Alienation

“The Lonely Painting” by Jude Griebel

 

how to live in a world
no longer your own
where your values
are trashed and your
ethics are gnashed in
the merciless jaws of
effete intellectual
solipsists aiming for
ignorant progress
deluded new dogmas
commissioned intolerance
framing ad hominem
scathing indictments
of any and all
disagreement

how to live in a world
you no longer love
truth be told but
it cannot be done
no choice left but to
turn yourself inward
pursuing the strength
of conviction to foment
a new hearts-and-minds
revolution a strategy
seeking to freshen the
air to enlighten the
dark modern motive
with new suasion of
old timeless truths

 

 

From my book Ephemera

False Memory

“Remembering Friends” by Karen Knutson

 

we were innocents
traveling life
common pathways
paved worn with
shared values
inherent diversities
channeled to loyalty
born free in spirit
of commonwealth
not a melting pot
but a mixing bowl
blending proud
colors and creeds

annealed dreams
yield exceptional
tensile strength
making possible
unified purpose
achieving great
civilized things
pushing men to
and through their
potential toward
prominent privilege
obtained of an
empire of intellect

so it once was
so it seems to the
eyes of my memory
visions so real
I can reach back
and touch them
feel every last aspect
of greatness the
pulsing pure essence
amassed with nobility

standing as witness
oath-sworn unto truth
I concede that I very
well could be mistaken
that none of it
ever did happen
my habit of painting
the past is perhaps
foolish labor
of mind over matter
distorted romantic and
stubborn with sentiment

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Zeitgeist

“Alter Zeitgeist” by Susett Heise

 

is the poet a man of his times
channeling culture
stroking his page with a populist pen
conventional wisdom affirmed

if so then I cannot in conscience
consider myself of the class
call me something other than poet
I brook no convention

a poem should surpass the mundane
if it has any art it should contravene
culture should shake it or break it
or take it to thoughts wildly new

it should fly on surprises of language
not mire in idioms
pull truth through metaphors
rich with provocative notions

the best poem is never self-evident
rather it leads to discovery
readers will find their own meanings
unaware they’ve become its coauthors

should a poet achieve such success
that his work becomes
part of the zeitgeist
it’s time that his readers move on

****************************************

“A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” – Salman Rushdie

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Rasennae

 

Decoration of Etruscan Tomb in Tarquinia

 
Etruscan gold primitive bones

raised up iron-age shoulders

lords of the sea tall as Greeks

proto west Europeans

whose women held privilege

a civilized city-state culture

of warrior merchants

in league of its talents for trade

master architects winemakers

metalwork artisans blessed

by exquisite refined ken

of function and form

a Tyrrhenian people who

thrived in the unwritten mists

of Italic prehistory

long before Gaius Octavius

undertook schema for empire

taking significant parts

of their models and myths

for the canons of Rome

a material people whose

ruins and relics still tantalize

all but mere gleanings of tombs

lost to conquest by time

life and language and liturgies

left to meticulous guesswork

of erudite dons who like me

share this bloodline of mystery

veins running sweet with

enigma and echo of origins

favored by warmth

in the whispers of

bronze Tuscan sun

Bandstands

“Belper River Gardens Bandstand” by Andy Mayers

 

round gazebos pavilions
and pergola octagons
stood village greens
crowded with summers
of swirled cotton candy
and lemonade mason jars
drawn into innocent
haphazard circles
of lawnchairs and wickered
fried chicken and pies

here fat politicians
in straw hats and vests
with a flask in each pocket
blew clouds of cigar smoke
and fogbanking speeches
across crinkled buntings
between martial music
played slightly off key
over lawns packed with bowties
and gingham checked modesty

children roamed happily
innocence safely
preserved among apricots
peaches and plums
wanting blue ribbon samples
while learning to sing
stirring patriot songs
alive with the civics
that promised fulfilling
tomorrows ahead

this once was America
land of my birth
where my parents came
seeking and finding
their most cherished dreams
this once was America
long before she and I
fell down disabled
from festering mordant
internal disease

 

 

From my books City of Pawns, Music of Scars and Legacies (vol. 1)

This and That

“Balance of Opposition” by Ibrahim Savas Pekdemir

 

serenity suffers

standing on scales

of off-centeredness

leans to the drag

of a lopsided life

out of plumb

lost of level

deprived equanimity

too much of this

leaves too little of that

without balance

no temper can

modulate tones of

emotional swings

without tug from

dependable keels

every journey

tempts hazard to list

without equipoise

character never stands

upright and virtue

cannot offset vice

cannot neutralize

random embrace

of an ethical drift

overloaded by heft

of an unstable culture

caught up in the speed

of the sweep of some

popular thrill or another

its flywheel stopped

dead in the heart

 

 

From my book Small Noise

Twain

“Mark Twain” by Steve Penley

humor with an admix of salt
floats down cynical rivers
through heartlands where
whitewash and mud paint
colloquial idioms raucous
with satire of innocent foibles
and deeper cut flaws of a
galloping history peccant
with self-indulged characters
countrified mise-en-scene
dreamscapes of Camelot
paupers and shot-laden frogs
here is America rendered
with mastery argot so deftly
employed to amuse the most
pompous of old Europe ears

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Black Hand

Symbol of La Mano Nera – The Black Hand Society

 

menace rose in the bloodsmoke of Etna
as it blackened east winds across oceans
reached violently into hard immigrant stories
adding terror to the struggles of innocents
extorting the self-possessed pride of a people
at knifepoint a gang of rogue feudal padrones
who supplanted American look-askance law
with an abject injustice severe in its wounds
to the auspicious cusp of a twentieth century

here do I nonetheless stand upon bonework
of caesars and slaves one of twenty odd million
descendants of browbeaten stoic survivors
unbowed perseverant determined to earn
rights of citizenship a new start a new world
holding off threats by cultural gangsters
they stayed the black hand from its sinister deeds
letting die the sick branch of my strong ancient tree
that it gained a new flourish in American ground

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Glass Acuities

 

“Day of Glass” by Erich Heckel

 
sand and ash
plain ideas
made from
granular thought
come to bond
in the heat of
intelligent fire
transformed in
that singular
chalice of bone
conscious crucible
elements changed
intellectual alchemy
purges impurity
giving release from
the sins of obscurity
rendered transparent
no longer a solid
not yet quite a liquid
a slow-moving
pensive deliberate
shapelessness
seeking some nobly
provocative form
ineluctably cooled
into choices of
permanence
ethically clear
artful lenses or
vessels admitting
of light the full
spectrum of truth
able now to be
sharply discerned
and displayed
defined starkly and
wholly accessible
no more excuses or
errors of judgment
but truth must be
handled with care
revelation can startle
and clarity can blind
sand and ash
plain ideas
the mean friable
substance of
unrefined minds
though they undergo
wizardry burned
and then turned
into beautiful glass
brilliant specimens
smoothly well-reasoned
exquisite exhibits of
vitreous wisdom
are evermore fragile
yes those
even those
best and highest
expressions of
artisan minds
can be easily shattered
by the merest
oblivious flick from
a philistine boor

Estate Sale

“Old Shack” by Barbi Kutilek

 

once upon a political time

was a fiercely robust fourth estate

where forests of newsprint inveighed

against government liturgies parsed

but American ground has lost worth

civic culture deveined of its nerve

institutions sold off for cheap votes

that estate now a pauperized shack

rented out to limp partisan hacks

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)