Category: poetry

Poem (Untitled)

can’t find the source can’t find the sea closed system nothing gained nothing lost everything is constant just bounce along a stream is static and dynamic a single entity and a zillion individual molecules of hydrogen and oxygen all at once is it measured in an instant or over time why why not a crocodile in the kootenai but how does that relate to a billion people all concerned with immediate deliberations there’s no figuring it out it’s a circle or maybe a down around route coming back to a same beginning about food, status, reproduction, deduction of construction of this thing we call what is if I does for I and self for self what is love and why does it exist or does it exist at all do we know anything beyond words and chemical reactions refractions of light bend time and if a blind deaf dumb man with no sense of smell was floating in space would he even know if he existed and if he knew of self would he love is self-love innate if I don’t know what any word means how can I know what any other word means so do I know anything at all of course I do I don’t but how can a chinaman and I both know a rock will fall to the earth if neither of us has ever seen one another or a rock fall or would it even fall at all lofty goals are they really lofty and does lofty truly mean self-sacrificing?

Poem (Untitled)

You ever fasted
Outlasted
Physiological demands
Become the master of the outcome
Of any given span
Planned the future in a vision
Brought to fruition with the will
Focus your intention and faith can turn a hill
Into a mountain
Or a mountain to the sea
Remove all reservation
And the truth will simply be

29 April, 1992

The brothers got mad
they had a right to
having seen years of struggle
nullified in twenty-three minutes
of brutality
and nineteen minutes
of deliberation

Suddenly Rosa Parks' sacrifice
was rendered inconsequential
for segregation was self-imposed
and they stood together
a tight mob, monochrome
exhaling an air of violence
poised, guarded
and whereas before
they would beckon me to join them
to laugh and stomp
today there would be no revelry

And when I approached
they shifted uneasily in their places
averting their eyes from the Devil's gaze
as Perseus from Medusa
and only after I lingered on
at the edge of that seething mass
did the one best known to me
step forward and say
"we cannot speak to you today"
and although I had known I was white
every day of my life
I had never before then realized
what that looked like
through the eyes of someone who wasn't

Go Not Quietly to Your Fate

Gather round brothers
for the end draws near
but soon we shall be rejoined
in the halls of Valhalla
Rally thyselves
and go not quietly to your fate
but rather with a loud
and boisterous cry
for you are not alone
and he who falls first
shall be best remembered
until the final drop of life
is drained from our last hero
and we celebrate our glory
once again
in the fellowship of our demise

Bane of Earth

bane of Earth
spawn of Hell
devil incarnate
clawed from the womb of the Mother
forged in the furnace of selfishness
fueled by ancient blood
fire-breathing monster of the indolent mass
serpentine footprint spreads
marking in stone
passage of the Beast

Vanity of a Bike Commuter

I feel so much cooler
than the people in their cars.
They can feel it too.
Even the wealthy woman
in her sixty-thousand dollar Lexus
looks with envy at my
five hundred dollar Specialized
as I glide noiselessly past,
through weather she would not check her mail in.
I can feel their animosity grow
as I illuminate their selfishness and fear
with my example of non-conformist green living.
Who does he think he is,
riding a bike in winter?
Why doesn't he get a car
like everybody else?