Two poems I found extraordinary, one called “Risk” Elizabeth Appell in 1979 which exhorts us to risk change, to grow into our beautiful self, another called “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” by Tupac Shukar in the 1990’s tells of resiliency and determination, such that hope and beauty overcoming adversity… I’ve incorporated these two poems in this musing with some of my own poetry…

Blossom as Beautiful as You Can

For we are planted by
circumstance and the love
of those who bring
us life, and placed us in these
gardens of our minds.

Where the winds may
bend, the rain may bow us,
and the sun may hold us
in warm  soil
of our circumstances.

Risk

When it’s quiet in the morning like this
I hear only the birds singing to each other
as I listen for a holy-peace inside my head

I hear none of the voices of the oppressed
I hear none of the chants to would-be kings
I hear none of the violence within and among us
I hear none of the world’s fight for ideology and power.

I hear the healing hearts of fathers and mothers
who care for the happiness of their children
who worry if they are eating well and enough
who worry if they will find freedom and peace
in an uncertain future, where the world fights
for ideology and power.

But the birds start telling a story that says
we will be here long after you are gone,
long after you have destroyed what you will
long after you cease to voice your worries, and
long after your ideology and power fades.

For we’ve always been here… waiting for you
to come and go… and we do not care about
your ideology and power.

Where is the moral
leadership of Washington?
The intellect and
curiosity of Jefferson?
Where is the brilliant
wisdom of Lincoln?
The righteous
fight of Franklin?
Where is the humility
and charisma of Kennedy?
The hard fought civil
rights of Johnson?

These things we need
at times of change, at times
of crises of our own choosing.
At times of crumbling
Madisonian Democracy.
At times of faithlessness.
and rampant corruption.
At times of social unrest.
and deep world conflict.
Where is the morality, the
intellect, the wisdom, the
fight, the humility, the equality?

Only we can rise up and
demand the end to the
crises of our own choosing.

The world we leave
our children will be
built on the shoulders
of leaders of quality,
honor and faith.
or
built on the ashes of
a corrupt history, of
power, inequality,
and injustice.

We choose our leaders
We choose our future.

Dinner yesterday on Main Street,
it was good, a place called The Tides,
strategically, just two doors down
from the small ice cream shop
with the wonderful goodness of rum raisin ice cream.

You know the stuff, I wrote of its praises
before, so great on a nice evening on Main.
The rain had cleared, and it felt like
a summer evening of old, not too hot,
a light breeze, out on a date, so maybe
two scoops and we could share?

It was going to be something special
to taste, again that creamy goodness,
a mix of old-world and new.
Going back to a past which may only
exists in a Hallmark-movie-mind

I wait in line after three tie-dyed hippies
all older than me, reliving a time long ago,
as they sample before deciding.
Then a young family with four kids,
another homage to the past,
and a young mom and a girl of ten
with a big pink ribbon on the back of her dress
jumps ahead of me in line.

It felt like another time and place.
I thought of the twilight zone… but wait
I’m on a mission, I must not be distracted.
But I worry about mission failure.
I don’t see it in the case, its not at the back,
furthest from the door
where it is always hidden.

I ask the young woman holding the scooper
for Rum Raisin… the greatest of all ice creams.
She goes to dig in, but realizes it’s not in the
last bucket…  she asks her co-worker,
where is the Rum Raisin?
and he looks surprised anyone is asking for it
and says we are out of it…

Noooo… this can’t be,
now the line has grown and formed behind me,
she with an impatient look, like I’m a kook,
asks if I’d like something else?
My mind says no… I don’t.  But I
don’t want to be a kook, and
I feel stupid being so prescriptive…

I scan the card board signs boasting
this or that ice cream.
Nothing catches my eye like RR would…
in a panic I point to the cardboard sign and say
I’ll try the carrot cake ice cream.
She says, you want a sample?

I say, no, just a single scoop, for if I tasted it,
I wouldn’t buy it, and who walks out of
an ice cream shop after 15 mins of waiting
without an ice cream?

Well to avoid further suspense…
it was very sweet, vaguely like carrot cake
with tiny pieces of carrot,
like coconut that your tongue finds
giving the impression of something substantial

It was creamy sweetness, but
none of the adventure of rum,
nor the substance of raisins…
it was not the Hallmark-movie
happiness I so anticipated.
Sadly, it was not Rum Raisin.

Speak not to us about freedom
and sacrifice, patriotism and the like.
Speak not to us about the final
devotion while you wave the flag.
Not if you care little for the institutions
and the constitution we swore allegiance to.

We are not an abstraction of loss
or a representation of power.
We had dreams and aspirations,
we laughed, we cried, we loved
our families and our friends.
We fought for each other and
cried for each other.

The unfortunate who did not
know instant darkness, cried
out for mom, cried out in pain,
cried out for salvation, not for
glory, or abstract ideas.
Winning and losing didn’t
matter any longer.

Please remember us for who
we were and who our spirits
remain,  as well as our hopes
and dreams  left in the dust
of history, and live for us,
grow old for us, for this
we could not do.  We are
the forever young.

Orwell is saying I told you so
1984 was not that long ago
and our future is easy to see
there’s no vaccine or immunity
to reconstituted history
to the rewritten mystery
of a people deluded and seduced
their powers thus greatly reduced
in favor of the all-powerful king
who’s lies we all will learn to sing…

for down here it’s just winners and losers 
and don’t get caught
on the wrong side of that line…

The light comes in sliced and diced
by the blinds, merging and reemerging
much as waves will pool around
rocks approaching the shore,
filling in all the spaces, bringing
everything together.

Light brings to light, chasing
darkness away, filling everything,
making life come alive in every
little way, making the struggle
of every small and big thing
thing come together.

We must use this gift of light,
so essential to life’s struggle, to merge
blessings unto the less fortunate,
thus bringing a brighter dawn,
an aurora of humanity’s potential,
as we come together.

We are here to bath in the glow
of everyone, and to bring a brighter
light to the future, which serves
as a legacy beacon, of empathy,
of reason, of intellect and love,
so much better together.

—–

Happy Mother’s Day!
Mother’s are and will remain
a beacon of light making all our 
futures possible and brighter.

Words find their way to this page
like birds alighting on an overhead wire,
they move to the left, then right, then
switch places as required to find the
place among the others where they
might sing, where they might mean
something to each other, and voice
their concepts, express their ideas
in a manner which makes the flock
alive and something more than the
individual.

Facilitating the return of one
incarcerated without due process 

or was it rather, the words like birds
flying up and re-alighting

Incarcerating the one without
facilitating return of due process.

Words find a way to the page
like birds on a wire, singing
their song for the audience
of the unclever, the audience
of the dual device, law for
some not for others, words
manipulated, concepts
confounded, and the song
distorted… if we disallow
and disavow our very nature
and the meaning of who
we are.

We own it,
we shrugged, we deferred,
we obfuscated, as we blamed
others who wore funny red hats,
we said little, we admitted our
weakness, and helplessness
of the alternatives to tyranny,
as we allowed the dirty secret of
otherism to live amongst us,
while many claimed they are the
worst of the worst, and deserve
their fate.

We own it,
for we outsourced tyranny
to those who are happy to carry
the orders quietly, secretly
to avoid due process, after all,
it’s not about us, as we are safe
until such time as we are not,
until such time we are expected to
wear the right hat, and learn
the right way, think the right
way, as we are fed their evil truths,
and it becomes our fate.

We own it,
we will know this oppression,
and the decline of the eagle,
and know the shame of colors
which run with pain and tears,
as we hear the cries of those
we’ve abandoned, as we are
pushed beyond freedom and
into the tenuous tendril holds
of power, a power which fades like fog
at sunrise when God’s light comes
for our fateful terrible judgement.

The truth dies first and quietly
and it dies massively,
long before liberty and morality
long before the rise of power
and before laws are averted
and before new laws are issued
by a dictator in a frenzy of fascist
action, offensive to those who have
challenged evil, and fought for liberal
representative democracy,
for free trade and commerce
for treating people with equality and
equanimity.  Justice doesn’t die, it
is just redefined to the injustice of the
powerful, of doctrine before reason,
of power over right.

Truth will only rise again when
all else fails!