Wishful Thinking

“Wotan” by Konstantin Vasiliev

I fight as a god
hurling powers
at breastplates
disheveling foes
shaking men
from the rot of
ignoble ideas
quaking doctrines
immoral and
dirty with greed
till they shatter
slip down into
cracks of failed
ethics regaining
a measure of
grace for the
world re-instilling
integrity honesty
values of shared
common decency
plumping the near
shriveled veins
of democracy
gasping its lungs
in extremis

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Interregnum

“The Missing Text – Interregnum 1” by Stuart Brisley

the time between crowns

peaceful transfer of power

descension ascension

compete for attention

a time to lick wounds

melt down bullets and swords

bury hatchets shake hands

convert memories

into new visions

regression progression

the laws of succession

press change ineluctably

marching through mindsets

of fear and desire

a movement

that hasn’t once ceased

during two-hundred-forty

remarkable years

every day

be it baseborn or noble

become a new piece

its own permanent crease

upon history

what will be ours

what tomorrows

will feather or nettle our past

the world waits on our conduct

within and beyond interregnum

Athenaeum Iudicialis

 

United States Supreme Court Building – Western Facade

 

its great quarried mass

philosophical stone

turned by masterful hands

masonic majestic and

solemn of civic utility

bedrock borne principles

given their safekeep

a thwart against rampage

of time and men’s tides

sturdy secular temple

its pediments graved

by wise chisels of history

nationhood founded in law

freedom finding preserve

Grecian columns like

fingers of Pericles holding

aloft neoclassical frieze

to the east giving

justice as guardian of liberty

then to the west

equal justice under the law

thus do architects

mindful of message

in monuments

speak for the ages

to citizens torn in their

tending of sacred

quadrennial privilege

reminding that every

decision of active democracy

carries grave consequence

My Radical Conservative Thoughts

(A previously published 2007 article of mine that I periodically retrieve when election time nears. This time, I’m prompted by the January, 2010 Supreme Court decision in “Citizens United vs. FEC” and the April, 2014 Supreme Court decision in “McCutcheon vs. FEC” and their deleterious impacts on the upcoming November elections. These are decisions that I firmly reject, despite my dyed-in-the-wool conservative credentials. The degree to which money influences American elections at every local, state and national level is deeply destructive. It is also unethical, immoral and philosophically antithetical to the principles of our constitutional republic.)

 

Illustration from pinterest.com

 

Maybe my current thoughts about elections have been influenced by my move to New Hampshire, a state with a mighty proud history of feisty political independence and a genuine “citizen legislature.” Maybe it’s my nostalgic affection for the classic Jimmy Stewart film “Mr Smith Goes To Washington.” But I’ve come to conclude that I and my fellow concerned citizens are firmly and finally fed up with all of our professional politicians, every last one of them, from all parties, and that we are especially fed up with political parties themselves.

I believe we have been fed up for a long time, but we have yet to effectively demonstrate our dissatisfaction. Nor have we mustered the courage to initiate the kind of radical reforms that, in my view, are increasingly urgently necessary. I also believe we have succumbed to resigned frustration for lack of obvious tools to initiate such change. However, the relatively recent explosion of blogs seems to give us new means and new powers. Just look at the thousands of politically flavored blogs in which we rake our politicians up and down, with varying degrees of justification, for their incompetence, stupidity, greed, dishonesty and self righteousness. We need to use this power better.

We, and that means you and I, have neglected our civic responsibilities for too long. We have allowed this magnificent nation of ours to slip from its sublime founding principles of self government, forfeiting the real liberating power embodied in the fullest sense of “we the people.” So I started thinking, what would it simply take to recapture self-governance from the political hacks and from the entrenched special interests to whom those hacks cater and grovel? I’ve come up with what I think is a radical but simple set of effective reforms:

• Prohibit all political campaign contributions of any kind from any source.
• Prohibit all political campaign advertisements of any kind in any media. (As to the free speech argument, there’s plenty of precedent in the prohibition of tobacco and alcohol advertisements).
• Require all political candidates for every office from the Presidency on down to local city councils and town committees to engage in televised debates.
• Structure real debates, demanding response from every candidate to each question or proposition, and allowing every candidate rebuttal opportunity. The questions or propositions should derive from the public, not the media, and should be sufficient in number to cover a comprehensive set of standard categories (e.g. foreign affairs, homeland security, domestic budgets, etc.). Moderators should be fearless in keeping responses on point.
• Schedule the debates close to election day, say, within a maximum period of the preceding 30 days.
• Government funds should appropriately subsidize debate broadcast time.
• Elected candidates should have their private sector jobs protected by legislation along the lines of “public service leave.”

That’s it. Period. I believe these simple changes, however radical, would put the candidacy credentials of the average citizen on equal footing with those of wealthy dilettantes, professional pols or special interest straw men, allowing once again for real representative government of, by and for the people.

It also relegates political parties to a diminished yet more responsible role. Instead of cultivating only wealthy candidates, raising extraordinary piles of money, and manufacturing images flattering to their candidate but degrading to their opposition, political parties could spend their time seeking and cultivating competent candidates from the general population, and they can organize meaningful primaries. Statistically speaking, their chances of finding the right persons would increase exponentially from today’s ill conceived practices.

It would cleanly extirpate the massive lobby cancer that has metastasized throughout Washington and every state capital, a cancer that has all but destroyed our cherished democracy. It would erase all the campaign bullshit that is the only substance of every campaign ad. It would strip away the masks of slogans and spin, forcing candidates to directly face the public. More importantly, they would be unable to avoid addressing the compelling issues of the day.

The election season would be drastically and beneficially shrunk, keeping legislators at work on the people’s business, preventing the gigantic waste of time consumed by their campaign stumping and fundraising. In fact, it would eliminate all tainted moneys from the election process and, with that, the poisonous seeds of corruption. And it would save the government and the economy billions of dollars that are now squandered on the ill-producing machinery of the self-serving campaign industry.

We desperately need Constitutional Amendment to rectify this vital area of democracy, or we are doomed.

Could it work? Could you and I make it happen? Or am I dreaming?

– Paul F. Lenzi 2007 (rev. 2014) (2nd rev. 2016)

Old Waters

 

“Water Abstract” Digital Photo by Carlos

 

in the belly of seas
ancient rains
once washed
truths taught
by myths
of Olympus
gave glisten to
Greek golden age
under Pericles
bathed the
inquisitive impulse
of Socrates
seeking for answers
to questions
that in themselves
elevate man
and morality

in the belly of seas
down and deep
the same waters
that nourished
antiquity mix
with new fluids
the discharged
remains of the
modern democracy
drained by neglect
of minds moved
to an arrogant
dryness of dogma
truths fixed by
presumptions of
self-proclaimed
demigods

Crimea

“Crimea Sunset” by Robert Braginsky

 

(Originally posted here March, 2014)

appalled by democracy’s murmur
heavily armed red-soled boots plant
their hammer-and-sickle beachheads
amidst Russian expatriate cheers
mindless of fragile unsettling sands
unmoved by the bluster and blather
that uselessly fogs western airwaves
will abrupt annexation ensue to commit
amputation of new Ukraine dreams

Reductio ad Absurdum

“Veritas Odium Parit” by Janet Brusselbach

opinions abound
every issue a polygon
angled with facets
adjacent or opposite

mouths speak in questions
minds construe answers
as certain and different
as each man and woman

opinions arranged
in an infinite conflict
defy all consensus
dividing society

factions abound
with ad hominem
argument pinning
red horns on opponents

opinions devolve
into vitriol drowning all
disagreed views in the
solvents of odium

knowing democracy
levels the stupid and smart
wrong and right why then
gasp at its ugly result

Halfwits

 

to see with one eye

to hear with one ear

insults the endowment

of reasoned free will

ignores the philosophers

from Plato to Nozick

injures the birthright

heirloom of Cleisthenes

 

such half-informed citizens

founder and slump

in the wallowing

squalor of demagogues

Vox Populi

 

“Bird’s Hell” by Max Beckmann

 

 

democracy dwells in your decibels
live your citizenship loudly
give your unrestrained voice
to indictments of tyranny
ring your bell-clapper tongue
in harangue of injustice
yell your dissatisfaction
into fourth estate ears
or succumb to a silent
entombment by quiet collapse

 

 

From my book City of Pawns

 

 

 

Tea Chest

 

“Reception of Mysorean Hostage Princes” by Robert Home

 

 

relic of the raj

piece of home

in an alien land

genteel reminder

of the mission

self-appointed

to civilize savage

motifs of a pagan

subcontinent

bring to it gifts

of a centralized

democracy tying

a noose round a

feudal archipelago

all in the interest

of primary goals to

commercialize via

monopoly vast

untapped resources

leaving behind a

three century

legacy still in debate

as to how much an

ancient admixture

of cultures was

either severely

demeaned or

enabled to stand

among moderns

politely discussing

the tides and the

times of the world as

they sit down to tea

 

 

From my books Onionskin and Legacies (vol. 2)