The Inn

Walking I reach the shore and I stare at the evening sea,
with the waves moving to and fro, and I sense, once again,
that I've nowhere to go.

But still I must go.

There is no room at the inn.
So I will try another, and another, and another still.
Perhaps one night I will find a welcome sign
and a warm glow through a window.

Here I stand at the end of the year
with a story that nobody wants to hear.
It is that all things move:
the stars in the sky, the waves in the sea,
and the love for you that spins within me.

Nobody wants to hear how the going
makes life so dear:
from the womb to the grave,
through cheerful days,
and fretful days
and loss.

The road is long for me, for you, for us all.
We remember, we forget, we remember again,
but not all.
If you should think of me,
remember that I go on,
from doorstep to doorstep.
Until I should reach another sea
the going is all there is for me.

Traveler

I love you more
than you will ever know,
than I could ever show -
far deeper than the ocean
in the moon glow.

 

But every word I utter 

brings you just grief.
So our time in the world
was fleeting and brief.

 

Alone I have left you
with peace in your mind.
Alone I shall wander,
searching to find

a face in the world
to match you.

 

There is a love that for you
the years hold in store.
But my path, traveled far,
ends in a cold, distant shore.
Here I stare at the stars
and shout til I'm hoarse - 

but the heavens show no remorse.

Horror

Strange that our Election Day
Is scarcely but a week away
From Halloween.

Strange, too, it seems

That we elect our nation’s head
Ever so close
To the Day of the Dead.

But stranger still we do not see

The leaders we select, the knaves,
Are monsters from our mental graves.

We vote for ghosts of yesterday.

We vote for zombies of today.
We vote for vampires of tomorrow,
Without thought to future sorrow. 

Indeed the choice has often been

The lesser of two evils.
But few can stare into the eyes
Of a horror more primeval.

The beast that shambles

To the voting booth,
With greedy eye and hungry tooth,
That tears at flesh
And rends the truth,
That creature with an empty mind
And shrunken heart
Who casts his ballot in the dark -

More terrible and stark

Than a rapacious leader
Is that voter who,
Without knowledge,
Without courage,
In that final hour
Bestows the leader’s power.

Golden Worm

The Iniquities of the Age,
And the Barbarity of Yore
All sprout the same black gore.

The avarice that piled coins high
At the point of bloodied blade
Today sees sums in bank accounts
Rise in high surreal amounts.

How to explain the riches of today
If not as a parade of terror,
Oppression, destruction,
And pain
That makes our evil plain?

Across the world and in plain sight,
A testament to greed's blind might,
Spreads the wreckage of the poor,
The hapless living near the lure
Of the beast of gold in sundry forms,
A monster feeding worms.

Burning towns, piles of corpses,
And bullet-ridden cattle,
The cries of women raped,
And wailing children
End another wicked battle.

Petroleum, uranium,
Gold, silver, iron ore,
Futures and stocks, too -
All produced by the same gore.

The malice that in ancient times
Raised marauding armies,
And the contempt that in our time
Loosed financial ruin -
The mythic despot and the banker
Share that timeless heartbeat,
The drum that beats the dirge
Of the planet's strongest scourge.

August 6, 1945

Sixty-seven years is a long time to forget

The faraway victims that we never met,

And the color of their final sunset.

The children born today can never remember;

For years and years, throughout the world,

In towns and fields, no uttered word

Of that war or surrender.

Who alive today can truly say

What horror took place on that day

When the bomb found Hiroshima in its path,

Its heat burning life away

Like a vengeful sun god’s wrath?

And so we turn to dusty books

Where the pictures live in print.

But of the toll that Little Boy took,

The stories there only hint.

Sixty-seven years is a long time to grow,

As the trees, the flowers, and the grass show,

While the Ota River through the town flows

And new festivals shine in the lantern glow.

Throughout the years we failed to hear

The distant Hiroshima echo -

In the victims’ cries under smoke-filled skies

And the beastly bombs’ loud bellow:

Warsaw, Helsinki,

London, Coventry and Belfast;

Hamburg, Cologne,

Essen, Bremen, and Dresden;

Leningrad, Stalingrad,

Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade;

North Korea, Vietnam,
Beirut, Baghdad, Basra.

Until the day that mankind brings

And end to the making of bombs,

Our children will in remembrance sing
Hiroshima’s deathly songs.

Birthday Cake

Melancholy is an ailment,
As common as the cough.
Though we take our medicine,
It remains, tough,
Rooted in our deepest days.

I always wanted a simple cake,
With blue lettering and white frosting.
But for years
My parents bought a fruitcake
For my birthday.

I always wanted the white cake;
All the other children got white cake.
How I cursed my lot,
Fated as it was for fruitcake.

But I failed to see the fruitcake
For what it was -
For the color of my parents' minds,
For the memories, hard to find,
After the cakes, and everyone else,
Are gone.

Now in the days of no cake
I see what is at stake.
To water the tree of my days
Is the best medicine to take,
And to hope, from beneath its shady leaves,
To take, from the burden of years, a brief reprieve.

Independence: A Meditation

We gained our independence from the faraway king,
Only to grow dependent on this new land of dark forests
And mysterious savages.

We gained independence from the wild frontier,
And the fetters of an early death,
Only to grow dependent on television, automobiles, airplanes,
Computers, and other machines of convenience.

We gained independence from God,
Only to grow dependent upon The Next Big Truth.

The myths we celebrate are not our fate;
Independence is merely a date on a calendar,
A folk tale wandered far
From the stare of our impassive future.

America, like Janus, has two faces:
Independence looks to the past;
Dependence looks to the future.

Empires have come and empires have gone.
And after the deeds of history are done
Only the ruins remain and the myths are remembered.

We have too many emails to write,
Too many cupcakes to bite,
Too many flavors to try,
Too many handbags to buy,
Too many bills left to pay,
Or rushed appointments to stay,
Too many miles left to travel,
Or business deals will unravel.

Too many machines of convenience
To remember the birthdays.

Happy Birthday, America!
And as we celebrate your myths,
Perhaps new gods will be born, and walk the land,
Out of the mists, from sea to shining sea,
A new version of the Trinity,
Of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Of Independence, Dependence,
And Interdependence.

And, America, the boon I wish for you the most:
The vision to see as clear as the moon;
Into the mirror of the Next Big Truth -
That you have become the faraway king,
That we are all gone much too soon,
And that kindness is the thing,
Through which empires must pass
For their greatness to last.

Social Security

I pulled my car up
To the toll booth;
The attendant smiled
As she took my dollar.
 
She was 70 years old,
White hair pulled back.
The lines on her face tracked,
Days when she had sold
Her childhood gold
To eat.
 
Future bleak
While skies are blue -
There is nothing I can do.
So I drive away
And hear her say,
“Thank you.”
 
Thank you, America
For your long, lonely roads
Lined with many a toll booth
That mask the sad truth:
What seems a consolation -
The endless work -
Is truly there to soothe
The careless youth
Whose only true sensation
Is of cars that speed til dark.

Easter Sunday

When in the morning I awoke,
the silent dread within me spoke.

The rock had rolled, the tomb ajar,
the corpse already wandered far.

Where has he gone, my inner guide,
that little voice fixed by my side?

When I was young, I did believe,
that God’s own son for me did grieve.

He died for me, I had been told,
so that my days I may live bold.

He died in pain, then rose above,
that pain turned into magic love.

And magical my days did seem,
but now those days appear as dreams.

For here I stand, an older man,
seeing shadows cross the land.

They took my faith, those shadows did,
and now my conscience, too, has hid.

What was to me the son of God,
was just a corpse, an earthen clod.

To my surprise this corpse had fled
and did a thing beyond the dead.

My inner voice the corpse did wrest
and placed within the shadow’s nest.

To find my voice then I must follow
the dead into the midst of shadow.

The truth that finds us on this earth,
the truth so hid from us at birth:

Our mortal nature is divine,
tested in darkness and in time.

Winter’s End

The last week of winter -
Weak winds wafting from the north
Bring the morning chill and the flowers forth.

Whence this strength
To slip from the grasp
Of the season of death?

The flowers scarcely wait
Their appointed hour.
A week early, beneath the moon,
After a night shower spring the blooms.

Still, wrapped in hat and coat I note
How on tender shoots death seems to gloat.
Rain flecked petals in the morning wind
Tell that flowers, too, come to an end.

Though spring comes early and winter fades,
All things, from their beginning,
Show their end of days.

Northern Valentine

The world is frozen
On a northern Valentine’s Day.
The clouds have broken:
Moonlight on lovers gone astray.
They carry tokens,
Yet passion’s warmth has blown away.

The world can lend no aid.
Small creatures dream
In the burrows they have made;
Tree branches gleam
In the wind and give no shade;
And the sun’s pale beams
Offer warmth that quickly fades.

In the cold noontime at the park,
The young man awaits his lover,
Guarding dreams against the dark,
With frozen chocolates and flowers.

He will wait another hour.
Such is its power -
That love will almost never die
Underneath a winter sky.

Love American Style

First we have to negotiate the sexism.
Then we have to negotiate the racism,
Then the homophobia.

We negotiate God
And the places of worship,
Selecting a God for the children.
And then we buy the matching outfits.

We forget about politics.
Maybe we remember
After the drinks, theater, dinner,
airline tickets, and the rest.

We forget about death, too.
But there's no time to remember
After the condoms, abuse, lawsuit,
Abortion, and the rest.

I remember you standing,
Before all the negotiations,
In the bookstore smiling,
And felt those queer sensations
When we said we'd write a new chapter
In the travel book you were holding.

Impression at Dusk

The sun had set without notice.
The winter dusk wrapped the street corner in purple dust.
At the bus stop, four people stood, swayed, waited,
Different shapes and colors, all wrapped in long coats,
In the noise of passing blue sedans and brown taxis
Rushing past the green light.
At the red light, the thrum of tense engines,
Waiting 60 seconds, then rushing,
Transporting drivers away,
To torments and delights,
Real and imagined.
.
.
What can I know?
What ought I to do?
For what may I hope?
.
.
The patter of expensive leather shoes
On the leaf-strewn, dusty pavement
Is scarcely heard
Before the rumble, screech, and gasp of the city bus,
Full of torpid, wool-covered strangers.
The bus blasts off, like an ugly starship
Into the gathering darkness.
Destination: the muzzled, muffled
Thoughts of aliens.

When the dust cloud settles,
A thin plume of exhaust curls around the empty bus stop,
A brief moment of silence - the sweetest sound - unnoticed,
Like the sunset,
And the sinking moral ground,
And the sense that we are bound
To see meaning in sound and color,
And in human horror,
After the bus has gone around
The bend.

Toothbrush

In the dead of winter,
Time to change my toothbrush.
In the garish supermarket light,
The colors of the brushes chatter,

And the clatter of voices, pressed tight,
In the detergent isle burst in bright
Laughter, passing, white.

Pick a brush, any one.
You're not getting any younger.
The clock has nearly gone.
And the line is getting longer.

In the bathroom mirror, my skin too white;
The toothbrush, pale blue in its package,
I stow from sight - a guest might stay one night
And need a toothbrush.

Laughter again, this time mine.
Deep in the mirror lies the wreckage,
A graveyard of brushes scattered like mines.

No one will brave that terrain.
Before I see a new house guest
I'll change my toothbrush again.