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