To The Barricades!

Hate and ignorance,
intolerance and tribalism
assail us every day.
Has our species lost direction:
is chaos our leitmotif?

We see, in the eyes of many,
a slavering, gibbering imp,
espousing harm and evil:
disdaining love and peace.
People who denigrate others, 
and make personal attacks
on those who do not espouse
their dogma, their arrogance,
their stupidity.

To the barricades!
They are far too many 
for our truth, our words,
to sway.  We must instead
defend our gains,
on our path to a better world.

To the barricades!
Logic is overrun
by mindless, thoughtless babble.
We must dig in,
consolidate our ground,
and fight for a better way.

To the barricades!
Has it come to this,
where we split into camps
of diametrically different views?
Are dialogue and negotiation
yet another endangered species?

To the barricades!
This is not my world,
where plutocrats rule,
and a rabble runs wild and insane.
Let us circle the wagons:
we shall fight another day.

Marshmallow Snow (Wiz Khalifa Kush Indica)

(Cannabis and Creative Cognition Series)

The profound stillness 
infuses the senses
with deep tranquillity.
The crescent moon, cruising,
above the scudding snow-clouds,
smiles like the Cheshire cat,
and illuminates
this surreal winter rabbit-hole.

The jackpines are heavy
with their marshmallow burden,
and available light
transforms individual flakes
into the chandeliers 
of a magical faerie ballroom,
full of movement
and dancing diamonds.

The silence has volume;
a rotund quietude
that is felt, not heard.
The crackling of ice in the cove
is a gentle and soothing counterpoint
in this minimalist symphony
of quiet and soft white fullness,
of snowfall and peace.

My Children, I Have Failed You

My children, I have failed you,
as I did not comprehend
the future that would greet you
at your childhood’s end.

I had tried to prepare you well
with visions that served me true;
but those dreams have been broken,
and they cannot work for you.

A paradigm shift fully unforeseen,
foils societal advance;
we are mired deep in a midden
of hate and ignorance.

Like Pandora I should like to release
some Hope upon our state,
but feel that much harm has been done,
and it may be too late.

My children, I have failed you,
for I did not clearly see
the effects that stupidity in others
would have on you and me.

Gird yourselves with personal strength,
and keep your loved ones near:
seek out kindred spirits.
Forge your vision bright and clear.

My children, I have failed you,
and if this all should cease,
it is because we embraced the hate,
and abandoned love, and peace.

Transient

A cornerstone of collective psyche
is the sense of “just passing through”;
and, folksy aphorisms notwithstanding,
we understand that this is true.

This weight of intuitive knowledge
comes with great emotional cost,
as we tend to lament “might-have-been”
and dwell on a past that is lost.

We traditionally build our gods
to offer salvation from life’s fray,
focussing on a heaven tomorrow
rather than building one here, today.

Our short lives are but a flicker,
a brief flash of intense light,
by which we must illuminate the Now
that precedes our cosmic night.

Walking My Dog On A Country Road

Used baby diapers, cigarette butts,
coffee cups,
a thousand incarnations of styrofoam.
Bubble pack and plastic blisters,
Tim’s cups and lids.
Gas cans, oil cans, beer cans by the dozen,
plastic and glass alcohol bottles.
Throwaway food containers of every stripe,
plastic bags galore.
The odd lost glove, and several roaches,
an old car stereo deck.
Hub caps, broken glass
and plastic from ancient collisions.
Skeletons from roadkill, decaying in the dust.
Plastic frames that hold an inch of dental floss,
as though the effort of using fingers with the floss
was too intellectually taxing.
Cigar and cigarillo stubs seeping poison
to a patient soil.
Plastic straws, plastic straws,
and plastic straws again.
Bits of wood, and metal constructs
that bear no trace of function.
Dozens of cotton swabs,
and endless soiled tissues.

A sad commentary on our times,
and our disposable mentality:
tragic epitaph of our species.

The Silence at the End of Time

Note: Leibniz and Kant postulate that time is part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events.  Without humanity there is no time.

No ranting pastors preaching hate,
and exclusion without Jesus.
All quiet from the imams teaching
religious violence frees us.

Black Friday long has passed,
we’ve consumed it all away:
our depleted planet barren
in the light of a sadder day.

The one percenters’ struggle
to have it all has failed,
and society’s poor can no longer see
injustice against which they railed.

There is no birdsong spreading joy,
in this orb so bleak and sere:
and no inuksuk now remains
to say that we were here.

Corporate and military adventurists
crumbled into karmic dust;
as policies of greed, and depletion,
untempered by empathy must.

We refuse to plan for tomorrow;
instead we wallow in our waste and grime:
our arrogance ensures our species shan’t hear
the silence at the end of time.

It Must Be Me

Surely the headlines every day,
and the carnage that we see,
are fictitious misinformation:
     or it could just be me.

So much anger, betrayal of trust,
dislocation, war, calamity,
with no sign of social enlightenment:
     but that could just be me.

Politicians telling lies,
messages saying we are free,
just shop until you drop, and take your pills:
     then perhaps it is just me.

Flags flying, heroes, martial music plays,
while we sip our coffee, drink our tea.
Military adventurism rules:
     or is it all just me?

Has the mountain of evolved society
shattered into tribal skree?
Are we capable of making a better world,
     or does it only bother me?

So I shall continue to hope for the best,
and see what tomorrow may be.
We could make our world a paradise,
     if we stop thinking “me.”

Against the Wall

  

The crypt coldness 
of the alley walls 
always bothered her 
even more than
the bad breath 
of her furtive clients.
Her thin shoulders 
were bruised and scraped 
by the bricks, 
as the speed of fiscal passion 
abraded foreplay.

Her working clothes 
were a hentai fantasy; 
short, with slits 
and scoop;
and a mile of leg 
disappearing 
into leather micro. 
Her eyes held that look 
of reflective knowledge 
found only in the better work 
of a few Dutch Masters.

The mind-place 
she visited while working 
was an old friend 
from a lost childhood:
a place to which 
she continued to be drawn, 
even after learning 
her test was positive.

On the Passing of a Friend

We all have our moments
when, perusing the past,
we chronicle our lives;
sorting events and changes
from first to last:
our friends, our mistakes, and our drives.

We all have our moments,
when a friend has been lost,
to reflect on what we could have said;
perhaps to have given more of ourselves
not counting the time nor the cost:
now that friend, like that moment, has fled.

We all have our moments,
when tears have been shed,
with regrets and remorse tucked away.
We can smile in remembrance
of things done or said,
and be with him then, each day.

Liturgy for Social Media

Breathe.
Ignore ignorance.
Do not become depressed
by the lack of societal empathy
reflected here.
Breathe.

Breathe.
Do not be sucked into the morass of false news.
Forgive stupidity, and do not respond to it.
Avoid the slimy vortex of hate posts.
This is a product of conditioning,
and is used by governments/corporations to mould
the audience that they would enslave.
Breathe.

Breathe.
Do not be drawn into policy statements:
your opinion will never change the ethos of a closed mind.
Do not invest anything of yourself.
Breathe.