The ghouls conspire/ The women gather

The merchants of war            but                   I love the world

issue decrees,                                                     how it used to be when

sycophants plot                                                  lightning bugs shimmered

to poison the trees.                                            in the evening breeze.

 

Desaparecidos never disappear-        but                   Las madres come together

these erstwhile enemies                                               the names of children live

figure in the fear of the newly                                    in their fingers in their eyes

minted junta-the vicious never cease.                       In their lips where songs arise.

 

 

Final solution to the                            but                   When Antigone rises

problem that never was                                               to let her brother rest

with the graveyard of the living                                 death cannot dim

Beelzebub thinks he’s won.                                         the cause of righteousness.

 

Hymn

The only truth
that I can see
in this thing
called history
is man’s inhumanity
to man
and mothers on
the outside
looking in
as their children
are taken
far too young
from their
never ending love.
Despair is common
in this world
beset by human sin
it is easier to
sink and drown
than build
the city on
the hill.
The river fills
an ache in me
spilling over shore
with greed, while
the earth forsaken
must recede.
But then I hear
her voice with laud
for every living thing
my hometown queen
her voice – a prayer
oh, sing Aretha sing!
She beckons me to
a higher ground,
mountains conquered,
dignity wins, yes it
wins when she sings
oh, how she sings
amen and hallelujah
sing Aretha sing!

The times we live in

There is always a bite
to looking different
whether mild habanero
or sharp like the ghost
the flesh is game
to be dragged across
man-made barriers
invisible to nature
which never divides
the difference.
The twitting of words
that brings out groans
is a venom that looms
over language profound,
the poet can but wander
like water all around
while cholera returns as
history repeats with
the grounding of science
the only sound.
It is the same old story-
old woman in a shoe
feeding her hungry children
a poor man’s gruel.
When your moral compass
is skewed by gold
Midas touches everything
from bangles to commode,
while dark skinned babies
are destined to be abhorred
In a white, white world.
Welcome to dystopia
land of constant fear,
the disconnect
from common sense
resides here in
the halls of major
players – where does
mania end? Is it
where dementia
begins? Oh how we
sin, sin, sin.

Song for Mitch

If I could give you

anything

it would be a world

filled with toads

and frogs

hopping all around

you, warts and all

everything amphibian

is what I wish

for you –

I leave the leaves

in winter so

spring can bring the

croak and hop

this I do

for you,

hoppity hop.

 

The monarch wanders

through my yard

finding nectar

and settling on

the milkweed

and then

come the caterpillars

yes I let them

be so you can

see them every

year that

circles through

your growing bones,

the caterpillars I

leave alone

let them nestle while

they turn to

butterflies.

 

Goldfinch eat

the seed of

echinacea left to

catch the snowflakes

brought by

December winds

the yellow fading

into green – I

see them through

my window and

they are a gift

from nature when

the days are

dark and drear I

leave the echinacea

as a gift to you.

 

Bright eyed boy

with forever

smiles I wish

for you every

gift the earth

has blessed us

with.

I hope you

always treasure

them as much

as I treasure you.

Halloween poem

 

When careless evil

in the minds of men

harpoons any good,

the women

are beaten

the children

are strewn

like moss

upon the earth

unrooted

detached,

a life without

the living

souls transformed

to ghosts.

 

Inner monsters lurk

around each

hallowed feast

intent on burial

of wisdom into

the deep.

Blindness oversees

the impulse to

paint trillium

in the woods,

no light to

waken the

path we need

to walk.

 

If ever the

heart could

capture the

arrow that

makes it bleed,

perhaps the

wooded path

would lead us

home someday.

Good night,

good night,

my humans –

our stay here

was so brief.

The evil

in men’s hearts

rocks us all

to sleep.

 

All in

How do you keep
from weeping
at the break of
an eagle’s wing?
Where does your
compass take you
when the wretched
bring you grief?

Why would the
howling cease
when nature is
bowdlerized?
What can you do
when power remains
remote to a
people ignored?

Let me be your port
when the sea responds
with waves miles high –
sail your troubles
into my arms,
and I will hug
and keep you
safely at my side.

I will be your anchor
when you need to ground
your sorrows deep –
the sand between my
toes will keep
away the ghosts –
letting you grieve
in peace.

Grifting

Fie! Remarks a peasant –
the need to deify kings
of blood or those intent
to be crowned – buffoons
are loath to see
the mirror’s image which
doesn’t lie, but
kings not anointed wish
for deification despite
the peasant shouting
fie.

Galileo’s telescope
opens the door to a reality
the pious would
deny.
With a slam that door
breaks your fingers
a chasm no omen
could predict –
the future comes
whether we see
the truth or lies.

The people you kill today,
today the people you kill,
the children you lock
in cages, the cages
that give you a thrill,
cowardly world,
cowardly world,
bringing back the
Salem witch;
cowardly world,
cowardly world,
your moral compass
goes blink, blink.

This is my manifesto
to a world bereft of kind –
the indigent always matter, for
freedom from want is a
credo for humankind
to believe in and
wealth is nothing
but bluster when
the grifting is but
a lie.

2019

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Circling

In the summer of
our discontent
poison ivy whispers
upon the skin –
take me with you
brother –
and so begins the
wallowing in
heat without
the water’s edge.
All the sky
and water
and earth
are nothing
but a shadow
of a mother
who paints us
with love
anyways, for

cruelty lies
in the sequence
of our genes,
all of history
a tic, a quirk,
the merlin chasing
peregrine
over the pond
where the bounty
finally dies and
is forgotten by its
predators.
Perhaps it is
a bufflehead,
hiding now
among the reeds,
waiting
for the vulture
to cycle the DNA
into something new.
Our genes are
moving on –
this is life
over and over
again, giving us a
taste of death,
sweet death.

 

Malignant normalcy

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” African proverb

A duck is not a goose 
quack, quack.
Call it what it is
quack, quack.

We stood on the
old stone steps,
my sister and I,
steps that watched
over Lake Huron and
there she was, my
mother, in the summer
of ’62,
drowning. Her arms flailed
over her head
in water that rushed
around her body as it
weakened, and yet, she
was saved, saved, saved.

Isn’t she a
child too? – Magdalena,
when they took
her father away,
it was the dawn
of endless tears
where terror resides –
no gentle rain here,
something rarely seen
these days. No
breathing of life
into the soil
that has died.
Terror does not
bring tomatoes
to the vine.
Terror leaves
only shrapnel
behind.
She was begging
for her father, a
father made
inconstant through
the vagaries of men
whose only vision
is a dollar well-spent.

The sole constancy 
in life 
is a parent 
who is constant.

The old stone steps are
gone now – over half a
century has passed and yet,
the wave that nearly
took my mother
still resides in me.

When the lion’s roar 
is read between the lines 
history isn’t kind 
to those who are unkind.