a polite war...

It was quiet and well-mannered
as human destruction goes, non-intrusive;
the world goes on with little notice
of the lives sown like ripe seasons, and seeds
find fertile moments in the barren soil of world concern
where nations pose like vain children
with cameras on a stick.

A community of nations
watch as one bleeds its life
lonely, and suffering quietly
in the limn light, slightly off
the center stage, where the stars
shine inward and the set stays dark.

Such a polite devastation
so many thousands
and war fails to count the important things;
it is not about the heroes, they bring war home
but are not the cause. No,
war does not count the important things
like the rich that get richer, and the poor
that vanish, and the dreams
trapped in fresh mounds of native soil,
and bound in arrested histories.
Such a polite situation, fate of a hopeful nation
evaporates in fictional news copy.

In all the world, all the outrage, pauses
to reflect, the sounds of boots still distant
and neither does the past insist, for
it too was a polite war.

A Pretense of an Ark

The Fourth World does not emerge,

it is filled with change and yet,

in essence, it stays the same

It is an endless rain of danger

and death impatiently awaits;

although it  arrives both early and late.

The Fourth World was not discovered

It was born full grown, from those who own

The means to kill easily and at will, fill

the unpaid bills of generations past; it remains

a dark evil that lasts past sunrise.

The Fourth World is not a hell-bent continent

But an archipelago of human pain, where endless strife

strains the sinews of life. Pausing barely for breath

It lurches and careens down a mountain like

Boulders falling in an avalanche, woe be unto…

The path is strewn and the wreckage can break

The hard heart of the world, yet withstands

Turn the head, avert the heart, close the purse

Build walls of forgiving news, fold it into a blur

Undisturbed- the peace is a momentary glance;

A random dance to music from a source unknown

It is day and the steady rhythm is a racing heartbeat

The flare of sirens feed reports of success

on a Wall Street news ribbon. For in the Fourth World,

There are few remaining tears, the past has dreary years

and tomorrow the forecast is easy to say, more like today.

When sunlight fills the air, clouds make pretense of an Ark,

birds swoop low, and from a clearest glow of day comes

the deepest gray…the sudden flash and thunder, and

suddenly un-breathable air fills the suddenly un-breathing.

_________________________________________________

Author's Note:

There is a Fourth World where war and conflict run rampant like virulent disease. It is in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Donetsk,  Central Africa, and Nigeria. Like a chain of islands surrounded by an unseen sea of utter turmoil, and they are connected by dreadful circumstance. It is up to the rest of us, the custodians of this planet- our lifeboat in the coldest Sea to do what must be done to bring the people of the Fourth World out of the grips of savagery. There have been heroic efforts and there have been instances of blind-eyed neglect. The fury of war is not a tame beast, it will always escape and find a new prey; it is the global human imperative, no one is safe from war until all are.

simply, more of you

Somewhere there is Christmas

Remembering a birth of hope

And the feelings of a fortunate childhood

revive and kindle as if a fresh breath

has met the rise of a slumbered hearth.

Somewhere there is gentle snow

falling to fill a season’s reasons.

Joy in the soft flutter of white

as unseen winds make evidence.

Falling and rising, a vision of home

and memories of happiness.

Somewhere there are soft eyes

that watch the slow road home;

With hope for change and a wish

For a familiar shadow at the door,

When more means simply, more of you…Somewhere

there is Christmas,

Somewhere there is gentle snow;

Somewhere there are soft eyes...watching,

when more means simply, more of you…somewhere.

signs fall

In the flow of human time

Came a  time without the sun

A dark age, and the rage of ignorance

Fell like the darkness.

Man, left  in the power of his worst,

Fed the life-dimming thirst for hatred.

As their crops fell fallow

And human reach retreated from

The edge of greater understanding,

Like a flower that inhales its scent,

Time went backwards.

And  to now, in an age that thrust

Mankind to a choice of abundance or slaughter

The measure of human greatness in the balance

We can do either…exceedingly live, or

Follow well worn paths to greed and death.

Signs fall from the skies, a feather

Comes into the casual ambit of my eyes

And a meaning extends from the delicate blend

Of circumstance and inner sight, free-fall flight

Of a air light white feather…

Signs fall from the skies, the sun disappears

And will it be for moments or years that we recall

The endless nights, and the fright-filled wait

For the gates of the near heavens to admit

A right we overlook each day, the miracle

That we need to stay on this fragile blue craft

And will we see that it is simplicity of We

That need the sun, the air, the sweet water

And… forgiveness

__________________________________
The sun dimming in December 2012  or in 2014  is a hoax-- but the ideas spread virally around the Internet. This was the inspiration here, a sobering look at the science of this day-- magnificent sun spots and enormous solar flares. Our connection to the Sun is the essential for human life on Earth, and hoaxes can focus on the reality, solar activity is unpredictable and uncertain except that we need it, and we are all in that same situation - we need the warmth of the sun.

fitful sleep

In the older ways, when in far simpler days,
faith was easy; spun beneath a gentle sun
a greener world- its greater evils
seemed long done - and the
reward of virtue was simply...itself.

Now, comes the time when faith is hard
because it can neither pardon waste's gravity,
nor explain depths we can see- precious life
cast aground blithely, like spoiled water.

Then one must see, for all the things men do,
the errors of the present and failings they rest upon,
for the whole of our arts are in the takings.
We spill precious existence as if it were wastes
Yet, we can restore neither life nor water,
cannot create air nor constitute the fishes
that sometimes fill the boats.

For all that we can do
brings little of that we need.
We yet prosper by gift; for all pretense,
mankind  is still a vagrant seed
fallen into fertile ground to grow.

Now, we take more than given,
by depth of greed we foul the air
and curse the ground, and faith
takes a trembling refuge
in fitful sleep and troubled dreams.

A Star to Follow...

The power of love celebrated

as birth of a child

in wonder of stars and earthly hosts—

noticed amid so little care of life  

that Life was the focus, and creation

of Love the goal—a flock  of souls adrift

left to crash upon rocks and shoals- found

a sudden shepherd.

 Walked among them a call

to something shared within each

a patient teaching, a purposeful reach

to the Sun

We live the miracle to this day

a far removed time still speaks the name

expresses happiness for a cause of mankind--

that man can be more kind, as this man

Whose steps made but a tiny circle

Whose words never cut stony Earth

but endure as little else has, a seed

that made fallow ground to turn;
 light in slow-crawl across time to now.

It lives a life peculiar to truths...above

the petty drag of days, and frayed tongues of doubt

to speak to the heart of the heart

in the voice of the spirit, to dare

hope, to risk loving, to defy the call to self

to exalt the purposes of compassion.

It is only the heart that finds a star in the east...

to follow  

Strumpet...

The whore in Iraq
sweet America used like
a street strumpet, abused
by men who did not love you
used for money

and they put you there
where virtue was a memory
where life was cheapened by lies
and death rained like mother's tears
after smoky bombs
and bullet filled air

and even now
as the years seem like minutes
so the dead are still lost to us
and oil still the price we pay
to the unborn who will freeze in strange heat
sweat in anomalous cold

breathe-in the folly of our age with
bitter tastes, as we fill their world with angers
their eyes with soot and burial ash

when memories like hatching eggs
bring the return of hatred, and
sands give back what we have sown
and time will own us; for the bonds
of truth...are unbreakable.




!0th Anniversary of the Iraq War ... hdm

a forgotten view

greed, a servant of a wasteful few
in golden fog boundless, above
a forgotten view, too long misplaced
virtue, the needs of the needful.

Greed, a waster of the precious many:
bloodline of  heroes, innocents;
life givers, rescuers, vaunt
angels in wait, bearers of
witness in a journey to
our more distant tomorrows-
when even gold and diamonds
will fade away -when memory captures
an enduring grace,
a cup of milk and a hungry child.

when peace intrudes...

the next war
has already begun, building
from a deep reservoir of greed.
It was planted by the last war, and bowered
an "anti-flower" gone to bad seed, sown.
Were there a non-fertile place in the world:
an acquired immunity to diseases of violence?

It will be fought for the same reasons
as the last, some nation's pride offended,
some interest curtailed, some strong arm yet to be tested.

Some new things will be, awful certainties
in glassy eyes that cease to see;
where and when they might be
come stilled, depite every natural will
every reason of beauty, every call to destiny
every reach for another chance to have been
some other time, some other place
in some other magic wish to fly away.

The next war is in the air, in hearts of men
begun as a trickle  to become a pour
until ground runs red with dearest loves;  and dread
is a stare on a shadowless floor, a voice heard not more.
in air bombs bursting....I long for a time

when reason rains to make  gleams of flame
when peace intrudes upon councils of the mighty
when love dispels words of fear spilled
from self-exalted thrones, beauty rises to displace
power fed by true angers for false injury.

A day when God's memory is long and men easily forgive,
learn the painful ways of justice: to stand
in the light of all we have done, offer back
what was won by taking breath and freedom.

I long for a day, when fury sits and peace stands
when ambitions of mankind flow like a mountain stream
gathered from tiny drops to build into a roar-
a voice within the mind's own speech-

that peace holds us, shapes and molds us
into something greater than has ever been.
Into a world bent on generous life, abundant years
the worth of existence measured
by its own boundless possibilities.