The seas are a brutally unforgiving
place to challenge adventure, and even
more dangerous for migrations to a better life.

We are simultaneously fascinated with risk
of discovery while repelled by the desperate hope
for a better life for the most unfortunate of us.

We cannot look away as five
wealthy thrill seekers face
their tragedy of life existence…

While we can easily look past another
unremarkable sinking of an overcrowded
boat taking the lives of hundreds of migrants.

What is wrong with humanity and
our fascination with the extraordinary
adventures of a few wealthy tourists?

While the drowning of hundreds of
unfortunate migrants fleeing oppression
causes us nary a shake of the head?

Where is our interest, where is our
concern, what resources are applied
to rescue, what resource to prevention?

We must wonder about how we value lives
and how we mete out our limited
attention, resources and prayers?

A longing and desire
for something unique
for something tasty
for something valuable.

A tendency toward and
an affinity for activity
and action and power
a compulsion of sorts.

His need for power and
esteem is an appetency
which has driven his
entire existence.

Conveyed in crowd size,
ratings, the stars on the
shoulders of those who
served at his table.

The documents and trappings
of greatness, and importance
hoarded and protected
like fireflies in a bottle.

The women treated as
trophies of conquest,
no different than the
magazine covers, of his likeness.

Like Narcissus lost in the
his own reflection, he
has no soul, only the
reflection of a crafted image.

His appetency will be
the end of him just the same
and with this the honor
of all who held the mirror.

Appetency was the word of the day today… I thought it was very interesting…. the definition is included in the beginning of the poem. 

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues. You are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,”  … Liz Cheney.

Time is on my side says the patient man,
waiting for the moment to show his hand.

And yet time is no one’s friend,
it wins the long-game in the end.

Moments are very soon to pass
for those who thought it would last.

As if next-time would always be there,
because the last-time failed to declare.

And time will not be banked says the wise man,
it is to be spent before slipping through your hand.

The gift of present-time we should all be aware
is the most precious thing this life can share.

It has a nice ring to it…
Free as if it has no cost,
but it does.

Dom, as if it is a state of being
endowed as a right,
easily trampled.

Often heard as a rally cry
by those who intend to
strangle it.

Ringing true as a bell
in the subconscious of
those asleep.

Keeping them asleep,
for fear they should
awake.

For they might then see
that freedom doesn’t
mean alike.

U who are greatly unique
and highly unusual.

The three U’s of unusual
one up the tu of unique.

There should be a
museum of the unusual U,

where certainly there’d
be long queues on Tuesdays.

And of course ed-U-cation
to be found at the U of U

for the highly unusual and
greatly unique U.

We may be energetic and restless as a people
but we are also static, and bound to our homes.

We move on with great difficulty, but we move
on in mass and until we find ourselves home again.

Goodbyes are tearful, some can never be said,
Memories, legacy and purpose abandoned to hope.

We who are the fortunate children of past migrations
Potato famines, wars, persecution, gold or adventure.

We should naturally sympathize with the plight of
millions on the move, for they are who our ancestors were.

But alas, many would rather pull the ladder up with us
when we leave the bottom, in the name of national security.

We would define our world and there’s as if they were
something alien and unworthy of the hope and dreams we have.

We are no different, we are they, but for the sake of fortune,
and someday their children and children’s children will be us.

The next wave is here, changing us forever, resistance is both useless and unfair. Life is precious and so is unwavering hope.

In a quest to discover,
turning over boats to
find which will float,
suitable for a journey.

Chasing streams of
consciousness, as
ideas float or sink
along a narrow brook.

Finding white water
of turbulence, with its
boulders of challenging
upending ideas.

Bouncing and bumping
toward an open sea
imagining control of
the uncontrollable.

Into an estuary, life
and thought slows,
imagining just maybe,
finally, life is settled.

But still there is an
open sea to come,
with an eternity
of flowing dreams.

We live in an era of the great
devaluation of decency and responsibility.

Truth is malleable to fit the moment,
and deflection covers accountability.

Power trump’s values and cult-like
faith excuses logic and reasoning.

For we apparently have lost our footing,
slipped into an abyss which echos irrational thought.

As it steals the rights of other for the disowning
of liberty as was once our fervent national quest.

This is not the “our-time” I would have wished for
with such a dearth of compassion and thoughtfulness.

I wish for Christian values in an unholy time
and for Socratic reasoning in a chaotic rhyme.

And wish and hope for the next generation
to rediscover faith, logic, reason and compromise.

Does it mean incredible
or incredulous?

Expressed because of scarce event
or is it scarcely expressed?

Is it to say tell me more,
or there’s no more to say?

If you have this figured out,
then all I can say is Wow!

It has a two in it, never a one
following the start of a week
without the fun of hump day
penultimate to Thursday in obscurity
without the respect of pay-day
nor the fun of a weekend day of golf
fishing, or other activity, and there
is no worship or football set-aside.

Never has a holiday… Thursday refuses to
give up Thanksgiving… maybe once in awhile
a Christmas or New Years shall fall, but
it is always with reluctance a day of fun
should prevail, before being sent back to
obscurity for years to come….
even birthdays are put-off until the
a Saturday or Sunday celebration.

Nope Tuesday is the working day, the
sad, so-far-off-the-weekend, the Monday
hangover gone, might as well just buckle
down, for workday productivity,
but never fun, not even the downhill run.
Tuesday is a day for seriousness,
or at least it seems, but one never knows
what might be hiding in the heart of
Tuesday, maybe, just maybe a vacation day?