains the hiker's
skin blood red, cooking his flesh, unseasoned,
for some coyote pack's dinner, sans place setting.

The hiker reaches the summit and looks down,
all around him. Only the hot blue sky blankets
him. The hiker takes off his boots and dons
a pair of mid-calf-high moccasins. He lights
a pipe which exudes a perfumy, peyote scent.
The hiker dons the head of an eagle, and claws
at the sky with sharp, white talons. Then, he spins
in circles, arms extended outward, weaving
about like an eagle on the air, soaring, chanting.
"Oh Father Sky, Brother Sun, Mother Earth and
Sister Moon, I weave the dance of rain before
your eyes, I claw at your skin that you might rain
your watery blood, the liquid of sustenance
on the world before me, and rein in the strife
of brother against brother, allow us all to revel
in the sweet nectar of Your Reign of Love."

The Sidewalk Streets of Despair

Blue tip matches travel
the dinosaur's path, ringing
in a right ear, spinning
in dizzying circles, fingertips
sky-grazing while alligator roach
clip protected, day glo faces
radiate snickers, bars cross
windowpanes' louvered blinds.

Who carves initials
upon the tree of woe?

A magician's trunk falls
to the wayside, mimicking
carols lilt through the hot
summer night.

But, can you dig it, man?

Can you take your jive ass, honkified,
plastic paid for, mystery misery
to the ocean's edge for all to see,
bare witness to salty tears for
the horror-filled TV screen - death
images destroying villages in desert
jungles, and jungle deserts glorified
slaughter at epicene generals' command?

Can you get your freak-on to fatherless
children, walking, dazed, in circles
on the sidewalk streets of despair, wailing
beside mommy's body lying lifeless,
curbside, in the blood-flowing gutter?

Do your vibrations groove to
fourteen-year-old children snorting
crack on southside street corners
in the unchaperoned night, sucking
down Old English with crusty old bums
who collect the change off asphalt to pay
for that 7 AM, start-your-day-off-tight,
morning, wakeup beer?

Will you trip to the buttoned down, spit
shined, Starbucks junkies, the fat cats
who prowl gated alleys and calculate
profits while digging cemetaries
in foreclosed track-home backyards?

Do you keep on truckin', brother,
while babies' malnourished bellies
distend, and distempered dogs' drool
anticipates masters' rabid-foamed
injunctions wheedling eminent
domain inflicted repossession?

Hallucinated reality cloys
close-knit, joyful bundles'
wrap: feather fabric's fantasy - try
washin' away each hopscotch square
on the sidewalk streets of despair.

The Avenging Dragon

Witness the avenging dragon!
He breathes fire in the night,
forcing you to notice
the future's starving children,
entombed by the bondage
of today's commerce.
Yet unborn waifs spit up
lungs, hurling a bloody pile,
overtaxed by their ancestors'
bequeathed burden. Who
represented their right
to consider and refuse?
No soul guarded against
usurping politicians
who funneled inconceivable
mountains of money
into the wealthy's vaults,
hoping to save their own
position, prestige and power.
And you let them,
in your lustful orgy
advancing today's interests
over tomorrow's foreclosure.
The avenging dragon roars
with Robespierrean authority,
as collecting masses coalesce
into a single spirited voice,
"Today marks the beginning
of the end of wealth."

This Charitable Nation

This charitable nation sends vast sums of money to aid those unfortunates who suffer from the harsh calamities natural disasters wreck. This charitable nation air lifts food, water and medical supplies to the needy and starving citizens in foreign countries. This charitable nation deposes dictators in foreign countries, and in the process of bringing the "freedom of democracy" to the people of those countries, this charitable nation destroys their infrastructure, decimates their economies, induces civil war and imposes a martial law more restrictive than the preceding dictator's government exerted. This charitable nation wants to erect its own Berlin Wall, seeking to prevent the natural, migratory and instinctual urges of the poor who only want their fair share of the affluence available within its borders. This charitable nation supplies funds, and sometimes even equipment and manpower, to assist in rebuilding the infrastructure relevant to the businesses within its own cities - while ignoring the needs: evacuation, food, health, housing and welfare of the citizens in those cities - devastated by natural disaster. This charitable nation offers hundreds of billions of dollars to businesses and businessmen whose insatiable greed induced them to exercise poor decisions, wrecking havoc in the national and world economies, while supplying the mere pittance of $500 to most of its citizens, all of whom were affected by the economic collapse and most of whom engaged in no contracts or other circumstances which led to or induced that collapse. Meanwhile, this charitable nation provides no relief whatsoever to the poorest citizens - who need assistance the most but will, instead, find public assistance to the poor, as well as privately funded charitable assistance to the poor, drastically cut. This charitable nation spends exorbitant sums for projects and policies its elected officials deem necessary, whether or not the citizens concur, and then passes on the bill for payment to its children and grandchildren with accumulated, usurious rates of interest at the same time as incorporating irrational and economically stifling inflation. This charitable nation provides tax shelters and itemized deductions to the wealthy, enabling them to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while the middle class is taxed into poverty. This charitable nation systematically reduces funding to the poor and those who give aid to the poor, stealing the shelters for the homeless as it both creates more homeless everyday and also enacts laws to prevent the homeless from camping on any land within its national borders. This charitable nation has converted LBJ's war on poverty into a war against the poor, everywhere, seemingly seeking to exterminate the poor of every land in a cultural/economic genocide.

Elusive Peace

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” - Baruch Spinoza

The sea never seeks its raison d’ etre;
Neither desire nor intent splashes up
Amid white foam when waves roll
To shore and crash; no hopes and no fears drift
Upon salty breezes. The ocean effortlessly and incessantly
Expresses every facet of her complex simplicity
In each immortal moment of eternity.

Run as far and as fast as you can,
You’ll never catch a rainbow;
Search through every corner of the Earth,
No fountain of youth appears;
Travel in the fastest jet made,
Horizon’s edge remains elusively equidistant.

Roadmaps to peace weave imaginary
Tapestries, manipulative fantasies,
Resembling webs, spun by black widows
Trapping their prey.

Peace exists or crumbles
In violence’s grasp!

No real peace exists merely in:
Absence of conflict,
Cessation of hostility,
Suspension of suspicion,
Or mutual toleration.

Peace only and always reveals:
Understanding and acceptance,
A calm, unfettered mind,
Mutual trust and respect,
The joy of self-expression,
A full tummy,
A warm, dry place to sleep,
Meaningful, fulfilling employment,
The security of universal healthcare,
The wisdom of a sound ecology,
Balance and moderation in consumption,
And the serenity of unqualified love shared.

The sacred name of peace remains:
The duty of every responsible government,
The aspiration of any moral society,
The ideal of all compassionate cultures,
And the goal of each conscious conscience.

Utopia will not spontaneously generate,
Through devises of any human
System or doctrine.
The smoke and mirrors
Of human invention
Cannot materialize,
Abracadabra,
Any life arrangement
Superior to natural order.

So, daily,
While humans:
Kill one another,
Deface and destroy nature,
Pollute the environment,
Bomb and pillage, rape and loot;
Wave after wave continues to was
Upon nature’s sandy shores.

Lingering in pregnant pause
As eternity constantly re-etches coastlines,
Moonsets induce sunrises and noons
Yield to midnights, each wave ticks
Another millisecond from the celestial hourglass
And every tide beats another heartbeat
From Mother Earth,
Who waits patiently
For humanity to leave adolescence behind.

Time's Up

The time to view the world with protozoan eyes
To balance our gait upon our knuckles
To grunt and snort monosyllabic responses to charismatic charlatans' fear mongered exhortations
To lasciviously lap clean crimson palms stained by innocent pools coagulating in occupied lands
To ignore our fervent dreams' rotting entrails while corporate willed solutions enforce through military commands
To suffer unredeemed agony's heartbeat longingly mourn
To rise above the clammy carcass pile now representing civilization
Yes even the time to ask forgiveness for desecrating this immaculate planet
Elapsed twenty minutes ago

Did you not hear the alarm
The echo screams even now in plaintive wails issued from the raspy throats belonging to starving children
In the final crystallized newly-etched fossilized tears from species rendered extinct with every additional breath you breathe
In engines' incessant whirring, painting the sky with a murky brown wash
While darting through streets and choking highways
In frightened eyes' furtive glances askance over hunched shoulders
For an unrelenting amorphous evil which only exists within ourselves
As we created all good and evil from our own fantasies and phantasms

Will you choose a dullard's cowardice not knowing when to discard
Life's training wheels or how to stop maniacally grinning
At Narcissus' lying shadow winking back from beyond the mirror
Where monumental edifices erect glorification to humanity's imagined supreme majesty
And mastery over a habitat which gave birth to us
Sustains us
And which will outlast us by eons

We cannot create a workable master plan
For subdividing the entire planet

No make-up brand
No matter how much collagen you use
No plastic surgery procedure
No architectural style
No designer label on our apparel
Can mask the decadent Hyde lurking within the Jekyll
Masking our desires and tainting all efforts to dominate splendor

We cannot make natural laws subservient
To economic models designed for wealth's centralization

The quality of mercy has been constrained
It drops down like acid rain
Waterboarding Western Civilization

Which writer calls the sky clear blue
It's brown by smog and hazed with gloom
Who sees the stars on moonless nights
When sight diffuses in city lights
Which wilderness helps wild to teem
In factory poisoned dying streams
The ocean's extinction we make
When plankton and reef's lives we take

Veiling screens reveal when parting
That all are one and one is all
Not bits of
Not imbued with
Just different branches
One solitary tree

Only one instant exists
Now's fleeting illusion
So fertile with options
Begging "Redeem
Life in this now
The only now"
As each new now passes to not-new now
Just more of the same now requiring
Not-yet now to slip
Through regretful fingers

He is I as I am you
We are they as she is free
Life's a maze though interlaced yews
Someone's the sky so anyone's the sea
The dog bear and hunter too
Eternally shine constellationally
Not life death nor sad adieu
Obscures cozmic Unity.

This is an edited version of a poem which was originally published by Eleventh Transmission on March 3, 2008 in their Vol II Issue 3. A link to the archived publication has been placed on the right column (8 poems on Eleventh Transmission).

Contaminating

Single tenement fluke
contaminating
what remains.
Its remains
stain the ground
with a stench
from the decaying
agèd of the culture.

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 homeless, the disaffected -
engulfed by incomprehensibility.

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
in a box somewhere - a safe
depository generates no interest
upon account ledgers or property
values, repudiating net worth.

GOVERNMENTS SHOVE
THEIR SHIT
RIGHT BACK
UP OUR ASSES!

Wharves of tears -
crystallized, echoed voices
of penguins - inflame
upon polar icecaps
to mere cries
of their hopeless
anguish
enveloping
existence.

EXAMINED SENSATION
MUST REMAIN
THE UNDERCURRENT
OF EVERY MOMENT!

Borne indignity
is always
born in dignity.

This is an edited version of a poem which was originally titled Contamination and published with that title by Eleventh Transmission on March 3, 2008 in their Vol II Issue 3. A link to the archived publication has been placed on the right column (8 poems on Eleventh Transmission).

Nutopian Creed

"Time wounds all heals." - John Lennon

Industrial sinkhole, bleak jobless bleat -
Plastic erections corrosively eat
Away at all the plans from youthful dreams
And jumble thoughts from consciousnesses' streams.
First morning light 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 lands?
Migrations will not stop by despots' hands!

The natives in the western hemisphere
Allowed the Europeans coming here
To grow and share the bounteous expanse
Without demanding who would lead the dance.
But then a doctrine reared its ugly head
And manifest a westward destined spread.
In iron horses and covered wagons,
Careless takers uprooted native hogans,
Rotting meat from leather stripped 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 whites usurped
By filling reservations on dry earth
With natives, owners' rights demurred to guns.
Religious freedom did not mean heathens -
Go onward Christian soldiers, convert more.
And those refusing? Lead them to death's door.

Soon even sovereign nation's land they 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 fleshy hues revealed as most white.
Indigenous: native and Mexican
They slurred inferior American.
Tell Debbie Reynolds, "How the West Was Won"
Was not by song but at the point of gun.

Potato famined Irish migrants came
As well as Jews who fled Hitler's endgame.
On Ellis Island dreaming dared once more
Imposed on huddled masses to explore
A path to freedom and equality,
But all were met by ethnic bigotry.

Show me a land where all can speak their mind.
One's thoughts even had to be the right kind!
If one was on a Presidential list,
Enemies, they'd extract you 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.

Indifference lives in all the attitudes
Which stand opposed to long held platitudes,
No selfish deeds 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
As 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
From climate change as nations that it wrecks
Will mostly be in northern latitudes?
With technological designs subdued,
Which higher culture will survive intact
When humans cannot find food already wrapped?

All planetary life came from one tree,
The Earth's gene pool stewed from a soupy sea;
Every branch stems out from African skies,
With migrant footsteps, Earth, we colonized.
No one arose to bar us from pursuits;
Life wandered freely, tasting varied fruits.
No artificial lines appeared in sand
Demarcating regions to one command.
Behold order's nature expressing life:
No human alterations built by strife
Can interpose in permanence a scheme,
Since humans lack a universal theme.
No god, nor country ever has unslaved,
Believers march to their freshly dug graves;
In capital, humans misplace their trust
While capitol leaders slightly adjust
Their careful edicts, old myopia,
And fail to offer up Nutopia.

This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by Eleventh Transmission in their March of 2008, Volume 2 Issue 3. A link to the archived publication is provided on the right hand column.

This poem pays homage to Pope.

Parched Lips

He rests emaciated arms
from shooing flies buzzing
near his face, crawling
across parched lips. Wide-eyed
expectation begs for so much -
really, very little to drivers
whose cars suck
the water and food
right off the earth.
Recreational golfers turn blind
eyes to everything but shooting
par for the course, while fountains
evaporate in Las Vegas
through an abracadabra
wink as Copperfield says,
"Presto," and water
morphs into the almighty
American dollar. A TV
flickers with images,
Madonnas and Jolies
whisking a child or two
away from everyone's
starving mother:
umbilical Africa. Even
Bonos and Geldofs
tell us to send the almighty
American dollar
to relief funds.
But the wide-eyed pleas
will not grant absolution
to overweight motorists
who drain drop after drop
from Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika
while they idle in drive-thrus
for another burger and fries.
The flies continue to crawl
across the parched lips
and into moist eyes, multiplying
with each additional car
started, driven and idled.
Take another trip
to the corner convenience
market, buy only a pack
of cigarettes or six-pack
of beer, adding to your obesity.
Then, blame oil companies
and car manufacturers.
The child sees you
grant absolution to yourself
as you tee up yet again
and idle in another drive-thru.
Every additional almighty
dollar sent to the child
evaporates another drop
of drinking water
and morsel of food.
The child cries in muted tones,
"Will you awaken
from dreams of bank account
balances, dates with boyfriends,
and the best sex in your life
long enough to save mine?"

This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by edifice WRECKED in their October 2007 issue. This was my first poem published. A link to the archived publication is provided on the right hand column.

Amerika

Amerika clothes in golden garments, glitter and gold paint adorns its face;
Amerika dyes its hair fiery red - green blood inundates its veins.
Amerika drowns in a modern tar pit, white phosphorous clouds its brain.
Amerika, go to bed, don't wall up your borders or ship relocating immigrants back in planes -
Amerika, you succumb to fears of mosques, while men named Abdul cringe from your plastic, tolerant distaste.
Amerika forcibly exports Thomas Jefferson's bastard children, and calls Palestinian, Lebanese and Venezuelan votes a disgrace.
Amerika, the flame from the torch in Liberty's hand flickers in systematic winds which blow the Bill of Rights into space.
Amerika, self-proclaimed land of opportunity, you leave the homeless, ailing, and needy on the curb, unembraced;
Amerika, black widow, weave your web across the globe - a political and economic order with you as its ace.
Amerika stokes a planetary furnace, fueling climate change with its waste;
Amerika demands all others' respect, 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, once the populist hope, now a threat to the whole human race.

This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by Eleventh Transmission in their March of 2008, Volume 2 Issue 3. A link to the archived publication is provided on the right hand column.

Climate Changed

Eagle soars through a cloudless sky,
Plants scorched dry to unblinking eye.

Skulls, skeletons, dry riverbeds;
Unraveled dread erodes homesteads.

Long, lawless war: a human blight -
Water rights at oil's might.

Withering, fatal, green-eyed lust,
Shriveling leaves gust past charred crust.

A faint memory -
iced tea.

Soil turns to sand
at wealth's command.

This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by Blood Moon Rising Magazine in their July of 2008 issue. A link to the archived publication has been placed on the right column (5 poems on Blood Moon Rising Magazine).

Desire Whispers

Outside Chartres' walls in clay
Thorns menace a rose;
Inside a palace in Marseilles
A painting of Camille Corot's
Waits patiently to say
What parentheses eternally enclose.

Desire whispers in the night
Lifting moonlit veils,
Fulfilled oration can't delight
Homeric ships which have no sails;
Though winds may howl, "Take flight!"
Ulysses anchors while Circe serves him ales.

Diamonds' polished and gleaming
Facets fascinate
The darkest vestige within priests,
Whose black robes fail to suffocate
Nature's urge unexpunged:
No instinct's easy to ameliorate.

Chicago Calling Arts Festival Reading with Count Leonard de Montbrun - "The Park in Winter," "Support Our Troops" and "Tropical Illusions"

Today, I enjoyed the honor of participating in the annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival. For readers unfamiliar with CCAF, the sponsors pair poets residing in Chicago with poets residing outside of Chicago. The poets work together to provide the live Chicago audience attending the event with a unique experience, a collaborative reading by two poets.

I was paired with Count Leonard de Montbrun. The Count and I never met previously. However, we found much common ground during the communication we shared while collaborating. I am sure each pairing of poets worked out a unique approach to their collaboration. Count de Montbrun and I, almost immediately, found we shared some common concerns, antiwar sentiments and compassion for the lasting effects war wrecks on cultures by psychologically and emotionally eviscerating soldiers of their stability through PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Both the Count and I already had created poems expressing those themes, so we found the right pieces to string together from previously written material. Count de Montbrun shared two brief pieces, "The Park in Winter" and "Tropical Illusions", which provided bookends for my slightly longer poem, "Support Our Troops" (previously published by Eleventh Transmission in their Vol. 2, Issue 3, March of 2008 edition, the link o which is provided as 8 poems for Eleventh Transmission).

I do not, at least yet, have the rights to publish Count Leonard de Montbrun's poems here. I have requested rights to publish his poems here with mine in the order read. Assuming Leonard does grant the permissions, I will edit this posting and include the additional and accompanying poetry. However, I can include, and am including, "Support Our Troops" to commemorate the event.

The Park in Winter

Through the wrought-iron bars of the park,
darkened by failed street lights,
winter dusk had the rural flavour of winter
slowly approaching spring:
The dark celdon of dormant grass,
the first display of yellow tulips
for sale at the nearby florist.

This quality lights
the weeks of Carnival
approaching Candlemas,
translucent as in the rose garden
years ago.
One could see dormant plants,
no longer with sunlight
nor yet with the moon.

In tension between lights,
the dark celadon of dormancy
resonated clearly,
resonated the return of spring.

Politics murmured in the rose garden
in opposites:
Never quite there,
never quite absent,
never communicating resolution.

In those years of war in Vietnam
the question of dusk in the rose garden
held the question,
in stasis:
An undeclared war,
undeclarable peace.

In that time, the lamps of logic failed,
as the street lamps by the park,
and so
the celadon of the teapot,
remelted in the earthquake in San Francisco,
vibrated in the dusk
between peace and war.

Copyright 2008 Count Leonard de Montrun

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 strip mall's parking lot.
The man always held the same cardboard sign;
Indicating his veteran status,
And pleaded for money to help him survive.

I watched car after car each stop
At the light, awaiting green permission
To leave, ignore his presence.
Not one driver even gazed in his direction.

When he was young and vital:
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 shipped him out to 'Nam.
His one true love donned 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
And won't take my calls."

He just stared plaintively, pleading into each
Implacable and non-responsive, sun-glared
Windshield belonging to 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 Beemers and SUVs
With bumper stickers on the back,
"Support Our Troops" written
Upon the image of yellow ribbons.
No one gave him one thin dime.
He recalled how 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 till 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 into 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 to chicken to join me in the jungle?"

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 the 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.

Copyright 2008 Don Coorough

Tropical Illusions

Illusion of tropical cafes,
possibly African,
possibly South American.

Immobile before the artists,
with Stolichnaya just beyond reach.
At stated times
I could drink.
The lime cut the vodka clearly.

I continued to sit
in a safari coat of khaki,
wearing a planter's straw hat,
symbols of bygone days.

Planters may no longer sit languidly
in tropical sun.
Tourists may sit there now:
No difference exists for casual observers.
No difference may exist for the servers.

Enforced silence in the silent studio,
enforced pose,
motionless in dry December air,
the studio somewhat overheated.

The periods of permitted drinking
coalesced in conversation with the artists.
Six artists had produced works
which differ radically,
yet they represent the same subject,
the same illusions.

Copyright 2008 Count Leonard de Montrun

America's Gift to Iraq

Distant sands

Harnessed
Iraqi youth
straps tautly flush
smooth skin
scrapes white
baggy robes
flesh and harness
separate
trepidation's
clammy sweat

Patrolling soldiers'
Humvee saddled
nervous guffaws
sing fear-numbing
derision
enemy songs
forlorn

Children clad
asphalt pitch
giggles
kick-shot escapes
tedious
torturous
death odds'
exponential

Sand grains
single filed
hour glass
descent

Ingredient laden
mothers gaggle
strolling evening
meals down
asphalt pitch street

Dreaming
Thierrys
Beckhams
Peles
dusk blinded

Harness hiding
Iraqi youth
veer-merges
pointing out
shots
moves
deft angles

Consuming thoughts
occupying infidels' hands
slaughtered
parents
siblings

Humvee soldiers
roar up
asphalt pitch street's
converged restive scene
complacency elicited
casually interrupts
invasive weapons'
neighborhood mission
search and seizure

Youth led children
regale soldiers
hungry-eyed pleas
tittering cries
chocolate
candy

Mothers flock
children
shoo-shoo
home

Makeshift football
pitch confluence
boisterous glee
eruption
explodes
flesh ripping
blood splattering
bone shattering
searing flames
putrid smoke

Gathered arms
Iraqi youths'
burden borne
onus soaked
de-liberating
liberators'
invisible gift

Like Dandelion Clocks

Around how many corners lurking on sanity's fringe
can asphalt stretch out in a postmodern mosaic wasteland?
Crumbling concrete edifices gulped up by the wind
sacrifice immortality to arrogant, rigid uncertainty.

A plotting cabal brews up a cannibalistic aroma.

I don't want no
hangin' judge
elected President

Hand me that red bandanna -
please -
it has Che's face-print
still on it.

Machiavelli lives,
The Prince's rank
fallen to mere Republican.

George Bush plays checkers,
he loves to say, "King me."
John McCain plays Risk,
conquest's game: world domination.

I keep slipping off
to 1971, driving along
PCH at midnight,
radio blaring
All Things Must Pass;
slipping off
to 1972, sitting-in
the ROTC building;
slipping off
to my Venice Beach
open door policy:
walk-ins welcome
to '71 freaks.

Slipping off
seems more real.

Liquid castles frozen
in time clutch aspiration
right out of the sky
only to drift
like dandelion
clocks.