We Shall Live On

We shall live on
In people far away
Who don’t know our names,
And don’t need to;
In those who feel as we feel,
Share our ideals,
Rejoice in what inspires us.
Let’s make this world a little better
For those people,
So that when they come
They will be more hopeful,
More contented,
More fulfilled than we have been;
That would be enough.

We are humanity:
Circling each other;
Engaging with each other;
Loving each other;
Life loving life;
Each a splinter of the whole,
A bright fragment of the kaleidoscope;
Mysticism without guile;
Just being, not Being.

In our separate dreams:
We arrive in class naked and late;
We are almost crushed by malevolent walls;
We watch strange gods move across the indigo sky;
We fall downwards
Into infinite space,
Plummeting toward stone, or fire.
We awaken petrified,
Always alone,
But together.

In one dream, a mother
Gave me her baby to hold.
I carried it around with me
Through several bustling meetings
And finally returned to the room
Where the mother had been,
But she was gone.
Did you see her? In your dream?

On the Sluggishness of Mother Nature

I have a strong suspicion, truth be told,
That tyrants had a role in days gone by,
When fearsome wolves pursued us through the cold
And gods made dreadful thunder in the sky;
In perils, hardnosed leaders were a must;
We had no time to glibly question why?
Was this command imprudent, that unjust?
Close-lurking death demanded we comply.
Submission then most likely had its place,
But now it’s just a need we long outgrew,
And those who shout in everybody’s face
Just blight and bungle everything we do:
When boorish brutes beset each institution,
How slothful seems the pace of evolution!

More of My Old Limericks

 

The jester of Amalek's dead.
The Israelites chopped off his head.
His last witty thing
Was to point at the king:
"That's Saul, folks!" — the last words he said.


There once was a man of great wealth
Who was told, “This will not bring you health.”
He was told it a lot,
So he had the man shot,
And that pretty much speaks for itself.


Now, listen up all of you haters,
And I’ll give you the word about craters:
They are holes that are strewn
On the face of the Moon --
Well at least that’s the meat and potaters.


There once was a gourmand named Finney
Who hated to see people skinny,
Which I think best explains
Why he left his remains
To a cannibal tribe in New Guinea.


There once was a baby named Lou
And he grew and he grew and he grew,
And he grew and he grew,
And he grew and he grew,
But he stopped when he reached six foot two.


There are three hundred girls in distress
In a basement at USPS,
Where the postmaster hides
All the mail-order brides
Who were lacking a proper address.

Old Rupert’s Almanac, a waltmarie*

 

If you want to succeed at the new farming --

sow lies

Distribute them widely, water them with fears, and wait while they ripen --

harvest 

Congratulations, you have raised America’s greatest cash crop --

outrage 

It’s the new plastic and people are getting rich --

trust me

If you don’t mind a little dirt, the terrific thing about the new farming is this:

it pays.

 

*A waltmarie is a ten-line poem in which the even lines are all two syllables in length and form their own mini-poem if read separately.

Starstruck

Our polluted air
Has taken away the stars,
Most of them.
How did we lose the stars?
What were we thinking?
Once bright, steadfast. . .
Dimmed.
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Children are growing up today,
Deep in our cities,
Barely knowing what stars are;
An undernourished,
Star-starved generation.
Is it not enough that we poisoned their air and their water?
Did we also have to block out the lights
That should kindle their dreams,
That guided the magi,
Columbus,
The Polynesians,
Harriet Tubman?
How will we quench our thirst
Once the drinking gourd is gone?
Will we even know that we are thirsty?

How do you break free
Without first imagining,
And how do you imagine
Without the stars?
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Leaders

 

We can feed and clothe everyone,
Teach them to read and write,
Divide and multiply,
Give them the care they need,
Every
Single
Person,
For a few thousand bucks each.
But we don’t.
We are generous enough,
But we are incompetent,
Disorganized;
We fight over details;
We choose leaders who have other priorities --
We are that stupid.
We choose leaders whose souls are vacuums,
With no imagination for anything but their own careers,
Their own self image --
And even that is not original!
They suck up everything good and true
And shit it out
All over the rest of us,
Again and again.

We could thrive, though,
That must always be repeated.
We are blinded by religion,
Ideology,
Ethnicity,
Fear,
A strange fear that ignores the many real threats that we face
In favor of imagined ones;
A fear pressed upon us by authorities
Whose legitimacy derives solely from the power that we gave them,
Though they know even less than ourselves.
We could do it,
Easily,
If we trusted the right people.
But the right people are humble, hesitant.
Honesty is timid.
The right people don't try hard enough to appear trustworthy.
The right people are fools.
We were the right people.

Somewhere, Perhaps

Somewhere, perhaps, there’s a holy river
That isn't polluted,
And a holy man,
Who isn't polluted;
An altar where the greedy do not go,
With the statue of a saint
Who has not been tarnished,
Not even after meticulous biography,
The publication of his personal diaries,
And extensive interviews with his wife and children.
Somewhere, there’s a book,
Whose language is elegant,
Whose tales are all edifying,
Whose morals are crystal clear,
And always applicable.
Somewhere, there’s a summit,
And those who stand upon it
Can think only wholesome thoughts,
And conceive only practical plans.
Somewhere, there’s a community
Where none of the children are awkward,
And none of the uncles are creepy,
Where dogs are always welcome.
Naturally,
This place is hidden,
Nestled in a cozy niche,
And does not advertise,
Which is just as well,
Because that cozy niche
Is located
Between
Your ears.

More of My Old Limericks

 

There was a young fellow of Putney
Who would eat only lentils and chutney.
He chose to migrate
To an Indian state,
But he died there of terrible glutney.

 

It took a few plates of titanium
To patch up that crack in my cranium.
That’s the danger you court
With a cocky retort
To a wife with a potted geranium.

 

An ambitious young fellow named Matt
Tried to parachute using his hat.
Folks below looked so small,
As he started to fall,
Then got bigger and bigger and SPLAT!

 

An unscrupulous bird is the stork:
He dines with no knife and no fork;
No agency vets
All those newborns he gets,
And when asked where they’re from, he won’t tork.

 

There was a young lady of Clapham
Who had too many kids and would slap ‘em,
Till the council said, “Cease!”
Now she calls the police
And they come round with tasers and zap ‘em.

 

What a limerick is in a crunch
Is a bit like a loony’s light lunch;
Though it briefly delights,
It’s just four nutty bites,
Swallowed down with a ludicrous punch

Against Hope

They say that hope's a thing with wings,
But such a view has flaws:
What comes with such appendages
Will also come with claws.
Poor Icarus had feathers too,
And yet he took the plunge,
Which brought his parents agonies
That hope could not expunge.
Now, when our loved ones writhe in pain
We hope they’ll find relief
And by this hope we daily learn
That hope’s in league with grief.
For hope’s a thing that draws you in,
It’s unsuspecting prey,
Concealing its intent to pounce—
Let’s keep false hope at bay!

Flanders Field Memorial

Before the flag-draped altar humbly kneeled,
Once more we pay respects at Flanders field;
We hear the somber sermon and the knell
And praise those loyal men who flocked to hell.
How hard for those whom statesmen’s folly dooms,
Their destiny betrayed in cold gray rooms,
The doors to which are closed, debate concealed,
And every door just leads to Flanders field.

The trip took days, another bleak November,
All for these scant dull seconds to remember,
Remember what we never even knew,
For they are gone, those last remaining few,
Who heard the blasts, saw healthy youngsters blown
To clumps of flesh and brain and splintered bone,
With nothing left to lay upon the shield
To bring a Spartan home from Flanders field.

But home some came, with tales they never told,
Took up their mundane callings and grew old,
Though waking still in time-mistaken fright
And hearing cries of terror in the night;
Or silently remembering the cost,
Of anguish gained for friends and comrades lost;
For those who lived bore wounds that never healed,
As much as those who fell in Flanders field.

This modern world would leave them so perplexed;
We don’t write verse these days, we simply text;
We seldom hear a patriotic word,
And yet, we’re not so numb we can’t be stirred:
We still fight wars that no one understands,
On distant isles, in far exotic lands,
Where poppy crops produce a deadly yield,
Though no one there has heard of Flanders field.

Flowers Under Pressure

Some flowers we extinguish
By crushing;
Others, we preserve
By pressing.
It all depends on how the weight is applied.

There are also
Rare flowers
Whom we preserve
By crushing.

We remember their names:

Marilyn
Billie
Virginia
Joan
Amy
Diana
Sylvia
Janis
Hypatia
Whitney

So many Ophelias:
A garden’s worth when living,
A book’s worth when dead.
But the garden
Would have been so much better.

I Sold My Soul to the Fairies

I sold my soul to the fairies,
When I was foolish and green;
Lost in a mystical frenzy,
Deep in the forest unseen.
Dark was the spirit who led me
To their perverse evening throng;
What was that potion she fed me,
Sweet on the tongue yet so strong?

That’s when I felt myself sinking
Into the Moon-haunted night;
Blackness enveloped my thinking,
Left me benumbed to my plight.
Soon they were circling around me
In a malevolent craze,
Rhythmically rapping their tabors
In the red campfire blaze.

Ever since then I’ve been falling,
It matters not how hard I try;
Cursed by one moment appalling,
Marked till the day that I die.
So, if you sell your soul to the fairies,
You need to know what to expect;
If you sell your soul to the fairies,
The fairies will always collect.

Monday Limericks -- A Few I Wrote a While Ago

I'm delighted to say that I've mastered

The appropriate usage of "bastard":

It's a person who's bred

By a pair who weren't wed,

But were too much in love—or too plastered.

 

If a lizard or worm's in a spot,

Then self-amputation's its lot.

For they're both quite autotomous,

But the great hippopotamus,

Though he rhymes,

To be honest,

Is not.

 

“Lord, we finally got into Canaan,

But we think you should do some explanaan.

Forty years isn’t funny:

Where’s the milk? Where’s the honey?

Where’s the benefits promised in trainaan?”

 

“I talk,” claimed a linguist named Hamill

“With every species of mammal”

When asked for a reference

He said, “What’s your preference?

My mother-in-law, or my camel?”

 

It is said that Dame Julian of Norwich

Was tempted to sin by her porwich.

At breakfast one day,

She yelled, “Devils, away!”

Then she locked all her oats up in storwich.

Mama Death

I will say to Death,
“Thank you for waiting for me!
I got nothing accomplished,
But I had a lot of fun."
I was a toddler in playschool,
Covered in paint and dirt;
Adoring the teacher,
Dodging the bullies.

At the end of the day,
Mama Death returned to pick me up,
Along with my empty lunch box.
She took me home
To wash me
And cover me again,
But only with dirt this time.

A Pain You Should Not Try to End

There is a pain you should not try to end,
Not even if it slices to the core,
Carves wounds that unskilled time can never mend
And remedies just seem to strengthen more.
This sorrow for misfortunes of another
Engenders all that gives us pride and hope;
Without it, what is sister? What is brother?
What keeps us from the razor, or the rope?
Some say such common anguish should be tamed,
That nobler souls transcend its worldly grasp;
But I say no, embrace it unashamed
And feel the widow’s tears, the victim’s gasp:
Don’t try to quench with water, or with wine,
The fire that lights the light that makes you shine.

Where Have They Gone?

Where have they gone, my bright ideas,
Those angels bold and wise?
They left me when I found them out,
The way they plagiarize.
They slyly flew to pastures new,
Whose farmers are more green
And left me but one thing to do:
Regress toward the mean.
The years trim back our confidence,
We know it’s all been said.
So, better just go take a walk,
Or grab a beer instead.

The Word Wall

I’m building a wall
Out of words.
Cementless,
Unequally shaped,
Yet almost coherent;
Strong enough to keep in a sheep.
Strong enough to keep out any but the wiliest fox.
Some of the words are boulders,
Others pebbles.

​ Walls demarcate:
Families inside,
Neighbors outside.
Without walls, there are only strangers passing through:
Not judgeable, therefore not trustable.

​ This wall I’m building
Is my private property,
But you are welcome to come in.
I’d love to show it to you,
If you are the kind of person who appreciates walls;
Otherwise, no.

​ Perhaps I just need to prove that I can build a wall,
Whether to impress you,
Or just to reassure myself.
“I built a wall; I at least did that.
It isn’t a very good wall;
It wasn’t easy to get the top straight;
It does the job though.”

Otherwise, where would I put all these misshapen words,
All this rubble of babble?
Some say a wall of words is an illusion,
Like currency;
But I don’t buy it.
If everything is an illusion,
Then illusion is real.
Words have consequences:
Step inside.