Category Archives: Social Commentary

Walled Off

Go ahead and build the wall.
Erect it around everything you cherish.
Build it high with your ideals.
Shore it up with your hopes.
Pay for it with your boundless dreams.
I don’t care anymore.

Go ahead and keep them out,
Those that haunt your dreams.
This is your land.
This is also my land.
But you have won the power
And I just can’t care anymore.

Because it won’t bring anything back.
Language and life will evolve past you still
As you close you soul to save your body.
So waste your efforts trying
To wade against the tide of progress
And I’ll sit here drowning in my learned apathy.

A Pile of Originals

Perhaps a snowflake falling down the air
is truly a special unique treat.
Perhaps it should be on display
for you and I to view and learn from.
Perhaps it has a secret twin
if we cared enough to dig around.
Perhaps it likes being on a pedestal
creating chatter and lazy metaphors.
Perhaps it’s lonely and seeking acceptance
wanting to find  it’s not alone.
Perhaps it looks to its drifting neighbors
And comments on the uniqueness of humans.
Perhaps it’s filled with contempt
that we dare to think we compare.
But who has time to stop and check
when it’s buried in a snowdrift?

Intentional

Hello, hello do you hear the wind
Calling out names from yesteryear?
Asking for solace
Seeking respite
Under a gloomy sky of lavender
Tainted with the dirty water
Of the paintbrush wielded by a dark minded god
Praying for absolution for a race that no longer looks up

Hello, hello do you see the rain
Staccatoing half-hearted rhythms?
Hoping for answers
Dreaming of wisdom
Mixing with the slow wake
Of a ferry traversing earthbound Lethe
Clear in purpose but clogged by the ideals of man
Begging for clarity in a world drowning in nihilistic hedonism

Halt, halt the senseless blustering
Crowing loudly, unknowing portents
As ignorance answers
Proud of its dissipation
Crawling hangovers
Of a wastrel world
Listlessly wanderlusting across land seeking emotion
Intentionally avoiding the screaming empathy of humanity

Over there somewhere

Battles raging all around.
Drones flock to the sky.
Brave humans marching on.
Off to war. Off to die.

Green lights steady in a row.
Patriots under god on high.
Honest souls with honest hope.
Behind closed doors families cry.

Superintelligent superpowers
plotting, planning, seeing all.
Bombing, blasting, indiscriminate.
Doing anything not to fall.

Guns plodding across the land.
Carefully a path they pick.
Footsteps disappear into sand.
Hearts stop. The ground says click.

The Weight of the World

The clouds hung so low
that the pillars of smoke
from the factories
held up the sky.
The stacks rose above spires
as straight as the spines
praying as if their words
were as useful as action.
 
Mists of fire
shrouded clustered lights
like fireflies in the fog
tempting the imagination.
The halos tricked
simple minds
into believing the worthiness
of substitutes.
 
Plastic bags danced
as nature’s sprites
across lacerations
on the numb ground.
Atlases noticed none of this
shrugged with indifference
and the future
went to hell.

Rules of Green Thumb

It matter not the name
at least that’s what they say
in their vague wisdom
that we acknowledge.

Close your eyes
breathe in deep
and believe you me
that the scent will be true.

Try to trick humanity
but we will not be
for obviously a word
cannot change essence.

The experts may have studied
good wine and expectations
but I don’t have to know their minds
to know how to doubt.

Doubt easy sayings.
Assume exceptions.
Consider circumstances.
Force truth.

If we all agreed
to name it rose
it does not hold
the scent constant.

Trampled fallen flowers
in spite of identity
smell not of sweet romance
but forgotten fertilizer.

Grows the future
from unquestioned roots
grounded in ideas
that should be rethought.

Hangers

Inspired by “The Hollow Men” by T S Eliot.

I.

They are pedestal women
They are the mannequins
Posing together
Faces with no eyes. Alas!
Their mummied senses when
They gather together
Are dull and rotting
As bulbs in constant permafrost.
Their bodies with heads lost
For aesthetics.

Form without point, frame without picture,
Will-less hands, Shell without Ghost;

Those who inhabit
With disinhibition, life’s other kingdom
Remember them—if you care to—not as being,
Vapid husks, but instead
As pedestal women
Hanger women.

II.

Lives you dare not picture
In life’s dream kingdom;
They run amok:
There, the wits are
Knives without a whetstone
There, are shiny things
And thoughts are
Quieter than the wind weaker
Than an ant’s sigh.

Let us all draw away
From life’s dream kingdom
Let us not wear
The vain guises
No, no no no

Not live by others’ signals
In the gleaming kingdom.

III.

This is the false land
The vacuous land
Here the gold images
Are gathered, here they waste
Until the last moon is cast
And the future is past.

It is like this
In life’s other kingdom
Never alone
But a spiritless mass
Quivering with potential
That seeps away
Unused through seamless shrouds.

IV.

Their minds are not here
There are no minds here
In this maze of linoleum
They are hangers
In this post operation nose of a kingdom

In this meeting place
Young pods group together
And avoid speech
Of any weight more than a pebble

Agencyless, jointless
Prefrontal cortexless,
In life’s smudgeless kingdom
The realm
Of pedestal women.

V.

Sometimes fate
Is really just cross gartered socks

Between place
And thought
Is silence

Hold your peace

Between mouth
And chord
Is inactivity

Speechless

Between brain
And mind
Is care

Less and free
Care
Less and free

This is the way the world ends
They don’t even know how to regret
They have no words to regret
Only an animal’s whimper.

Motions

He has a plan for me, I know it well.
He demands that once a week I pray
because he took a vacation day.
 
But the flesh is bland upon my tongue.
The blood a year off vintage.
The praise drones monotonously on.
Good Christian faints with faith and love.
The fellows leave him worshiping the floor.
Sheep bleating out their trust in god above.

The Lumps of Life

Inspired by “Toads” by Larkin

Why should I let frog fancy
Run my life?
Can’t I use my mind as a tether
And ignore it away?

I feel content
To sit about
But every now and then—
Wanderlust.

Lots of folks travel,
Nomad around,
A backpack and will
Surviving on guts—alive.

They seem to like it;
Even as paupers
In bare-footed ridiculous
No one actually starves.

But no, I just can’t
Cross the ocean
On mere lily pad dreams
Even if my heart leaps so.

Money

Money
Makes the world go round.

Money
Sees my frown
And turns the wold upside down.

Really?
Did you expect that to rhyme?
It’s not my fault the world is
So predictable.

And let’s be honest
Money won’t make me happy.

But I’d rather be rich and frowning
Than drowning
In the slow death of passion
Of love
Of desire.
Watching everything become
More gray
More broken.

And if we are frank
We’ll admit that
Money
Can bend the world
And make everything just a little bit
Worse
For everyone without.