solve your problems
within the concepts
resulting from your creation.
If there is now a living God
it is but a baby -
and who would ask a baby
to care for its parents?
The Dispossessed
Standing on an old street corner
alone
a poignant awakening
to hate and despair
the day
Autumn suddenly slides into winter;
the day
torn leaves and whipped rain
slash at grey concrete walls
(so many storeys high)
and water dripping endlessly
through rotten eave-troughs
runs down your naked body
under ragged, dirty summer clothes.
But just down the block
a commercial poster
jets you to Hawaii in style.
The End of Humanity
An old man sat beside me
as I was waiting for the bus,
turned and said:
“Is something troubling you?”
Yes I reply, I am wondering
why people don’t seen to care
about the fate of their world?
“Ah”
I think, somewhat sadly,
(says the old man:)
“It’s like this with humans:
they’re sitting in a big SUV
heading straight for a brick wall,
doing a hundred miles an hour,
and all these people can think about;
all they want to argue about,
is where is the best place to sit.”
(quote from David Suzuki)
“I thought when I was younger
(continues the old man)
I could make a difference
on this crazy world
but as I get older
I am finding out there is no hope,
people are just too stuck
in old ways that no longer work,
old ways that really
never did work.”
The Eternal Dream
How much of that substance known as "me"
already has passed outside the borders
of time and space; has forced its way
past the fears, the taboos, the ridicule
of a dying world, moving unawares?
In the night, the dead of night,
the inky blackness of a normal night, I,
the earth-bound, unknowing, ignorant
sleep the sleep of the fluttering moth
when the light is suddenly extinguished.
But now the miracle of the night begins:
the dance of the spirit, the world of magic,
the fantasy of guided dreams unfurls:
"Actors, pay attention, take your places,
sun, moon and stars, focus your lights!"
Always obedient, the universe as one
bows to the will of the gods in the clouds,
provides misty stairways for them to descend
to every place where action is decreed:
it's time to learn, it's time to play.
I meet my friends again, creators, actors,
with me in the endless drama of life opening
like vernal flowers in greening meadows,
their voices, the eternal Spring song of love:
we acknowledge each other, and play our parts.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the dream ends,
the magic wand is waved, the stage rolled up,
the last echo of our laughter caught
in the song of a finch outside my window:
"Are we just ships that pass in the night?"
I, the restless wanderer, wide awake now
ponder that endless question, seek the answer: wait!
Could it be that one night, after I learn my part,
I too will disappear with the waving of the wand,
becoming part of the eternal dream, once more?
The Fools Tax
It’s hard to imagine anyone
volunteering to pay an unnecessary tax,
yet every day millions are collected
by government agencies
in monies no one ever had to pay.
It’s a fools tax – and how does it work?
By the simple application of greed.
It’s called “The lottery.”
The carrot on the stick – the longer the stick,
the bigger they make the carrot
and the trick works I daresay
even beyond the wildest dreams
of those who invented this insane game.
Oh sure, sooner or later one of the tax payers
gets a windfall: millions of dollars;
a small percentage of what was collected –
and the press and media play it for all it’s worth—
sorry, way beyond what it’s worth –
and all the losers remember is how much
so and so “won” in the draw.
Wouldn’t it be simpler and easier
to just ignore this insanity?
Keep one’s money, give a few dollars
to some legitimate need or a homeless person
and just enjoy the “feel good” from that?
No one likes to be a loser, no one
and yet what is a lottery?
A game for losers and of losers – guaranteed.
The Forgotten Ones
We react with horror and sadness
as innocent people die of terrorist attack
in the back yard of a "world power"
but do not feel the much greater horror
of systematic oppression of smaller nations
at the hands of the bully - and I ask "why?"
Economic policies starve entire countries
and children die from lack of food and water;
lands are raped of resources, impoverished
while their leaders are well fed and healthy
because they do the bully's bidding;
the people wander naked, sick, hungry...
and we who live in the bully's back yard
do not feel, and cannot feel, and I ask "why?"
In third and fourth world countries,
most don't live beyond thirty,
because the fat of the land is taken
to the land of the free and the home of the brave;
and I ask about those who die in natural disasters:
I don't even bother asking where God's love is,
but where is our natural compassion
and our sense of outrage in all of this?
Is it all reserved for ourselves and our friends
and our sacred beliefs about the rightness of our cause?
Where is the collective compassion
for these thousands who die daily around the world?
Who die, we so well know, of preventable causes?
Where is that five minutes of silence in memory
of those who ensure we keep our abundance?
From the dust of the earth their voices, not silent yet,
cry to us to remember their sacrifice...
but we want to silence their cries for justice;
we want them to remain the forgotten ones -
otherwise, how could we justify our indignation?
We've always had someone to pay for our extravagance
are we to give up our favored status in God's eyes?
The Future Of The Hunt
I'm standing among tall fir-trees,
where deer and other wildlife
once roamed free,
and it makes me wonder:
when the last of the so-called wildlife
has gone the way of the dodo bird,
what will the hunter hunt next?
Will he turn his sights on the poor?
On the outcas
ts of society?
Will he find some 'enemy'
B one who cannot fight back of course -
to hunt down and kill for fun and sport?
Perhaps he will be given prisoners;
unwanted types now in jails
to hunt down in faked jail breaks?
Will we finally come down to
'The Most Dangerous Game' -
the legitimate hunting of humans
strictly for sport? Not a new idea, is it.
The Romans perfected it in their arenas.
Whatever happens in the not distant future
there will be those who will justify
the hunter's 'needs' - if only because
a license to hunt humans
brings in extra revenue -
And the bottom line is,
has always been,
the game must go on,
to the bitter end.
The Ghost
Always pulling to the dark side, always;
the black clouds fit our mould so well,
shaping our evanescent, misty lives!
The phone rings: another old friend
depressed, lonely, lost, afraid
in fevered mind drugs no longer numb.
"Hi! I know, it's been a long time--
do you remember who this is?"
"Sorry, no, I don't. You must have
dialed a wrong number by mistake."
"It's me, Phil: don't you remember?
The demonstrations, the peace marches?
Phil, it's Phil!" Desperate, slurred words,
incoherent speech, childlike hope.
So sad, I feel, even if I don't connect:
I pretend long enough, just enough
for the past to reclaim its portion
of memory no longer used or wanted:
the long forgotten, undesired past;
its ghosts abandoned, forgotten so long.
"It's Phil! It's Phil!" cries the ghost
like the stab of a knife in my heart.
"Yes, I remember now... Phil. I remember
and I won't forget again, I promise."
If only I can make the black clouds
part just long enough tomorrow
to admit a shaft of light from the sun
and make the ghost come alive again!
We're having coffee together tomorrow,
the ghost and I, until another day
when another ghost, not so old or tired,
disembodied, free, may join us:
His youngest sister has cancer.
The Healing Room Of The Heart
Is there such a thing as a healing room?
Is it found in a special building?
A special room? A great power place?
Does not all healing proceed
from one's love center in the heart?
A heart weighed down, crippled
from dis-ease of the body;
from fear, lack of trust in its own power;
from false belief, or disbelief;
from a sense of lack --
either of money, or love or other wherewithal,
is but a "healing room" closed to those who seek.
Must they then turn helpless to the parasites
who suck out the remaining life from the dying
in their surgical cubicles?
The Village