When lightning delivers its wicked blow
and the wisps of acidic burn informs the birds
the deer, the squirrels, of danger they know.

They flee as best they can, they run and fly
for they know reality doesn’t bend for them
and the destruction of fire is not for them to deny.

And yet we, in an age of thunder and lightning
don’t turn from the stench of the devil’s burn,
we’d rather marvel in the rareness of the sighting.

We adopt corruption, ugliness, pain and death
into our view of the world, and grow accustomed
to the devil’s darkly demonized view of Earth.

Better than the wooded animals and birds, it is we
who think we can look away when life’s reality doesn’t
fit the model of who we believe we all should be.

Millions remain delusional, accepting denied reality and never
seeing that the darkness, the acidic burn is not outside
but rather inside of us, for the devil is wicked and clever.

And we are too weak to accept that the forest is really burning!

A precarious thing, just a little more
here, a little less there, and it is no more.
The scales of justices is felt by the blind
measure of truth, which is carefully weighed
yet a little more or less here and there, and
justice is lost to the truth.

The earth, the moon, the sun in rhythm
keeps us in this precarious place where
life thrives as the seas and land
in concert with our spin keeps the
whole thing on the tip of a pin until
a little more or less here or there
brings the world crashing down.

Toddlers learn the precariousness of
gravity and motion instinctively, and
will eventually challenge it in a blind
spin, with a donkey’s tail or pinata stick,
and once again, will learn of its delicate
nature in future days of later times,
when dependence on much more
is the reward of long life.

And we all will undoubtedly find
the precariousness of her fickle nature
in the balancing of our anxieties, hopes
and dreams, our successes and our failures
we will need the help of others here and there,
to maintain life’s momentum and balance,
for without such we fail into nothingness.

From the movie Napoleon,
“it is said the French fight for money and the British fight for honor and glory, each fight for what they lack the most!”

Some fight for money
others for honor and glory
some fight for freedom
or respect and power
but always it is for what
they are lacking.

In a way we are always
fighting for survival and
something more, something
which gets us another
rung upon the ladder
something beyond
where we find ourselves.

It is a way of our species
like the mountain goats
claiming its rocky claim,
its right to determine
the future of a species.
There is no gilding of
a greater good, it is
just who we are.

Leaders who lead
the fight know how to
appeal to the lacking,
to the crassness of the need
to be above others,
to be in control and
win in order to restore
something long lost.

And so too then
ration and reason
compassion and empathy
fairness and equality
are values we must be
lacking for we seemingly
must continue to fight
for these!

As blood through the sand seep
while mothers of loss weep
and birds of prey circle above
seeing the grainy image of love-
lost as terror by hunger informs
thousands that nothing reforms
a way of life born in pain and grief
never to find release or relief
from the tragedy of idiot leaders
and the wrath of racist feeders
of stories of defensive aggression
bearing into a future a succession
of mothers of loss, watching blood seep
so that a hundred generations will weep.

I heard it said long ago
“It’s the little things
that really piss you off.”

For we are so easily annoyed
by the slow drivers, that
grandpa called the creepers,
or those who are sleepers
at the red-light turned green
or clods  making a loud scene
at the movies or airport
as they fail to deport
themselves to our expectations
having thus huge ramifications
on our demeanor and seeming
to say something of us, meaning
we didn’t learn to let little things go.
Instead it would be better to know,
how to see little things which bind
us to the world in ways we could find
bring us happiness and little joys
like a child first encountering toys
or the morning dew on a flower
or the first taste of sweet and sour
and the hold of loving hands
in a stroll across white sands
and the joy of full sails by the lee
with a fair and following sea.

Better to let all the little annoyances go,
and instead find vital little things to enjoy!

Looking back on our times
along narrow straight lines
receding like rays to a point
to a beginning we’d anoint
as the start of everything
or a transition from nothing.

We might see how a slight
change would cause a flight
of future fancy less or more
sending rays thru another door
than the one from which we gaze
and the changes might amaze.

Would we ponder if we are here
by chance or by design made clear?
Would all other light source rays
cross our paths or recede our gaze?
And might it change this poems end
if such life-light rays were to bend?

Eyes are supposedly the window to the soul
but I think rather the soul is on the outside,
in the form of energy and spirit which flies
uniquely between and among others and
interacts with the universe in a way which is
as unique as each snowflake which must
meld with others to become something more
and in like manner we need others for us to
be who we really are, for in the vacuum of
nothing we are nothing, and in everything
we are potential of everything, looking
for our perfect equilibrium, which always
is changing because of every connected thing,
and the window to our soul is through
the eyes of others who see or sometimes
fail to see the space between us and
each other, and there is this soul-spirit
we use to connect with each other
as well as all other things of which this
universe is made of, and as we are of this
universe, we are alive as long as the universe
is alive, for our atoms have always existed
and may never be destroyed until the end of time,
they merely come together for this experience
and this miracle we call life,
and as we connect to everything else,
we affect by such measurement all things,
and thereby we are unique from the moment
we knew, the moment we understand
we are someone and sense in ourselves that we
are part of something of great enormity, we
are part of everything, and everything lives
until the end of time.

the thief says sassily to the magician
why do you think your better than me
for I can make things disappear just as you do…

the magician says, but I am not in the business
of taking, I’m in the business of giving,
for my money comes from people I’ve amazed …

the thief says, I amaze them too, for they
don’t know how I came and where I went,
only that I was there and made a living of what I do…

yes, but as a magician they pay me to amaze
them, buying back the watch I made disappear
without knowing how I made it leave and reappear…

so, you are in it for the money same as I,
thus we are no different, we are much the same,
and the conman next to us is also amazing people too…

but the conman, says I might amaze, I might distress,
I might spin a story fantastical, and they part with money
willingly to me, and so I am better than both of you…

in fact says the conman, I tell them all kinds of lies,
and they follow me for the amazement of the show,
and I will never give them what they want, they give to me…

the magician sighs, saying both of you will be caught
one day and you will disappear, one to the depth of jail,
the other to the dustbin of presidential history…

for my magic is the people, and ‘we the people’ will
endure, and find a way to reveal the truth of where
you hide, and how you’ve lied, and taken from others…

and the magician will amaze, and entertain,
as the thief slinks away along with the conman
who is stomping around selling his snake oil …

until they take them away, or we the people
do our magic.

Written in 1939, this poem is about the plight of German Jews with no place to go, refused by every country, persecuted in their home country, driven out by a narcissist with a messiah complex and people with evil in their hearts.
Yet this poem is equally applicable today, to the refugees of the conflict of your choice.  Yes, borders must be secured, but we must also be mindful that those chased away by persecution, by war, by violence and threat are part of our human family. 

Refugee Blues

by W H Auden