Twelve Poem Fragments

The Bee and the Flea

 

A purpose a meaning

A meandering flower

Wilted and leaning

Sun beats down with its power

 

The rain mist has lifted

The skies blue above brown

Of the smog layer enveloped

Across the urban landscape’s ground

 

The days of water-life’s nectar

Descending with glee

A memory fading

Through my thoughts falling free

 

But that small yellow flower

Petals pollen still sits

And bees butterflies whirl by

Buzz zip fly and sit

 

So while this delicate life form

Withers and dies

It gives renewal anew

And spreads its seed in disguise

 

Yes unwitting but common

The smallest insect alone

Causes life to bloom once more

In spring’s illustrious home

 

To the least amongst all us

The bee and the flea

Without you there’d be no flowers

To sway in the breeze

 

Did you hear it?

To some shadow’s fear

An unspoken dread

A callous hollow shame

A cloud on high

A helicopters’ hum

A muffler’s guttural refrain

A fridge it murmurs

The power lines buzz

The cars whizz by and honk

A construction crane

A dump truck beeps

A breeze a whirl a thump.

 

A bird squawks a lover chirps

Strolling couples walk hand in hand

Speaking in low quiet voices

Conversing to understand

 

For who or why a kid exclaims

This earth emerged and grows

And voices of shrouded flickering shapes

A gust adroit ignored

 

To shatter the fears

To silence the rage

To scream and wonder why?

 

And blame oneself for recoiling

In disgust at the sight

Corruption and lies

Obstruction deflection

A show of mirrors and smoke

To this day I’ll say

Some murmured reflection

Has this life been just a joke?

 

Here sitting alone

Afraid insecure

An awkward humiliated mess

But despite the worry

The hustle the flurry

We steady ourselves

and give it our best

 

To Ponder

And to think I could be

In the land of the free

Mansions bordering tent cities

 

And desire for sale

Bodies prostrated and frail

For phallic possession – so empty

 

To that glittering eye

Up out in the sky

Satellites and cellular phones

 

DNA structure

An aura all ruptured

Technology disconnected alone

 

But for what of society

Or ordered propriety

That government media states?

 

Insidious perdition

Herd instinct suspicion

To live a lie our fate

 

But what of this condition

A practiced permission

To steal a compassion’s touch?

 

As the police state it slithers

Our shackles conspire

Our tatters environed rush

 

Sacral cranial therapy

For people shocked by society

Torture survivors have empathy

 

Bombarded by cyber-electromagnetic warfare

 

So scream and cry

Take a desperate gasp

Love hug and be sincere

 

And hide no more

In social roles

behind the guise

Of herbal smoke

 

Alive and woke

To bare our weight

To shake off the trauma

Make our escape

 

And each one teach one

Together with intention

Our will and humility

We rise above and sing

 

So swing low below

Sweet chariot

And take me home

 

So what is It Good For?

Some cocaine government

Opiod empire

A two-faced poison

A bomb blasted both ways

 

Remember that day

What pride what hubris

What foolish idealism

What privileged what care

 

We screamed these were our streets

And we were what democracy looked like

We through will power alone

And rough stenciled signs

We would stop the war

 

A generation super-nintendoed

As the new age bombs

Dropped smarter sophisticated and intelligent

And they launched the face book

Like an open-source do it yourself FBI database

 

We called it freedom

Social media

To manipulate discourse

And clearly Bush lied

Tell me

Who died

Again?

 

Guantanamo torture

Chambers echoed their horror

In the name of counter-terror

And fallen towers

 

“We” bombed Mosques

And disclosed a few pictures

Of sadistic pornography

As official U.S. policy

 

We so foolish

We would change the world

Raised by star-trek, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem

We raged against the Machine

And double plus liked

And rape culture echoed across the radio

 

The chants slunk slowly off

The streets

And onto face book walls

And then finally

Like a dream

A change we all could believe

And targeted drone strike assassinations

And black kids with their hands up

In Ferguson

 

Los Angeles Morning News

 

When all lies are truth

And fake news is reported

Nothing really matters

And might makes right

 

When America-nothing

A farce of its founding

And LIBeral Lost Angeles

Votes education funding down

 

Where the summertime soldier

And Democratic ®esistance

Cries pant suit crocodile tears

 

Before ending the sequester

And spiking defense spending

Giving That Man his victory

Stripping a million dreamers of their future

 

So families are endangered

Children torn from their mothers

A diaspora dispersed

To all four corners

To lose ones name

 

And we call it opposite day

When the reward of torturing babies

Is border wall funding

And budget line items

For concentration camps

 

It’s a city that celebrates

Its culture industry

 

The baristas at the coffee bean

Across the Directors Guild

Follow a script

Or face dismissal

 

“Hi, how are you?”

“Fine, and yourself?”

“Great, thanks,”

“What can I get you?”

“A coffee, no, an Americano”

“For hear or to go?”

“To go”

“Would you like room?”

“Huh”

“Room for cream.”

 

A daily scene

Watered down

 

And in the Pan-American park

Next to the Los Angeles Holocaust museum

There are no working toilets

On Shabbat nights

To pee

After a prayer

For redemption

 

And homeless are dying

In the streets as Maseratis, Porches, and BMWs

Rush past

Staring at i-phones

Bumping the soundtrack

Of Chase freedom unlimited

 

A middle aged white man

By a bench

Emblazoned with an advertisement

Of a cadaver that says “Homelessness Kills”

 

Is puking heaving red bile

On the Glamorous Sunset Strip

As a woman waits for the bus

Fashionably dressed

 

There aren’t soup lines nor soup

But it’s sunny

And tents are confiscated

In 5611 law-approved police sweeps

 

And all the nonprofits get paid

And nothing is done

With low interest rates

And a tech boom

With skyrocketing rent

Real estate speculation

Bubble popping

In a twerking obscenity

Cash raining down amidst the ash

 

Two plus two

Is just five

Stay High

 

So ask – why aim?

Before calculating

Firepower velocity and

Ballistic angles

 

Can you hold two

Contradictory ideas as

Truth

At the same time?

 

It is a cognitive disconnect

But at least we won’t go crazy

If we just let the robots

Do our thinking for us

 

Can you hear silence?

 

And as my mind extends awakes and screams

A thousand voices in sequenced cycled steps

Crescendos shrieks and shapes contours of dreams

To rise and strive once more to be incensed

 

That smell that taste that sight and fate we smell

As time and life the breeze its wind does shift

As words condemn profane and praise and swell

For love enough to spread out wings and flap

 

To fly and wrap the tender door its key

An open heart to judge or hang in shame

But no! to understand forgive and leave

That pride and prejudice the pain remains

 

But minds chatter delves in depths I could not see

So stop the clamor listen and just be

 

Shrug off the fear

 

So what they say that time will tell

We living on this edge

A fluorescent screen warms my flesh

As we roll through night and rest

 

For this –no fear

We must be near

To clear the cloud this rain

 

That hate poured down

In torrents bound

Not tricked nor mocked disdained

 

My people here

We slide we veer

Across the fabric’s shroud

 

And ripped apart

Inside our hearts

Each cloud of life swirled down

 

The earth it warms

and waters stir

And rain clouds life breath gathers

 

A meandered flash

A torrid rush

A torment fallen splattered

 

But this they say

Just stay away

Hell’s furry born to dress

 

A colored haze

Surprised amazed

Around each raven’s nest

 

To shear a snake

Of scales awake

A worn torn flaky skin

 

A shattered screech

To laugh beseech

Before you reach realize

(The emperor has no clothes)

 

Ha Ha she chuckled

The bird it shuffled

Across the barnyard floor

 

But now that chicken

Is not for the fixin’

That we see in picture’s glory

 

Oh old McDonald

Got bought out

And his daughters son

Grew a snout

 

And the agribusiness chemical combine

Poisoned the hefer

Of our hearts and minds

 

They did it in stages

One at a time

And as long as were eating

We sure didn’t mind

 

But hey there today

As the people don’t say

But everybody knows

 

H2A H2B

Those visas aren’t free

The harvest picked just only so slow

 

Before the fruit rots.

 

To replace us with machines

So they can chop down the dreams

Of America’s forests and plains

 

Down the yellow brick road

To the scarecrow its shown

The lion and tin man

They say just go home

 

But I tell you my brother

My sister my lover

Your sweet lips succulent and wet

 

If I had a finger to lift

And if I had a gift

I’d use it with all my strength

 

For my neighbor my friend

Life here in the end

Is about more than being chained to some screen

 

A vision of zombies

And mass market terror

Is only as strong

As who believes

 

In their fear and their anger

It’s frightening to scare ya

And create a monster in your bed

 

My people just laugh

And sigh breathe and rasp

And smile to live

Our lives as they pass

 

For what is there for us to fear

If we pick each up anew

One community one symmetry

One world spinning round through

 

 

To mend our hearts and kiss the soil

 

Broken love and that passion

That beats in your heart

My sister my brother

Our world torn apart

 

I remember your eyes open

Staring out so wide

That blue green hazel flame

A soul astonished to rise

 

And your compassion and hope

And belief in each all

Was as strong as my hands

Were a clammy clenched balled

 

For in my anxious fear

I shunned and turned away

And in your anger injustice seethes

To this very day

 

This earth love how I long for

from you as I did breathe

I drank up of your fountains

Plants and fields to support needs

 

The life that grew of your crevices

Tall mountains and depths

Sustained as for centuries

Your snow-capped succulent breasts

 

Now lady could I take it back

All those wires strung with violent snares

Across your bare flesh virgin forests

Your skin your back your hair

 

I’m sorry my sister

Your thought is on my mind

I thought that I gained all

The more I grasped in time

 

The closer to possess you

The farther from me you fled

Until alone and broken

I wept in my florescent bed

 

Oh lover earth my Gaia

To exploit you and to rape

But that violent whipsawed bounced back

I was smacked and dazed awake

 

So for each mind’s eye shuttered

Each soul tempest tossed

I’ll push to bring back in balance

What here we love lost

 

The Rose in the Night

Across some shattered world beyond the contours of material existence

Skyward broken slouched slinking framed laughing wayward

Pruned pacified creatures lounging like snakes with

To strike or at least defend themselves in anticipation recoiling fangs of venom

Where life shakes forth protruding

 

So where we look and what we do

Somewhere without to start

 

And here some home retrain its way

That tantalizing parts

 

The world, LA at least, abuzz

The roses are in bloom

 

And Puerto Rico’s cries they pierce

The fear and dread and doom

 

Despair cast off we here are now

To breathe and to believe

 

That life that pulse through each of us

To unify and seize

 

The day each day a blessing be

And sit and ponder why

 

And lose our way in thoughts decayed

And memorized broadsides

 

But shine that street drum point that beat

That music rhythmic pant

 

For we our memories unsheathed

Why laugh and love and dance

 

No terror nor any disease

Or fear of image shaped

 

Can break us off from our fate

We human love create

 

And so we stand here holding hands

We think and sit and hold

 

But as the life inside burns bright

Some flame so eloquent bold

 

To scream to fart to sigh and heave

To long and love and listen – breathe!

 

And synch our hearts in one accord

To reach together we- hand in hand

On earth we stand

 

But what some space to live

To eat to catch a line to give

 

A place to sing a soft stretched line

A melody that floats beyond time

 

I love you all my people here

In towns and city streets

 

So here as time gathers innate inept

And murmurs through our callous feet

 

A place to breathe words to read To synchronize our minds

But what I’d roll here out of control dear spread out my muffled lust

No we I see full energy come one come all just thrust

 

The fire falls from diaphragms up windpipes lungs and lips

To tumble out through mouth and snout and breath that word so swift

 

I hear severe you have no fear we stand together strong

No distrust and envy nor foolish pride

To bring us down to fall

 

So long that crash and roar and splash

And scream a moping frame

 

Life loud it burns and ears they turn

With chords of fraught sold frames

 

 

Los Angeles Red Line

 

I saw while standing at the train

A man so gaunt and frail

One could see the bones protrude from his chest

He struggled on to dare

 

To live a life he pulled his right

Hand lifting up I saw

A giant clear plastic bag

full of bottles and cans and all

 

He picked up trash recycling

Dragging the bag across LA

On the red line–Hollywood to downtown

Like any third world country

 

And so they say its makes us free

To have a despot and strong military

 

 

Walk Around the Serpent

 

So what all lies to hurt? Despised

Its true we could not speak

And nothing here for what is clear

In the trail I see a snake

 

It’s better they say to keep away

And not to provoke the beast

And if its scales and fangs and eyes

do cross our path to stop to pause and speak

 

Hold up! – I say, Caution, stay!

Its best to still proceed

But we yes true avoid the ruse

Step round them peacefully

 

And when a snake obstructs ones path

There is a better way

Though off the beaten path is tough

Sometimes it is just enough

 

And the bush thorns barbs don’t bite

 

 

A Prayer for the Poor People’s Campaign

 

Despite outsourcing and automation

Offshoring union jobs scrap yards

And Heartland factories decimation

A recession depression crack & opiods’ intoxication

Division race hatred and mass confusion

 

Love is the solution

To spiritual pollution

 

And with love and a song

It won’t be long

For that dream of earth’s creatures

Infused with that Spirit

Former slaves and slave masters

Jews and gentiles

Bent ears to hear it

(A Quiet Voice)

 

Every face and feature

With smiles and laughter

Hand in hand

We understand

That humanity will not perish

From this land

Amen

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