Every time I start liking “W,”
due mostly to the contrast
with the present (p)-resident,
because “W” seems a pleasant gent,
I remember that “W”s administration
was responsible
for the dissemination
of false information
about weapons of
mass destruction
giving carte blanche
to an invasion
that did cause
mass destruction
resulting in about a million deaths
after that
unforgivable deception.
Still, he is kind of mellow,
duped by Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld —
the polar opposites of nice fellows,
clamoring for oil and using torture
while the president pitifully insisted
he was the decider and enforcer.
Still, while some might claim
his administration was fiendish,
he certainly looks like a little, love muffin
in comparison to the
self-proclaimed, stable genius
with little fingers close
to the big red button.

sun came to hover;
pushing the lion away,
melting snow cover.

Law and piety,
hallmarks of civil society,
often collude
in evil to conclude.*
In the name
of both they march insane,
seeking out one to blame
for all the shame.
And so they do
and murder countless, or a few,
often just one
whose death suffices for everyone.
And so it goes;
one’s blood flows
allowing law and piety
to return as civil society —
the necessary temporal
within the sacrificial eternal.
Some say it was once for all
but the once is in each one’s call.
life to death to birth, One shows,
and round and round it goes….

*idea from a meditation by Frederich Buechner

the lion marched in
blanketing the earth with snow.
he dropped it softly.

A pubescent, childish,
ever so needy ego
accompanying
a small stature
and little hands,
if his little riddle
is exposed,
he’ll jump and
scream and
through the floor
will never
be seen —
anymore.
So the name
was named
and that was
the end of that game,
but consider the
game reversed
and we all diligently rehearsed
not saying a particular surname,
a name
that indiscriminately,
voraciously and
oh, so blatantly
seeks such fleeting fame
falsely believing such attention
would fill a voluminous void
beneath a very thin hide —
an ego so weak,
it slavishly
craves any mention of his name,
tweak, twitter and tweet.
If for one day, all the world swore
and made finger vows (to and fro,
across land and sea the vow would go)
not to utter for one day
the name out loud,
maybe, just maybe,
a loud, thunderous roar
might be heard,
feet stomping on a bedroom floor,
and the now nameless man
would vanish forevermore.
Shhh….

I have little taste even to entertain so much
as a distaste and disdain for the noxious
effluence rising from our ever more barbaric
culture. Society smells more and more like

the putrid scent from sewerage treatment
plants. I sniff the sewage laden culture
of what passes for discourse but is so
course a wood plane couldn’t smooth it,

and so I gag. What has become of us? What
has become of the simple rules of etiquette:
please, thank you, excuse me? We have burrowed
into our stinky, death laden dens emerging

only to offend and not make amends. I do
believe in the “trickle down theory” only
it isn’t about economics, it is about greed
descending to those who have been cut off

from any access to the “good life” as defined
by ubiquitous, crass, capitalistic commercials
paid for by the one percenters who want the
poor and poorer and poorest to pay to have

the one percenters’ products, while the stupid
one percenters don’t have the brains to know
that once the middle-class becomes poor and
the poor are then in abject poverty, there are

no slices of the pie and no one has anything
with which to buy anything and all that trickles
down is hate, upon hate, upon hate. And no one
even bothers to say, “I’m sorry.”

For the late poet Carolyn Kizer and her righteous indignation and imagination:

“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord,
but, retribution will be by my own accord.

He looks at the poems
in his inbox each day.
He groans
at the length of
some poems
and then he thinks
about his own poems
and wonders how there
could be groans
at the length of his poems.
Then he heard his own groans
at the length of one
of his very own poems
and then he heard
the groans
that flew through
the air
of the few
who read his poems.
And he made a vow
to those loyal few
that he would
stop writing
long poems
right now,
er, actually right
after finishing up
this particular (but
really not all that
long of a poem,
one at which
someone would groan,
do you think?)
poem.

You might not think much of chrome, nickel, steel,
but when combined it’s a pretty big deal.
On their own they are strong, much stronger than wood,
but when combined, it is stronger than anyone understood.
The swirling synergy gave the material strength exponentially,
and after that planes would fly higher and faster with incredible energy.
And so if instead of studying individual subjects
as a way of learning,
we swirled all subjects together, our brains would
be burgeoning
with thoughts and ideas beyond anyone’s imagining.
This is related to that, and that influences this
and we would be in synergistic thinking bliss.
We might eventually be integral to our very own
evolutionary emerging.
Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers have
postured such for years.
Thank heaven, theologians are emerging from their fears,
and embracing this courageously in temerity
likening parts of an atom to the Holy Trinity
which whirls and swirls and when combined
finds energy greater than any could find
and now we know that we are part and parcel of the holy dance
leading to an evolutionary (en)chant
at this very moment —
the past, the future combining, swirling
synergizing, energizing
and into the present experiencing —
a love greater than any ever —
a holy infini-tet —
you, me, creator, redeemer, savior
expanding to embrace that not even
known or seen as of yet.

I sit and feel the heat rise into the room 
	to warm me after the coolness of 
the evening’s sleep. I sit and watch the 
        evergreen bush just outside my 
window flutter and sway in the east wind. 
        I wait for the sunrise to warm the 
earth, sky, water, trees, animals as winter 
	moves inexorably toward spring. I 
know there will be sobering interruptions 
	along that journey.