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.