Category Archives: Poems

So Much Better Together

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.

The Meaning

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 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.

 

Truth Dies First

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!

 

We Must Decide

We’re here, stuck in an irrational time
dredging history’s frightening rhyme.
Finding ourselves once again on a knife’s
edge, where freedom and our very lives
are risked in a gambit for absolute power
by those at home in a gilded mordor tower.

There is no one to come to the rescue.
There is no grand hero strong and true.
There are only the victims and the complicit.
And soon even these mere words will be illicit.
We need a people’s resistance of firm resolve
in defense of freedom, law and fairness.

For no government may govern without
the consent of the people for long.
And in this way, no dictator can rule,
without complicity of such rule.
And we are not, in our hearts, the cruel tools
of oppression their propaganda would advise.

We must decide!

Sunrise as I write

I’m outside watching the sunrise as I write to you.
It’s a hazy, breezy morning.  the kind where low gray wisps of clouds move rapidly past the sky while the sun still refuses to show more than a glow of its presence.
The birds know.  They are making their journey to their respective feeding grounds, the pond ripples with the prevailing southeast wind which is bringing moisture with it, making the air feel heavier than it might otherwise despite a nice coolness.
In the few moments of telling you of this, the sky is changing color, from gray to a burnt orange as the sun asserts itself and the underglow of the drifting clouds reflect its intensity no matter how they try to resist.
A flock of fast moving small birds whiz by in a formation which changes as it passes, they are moving at high velocity for just the thrill of it I suppose, because of what could they be late?  The day is just beginning.
And now, in just these few moments, the sky is bluing and the clouds are changing to pink, the marsh hens are twittering away a distant woodpecker is pecking and the sun is alighting the trees and the ripples on the pond.
Good morning!

 

The Signal Among the Noise

Maybe the signal is bad?
the deranged Orange King muses,
trying not to show he’s mad.

No, dude, it is the noise
of all the clowns you
call your boys.

It is the privileged kiss-asses
pumping chests, exclaiming
Opsec and their successes.

While they violate laws
and all common sense
and obfuscate their flaws.

In front of oversight
in front of the people
claiming wrong is right.

Demanding suspension of belief
as they stick stubborn to the lie
waiting for next-news-cycle relief.

But the signal is cutting through
beyond the noise of arrests, cuts and
Greenland, and what’s said by fools.

Our friends, are becoming wary
as people are awakening to tariffs
and the pain they’ll be asked to carry.

The Orange King cannot find
the signal with all the noise created
and he clearly has lost his mind.

And the people will rise from sleep
with clarity that his dark-mad plans
are bringing us ever closer to the deep.

The signal must not be lost in the noise
and our freedoms, values and wealth
shall not be sacrificed to an Orange King
and his tech-bros.

Rise-up I say again,  resist… write to
Senators, write to Representatives
tell them we hear the signal despite
all the noise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masters of Our Fate…

Poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley
put into art of fire of red and black of the shadows by Peter Tunney as found at the Wynwood Art Museum, Miami

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.

 

We are who we are. Tested by fire, by a history of challenges, and we will give in to no one, for we have earned our freedoms and will not give them up.   No matter what we have to do, no matter the obstacles we will have to  overcome.  We will face them without fear of retribution, revenge and unjust punishment… for we are masters of our fate, and captains of our souls.

Rum Raisin

Rum raisin ice-cream is the best… it originated in Sicily in the 1930’s … where raisins were soaked in a local wine and mixed then into gelato.  When it was brought to the United States the local wine was replaced with rum… what a great upgrade from the old to the new.

Rum Raisin

In the back, furthest from the door
is the special treat I came here for,
Beyond the chocolate and cookie dough
not the vanilla or strawberry of old
or the mint chocolate or rocky road
lies that special treat, yummy and cold.

Like heavenly angels would dream
sweet raisins and rum with cream,
overflowing with richness and icy cold
it tastes smooth and perfectly bold
from Sicily it came here to our shores
and found its way to our local stores.

At the small ice cream shop on main street
of every small town, you’ll find this cold treat.
Just give it a try, in a cup, or better, a waffle cone.
Others will want to try it and not leave you alone.
But, love is sharing its perfect smoothness and taste,
and returns you’re sure to make, with all do haste.

 

 

 

Rise Up … Bravely For Them

There is a crackling in the air
there something out there
that is reaching across all life
and it’s a cutting sharp knife.

It’s angry, it’s hard and telling.
It’s comes in ugly and yelling,
and it’s as unrelenting as gravity
pulling us down in its depravity.

Power is all that matters now.
Nations and peoples must bow
to devils of the East and West
at the time of their loyalty test.

Else, the four horsemen will rise
as they chase the phantom prize
of power, wealth and adulation
from all of you and every nation.

The end is just beginning
The world is now spinning
in a direction of great turmoil
in a battle for minerals and oil.

Evil must be stopped now
before fields feel the plow
before the seeds are in the ground
before the final trumpets do sound.

It is time to rise up, to resist,
to make arguments and persist
with values and courage unfettered
while reasoned people still matter.

Before the power of evil is too strong
and right is indistinguishable from wrong
in the apocalypse of the four horsemen
and the battles which precurses the end.

Rise up, while we still can
Rise up, and upend their plan
Rise up, with all the power of good
Rise up, let the future know we stood

bravely for them!