The Morning After

I woke up at 4:00 am today, unable unable to sleep. Rain fell outside. Was God crying? Or urinating on us all? How could a compassionate, just God sanction this election?  Most Christian Evangelicals voted for Trump, a complete betrayal of their religious beliefs. In their hypocritical hearts, they know Trump's religious gestures are mere theater. Never has it been more tempting to boldly proclaim the virtue of atheism.

A panic attack kept me awake. Vaguely, I recall the fear constrict my chest and knew instinctively that it was the same fear Trump's supporters felt. They surrendered to this animalistic drive, irrational by nature, at the polls yesterday. It was an epiphany: understanding this fear was a key to penetrating the dark, unspeakable mystery of our national political climate. How each of us responds to this fear individually will affect the course of our country, and in turn, the world.

I dressed for work as if for a funeral, all in gray - gray suit, gray tie, gray shirt - gray like the cloudy day that was dawning and still I moved about as if in a bad dream, slowly.  To deny reality is human. Uneducated racists do not have a monopoly on denial. But my clock kept ticking. Because I could accept the possibility that I would be late for work, I admitted I was awake. I had lived through what history will record as our worst election for all its resemblance to 1932 Germany.

Stepping outside, the fear subsided but still lingered. It cast a small shadow in me, like the shadow of leaves on pavement after the rain.  What I did with this fear was my own burden. So I secured the fear, until I could regain my reason, by using a talisman.

I dressed in mourning because something died last night, a grand experiment on tolerance unique in history.  But I placed a small, white handkerchief in my breast jacket pocket. The Christians - the authentic ones - have a story about Jesus who survived death and will one day return. Only their hope sustains that story. The thin, white line in my breast pocket was my own talisman of hope. Perhaps America will return from death some day. And perhaps how we vanquish the animal fear will usher the resurrection. But for today I just need to touch the white fabric often, to navigate the sadness until I can again think.

Kanye

I resist

the commodification
of the struggle to define
the self;
I am not a brand -
from where I stand,
no man, no woman,
or rock,
or bird,
or tree,
can truly see
to understand
the struggle is not in blood,
not in riches or glamorous fame,
but in language, in memory,
in the past that never was
and forever will be.

She repeated the sentence three times
To herself in the morning, stopping
On each line for emphasis,
While breakfast was served on her balcony,
The fresh squeezed orange juice
Cooler than the wind from the sea.

Before her tea at three,
To the reporter,
To the photographer,
To the publisher,
To the maid:
The long sentence in every receptive ear
Seemed to steer clear of any risk
Of meaning.

The unknown safety of not thinking
Keeps us while we sleep
With eyes wide open:
Protection from the standing rock,
The bent, old tree,
The incomprehensible
Wind from the sea.

Hourglass

I grow tired
And the hour is getting late;
The time withers for youthful dreams
I hoped would make life great –

Too late to scale the highest peaks

Or swim the widest channel
Or other wondrous feats;
Too late to take a child in hand,
Raise a fine woman or a man.

If still left to me were one hundred years
I still would not find the courage or time
To conquer my fears -

Still the manuscript would lay in tatters,
Still I’d dwell on what doesn’t matter,
Still the trip to that distant land
Would be just talk with a drink in hand.

And as I drain my glass with somber face
In a clean, well-lighted place,
I know my love tonight will not appear.
Perhaps, if time should still remain,
I will find you here, this time, next year.

Dissent

If a nation
Founded on the ideal - the sublime appeal -
Of individual liberty, should shine and not
Vanish from the earth,
Then at its hour of birth, the nation should relent,
That seeds of liberty must also sprout dissent.

And, if in that shout of contradiction,
Should be raised a moral vision
To shake our institutions
At their innermost foundations,
Then should we recall
That dissent seeks to forestall the fall
Of those dear and cherished freedoms.

A far cry from the critic
Who would redesign our structures
Is the nihilist who furthers
A complete and utter rupture -
That ideological arsonist
Who would burn the entire edifice
Of our popular democracy.

Therefore let us pray we don't confuse,
Confound, misunderstand.
The dissenter who may take a stand
Against popular but harsh opinion
Is no demagogue's minion.
The nation cannot find its way
If dissenters face our wrath.
They struggle in their way to say
That we stray off our rightful path.

Spring Rain

After the rain
Of days and melancholy days,
When the wet sheen on all the world
Reflects a dull spring sky,
Still the swollen green of dripping plants,
With the shiniest indifference,
Demands your full attention.

By the sidewalk, the milky white of dogwood,
In a garden, the tender tone of roses,
And the lilies scatter on a lawn
In speckled yellow splendor:
All seek to draw the eye
From the pensive gray of sky.

To venture out at dawn
And hear the song of sparrows
Hiding in the great, green tops
Of sturdy oak and slender willow,
Branches swaying, dripping rain
Like green low-lying clouds -

Sight and scent and sound that calls -
The bustling of no crowd:
Nature's vigor, soon to die,
Its fleeting moment leaves no doubt,
Our blood is earth, our soul is sky.

Worldwide Web

You can project
Your content here:
Your hope, your fear. 

This space can be
Your preferred candidate,
Your Superman,
Your Jesus. 

What you want me to be, I cannot,
Because I already am. 

In my mind there is a land
Where we can walk together.
Flowers in a field gathered;
Like us, they sway and dance,
Sprung from seeds scattered
By the fickle winds of chance.

 

 

Greenwood

Greenwood
Was a cemetery for the colored,
A place where the pale-colored bones
Of black folk
Would not through ages rot
Near the pale-colored bones
Of white folk.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

These days Greenwood
Is a haunt:
Weeds and ivy choke
The graves among the oak.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

The white man’s marker taunts,
From its shining grave upon a hill,
That declaration of segregation
That was Greenwood,
Now fallen mute and still.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

Why care for the plots of the dead
When we can scarcely tend the living?

To right the ancient wrongs
Among the living poor today
Would not undo the lynching.
In the well-kept tombs
Of the martyred dead
Is the silence of forgiving.

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.

December 24, 1914

Before the bitterness, before the hatred,
Before spawning the beast
That must be sated,
In the horror of every war since,
Came the peace on Christmas Eve. 

Few could then believe
The German call heard in the night
Across the blasted waste of No Man's Land.
The British and Germans dared to stand
Atop their trenches, within sight,
And, walking, met halfway in brief reprieve.

Though comical the call,
"We no shoot!" opened the door to all:
To sing old carols, "Stille Nacht, Heilinge Nacht,"
To hear a band play "God Save the King,"
To give as gift every simple thing -
Wine and cigarettes,
Bully beef and biscuits -
To share a human night is all they sought
And a game of soccer with a makeshift ball.

By Christmas the following year
All of the players had killed each other,
Bringing on the helpless, hopeless tears
Of British and German mothers.
French mothers, too, clutched their damp letters
From sons who believed, in December 1914,
That life could be better.

Gone are the trenches; gone are the fences.
Gone are the days a solider could see
The enemy's faces.

Our enemy bears no love
For our yuletide traditional ways.
And still we rain death from above
On the enemy's most holy days.

So let us pray today
For the youth of that children's crusade,
The ones who had glimpsed on that night
That another kind world could be made.

Distance

Imaginary fingers
run gently through my hair
as I fix a lazy stare
at the table, once laden, now bare.
The heating pipes knock, hiss
and warm the silent air,
in the night beyond the only kiss
the wind upon the branches bare.  

Imaginary hands miss
my tight and aching back,
hardened by the days of quiet labor,
dragging the alienating sack;
hands instead that brush the sand
from a hardened pillow
on a warm night in an alien land.  

The soldier and I had parted
in the possible of an autumn evening,
one meal not sufficing, not enticing,
a gust of words to loosen
the silent weight that years create.

Petals

Here today,
Gone tomorrow.
Heart to lend,
Love to borrow.

Blossoms of new promise
The winds scatter in sorrow.
But always there is solace
In the sunrise that will follow.

Looking Glass Moon

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

But curiously,

The pale October moon

Sinks too soon

And shines no light upon the plight

Of the distressed little doshes.

 

For the Gostak distims the doshes

When the year turns autumn green.

Sad and sweet are the losses

Though in fact they are never seen. 

 

The splendor in the grass

Sinks down into the bottom

In the first chill gust of autumn

When the clouds of moon go past.

 

In the soothing thoughts that spring

From our human suffering

We see the trail of doshes;

All are mimsy and  distimmed.

 

And the slithy Gostak goes

Where the cold winds always blow

From the east far to the west.

After the sleep of the colorless green,

The doshes wake to wonder and see

The flight of the borogoves blessed.

 

Then toves and mome raths smell the grass,

The splendors all to eat.

But splendors sleep in burrows deep

Until frabjous sky of spring. 

 

Under autumn moon the green ideas

Prefer the light of noon.

The uffish passions sleep til then

To the cry of the burbling loon.

 

 

Ice Cream

Does anyone see the irony?

Does anyone think it queer?

Does anyone grasp

That the thing we crave

Is the very thing we fear? 

We eat our slice of cake

And cut a piece to save.

But the light of all those

Birthday candles

Shows where lies the grave.  

We lick our mound of ice cream.

We lick until it melts.

With every lick we may get sick

But oh! how good that felt! 

So chase your little treasures

Until you're out of breath.

Take care that your last pleasure

Is not the kiss of death.

 

 

Destination

The tall volcano will spew its fire.
In rage the storm will roar and break.
The sunlit hills will tremble and shake.

Mankind, another scourge that roams,
Lays waste across the trembling world -
Oceans and forests wither and groan.

Whether the world will end in fire,
Whether the world will end in ice,
Whether mankind's base desires
Will poison the world in passion's guise -

Destruction is the destination.

Those who extol predestination,
In the grip of ancient fears,
Differ little from the explanations,
Offered by the wise of many years
Who trace the arc of nature's dawn
And its ultimate decline
In complex formulas that shine -
The magic spells of a darker time.

Founder's House

A flag hung from the brick façade
Of a stately and elegant house,
The street lined with old rich homes
And ancient, shady trees.

Inscribed were the words:
"Descendants of Valley Forge,
Soldiers in George Washington's army,"
Undulating in a hot summer breeze.

Around the corner, down the street, some distance away,
A posted sign was met with casual glances each day
From an American public who, with faces pink and red,
Between wiping sweat and heaving, read:

"On this spot, until 1889, lay the house,
Richly appointed, grand, and fine,
Of So-and-So,
An enlightened man of his time,
A Founder of this great Nation,
Whose achievements in Government
And Industry were sundry and sublime."

The plot of ground was flat and empty,
A wide square paved in red brick,
With tufts of grass in places thick,
And a thin tree growing like a lonely stick.

An old, tired beggar sat beneath the tree,
Taking from the sun a brief reprieve,
Descendant, too, of Valley Forge,
Though no one would believe.

That night the beggar walked to the river and saw,
With hunger and awe, the fireworks light the evening sky,
Blotting out the stars, the very stars the Founders saw,
Their precious source of light, as they sweat in all their splendor
On those steaming summer nights.