From time to time, I hope to publish a collection of a few of my recent poems. I will refer to this series of posts as my "Poetry Digest". This is Poetry Digest #3.
Delays in Both Directions
If you inhale the spirit through the ribs
Supporting a city's circulation,
Then you feel the breath exit as I feel
With the heaving masses, a crushing weight
Lifting its own chest within these tunnels -
Gasping for air among the Metro stench.
Why we wait so long to repair ourselves -
To ascend, to escalate our greatness --
That's the mystery of Gallery Place.
I am the blood animating the limbs -
A nerve protruding under this body -
A lonely note rising from the wind pipes:
Orchestrating an unknown symphony -
An unpaid musician beneath the streets -
I earn tips from single track siren songs
Passersby play on their way to stardom,
Strutting across a lowly makeshift stage,
Seizing the proper moment and platform.
There is artistry even in one gasp:
Not in the air, but from where it travels.
Upon This Rock
If you are not the story, tell me why
I am listening. I hear boom and bust,
Cataclysm and the great extinctions
Carve our instant in geologic time.
Rising, falling ecosystem empires
Stagger past catastrophic disasters.
Survival is the next imperfection.
I am the latest in this same series.
Know my checkered, fragmented history;
The vulnerability in all life.
I am not an inch in a continent.
I am made in the image of chaos.
Fighting order to avenge indifferent
Does not make our world a product for us.
Listen to scriptures in the sediment:
Our myths are footnotes for another tale.
Cognitive Dissident
I seek shelter from illusions of thought:
Protection from harsh gusts of reflection,
As doubts soaking the ground to germinate
Creep up as intellectual kudzu
Mounting the walls of ideology
Seizing the fortress of my correctness.
No one shall challenge my exactitude!
Therefore, I flee and take up asylum:
Before I ask experts or - how quaint - books,
Today I declare my independence -
I protest empirical observance.
I don't need to know anything at all.
Since reality is a passing fad,
I will triumph in my own history.
What happens is always irrelevant -
What counts is that I'm in control of it.
Nightlights
Against the walls shrouded in silhouettes,
I peer into blue, electric dimness.
A siren square bears the violent angles
Caroming at each other in the dark.
In the urban forest of high black beams,
An army witnesses against the night:
Marching in place, wielding its faint banners -
I sway with the waving shadow trumpets.
This glow is a baton between my hands,
In my imagination's concert hall:
After the stars have stacked their music stands,
Let blackness unpack its song, and play on.
Poets
poets never sleep
our dreams are wakefulness
our lives are dreams
we recycle
we recycle
pain beyond words
our dreams are wakefulness
there is pleasure in seeing
there is pleasure in seeing
even in anguish
pain beyond words
yet words are redemption
yet words are redemption
our lives are dreams
even in anguish
poets never sleep
Money for Obama
I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message
do you have any money?
(I ask again)
do you have any money?
do you have any money?
Mitt Romney shouldn't be President
do you have any money?
(words Mitt Romney never says)
(words Mitt Romney never says)
besides
Mitt Romney shouldn't be President
put your country above your money
put your country above your money
(I ask again)
besides
I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message
Afterwords
after
words
only
pauses
pauses
carry
words
together
together
pasts
carry
presents
presents
only
pasts
after
Keep the Customer Awake
Not sure if philosophy is a meme
Or a profession. I enjoy labels,
So I'll coin a name for my condition:
The one where I cannot stop listening
When I'm tired, when Simon & Garfunkel
Are keeping this customer satisfied
And the lyric is in the description
As the cure is inside the malady
And I'm trapped inside this syllable count
I'm too afraid to write what comes to mind
To spend my time this way before I fret
Searching for an abundance of nothing
My pulse the key of possibility
My words warble although I am tone deaf
Gee but it's great to rely on meter
And sarcasm so I can say nothing
I'm one stead ahead of plagiarism
Two steps behind getting the sleep I need
I'm not even sure why I'm writing this:
I act in ambivalent defiance!
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Is America (and President Obama) Afraid Of Greatness?
I'm tired of small-minded, lazy, simple explanations. I'm tired of horse-race, he-said/she-said reporting that pretends to be objective but isn't and covers trivialities instead of issues. I'm tired of talking points.
I'm tired of cowering in fear after the deaths of a few thousand people. I'm tired of using the hatred of our enemies as a blank check to expand the power of government, shrink the accountability of government, and erode our privacy.
I'm tired of a government and political class that values the feelings of the wealthy over the well-being of the unemployed.
I'm tired of politicians who demand freedoms for journalists, dissidents, and protesters in other countries -- yet remain silent when those freedoms are threatened or denied in our own country.
I'm tired of politicians who demand liberty for themselves -- but deny liberty to women, gay people, racial and religious minorities, the disabled, the elderly, and the poor.
I'm tired of politicians who endlessly caterwaul about the deficit threatening the future of our children -- yet do nothing to address issues like global climate change, overpopulation, or renewable energy.
I'm tired of politicians who think endless war is the solution to every problem. There is no war on drugs, war on terror, or war on poverty that America will ever win alone. The biggest, most complex problems demand ambitious, large-scale, heroic solutions.
***
Conservatives often taunt liberals by stating that government is a parasite, but without government, America cannot and will not remain a truly great nation. Our government fails us because the people we put in charge of our government were incompetent and chose the wrong priorities. America is fully capable of attaining greatness, and our government should be fighting for its people on the front lines.
President Obama wants to help a few people with their mortgages, a few people gain jobs, a few people face less discrimination, a few people avoid deportation. President Obama wants a smidgen of deficit reduction, a token amount of investment: but all the small changes amount to nothing, so people see a status quo that hasn't changed and isn't acceptable.
President Obama is afraid of greatness. Mitt Romney won't stop talking about greatness and America at all hours of the day and night, but he doesn't mean a single word. When voters have two alternatives -- one candidate who has no vision and one candidate who has a vision that isn't trusted -- which candidate do you think will win?
When the candidate without a vision represents an unacceptable status quo, and the candidate with a vision successfully represents (in the minds of voters) a change from that unacceptable status quo -- which candidate do you think will win? If people don't like Mitt Romney, if people don't trust Mitt Romney, if people don't trust Republicans -- none of that will matter if Mitt Romney offers some kind of vision of America and President Obama doesn't. That's the current political situation, and President Obama and his advisers need to wake up.
I'm tired of hearing that America is the greatest country in the world from political leaders who do nothing but erode everything that's ever made America great. In 2008, President Obama won the White House because he offered a chance to change that situation. During the past four years, he hasn't done enough to fix the deterioration of American greatness, and he hasn't offered a plan to restore or expand American greatness during the next four years. The time is not too late for President Obama to change course and offer that specific, compelling vision. If Barack Obama can't win re-election in November, it will be - as Jimmy Buffett sings in "Margaritaville" - his own damn fault.
I'm tired of cowering in fear after the deaths of a few thousand people. I'm tired of using the hatred of our enemies as a blank check to expand the power of government, shrink the accountability of government, and erode our privacy.
I'm tired of a government and political class that values the feelings of the wealthy over the well-being of the unemployed.
I'm tired of politicians who demand freedoms for journalists, dissidents, and protesters in other countries -- yet remain silent when those freedoms are threatened or denied in our own country.
I'm tired of politicians who demand liberty for themselves -- but deny liberty to women, gay people, racial and religious minorities, the disabled, the elderly, and the poor.
I'm tired of politicians who endlessly caterwaul about the deficit threatening the future of our children -- yet do nothing to address issues like global climate change, overpopulation, or renewable energy.
I'm tired of politicians who think endless war is the solution to every problem. There is no war on drugs, war on terror, or war on poverty that America will ever win alone. The biggest, most complex problems demand ambitious, large-scale, heroic solutions.
***
Conservatives often taunt liberals by stating that government is a parasite, but without government, America cannot and will not remain a truly great nation. Our government fails us because the people we put in charge of our government were incompetent and chose the wrong priorities. America is fully capable of attaining greatness, and our government should be fighting for its people on the front lines.
President Obama wants to help a few people with their mortgages, a few people gain jobs, a few people face less discrimination, a few people avoid deportation. President Obama wants a smidgen of deficit reduction, a token amount of investment: but all the small changes amount to nothing, so people see a status quo that hasn't changed and isn't acceptable.
President Obama is afraid of greatness. Mitt Romney won't stop talking about greatness and America at all hours of the day and night, but he doesn't mean a single word. When voters have two alternatives -- one candidate who has no vision and one candidate who has a vision that isn't trusted -- which candidate do you think will win?
When the candidate without a vision represents an unacceptable status quo, and the candidate with a vision successfully represents (in the minds of voters) a change from that unacceptable status quo -- which candidate do you think will win? If people don't like Mitt Romney, if people don't trust Mitt Romney, if people don't trust Republicans -- none of that will matter if Mitt Romney offers some kind of vision of America and President Obama doesn't. That's the current political situation, and President Obama and his advisers need to wake up.
I'm tired of hearing that America is the greatest country in the world from political leaders who do nothing but erode everything that's ever made America great. In 2008, President Obama won the White House because he offered a chance to change that situation. During the past four years, he hasn't done enough to fix the deterioration of American greatness, and he hasn't offered a plan to restore or expand American greatness during the next four years. The time is not too late for President Obama to change course and offer that specific, compelling vision. If Barack Obama can't win re-election in November, it will be - as Jimmy Buffett sings in "Margaritaville" - his own damn fault.
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