Independence from Dependence

Hear ye, hear ye the British are coming
There! Out in the Gulf, you can hear the oil drumming
In the wetlands and the marshes you can feel the ooze scumming
And the end to the madness is not in sight

As the waves of crude roll in, the wildlife is succumbing
Because of greed and carelessness and what’s been labeled faulty plumbing
And to our people and to our government, a corporate giant with noses thumbing
BP officials are just spoiling for a fight

I’m reminded of long ago, when we fought a revolution
Except this time, instead of muskets, we try to skim up the pollution
And there is, I believe, only one distinct solution
That’s to do, what in this case, is only right

We must use all our resources, man the shovels, ply the boats
Defeating tyranny in the form of board room greedy, callous Red Coats
Then ship them back to their Queen and their castles and their moats
And then commit to break this habit, with all our might

For only then can we depend to find a steady type of healing
When ocean waves are free of oil, and the wells they are a’ sealing
For it’s our planet and all its life, and for that we must have feeling
May God forgive us, and redirect us with gracious light

Round Peg in a Square Hole

Circles…we all live in circles
Concentric circles…Expanding, Receding
Colliding, interacting…Demanding, Retracting
Six and one-half billion…times a day
Self-contained…biological spheres
Micro universes…the big bang
On one small…beleaguered planet
We inhabit…our circles
From birth…until death
Using walls…to conceal them
And doors…to protect them
With borders…to surround them
We use…success… to inflate them
Then pride…to satiate them
Finally religion…to justify them
And when…we run afoul
Of…other circles
We use ... ignorance…to deride them
And intolerance…to reject them
With bigotry…to separate them
Then hate…to berate them
Our faith…to condemn them
Ending with…violence…to destroy them
Circles…co-existing… in a Sea of Resistance
Touching…yet frequently…untouched
Buried…in Boxes
Fashioned…with jagged corners

Funeral for a Friend

Now it withers … on the vine
Hanging limply, listlessly
Never having fully bloomed
Yet once, ever so briefly
It seemed possible
That its zenith would be achieved
When the flowers
In a young girl’s hair
Flowing in the San Franciscan breeze
Would take root
And we would not be lamenting
The death of compassion

Under the Covers

Valley fog, blessed comforts
Gray blankets, soothing insulation
Cool clouds of descending mist, extinguishing
Ancient, acrimonious fires
Summer’s endless banality abbreviated
Hot tempers temporarily tranquilized
Society’s defilers momentarily chilled
A tranquil respite from the blazing sun
Where chimney smoke intertwines
With shivering tree branches
And in solitude of thought
I pretend the world’s at peace

Time

He was born on a plateau of unknown origin
Located somewhere between infinity…and eternity
A star-child who considered all beings
Of noble intent and good deed
Members of his fraternity
His mother taught him the value of truth
Whilst his Father warned of deception
They raised him well…between Heaven and Hell
Then bade him farewell…with a warning
“You’ll be an outcast…never fully understood
A destroyer of beauty whom the slothful would kill
An embracer of youth with value unlimited
From henceforth all must submit to your will”
‘Twas so he departed this essence of started
Casting shadows wherever he travelled
He waited for no one… his march was relentless
And stood by as the cosmos unraveled
A file that wears and makes no noise
Whose vision is tomorrow…whose hindsight, yesterday
Creating women from girls and men from boys
The ongoing production…The forever play
He seems so long… to those who long
And short to them… who are dying
He’s heard all word, all verse and song
And weeps not…for the dead and the crying
He is the ultimate healer…yet arbiter too
With a number picked out…especially for you
And if
His Father and Mother committed a crime
When they sent forth their son
This Demon known as Time
We can all rue the day…they made the decision
Then sit back and admire…the deadly precision
Of Time

Fragments

Saw the shadow of a cat
Chasing the shadow of a dog
In the dark
Heard a whisper…from a lisper
During a hurricane
Smelled a rose…on Channel…0
Felt my fingertips…feel my fingerprints
They felt…different?
Tasted 31 varieties of ice cream
In one 30 second dream
Woke up…eyes wide shut

Propheteers

Propheteers

Here they are, ladies and gentlemen
The men who set out to save America
Malicious messengers of hate and intolerance
Pugnacious proselytizers attired in 5th Avenue sackcloth
Freakin’ deacons in long black limousines

Well-heeled descendants of the Scopes trials
Diamond-dripping disciples of the overseer
Arising, vitriolic and venomous from deep within the veil
Pale-skinned and pissed off
Fed up and festering
The fetid odor of burning Jim Crow
Giving rise to their inbred blood

Let me introduce to you
Jerry Falwell
His fingernails fractured from digging in the collection plate
Seeking “the good people of America”
Those ready to drive the Negro from our public schools
And let God back in

A moral majority of red-blooded red-necks
Backwoods bigots and conscienceless Christians
Seeking to affix blame for war, for disease, for debauchery
Onto minorities, onto gays, onto women, onto liberals,
Onto anyone except themselves

Pat Robertson
Anti-Semite par excellence
Issuing forth scathing, scalding denunciations
Of Jewish usury
Whilst himself counting a thousand pieces of silver
In the cozy confines of the Christian Coalition
Or approving asinine assassination attempts of foreign leaders
Divine intervention at the point of a gun

Jim Baker
And wife Tammy Faye
Sanctimonious sentinels of the PTL
Million dollar ministers of misappropriation
He scored a strumpet from Penthouse
She built the poodle and air-conditioned dog house
They got busted for fraud
And took their Bibles to the big house

Jimmy Swaggert
He stole two million from the plate
Built three mansions on the hill
Let “little head” do the thinking
Then begged for faith and forgiveness

Oral Roberts
Who swore he’d drop dead
If pusillanimous parishioners
Didn’t drop a million unto him
They didn’t – and he didn’t …
A failed loan application from “Moral Oral”

The Pope
A coronated Cardinal crusading for Catholics
The pontification of creation and gestation
The denial of contraception,
Fused with the deception about conception

Now, a new crop pollutes the airwaves
They inundate the Internet
And after them, will be another
Then another
Then yet another
All promising the glory of God
False prophets preying on prejudice
Perfidious parsons schooled in scripture

Their pseudo-pious, semi-secular acolytes
Door slamming, righteous ranting,
Privilege purveying buffoons
Like O’Reilley, and Coulter, and Hannity and Rush
Will stand alongside, shaking fingers of indigestible indignation
Deftly wrapping the cross in hues of red, white and blue
With their frantically fallacious, false, fickle and
Frankly fouled up brand of God and country
If America is to survive
Their insidious infection must be exorcised