Edgar Allan Pope

Don't Give Up On Me

2010-10-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

I was told by someone close to me that I seemed to be, I think his words were, distant from my art.

Though I don't FEEL distant, I may APPEAR distant.

My art, or my writing, is in me and a part of me as it's always been. I just have been distracted from its creation. Please bear with me, as my life is in a state of change. Improvement. And it's important.

I still write. And I will still post here. In time...

But please don't give up on me.

YOUTH IN ASIA

2007-11-25T13:47:00.000-08:00

Old and faded
Young and strong
Sudden tragedy
Illness long
Life or death
For which to strive
If the brain is dead
Is the soul alive?

Loved ones ponder
Feelings frail
For a useless tongue
Can’t tell the tale
If life is agony
Fear and doubt
Freedom is choice
Death the only way out

A doctor says
He has no choice
But to keep you alive
So you have no voice
Motivations of mercy
Legal static
Pertaining to oaths
Hippocratic

What is life?
Where is our essence?
Is it just flesh and bone
That give us our presence?
Life is a gift
One you could choose to refuse
If you felt that by dying
You had less to lose

Is death beginning or ending?
What lies beyond unknown…
Is it just the flesh left clinging
The spirit having flown?
Or does the soul also linger
A flicker of life not stilled
Remaining for some purpose

As yet unfulfilled?

WISDOM

2007-11-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

After years of bloody senseless wars
There came to power in the Middle East
A man of vision beyond his years
Who pursued a policy of peace
Against the duty sworn of all Arab born
To never accept a Jewish state
To bomb and kill and terrorize
Using every provision of hate
At first he tried to from his side to
Change times and laws old methods tried, true
The first small step? To tolerate…
This so enraged those “powers that be”
With ballots of bombs they gave their decree
Voting him out of his life
Let alone of his position
So they could carry on their fanatical tradition

Another man took another path
He spoke of pomp and circumstance
And asked of young and old alike
To just give peace a chance
Studied for years by a zealous man
Who couldn’t just see him
But wanted to be him
And so somehow he
Saw murder, rather than imitation to be
The sincerest form of flattery

Another time another place
Another failed challenge to the human race
As we gather together under flags unfurled
That unite our nations but divide our world
There came forth a man seeming born to lead
His policies motivated by compassion not by greed
He said: With what we’ve wasted in treasure and talents
We could have gone to other planets, transgressed the known and farther
Rather than building these horrible weapons of war
And pointing them at each other
It’s been said his election was brought about by corruption
And here from books I quote,
Without Cook County and a V.P. Texan
In ’60 Nixon would have won election
By one electoral vote
So those “powers that be” had helped bring him to power
So certain factions expected his favor
But he tried to resist them with the help of his brother
(Who met his same fate, five years later)
From the annals of La Cosa Nostra Co.
To the fascist old Mens Club where defense dollars go
With bullets the only ballots cast
Another “brief shining moment” passed

Around the same time there came forth another
A beautiful man and a brilliant orator
Who challenged us to prove ourselves
To live up to our ideals
Our “Dedication to the proposition
That all men are created as equals”
Penned a century before by another great man
(Who also fell by an assassin’s hand)
Not just words on paper but a utopian vision
Of human relation without racial division
But to those powers that be, that just wouldn’t’ do
Needing someone to feel superior to
Shot a Baptist preacher by stealth in the face
And took another dreamer that we could not replace

Two Kennedys, a King, Lincoln, Lenin, Sadat
Prophets sharing their vision often costs them a lot
Though each has a marker, all have a spot
To prove to ourselves that we haven’t forgot
Airports and avenues, schools and shrines
Even a fifty-cent piece
They take the man and give to us these
Namesakes in their places
And if ever we see their likes again
Who will step forward to murder them?
They take their lives,
But not their dreams,
Nor their prophesies of peace

VOICES

2007-11-25T13:42:00.000-08:00

I hear the roar of a voice, unseen
Two worlds I’m torn between
One of metal and gasoline
The other likened to a waking dream
The first has a tangible culpable calling
It echoes with answers more questions bring
One foot in the “real” world of laws and kings
Worth, value gauged by acquisition of things
Well another world rages, I have found
It turns and it toils
Burns and it boils
But that loud voice don’t make no sound
To the senses rendered just beyond
A dedication “tu les monde”
To the whole wide world of Babylon
And just who are the sages?
It’s for you that it rages
These two world’s wages
Sin is death
These two worlds, in between
Two hands motion, beckoning
Do right. Do wrong. Do anything
There must be, there will be
A reckoning
Be ye not tepid, make your choice
Heed the call of your destiny’s voice
For wither thou goeth, heart and soul follow
Whether you tend to the noble or hollow
The voice that carries on a silent shout
Beckons you notice the hand of God all about
There are none so truly blinded
As those who just refuse to see
None so dull and vapid
As those that dream but never be
Seeing naught they listen not
Keenly honed senses still miss (a lot)
Doing nothing to explore those dreams
Which by morning are forgotten
By those ordinary means

UNTITLED #2

2007-11-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

Look where I look,
See what we saw
Inspired by things
Brutal and raw
We sell no illusions
To confound your confusions
I’ll tell you the truth
Draw your own conclusions…
Truth is a word
Hard to relate
Injured by doubt
Clouded by hate
But mostly buried in haste
With indifferent greed
Just look at the hungry
We refuse to feed
From Vietnam veterans
To urban black children
The debate no longer “if”
We should have had them
They’re here and they’re hungry
But we don’t help them…

Try and discuss these
Things sincere and sober and
Watch the eyes of most people
Begin to glass over.

With such cynical ease
The hypocrite prays…
True are his methods
Tried are his ways
And he’s fine with the world
Just as it is
As long as he’s able
To keep what is his
As long as the police
Come when he calls
If some uninvited
Transgresses his walls
And if that trespasser
Had the look
Of “that man” described
In that “Holy Book”?
Why, he’d simper and cry
With a 9-1-1 wail
And cuff him
And stuff him
And “book” him
In jail

Try and discuss these
Things sincere and sober and
Watch the eyes of most people
Begin to glass over.

So here is the message
And the message is clear
(Though perhaps not the one
That you wanted to hear)
God is alive
He answers all calls
In a fair fight with love
Evil falls
Reach out and uplift
Your fellow man
If he won’t himself lift
Pull him up by the hand
And count up amongst
Your time-honored quotes
Your pearls and proverbs and anecdotes
A rising tide raises all boats

Try and discuss these
Things sincere and sober and
Watch the eyes of most people
Begin to glass over.

UNTITLED #1

2007-11-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

A wanton shot across my bow
Circles like silence, then as now
Hear my blindness? Smell my fear?
Desire’s aim? Away from here.

Beholden to gods our fathers knew not…
To each their own wanton shot
We bind ourselves of our own free will
Then lament our fate, even still…

A favored craze of the willing victim
Stays the course on the suicide slalom
Free me, save me, take me home…
Break my bondage, redeem my shame.

You long to escape, but all roads
---------------lead back to
a mad cry to Heaven. Born
---------------of a furious lack, you
close yourself off to a world gone
---------------bitter and numb…

TREASURE

2007-11-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

Is looking up just looking down?
Does a miserable life mean you’re heaven-bound?
Does taking your God to this forsaken town
Make the down side the upside of upside down?
Does simple inversion make a smile a frown?
The feeling behind it no longer around
Like a face you can’t place
Or an answer not found
Or a song, long forgotten, remembered
Will hauntingly sound?

Does your mind favor time
When sadness and pain
Were lost in true love
Like tears in the rain
When to make yourself “right”
Means you’re selfish and vain
And if wrong you’re all right
But you’re also insane
When your innermost impulses
Wax and wane
Between raw desire and pure disdain
The groove of the world goes against your grain
And smothers your soul as it clefts you in twain
If you whittle the words will the meaning remain
And is the question well answered, the same
When you ask it again? And again? And again?

And I, never sure
If truth or no
Pure or stain – friend or foe
Though it must go on it ends the show
Growth brings death and stay means go
It is of nothing apropos
That fleet meets defeat beat by steady and slow

If a world of contrast
Is really God’s pleasure
Then I’m in the grips of synaptic seizure
But if I’m insane then
By that same measure
I’m pissing wine
And crapping treasure

THIS WANTON REVELOF ABANDON

2007-11-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

These hands ascend
And wrap around me like a gentle friend
The ties that bind me to a bitter end
This dark caress
A well-known lover’s tenderness
A well-placed lever’s eagerness
To move the weight to where it will

These hands descend
Break me though I try to bend
Then pardon and I try to mend
This light embrace
Conceals with veils of the finest lace
Reveals a person that I cannot face
Staring back from mirrored glass

This wanton revel
Of abandon hones the bevel
Of the edge of pure or evil

Blurs the line of God or devil

These hands advance
Seduce me better with this courtly dance
Deal me down to less than half a chance
This cold release
The shivers and the shakes increase
And when it seems as if they’ll never cease
I find my solace in these hands

This wanton revel
Of abandon hones the bevel
Of the edge of pure or evil
Blurs the line of God or devil

THE TOUR

2007-11-25T12:55:00.000-08:00

We met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates
To take a tour of heaven
He entreated us, eliminate
Our preconceived perceptions

He said, “You all will have a better time
If you just let go
What you ‘think’ you know
For heaven’s nature is at best sublime
Nothing good for woe
But thinking makes so”

Approaching a door with a number ‘One’
Then opened to our viewing
To our wondering eyes was then undone?
Judea in their ‘Jewing’

They said “Salome” and then would deign to ask,
“Would you mark door ‘Two’
For the chosen few?”
Against the hearth an empty breaking glass
For the happy Jew
I was happy, too

So now proceeding to the second door
To view a wholly different din
Washed upon a tempered Muslim shore
In holy month Ramaadan

A serious caste was Islam’s haunted brow
Of choosing to fast
And curbing their lust
But joyous still Mohammed's vaunted trow
Religiously wash,
Relentlessly just

So as to not confuse or complicate
Most simple explanation
To view the next doors opened: Three through Eight
A multitude contained in

Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Tao and Confucius
Banquet of schism
Smorgasbord sectism
Try to both explain and not confuse us
Splits of ‘-ist’ and ‘-ism’
Like light through a prism

As they carouselled on the ‘wheel of life’
Holy smoke, they levitated
They meditate past tomes of earthly strife
Holy cow, reincarnated

The next door tenured by the Protestant
Luther, Baptist, and their like
In common having more than different
God’s son only on ‘the mic’

Seventh-Day-Advents and Latter-Day-Saints…
“Though to sin we fall
He stands us tall”
The potter’s clay that Jesus deftly paints
Not the only call
Just the one heired to all

Debate both the Sabbath and the method…
It’s God’s will so what’s the use
Arguing in voices bold or timid
What God wills for someone else?

At portal next St. Peter turned to us
And hushed us with a finger
The door was opened… Quickly closed… And thus
He would not let us linger

For here the Catholics sat and stewed
Heavy laden air
With guilt and fear
St. Peter hushing, rushing thought it rude
If ever they should hear
They’re not alone here

I approached that goodly saint and begged, “Attend”
The many questions I would ask…
Assuming that the tour was soon to end
As the former door appeared the last

What of anonymous’ power, higher?
And New Age thought, is it divine inspired?
“It’ a start,” said he, “To first admit,
There’s something more and you’re not it”
“And the Atheist?” said I “Where go they when they die?”
“They go somewhere not really there…”
His omni-potent, ballsy answer

Here I paused in this, my final quest…
Thought I, one place yet added to the list
“Satan’s loyal children then,
What condition would we find them in?”
St. Pete – “Would you be shocked to know,
If this the place they chose to go?
A place of blazing fire and stinking brim,
May be Hell to you but Heaven to them?”

“St. Peter? Uh, St. Peter?”
Turning, “Yes?”
“Dogs?”
“All dogs go to Heaven”

TANGENTS TO NOWHERE

2007-11-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

I’m talking about things that matter…
Not random obscure non-sensical paranoid bullshit.

I’m feeling things that shatter…
To face them and to feel them fills me with a terror so deep, so profound, that to attempt to loose it with mere words would deny it the true power it possesses.

Power to rent me to tatters…
Causing a realization of how fine a line we do walk, how delicate the balance really is, and if tipped too far, the cause being chemical, can spin us off onto infinite tangents to nowhere.

SOME PEOPLE SAY

2007-11-25T12:42:00.000-08:00

Some people say, “Love is blind”
It justifies itself by being giving and kind
Never acting to possess or control or to bind
But simply loving this beautiful world

Some people say, “Love is a lie”
Sure, it lasts for a while, but then makes you cry
And never has any one thing given us such cause to die
In all of this miserable world

Some people say, “God is love”
But God gets forgotten when push comes to shove
And I find myself wondering what God thinks of
What we’ve done to this beautiful world

Some people say, “God is dead”
Say, “God, like love, exists in your head”
Put their faith into things they’ve heard, seen and read
Bowing to idols of gold, steel and lead
And make this a miserable world

Well, God talked to me,
And God set me straight,
God said, “You’ll never conquer evil
By fighting it with hate”
Only faith can overcome
The woes that evil perpetrate
Faith in love
Faith in life
Faith in light that penetrates
The deepest hole…
The blackest soul…
Fulfills… Forgives… Exonerates…

THE STATE OF WASTE

2007-11-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

PART I: WIRE

The razor-wire fence-line
Surrounds this state of waste
Shackled sober
Chained and chaste

Converted to a virtue
By walls and steel
Sword-point passion
We don’t feel

Time stretches like a wire
Repentance by the clock
Pennance drawn
From barren rock

Time passes like a breeze
Days like light
And broken dreams
Clash by night

Till penance done
By time the wire sword
Virtue becomes
It’s own reward

Am I punished
For things I’ve done?
Am I now remiss...
Or have I won?

I would be the bishop
Of this Vatican of waste
Charity, chastity, poverty and I,
Their priest
I give the virtue of walls and wire
The penitent’s hope…
I give the pure untouchable,
I am their pope.

PART II: WALLS

When I first met James he was just twenty-two
Eight years in “the walls” for this deed were due
He and some friends robbed a dealer of “X”
The gun enhancement got him the axe
What good could emerge from that lonely cell
Eight years spawns ten times the disciple of hell
What can emerge from that cauldron of swill
The violent felon he now fits the bill
But what of then when in a moment of haste
He subjugated himself to the state of waste

Next comes “Robert”, his friends call him “Stalls”
Thirty of fifty-five years in “the walls”
Stop in mid-sentence… Stare into space…
Were his best years inside or outside that place?
Face blank, eyes vacant, then suddenly burn…
With ways to stay out or ways to return?
When he finally got out you may think it funny
The bank teller would not even give him the money
But turned on her heel, went straight to the phone
And called the police to take Robert back home

Are society’s aims best served by a cage
That fosters resentment and bottles rage
The walls nurture bitterness, innocence kill
School violent felons with consummate skill
Idle for years while they’re young and strong
Kill them to show them that killing is wrong
Spend in one year for incarceration
More than an Ivy League education

PART III: WAR

This tale the monumental last lament
Of vapor war transgressors judged and sent
To wasted states where walls and wire
So well such willful waste inspire
Idled lives… Stifled dreams… Wealth misspent

To what foul deed do fifty-plus-percent…
Owe this felon’s debt of punishment?
Escape from pain their sole desire,
A day… A week… An hour…
Some brief respite from hurt and discontent

Remorse for such as this I’ll not invent
From whence the guilt my conscience to repent?
Unbiased scale stay passion’s fire
What wrong by me put right require?
No victim stands, no malice shown, no ill intent

If liberty demands me vigilant
And pride before the fall is arrogant
By revolution must transpire
The proud collapse of walls and wire
Though punished well, released as ill
As when they went

I would be the bishop
Of this Vatican of waste
Charity, chastity, poverty and I,
Their priest
I give the virtue of walls and wire
The penitent’s hope…
I give the pure untouchable,
I am their pope

PEYTON PLACE

2007-11-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

Once I knew a girl
Her every wish my pleasure
In manner look and form, you know,
She made me think “forever”
We spoke on nights of unseen heights
Of lows I’d hardly known
In heart, in head, in mind, in me
The seeds of love were sown

I know it was real but I should have dreamed this
Once this angel graced my lips with her velvet kiss
Deep in her soul I felt blessed to see
As every breath she returned to me
And I saw (for a second) what I wished we could be
But love for me she would not confess
Her tender heart I could not impress
Nor, to her, a single redeeming attribute
Did I seemingly possess
“It’s either there, or it’s not,”
That’s what she says,
“When it’s there you just know it,
------Love’s not a process…”
And so, as so often happens with seeds I’ve sown,
------Not blooming in the end
But cut short by a word
One of the cruelest I’ve heard
“I only want to be your friend”

So inside I whirl asunder
Desired by some, with her a blunder
And if I find I truly want no other…
Will I die with empty eyes and empty arms?
I wonder…

ONE FINE DAY

2007-11-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

One fine day in the middle of my life
Reality hit me with the coldness of a knife
How alone I really was, the temper of that edgy blade
Just who was I to blame for the bed that I had made
Lying in the defecation
Of my own poor choices’ sole creation
I watched in utter fascination
As “they” reveled in perceived misfortune
And treated with real elation
Mine and others’ pain

Watching as the end approaches
An evil din upon the light encroaches
Turns to ill all it touches
To “the best laid plans”…
Scattered like roaches
Scurrying to the cracks and crannies where evil dwells

But evil cowers in the dark no longer
It’s growing well and getting stronger
Against which my will once stood as famed Gibraltar
With passing time my resolve did falter
Finally hewn to an unfit altar
Upon which I’d naught to lay
Except my life

Over or under? First or last?
Straight down the middle the die were cast
Over or under? First or last?
Now and ever the question asked
And will the good fight in the end seem worth the cost?
And will it suffice to save me when I die alone and lost?

NOBODY KNOWS

2007-11-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

A little child, at table sat
With furrowed brow, to concentrate
Drawing picture, pen in hand
Enchanted kingdom? Far off land?
Only she knew,
What seen, she drew…
Only she knew.

The parent approached,
Her mother, it would,
Entreating her, “Tell me, if you could,
Just what you are making on that page,
Why, it looks like a wizard, or wise old sage.”
No negating shake, nor affirming nod…
From the child, “A picture of God.”

Now the mother gave import to letting her know
So, sat and reached for the pen, took it away
And said to the child in serious tone,
“Just what God looks like isn’t known.
Nobody knows, baby…
Nobody knows.”

The child thinking, before she spoke,
True, I’ve not seen it in any book,
Never seen that chapel roof,
But is absence proved by absence of proof?
Not allowing this scene her heart to diminish
Reached for the pen saying,
“You would if you’d just let me finish…
You’d know if you just let me finish.”

LADY IN WAITING

2007-11-25T11:34:00.000-08:00

There she stands, a lady in waiting
Eyes? Forward looking, the future surmised
Her look? Long and distant, far away gazing
Deep beauty distracting, true feelings disguised
Always behind beauty lie flesh and bone
But deeper, a person, often desperate and alone
Desperate to be noticed for something that will last
Beyond fair reflections in a looking glass

Does a woman really want you to feel so much?
Or does a friend as a lover just need your touch?
Then she surely can’t have you needing her
For selfish reasons all your own
Though chronological adults, physically grown
Emotional infants with hopeless fears
Who cry bitter, resentful, little angry tears

Common lives have people led, and loved a common way
Common things have done and said and common things will say
When two out of three has some sordid tale
(It could even be more for I’ve not spoken to all)
Parents and teachers, protectors and preachers, authority misused
The young, the weak, the innocent, exploited and abused
If she trusts you enough to tell you her tale
To share her heart’s innermost secret
Then her secret protect
Her confidence respect
Betray her never to no one
As to cause her regret

This done in honor and sincerity
Of this distant, staring, waiting lady
How can she not be
Dreaming about me?
Me, that piece of her puzzle
That could make itself fit
By trying hard and wanting it
In that place in her heart or her head,
Or wherever
That says for that one fleeting moment
Love just might last forever.

KISS AND TELL

2007-11-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

Never kiss and tell
It’s never just as well
To settle for less
Or stand for more
To know with you head
What your heart yearns for
What lies within, truly?
More than most see, surely…
So much true love
Bubbling in your eyes
Wonder and delight, purely…
Blue as summer skies
But blue from sadness, too
And from pain
Wanting the love you give so freely
Returned to you again

IF (I GAVE TO YOU)

2007-11-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

If I gave to you something
------New as a world
Before every inch had been
------Trodden and spoiled
Time would pass
As time will do…
And then pretty soon
------It wouldn’t be new
------------Anymore

If I gave to you something
------Whole as a heart
Before age and abuse could
------Tear it apart
Lies and betrayal would
Take their toll…
And then pretty soon
------It wouldn’t be whole
------------Anymore

If I gave to you something
------Shiny as gold
Before it got tarnished
------Or rusty and old
Illusions beheld that
Seem so fine…
Upon closer scrutiny
------Just don’t shine
------------Anymore

If I gave to you something
------Pure as desire
Before it got tedious
------And lost its fire
Sweet temptation turns A bitter taunt…
When you end up with something
------You just don’t want
------------Anymore

So I gave to you something
------Your hand couldn’t hold
It never gets common or
------Rusty or old
I gave you these words,
The wrap and the ribbon
Surrounding the best gift
------ I’ve ever given
Every day I make it new
And give it again
------When I tell you it’s true
------------I love you

I KNOW A GIRL

2007-11-25T11:24:00.001-08:00

She won’t drink any milk, you know
In fact, she says she “hates” it
But as exceptions go
She won’t say no
If that milk is chocolate
She wants to live, to love her life
In her face, her eyes, frenetic
Beauty and brains and talent as potential
Yearn to be kinetic
What she wants, she knows
What she feels, she shows
What she says, be sure
She means it
I’ve given it thought
When from a Big Hunk she bought
I watched her pick out every peanut.

Of her beauty, can she be uncertain?
Of her attraction, can she really be unsure?
I mean, she only has to count the guys
Totally willing to give up their lives
And revolve them completely around her.
But when they come around,
Do lips in a frown
Part into haughty jaunts?
Do their hands chase away
The cares of the day,
Coaxing ills from their jaunty haunts?
And most importantly, will they eat
Those peanuts she don’t want?

I want to say, “I love her”,
But that would be so common
It says so much and though
Can say it all I know
Still it’s been said so often, so
Endeavor I then to the very end
To be her valued trusted friend
If ever thus we feel I shan’t dismay
For love revealed is often pushed away
If ever thus will feel I cannot say
But friends we still shall be another day

GLAD TWISTED

2007-11-25T11:22:00.001-08:00

I don’t wish to be
What I willingly am
Every promise I’ve broken
Every dollar I scam
I Choke on the smoke
Of the bridges I’ve burned
No heed to the tally
Of lost opportunity
Behind doors I’ve slammed…

And I would that I could
Convincingly blame
Either God or the devil
For the depth of my shame
But I owe my despair
To my caste in the mirror
My own stakes to claim…

On this life I’ve insisted
Yeah, I barely resisted
As I dragged myself gradually down
I went in two fisted
With all veils lifted
And now I’m glad twisted around
Yeah, now I’m glad twisted around

So I survey the wreckage of living angst
Of living waters
And broken links
God grant me, I can’t see
Just who chose to lead me
To temptation I found so well on my own…
The devil hates me so badly
So why would he want me?
If only to gloat that he reaps where he’s sown…
God’s fire refines me
And molds me, divine He
Sure don’t make it easy to choose either one…
To give my thanks…

On this life I’ve insisted
Yeah, I barely resisted
As I dragged myself gradually down
I went in two fisted
With all veils lifted
And now I’m glad twisted around
Yeah, now I’m glad twisted around

HAMLET (REVISED)

2007-11-25T01:15:00.000-08:00

Hamlet and Ophelia…
To see them together still I long
So vexed was I by this
As to rewrite the entire
Wretched tragic song
The “Bloat King” Claudius
To a much worser fate by me reduced
For power corrupted and lust seduced
But justly and fairly
To only himself…
Not with him take Hamlet…
And Ophelia… And everyone else.

She said to him with words so sweet
“Of breath composed”
As to make all the richer
“Things” once exchanged
“Remembrances, labored long to redeliver”
Of love “cleft in twain”
By the treachery of another
And Hamlet taking to heart advice
Once bestowed upon his mother
Threw away the worser half
But lived no better
Nay, at least no longer
By keeping he the purer.

As Hamlet gazed into that empty skull
Hollowed sockets where he looked
But hallowed secrets what he saw
“I knew this urich,” said he, as he sought to pry
Some answer from the vacant, staring eye
Some reason having long since with “blood and marrow fled”
And by this questing gaze was his madness fed?
Given pause to wonder…
His own demise upon which to ponder…
Found he some kinship with the dead?

So…
Within the enactment of this play
Found I any cause to delight?
I did find cause
To empathize
Even though, despite
It being a tragedy did suffer and die
Both friend and foe alike
From purest unspoiled virginity
To most integral nobility
To blackened soulless lout…
All of which, upon conclusion found
Unceremoniously strewn about

HALL OF SOULS

2007-11-25T01:13:00.000-08:00

The hall of souls
The Wolves in white
Sterile masks
Dark eyes bright
Scraping out the potter’s clay
50,000 every day

They’re pretty sure that God is dead
At least that’s what “The Times” has said
So why shouldn’t they make a buck
Off some poor tramp, down on her luck
Girls and ladies and unborn babies
Innocent blood for brand new Mercedes’

Life is precious; Life is short
Ego and money are not so important
How much could you make
If your life were shortened
To just under ninety days?

Once endeavored, forever changed
By guilt as cold as a scalpel’s blade
Carried forever like a stone in her heart
That turns her to steel as it tears her apart
Not seeing the scars or the ripping sutures
Of unhealing wounds left by legal butchers

Life is sacred; Life is short
Ego and money are not so important
How much could you make
If your life were shortened
To just under ninety days?

HADITH

2007-11-25T01:12:00.000-08:00

New passages same books new tolling same bell
Same God on the hijackers lips when the planes crashed and the towers fell
New devilry same beast new revelry same feast
As far as the west is from the east
As far as terror is from peace…

Throughout history, the beast had always hated the same things
And sought to still the impassioned fervor that freedom brings
The progression of a hate-based faith to a racist benediction
Versus freedom of speech and of the press, of liberty and religion
Any thing that ignobles the individual in this grimy plight
A pleading face to Heaven turns, “May God protect the right”
It’s hard to keep your feet in that “Eternal Sea” of shifting sand
Didn’t the CIA used to pass out Korans to the Muslims in Afghanistan?
Back before the call went forth, “Workers of all countries disband”
Before the first Bush toed a line in that sand and crowed “This will not stand”

Islam spreads through the nations like a roaring wind of flame
And the polarization of the Muslim world makes the Godless Commies look tame
Future compatibility of fundamentalist Islamic states with western democracies?
Predictions are dire…
As they raise armies and navies, test rockets and rhetoric, and covet the nuclear fire
In Persian Greater Arabia, it is known if not confessed
They bide their time and build their strength for jihad with the west
Israel, Palestine, fatwas and martyrdom, intifada, Hezbollah, Hamas
Who is the aggressor? Who the oppressor? Who is Al Qaeda? Who is the boss?
The Muslim crescent against the David’s star, and by proxy the Christian cross:
With a new generation birthed in the shadow enamored of terror and loss

The flower of that youth are then recruited and when it’s done?
They’ve killed themselves and some civilians and think they’ve won
Against the average transit commuter they wage a facile war
Killing the young, the very old, the working classes, mostly the poor
Undefended and impoverished, marked by the existential bane
To school, to home, to work, of having to get there on the train
They think to effect some quick and easy change in politics
Like a junkie holding up a liquor store to get a fix
All they’ve really done is made their enemy mad with desire to confront them face to face
Until no shadow will hold no hole hide them nothing shield them from their disgrace

FLEAS

2007-11-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

When I was young
The world seemed
Possessed of such promise
Pure and pristine
A place of such wonder
Where any dream could come true
And governments never did things
To purposefully hurt you
As I grew older I learned the truth
Corruption and lies slowly eroding my faith
In anything taught, thought or made by men
Man made money / Money made him
The sunlight of money sprouts seeds of sin
Go to jobs that you hate, run a race you can’t win
For money you can go out and buy a gun
Then get mad (over money) and shoot someone
Purchase a person and have your fun
A black market baby if you can’t have your own
You can will all your money to that daughter or son
But they may plot to kill you if you don’t die soon
For money good men have sold their own soul
Made inhabited lands uninhabitable
Printed on all “Trust in Cash”
Buying ever expanding mountains of trash
Buy it all: Use it up: Throw it away…
To hell with tomorrow la la live for today
We are trashing this world with untethered haste
A planet of plenty spawned a people of waste
Dump trash in the ocean, shoot trash into space
All simply serving to quicken the pace
With which this world rejects us, by fire or freeze
And shakes us all off
Like a bad case of fleas…

FALLING DREAMS

2007-11-25T01:09:00.001-08:00

Dreams of flying, dreams of falling
Dreams of searching, lost and calling
Pursued by fiends, disguised as friends
Through mazes of places I’ve never been…

Dreams of living, long and happy
Blissful belief that true love finds me
Dreams of dying, sad and lonely
Finding naught what leaves me empty…

Sleeping dreams are soon to end
If fair or foul, no matter when
Awake you find that once again
That endless nightmare waking dream
Can now begin

So dream of me on joyless days
Of idle hours and oppressive malaise
Kindly draw to gentle frame
Cherished traits of beloved name
Recall the look of love felt true
The look of me as I look at you
And this well done
Be not remiss
Remember well this feeling’s kiss
For joyless days may one day find
Dreams of me brought to mind…

ENCHANTING TALES OF WOE

2007-11-25T01:07:00.001-08:00

I’ve heard in song and story told
How a lonely heart is ‘better’
Than one the loveless, bitter cold
Has pushed to painful end’s threshold
And then gone on to shatter

But if the owner of the broken holds
To that disenchanted tatter
Come to find, time’s passing tolled
The parted organ whole and healed
And by the venture now the better

Alone knows not this vaunted tome
For having never been where
Another’s body becomes your home
Another’s heart becomes your own
Can’t tell you what it’s like there

Broken knows where lonely’s been…
Are such worse off, when back again?
Having points to which compare,
Enchanting tales of woe to share.
Woven threads of joy
Amidst the weave of pure despair…
Is ‘better’ then best served to love forego?And never have those tales of woe?

DICTION / DIDACTIC

2007-11-25T00:57:00.000-08:00

PART I

Fact : Fiction Truth : Suspicion
Fear : Wisdom Doubt ? Listen
Fate : Vision Destiny : Decision
Fight : Give In Resist : Submission
Faith : Attrition God : Religion

Diction : Selecting the best word for use in speaking or writing

-----

PART II

Fiction : Fact Friction : Tact
Addiction : Lack Desire ? Act
Define or Distract? Designer : Detractor
Linear : Fractal Shuffled or Stacked?

Diction Didactic : Politically Correct

Didactic : Meant to be morally instructive

THE COLD WITHIN

2007-11-25T00:37:00.000-08:00

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood
Or so the story’s told

Their dying fire in need of fuel
The white man held his back
For of the faces around the fire
He noticed one was black

The second gazing across the flames
Saw one not from his church
So could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch

The third man sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch
Why should his wood be put to use
To comfort the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy shiftless poor

The fifth man in this forlorn group
Did nothing but for gain
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from sight
All he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white

Six twigs held tight in death’s still hand
Was proof of human sin
They died not from the cold without
But from the cold within

CITIES (Shake The Very Dust From Off Your Feet)

2007-11-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

The citied skylines carve the landscape of the modern age
Squalor spouts forth rivers of dull gray poverty and rage
Twisted visage of decay on canvas of urban blight
On the vile sewage soiree we dine and dance away the night
Five mighty metropolitans – from this dust arisen
Once shining, cosmopolitan, suffered black erosion
Iniquity abounds… Embracing with a dark caress…
Like slow digestion in the gullet of excess…
Time… That rust relentless… Never sleeps
Corruption sown, a bitter harvest reaps…
Eruption dawns… Invasion looms… Corrosion creeps…

Pealing neon beacon draws yearning age and fawning youth
Glitter day and glamour night push this need for passing truth
In the rock-and-roll-religion ‘Vatican’ city…
Mecca to the ‘movie god’ faith; Holy, holy…
Fondest wish? Beauty. Cold cash grand desire.
Gravest sin? Have naught. High Priest? The lawyer.
Business highest law… Contract is ‘Torah’…
Earthquakes, race wars, fires plague this doppelgänger of Gomorrah

Hope out, skip up the coast and jump across the bay to be
In the ‘life-style friendly’ evil twin of Sodom-by-the-Sea
The not-quite-temperate ‘Rio’ of the north, at best
At worst the sully, sordid ‘Bangkok’ of the west
Singles bar temples… Bathhouse Bible studies…
Pestilence harbinger… Amusements bawdy…
Leftist paragon… Intolerance pariah…
Evolutionary ‘übermensch’… Nietzche messiah.

For want of but ten righteous, these two by fire were lost
Rained down from Heaven and returned to dust
Madison Square hanging gardens, Ishtar’s Gate, Ellis Island
Sports arena coliseums; Hallowed, hollow manmade mountains

“Surely it couldn’t be Vesuvius”, the dwellers say
Of portentous rumblings heard in the last days of Pompeii
Illusory Oz’s great ‘Emerald City’
Broadway, asphalt Ganges, flows grim and gritty
Over concrete banks, processions of dead
‘The Needle’ draws down the Yellow Brick Road
And looms above, as does not-so-distant Rainier
Whose shadow falls like ash and reigns like fear…

Concrete, glass, stone, steel; Monuments to plans laid well
Mute witness to time’s grand tales they cannot tell
Of this dark parade, whilst they stood and fell
Love’s labors, undone; wars lost, won,
Now, come to naught…
History’s written while destiny’s taught
Nouveau is smitten by that same old rot
The past, forgotten, soon returns to wrought
Calamity upon the works of those who dare forget…

Soaring tower built where-in by hand-hewn steps ascended
Was Heaven gained, likewise God, who by this so offended,
Sent one people to four winds, one speech to Babel confounded
Resurrected in new Mesopotamian
Empire on the Hudson, new Babylonian
River Euphrates, Greenspan new patron
God Baal, Liberty new Ishtar’s Gate run
By new kings of finance, culture and trade
Harlots clad in scarlet silken finery arrayed
Blind to their impending doom ‘til the conquerors invade…

Barbarians behind the gates, no longer held at bay
On Pennsylvania Avenue or Appian Way
Sit on thrones of law; wield power’s reins with grand display…
Legislate rule of empirical republics
Enforced by war… Another means of politics
From ‘senatorial oligarchy’
To ‘patrician aristocracy’
Made modest with the ‘fig leaf’ of democracy
By enemies surrounded, as Cæsar in March’s ides
The fall well underway but has no face, like ocean tides
Pound the stolid shore relentless that grain-by-grain recedes
In ‘Fabian’ decline of greatness, until no more residesEternal no longer…

BLACK REIGN

2007-11-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

This is a work in progress, not a final draft

What is this that’s burning?
What is this that’s burning, burning black?
The war machine is turning
Is there ever any turning, turning back?
A gaping wound has opened
And from the wound the Earth is bleeding black
Eco-terror war, ill health care and crack
See if we can find a way to blame it on Iraq

Where has hope been going?
Where has hope been going, or coming from?
This neighborhood is changing
The entire world changing into a slum
Inflation, education, children growing up dumb…
How much does it cost to make a smart bomb?

Why are children dying?
Raining death upon them from friendly skies
Old evils passing
Down through generations of killing lies
Love on the lull, hate on the rise
Another point is made, another child dies

How are we not learning?
Reticent in paying the rising fees
Never even seeing
The growing repetition of our histories
Non-combatants slaughtered, war is a disease
Spreading through the nations like briskly blowing breeze

When will it be finished?
Who will be left laughing at our ruinous fate?
Is the Anti-Christ now living
Plotting our demise by a certain date?

BLACK MARKET PORK CHOPS

2007-11-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

The day will come when the pigs are gone
No more pork chops to feast upon
Then my business will start to hop –
The Pork Chop King – I’ll be on top.

I’ll sit in my hideout all alone
And wait for the pork chop junkies to phone
I’ll tell those fiends that they’re in luck
I’m on my way in my pork chop truck

I tiptoe out to my shed in back
It’s a walk in freezer with lots of racks
Look at them pork chops – stacks and stacks
All wrapped up in plain brown sacks

Quickly now I load my rig
With it’s precious cargo of chopped up pig
There’s a family out on Highway 6
In desperate need of a pork chop fix

Fast and smooth I make the drop
And head for my second pork chop stop
This family shells out serious coin
For it’s weekly dose of tenderloin

Some pay me in jewelry or VCR’s
I even had one guy give me his car
I take what they give me – It’s not about greed
I’m providing a service. I have what they need

I drive through the toughest parts of the city
Some things that I see there are not very pretty
There’s a few young ladies who walk the streets
And sell their asses for “The Other White Meat”

One of my regular street junkies phones
His voice is shaking from a pork chop jones
He has no money, but my heart is not stone
I drop him off a fat sack of bones

In the last house on my list this week
Lives a psychopathic pig meat freak
He sits on his porch with fork and knife
Applesauce, gravy and his pig freak wife

Through for the night I head for home
To count my money and sit by the phone
On my way I start to sing
“Look out Miss Piggy – I’m the Pork Chop King”

So if you suffer from pork withdrawal
Pick up the phone and give me a call
3 5 9 – P O R K
Doorstep service – Night and day
The Pork Chop King is here to stay

With Dave Bartone

BAREFOOT SLIDE

2007-11-22T01:36:00.000-08:00

The lamb and the ram

The sheep and the shepherd

The way and the truth and the life

The light in the dark at the end of your tunnel

The easing the lifting of all manner of strife

The true liberation from fear and frustration

But the carrot and the stick

Seem the Good Book’s fascination

And does that ever make you wonder

Over “good folks’ ” motivation?

First a threat… Then a promise…

It’s the love and fear of a jealous God

That puts His grace or wrath upon us

Then to motivation? Blissful elation.

The soul’s invitation to love and salvation

Torrential torment evil surely will bring

Fear forever on fire, endless suffering

God promises either – Hence the scary thing

Is to harvest in death what you spent your life sowing

Lack of fear spawns lack of restraint

It’s the finest of lines we do indeed walk

That turns a sinner to a saint

Wide the way to destruction leads,

And broad the gate

Many therein have gone and will go

Who turned too late

Narrow the path, well sought

To salvation’s precipitous ledge

Like a barefooted slide

Down the razor’s edge.

ASLEEP

2007-11-22T01:01:00.000-08:00

Who are these people
Asleep on the steps
Of these temples to God
Supposedly built?
Feigning the spirit
Of giving and love
For corporate gains
Hand in glove
It’s money that matters
Don’t even doubt
Why else would they close them
And lock people out?
“Open For Business”
And likewise “Close”
No homeless sleeping
In those opulently furnished pious rows…
“Crime in the streets,” you say
“Theft would be rampant”
If it’s meant to be stolen
A locked door won’t stop it.
The money that bought it
From Heaven flowed forth
So the money that bought it
Is all that it’s worth
But the Spirit that brought it
Herein lies the power
By which anything stolen
Would be replaced with another.
“And unto that thief?” you ask
Well that’s on them…
We must not have needed it
As badly as him.
And would God even enter
A door with a lock?
Or would God’s house be open
Around the clock?
Locking the temple
Seems the nature of sin…
Sure you lock out the thieves
But are you locking God in?

A POT TO PISS IN

2007-11-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

On any given day...

I feel ill-equipped to survive …

– Perchance to thrive …

In a world gone totally, wholly, utterly mad.

paragraph

I feel compelled to say…

Just what to the greedy masses –

– Does true love pass as –

Compassion just a lonely passing fad.

paragraph

Keep the wolves at bay…

Grasping hands, grabbing at my pockets,

– Stabbing at my back it –

Seems I’ve blown the only chance I had.

paragraph

Conscription affliction…

A war of attrition…

How did I get into such fucked up condition?

Appeasements result? Contrition addiction.

Surrender esteemed as my final position…

Without a chance to win or a pot to piss in.

Reaching Out
Pastel work by Peter Barnes 2005