Hope
Beyond the flavor of the day
The pretensions of illusions thrust
Cut off obscene angelic forms
Meandered thoughts and sacred space
To call this livelihood a sham
To stare and pray to some incandescent flicker
Our worlds inhabited by a sequence of sordid swipes
These bitter leaves these thorns and forms
Porous singed skin a quiet gasp
We burn it down and let flowers grow
On the shattered plains of asphalt slabs
For roses grow they sprout and bloom
Mature and flower wither and die
And decompose and plant anew
Between the cracks of hope and lies
So much rage and pain and ghosts in time
But here we breathe and gasp and sigh
And cleave to wounds and forms and things
And live our lives as if we’ll die
For life and risk a sacred act
To pierce the veil the drones illusions grasp
And truth its pain skeletal flowers
Will fertilize a minds’ eye lapsed
A field a cricket a cold ensemble
A thicket field a butterfly bed
An unrest that tremors loses its hand
Beyond some stammering eerie stagnant dread
So if destruction on tired thrusts would land
The blow proportionate to the frustrated rage
The life within without to be reborn
And sing a song and turn the page
A Green New Deal
In some dark dreary illusion
Some cataclysmic rite
A tower of babel extending
Up beyond the clouds and sight
A murmur a shape here
A recorded burst
A word left unspoken
A violet burned mush
In that eloquent fixture
Some cold emblems dirt
An empathetic mixture
An insipid hurt
Some thought form elusive
Forever beyond sight
And as we were speaking
Its order burned bright
Some lamp here a fixture
Snuffed out at noon
And the daylight it shines through
The darkness and gloom
American seizes
In eclectic shakes
Elliptical seizures
That time zones create
For what I’d suppress here
What words were stillborn
Some dead flesh and sinews
And an umbilical cord
For those thought fields that numb minds
Forever pulsate
But hope is as eternal
As our renewal creates
Don’t judge me too harshly
I’ll reach to understand
And clasp your clammy fingers
And sweaty moist hand
This grime and this dirt its
What bring us to earth
To ground us in humbled
Debt to our birth
For born of this world here
Sustained and then die
To claim it so arrogant
So sad what a lie
For as the western frontier here
Is bitter with pain
The carcass of buffalo nature
and human remains
A song of spread suburbs
Oh black asphalt plains
America will grow free
When it’s the home of the brave
A rose born of concrete
Helicopters and shrieks
Blood strewn sirens echo
Like gunshots in these streets
But that rose it grew vibrant
Despite tatters and thorns
An end in itself
Life meant to be adored
No calf bronze or golden
No stock market soars
No salute to napalm
Or atomic scourge
No this world isn’t ours here
To beat and abuse
Its God the one only
Through which were subsumed
If eagles and hawks once
More freely could fly
Then American clearly
Will be here in our eyes
Yes brothers and sisters
Together well stand
A new deal is coming
Across this great land
Remorse and Redemption
For what the world my heart did yearn
To sit in silent peace
The cars did roar the bullets fly
To tombstones all did cease
For where or all some quiet tune
A murmur to beseech
And cry out loud for my lost youth
Innocence out of reach
And if love we could start anew
To start over again
Id kiss the indent above your top lip
Hold hands and call you friend
We’d sit in parks hold hands and talk
Your throbbing heart in mine
And some rhythmic trace of my soul with yours
Complete when intertwined
Its been so long here wandering off
In woods and city streets
In trash strewn alleys where junkies fiend
Eyes glaring in sundered shrieks
But why I cry and reminisce
A sloven disheveled mess
I dream someday I could start once more
And give it all my best
So no matter where out there I’d roam
No matter what I’ll find
The thought of you follows me still
Some echo of the divine
A Ramadan Evening in Hawthorne, California
For in some trance
Beyond the race
A still paralyzing fear
To rush and roll
Out of control
To still an inept veneer
To shatter that power
Hour to hour
That emulsifies and sits
But to a place
Cordoned disgraced
Humiliating shifts
To sift about
Down towards the mouth
Of some terrible prickly beast
An angels wings
Swoop down are singed
Rise flapping in rhythmic beats
A cloud on high
Beneath the sky
That pain to suffer call
A victims rage
A behavior made
An oppressor to oppress us all
I hope one day
To describe the way
Of what it for me was like
Iftar we break
And bread we make
In Space X’s shadowy sight
In Hawthorns burgeoning aerospace hangers
To occupy mars and moon
But what about the earth can we
Save ourselves from certain doom
I love you. Amen.
Longing
Between the curbs the lines
cascading down tired occult silent shadows
slinking across the night.
Murdered mayhem morbid confusion
distracted animated time:
And if these hopes could assail fear
And press your healing across my back
Inhale your nurturing love and tears
And together balanced against all attack
I’d kiss you deep exhale and breathe
Your pulsing soul that spirits reach
Oscillate within each life form seized
With love and joy beyond all speech
For words these longing whimsical prayers
Cast out into the ether’s grasp
In murmured echoes the abyss it stares
With terrors memories an indifferent past
Bust some flare some spark, no could it be!
That an ear could bend, you towards me.
Return to Nature
So time itself through screeching halts
And belching metal clangs
Through wooded glens so still serene
The police gun sirens refrain
The hydraulic press the mufflers roar
The bombs bursting deified might
The wild amused times tricks and treats
A momentary blight
A human refrain for what remains
Some silent defining hiss
Fear and power shame and pride
The emotions tugging at this
For a quiet mind in peace we’d find
Strength to shake all heavens gates
And hells fiery depths from which we’ve leapt
A searing shuddering escape
A silent vowel a word a phrase
A number climbing steep
Some dimension of time some peace I’ll find
To pause it all and think
Empty my mind of these auditory assaults
The advertisements scream
And to look once more at natures chorus
Meadows lilies of flowering dreams
But in that grateful loving time
Disturbed by some thundering drone
It snorts and grunts I shrug enough!
Of your shining and screeching tones
I’d much rather be in wind swept air
With butterflies and bees
With a kindred soul up on mountain heights
To commune amidst the trees
A slave to time three minute rhymes
And nine to five – enough!
One day they say we’ll awake I pray
My people have had enough
And you and I quivering and shy
Alone without these screens
Hover close to kiss your sweet unadulterated lips
And revere the quiet spaces in between
Relations Unmediated
There will be a day that we will meet
And brush our feet in soft sweet grass
And brush aside those walls of thorns
That hide our past defend the self
I had a dream that outside these walls
Our hidden hovels our cellphone screens
We’d dance in forests green and damp
And to the leaves and bark would sing
To unleash the spirit from its chains
And the mountains and sea would unveil a path
A place where one could breathe the rushing air
That no time clock brand or code constrains
Free of measured time and egos spent
In some clear fresh place to love and reflect
Know Where
And if these thoughts that form from joy and grief
Could form a word infused with gratitude
Delivered as a humble gift a treat
Like ice cream tasted on hot parched tongues does soothe
You shook the false beliefs that held me numb
I spun and whelped jumping in joyous glee
My brain it froze my thoughts they raced I’m stunned
I stumbled running like an inmate escaping freed
For you it seems have a blessing and a curse
To though your piercing eyes of hazel flame
Unshackle souls from self-inflicted hurt
With curt retorts to lance all lies and shame
And of your curse to feel what others feel
I pray for you that you love and joy’s revealed
Human
And in some place a rainy day
For what these words I write might say
I hope that you are dry and safe
While from some corners edge I race
To find a tinge of empathy
To kiss your lips and let you be
To hold you tight as drizzle falls
To rock back and forth to share my all
To feel your heartbeat in my breast
To laugh and love with all the rest
To share and think that we might sink
Into one pulse a beat in time
A common soul humans kind
But while these words these husks this phrase
Could not do justice to psyches frayed
Nor broken hearts nor shuddered tears
Remorse nor longing across the years
While nothing I do or say or think
Could equal the sight of your eyes fixed
I pray that in my abject despair
Ill be worth some laugh or half-hearted care
These shattered hopes and half flung dreams
Thrown at the gates of fates cruel schemes
All meanings worth and purposed goals
Stale and brittle when hearts froze cold
So I wish and pray that for us one day
Wed put aside our guises and defenses
And be able to trust each other with compassion and understanding