Mother’s Day Ode to the Walking Wounded

I have looked at these things, these dramas, these

Games that people play from so many angles and different perspectives

That I have confused myself.

Writing about them in the third person, I’ve invented characters with pain so
intense only

Hell could relieve them,

Some of them are believers of political rhetoric and sinister propaganda

And religious dogma so inane that believing must be a sure sign

Of mental illness.

Walking in the park, or standing motionless in front of a spectacle that

They never notice, you can find them gnawing on

The bread of life, fingers dripping with the sticky entrails of their feast.

God, their god smiling over the endless fetish of their insatiable desire

Goads them on to

Conquest and empty absolution.

Sometimes they gather in rooms with gilded altars and raise their voices

In song, self absorption and vanity, soft little prayers

Floating slowly up to heaven on little, fluttering wings

But most are mired in the filth

Of petty self righteousness and tacky, meaningless, pretentious displays that

Fall over on the ground in the rain.

Then there are the ones who live in a world of plastic things

That don’t quite work.

They keep throwing them away and replacing them but each substitute is

More perplexing, and more expensive, the instructions

Make less sense, and the easy open packages only open

When chewed apart by teeth.

Out on the highway they feel the pulse of the world, they drive

Here and there but nowhere they ever get to is where they want to stay.

They chat incessantly into cell phones but most of what they say

Is never final, it only adds to the crazy chatter, the only constant,
intelligible word is more,

And at the end of the day more is never more, the more there is

The less the soul is full

Tomorrow they will try again to fill it up while it only empties its essence in
defeat.

But then there is you with the center always holding

True to the simplicity, the essence, the aura

Simply predictable because truth never changes it stands fast

While fashion becomes extinct, styles one by one drop into memory

Some locked away in forgotten closets

Are resurrected and celebrated

For a little while.

In your little house there is always the real, there is

Black coffee and nicotine stained fingers the eagle’s view out your window

Close friends and family meeting and embracing on

Holidays and occasionally by accident, furniture well worn

And loved, the use not fading away the memories

Lodging intrinsically into the fabric of your surroundings.

You are an inspiration to me with your minimalist lifestyle and your

Disdain for the plastic and the disposable, your

Quiet patience with the great unwashed, you have traded the quest for the
unreal

For the essence so long ago that the road is now old and worn for you

But it is still going only forward,

Now there is only pain and loss ahead.

This is the way of the warrior, and now even in the golden years of living
there

Is the choice of a warrior to know that your most important work must

Be done in pain and hopelessness. To know that the desire for things is

All around you but to be dead to the earthy passion of it all.

To sense at the end of life that the love of the temporary is an illusion that
shields the heart from pain

Leaves one alone and small in the big unknown.

If you could see in yourself what I see you would know how incredibly beautiful
and special you are,

You would see the years of decision and childbirth, work, peace, love, loss,
pain, joy and soul changes

Emerging beyond it and looking in the mirror one day and asking

Is this really, really me

It’s never a question of what does it mean, in the end we all wind up wondering

How did this all happen?

As all things go, we are eternal, even when the hour grows dark

Dreams of death and agony and separation from love and comfort

Wrap their steely tongues around our dreams,

We must cling to our beliefs

I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve come to believe

These things we have come to feel, these items that we’ve trusted to be true

Are in fact real.

– Mike Glover

the born again virgin

the Georgia lady does not have to die
to be reborn
to be again a virgin
the purity of love si
meanwhile in L. A.
the more than 500 days now trial
no one wants to believe
a boy can sleep with a 34 year old boy-man purely
but a 33 year old can be a born again virgin
is this a Christian Jihad
or a Muslim Crusade?
while Paula and the American Idol
have consensual sex?
Mother’s Day
in all it’s originality
the lady
gave us The Battle Hymn of the Republic
then proclaimed
a day for mothers to stand up and just say no
to taking their sons away to war
West Virginia country road take us home.

Southern Baptist House Divided

pat robertson come in Friday here
is it your intelligent design
dividing the Southern Baptist Church of God?
Louie Louie Lou eeeeee
Louie Louie Lou iiiiii
they could not understand the words but they were
sure they were amoral so they banned them
surely this is not the land of OZ
Muskogee or Kansas city
how did we get to this hell
of lopped off heads and back to the torture rack?
oh God is on your side you don’t say?
are you on God’s side?
do you follow in his steps
like feeding the poor not some poor
the poor did He say
there will always be poor
and under his breath I know
via human history
opulence is feeding a few poor
and starving the many
heaven is only something of
an atonement away.

Judge Pohl vs England vs Graner

England said she was guilty.

Graner said England did not know what she did was wrong because she was following orders.

Judge Pohl ruled it a mistrial.

England knows she is guilty and said so but we know she share the guilt.

If Judge Pohl sees to it that the truth of the illegal order comes out – the line the torture order
came down might be revealed…

…like the torture the Osma’s #3 man now captured is surely experiencing even as I write.

Abu Faraj al Libbi

human eyes of no return
kinda frenzied they are reporting
tighter airport security even with full evidence
of each and every attack more spectacular
or at most unique
who will not look will not see
abuse it and you lose it common sense

Abu Faraj al Libbi
who will abet your torture on the rack?
knowing he will say whatever they want
to make the torture stop
or not perhaps
like other torturers they want to break his resolve
with sexual temptations like Bill O’Reilly says is ok by him
all i am saying Bill
is how many martyrs to their cause are you willing to look into their eyes?
Ghandi showed the British how stenchful it gets…
Yes, please, call him a terrorist
and then listen
and yes
Regan did negotiate for the Iranian hostages
in history we call it part of the Iran/Contra episode,
or more simply, American foreign policy
i know Bill
you have been assigned to make a connection
between the coma man who is now talking after 9 and 1/2 years
and Terri Schiavo who by now for sure
would like a little peace..

evolution of intelligence by design

of course from natural selection
not hyped up designer advertised
dog-earing Shawn Hanity today
Bill Moyer yesterday
Phil Donahue preselection 2004
while the doctor Phil misses Jennifer’s
Gut Reaction of natural selection
ask one who did not listen to their gut
arriving at the door of weddinghood
boys and girls alike don’t laugh
in the middle of a squabble
about preserving the “sanctity of marriage”
tie the knot of desperate house wives with no clues
Darphor
Bolton
Negroponte Iran/Contra
the only need to control the populous with patriot acts
is when the populous disagrees with their government
the most dangerous time for civil rights extinction
evolution is intelligent design
when the head lies to the heart
expect
a gut reaction!

Rich Lowry National Review

says it was a necessary nasty compromise
in Iraqi governance but he
dubs himself an optimist i says
it is easier to be an optimist than a realist?
Leonard Bosswell, Vietnam vet
says the troops knew at the beginning of that war
they could win but were restrained from doing so
which begs the question of results…
Vietnam divided north and south
Korea divided north and south
Iraq divided and there we stand
supporting one side of a civil war
but i’m a realist still crying
for Argentina, Palestinia
Vietnam vets i still hear singing
“We gotta get out of this place
if it’s the last thing we do.”

Look Jane see Dick
Dick with his Weber grille
brother takes ecstasy and “rips my life apart”
Hester Prynne denied the morning after pill
while Johnny jumps up for Lavitra
Zolof’s Columbine
don’t negotiate with legal drug lords
throw some pennies to the paupers
torte reform so they can’t sue the bastards
it was not just regime change
Saddam is wrapped up in a cage
it was about regime change to what?
let’s tick tock back in time for clues:
The Shaw of Iran 1953
Carlos Castillo Armas Guatemala 1954
Ngo Dinh Diem South Vietnam 1955
Nguyen Van Thieu South Vietnam 1965
General Suharto Indonesia 1965
JoaquĆ­n Balaquer Dominican Republic
(kept in power) 1965
Houari Boumedienne Algeria 1976
Augusto Pinochet Chile 1973
(Don’t cry for me Argentina)
Lon Nol Cambodia 1970

et cetera to Y2K
where we revved up to a double barrel
Saddam and for a side dish Aristide
Aristide in behalf of La Tortue
Saddam well oops a little careless
Chalabi was outed as Saddam’s replacement
but power is money so now we have
Chalabi, Minister of Oil
food for oil not being lucrative enough
it’s back to blood for oil
pretending peace in Palestine/Israel
by not mentioning the divisiveness
of the city of Jerusalem
there’s your National Review optimist Rich Lowry
please dot your t’s and cross your i’s
we are in this together
an honest broker would listen to
the Sunni’s referred to as insurgents
and the Hamas referred to as terrorists
boogie boogie all night not long
the Sand Man is coming
is ticked
May Day a very fine day
to remember 30,000 still dying every day
tsunami related starvation and disease
but heys Dick and Jane
see Jennifer run away
desperate not to be a housewife
what the foot and who the hand
and what the man (mostly white)
can allow
that he was wrong or made a mistake
or did not know the answer
(forgive me dear male hearts that have touched my own
but i know you know this song is not about you)
it is begging sometimes borrowed – bless you
all you still walking wounded it’s just another mother
bird floundering and wondering at April’s long snow
but now it is May just a heartfelt away)