Lebensraum

I gave a homeless man
a calorie bar.

The stars above the seas have wandered far
from days and nights
when men would leave their lands
of burning sands
and fight
for food and home.

Now alone and thin as bone,
the homeless man sits
with cardboard sign,
his face an invisible sign
that we have not come far
from our savage days of need.

The single thing man will not fight
is greed.

Fallout Shelter

The children were asked to hide
In the classroom storage closets.
In the wide open air,
Bullets could fly
Under each desk,
Under each chair,
To hit a student hiding there.

Bullets could fly
Through large plastic boxes
For holding the toys,
Now turned on their side,
To hide little boys.

Bullets could fly
Through yellow fans
And music stands,
Through picture books
And coats on hooks.

Better instead to hide in the closets,
The two large closets,
That made the world dark, and warm,
And fun:

The game of fear had just begun.

Drywall could not simply stifle
The startling sound of angry rifles.
Drywall could not simply stop
The bullet of a madman’s glock.
Drywall could not soak up tears
Of children in the grip of fears.

When lunatics are hunting sinners,
Children’s lives can hold no meaning.
The game of fear has no real winners;
The teacher draws fire with her screaming.

Ceiling

Another night

Staring at the ceiling.

Wondering -

There is a world on the other side. 

Footsteps I don't hear but sense.

In silence, on the other side, words.

In silence moans, whimpers.

In silence stares out the window.

Nervous looks I don't see.

Private victories and silent defeats.

People live and die

On the ceiling.

At night, they stare at the ceiling

And wonder -

There is a world on the other side‎.

August Moon

Another summer slipped away
In a warm and windy haze.
Another summer I don't sense
Your silent, steady gaze
As I fussed about the kitchen
To pour us both a glass of wine.

Another summer fades in time,
Images lodged in the mind
That blur misty when I find
One night melts into another,
One year into another.

On a warm and balmy night
Under a waning August moon
We said we'd see each other soon.

Side by side we slowly walked,
In quiet whispers we had talked
Of all the things still left to see,
To hear, to taste,
Before time laid this world to waste.

Perhaps we knew and would not say
Our roads would lead us separate ways.
To keep your fading memory bright,
I look up at the August moon -
Like you, her smile is filled with light.

Beautiful Coffins

All life is steadfast pain

That guides us til we die.

We are all born forced to cry

And end in gasping breath.

 

So rare is that death embrace

That leaves a smile on the pallid face,

So rare the fortune and grace

To die at peace in a quiet place.

 

All too often we have seen

How death makes men writhe and scream.

All too often we enjoy

Spectacles that maim and destroy.

 

No matter the noise, no matter the stillness

We can be sure that death is good business.

Whether we die crying or die laughing,

Our faces will hide inside beautiful coffins.

Walking

I can't say your name.
Because I don't know you.
Wherever you are.

Did you think
That you would find me
One day,
I wonder sometimes

When I wander
In this city or the next,
With the sidewalks branching
Right and left.

The stretches of time:
Sometimes I notice the years.
But mostly the seasons.

Still, I never know who I will meet
Around the bend in the street.

Self-Evident

In the course of human events,
A crumpled page in a drawer was found,
Such words that boldly astound,
And history's course would have bent,
If by them we had been bound:

“We hold these truths
To be self-evident,
That all men are created equal,
That they are endowed by their Creator
With certain unalienable Rights,
That among these are Life, Liberty
And the pursuit of Property.

“But for the Claim of Property,
History would show no Thieves,
Their daggers held in centuries’ sleeves -
The Governments among Men.
The respectability they lend
To the long train of usurpation
Should lead to question the Creation
Of this Sovereign over Men.

“Self-evident then is the truth
That to happily pursue their Property
Men must have unfettered Liberty
That very end of all Government -
Of the Crown and of the Colony,
Excepting Nature, by Heaven sent.”

Was it Jefferson, Adams, or Franklin
Who tossed those drafted ramblings?
By the fortunate strokes of a pen
We were saved from a land where all men,
To accumulate endless property,
Take the life and liberty of others
While Government idly does nothing,
Having long ago, by declaration,
Been quietly strangled and smothered.

World Water

United Nations:
Two words that sound
Like the harmony of chimes,
The choral burst that climbs
To the celestial winds
That soothe the world to sleep.

The report could hardly keep
The hope in unity alive
As the people of the world strive
To pull clean water from the deep.

The World Water Report for 2015
Said rare is the water that is pure, pristine:
One billion people defecate in the open.
About two billion drink their water
With fecal contamination.

Certain is the damnation
That awaits the United Nations
For each poor girl that treks
To the arid well for filthy water
That once drunk will surely wreck
The body of her hopeful mother.

Sentence

You always remember
the night of your execution
better than any other night. 

It is only the freak accidents,
the arcane spinning of the stars,
that keeps you hidden
in broad daylight,

An accident that you escape
the scornful looks
that perch upon grand bank accounts,
that mask the domestic misery
of diminished ardor,
that pity your pathetic plight
less than a turkey in the hunter's sight.

In another world you wander
beneath the summer starlight
and thank your god for darkness,
the warm canopy, keeping at bay
lingering leers, lacerations,
the civilized protestation
that is the response
to the fact of your creation -

Who are you, the voices say,
that you should live another day?

Hope and Remembrance

The child was born on Memorial Day.
Her parents christened her Hope.
Soon the young father, so full of pride,
Shipped off to war and died.

And so the saddened young bride
Was left with Hope by her side
To get on in the Land of the Free.

And oh what a sight to see!
With each passing birthday -
A time of imagined glee -
The mother told Hope sad stories
Of all those soldiers, dead in glory,
To be counted on Memorial Day. 

The child never knew a birthday cake
Without a mournful soldier's story
That would make her cry and shake.

To mark the holiday in school one day
Hope asked her teacher for some paper -
She wished to draw a simple mark
For every soldier who had died
In every war on either side -
The teacher laughed, "Oh silly lark!
Your paper would be miles too long!"
And so Hope's project was denied.

No one can say the hour or day
When Hope passed into song.
For the pain of remembrance,
And the senseless guilt,
Is remarkable in its resemblance
To the Tower of Hope we built.

Deep within that quiet Tower,
With every soldier's death
In every passing hour,
We hide far from the question -
Why them and not me?

And so one fine Memorial Day
No one could hear Hope scream,
"To live with death what will it take?"
And then as if in a fantastic dream
Hope baked herself a birthday cake
And in the hundred candles' gleam
She set herself on fire.

Yes, the consequence is dire -
The one who feels all pain's a liar -
To truly mourn all soldiers dead
Would take up all the days
And burn out life's desire.
Better that we should designate
To remember all, for reason's sake,
One simple holiday.

Grace

This is the boon of time;
It creates a distance in the mind,
A space of grace
And possibility:
That you may not be a slave
To the past,
That your pain is not obliged to last
But fade by grades,
And the tell-tale tears
Vanish in the years.

Akai

The light of the stars above the city
first sparked over a Scandinavian village
in the long forgotten past.

Now, the light has reached
the dilapidated old building,
set aside for the impoverished,
the long forgotten, and the rats.

There, in the darkness of a stairwell,
a shot rang out.
The monstrous Grendel tumbled, dead.
No doubt some mythic greatness
would await the heroic officer.

Only it was an accident without a monster.
And the officer was a villager,
like so many of us, so many of us.

In the days that followed, the elevator
would see repair
so the stairwell could be avoided
until the lights, too, could be replaced.

Snowfall

In the morning

The world lay silent white,

A solemn announcement

From the Heavens beyond sight:

 

The fallow world again will rise

From death’s old, cunning slumber.

Though trees are skeletal and somber,

Their roots are fed by winter drifts

That fall from deathless skies.

 

The winter storm that passed in the night,

Sent by the Heavens beyond our sight,

Delivered as well - without joy, without scorn -

Its fell judgment in the morn:

 

All men are weak as infants born,

Though some grow strong and weather storms.

Still some walk hapless, poor, and sick -
For them death’s slumber is sudden and quick.

 

The beggar was found all covered in snow,

Having found in the night no safe place to go.

Outstretched on the church steps he fell,

Frozen hand within reach of the bell

On the door where the snow barely fell.

 

 

 

World of Law

We set up laws
to obey the king upon the throne
and to turn the country into home,
a place where people would greet
each other passing on the street,
not kill each other over scraps of meat.

But laws did not suffice.
For such is mankind’s vice:
we ignore the law, respect the price
of the devilish things that do entice
our monstrous greed to play at dice
with children’s lives
and ancient forest woodland,
the ocean tides,
the dying crops on the drying land.

Laws would not have slowed the fire
that every soul does char and burn
if the king had not in turn
revealed in tales a land of fire
reserved for murderers, thieves and liars.

Hell is the ultimate prison, ultimate end,
the king would say,
and death is here eagerly willing to send
the disobedient to torments vile and eternal,
to die endlessly in suffering infernal.

Still the threat of hell has failed to stop
those greedy few who laugh and mock
the hellish stories as children’s stock,
those bloated beasts with hearts of rock,
who chew upon the people’s bones
and sit atop the world’s gold thrones.