Bullets from Bones

“Indifference, Year of Peril, 1944” by Thomas Hart Benton

 

we are that species

who numbers cadavers

more wardead than

died-in-their-sleep

since antiquity more

bloody years rent with

combat or suffering

siege than at peace

knowing war begets

war we make beautiful

bullets from bones

to recycle their valor

reconstitute sacrifice

crumbled in graves

of both soldiers and

citizens lost in the

billows of battle-fog

all of which pale against

whole populations

entire generations

erased by the wickedly

punishing sword

flame or slavemaker’s

brandiron victory often

takes into its hands

asserting its dubious

rights of immoral

barbaric revenge

oh the genocides

staining each century

back through prehistory

utter depravity

strangling humanity

with our pretensions

to power that mock

the theology vested

in principled ethics of

jus bellum iustum

we know the right

thing yet continue

continue continue

to do what we know

to be wrong leaving

open for all our black

bloodied millennia

questions of whether

or not our apparent

intractable flaws

are perfectible

 

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)

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

Inversion

“Compassion 2012” by Drea Jensen

 

by what precept

does innocence suffer

at hands of the guilty

is it simply misfortunate

“wrong place wrong time”

or something more sinister

raw feral

unevolved ethics

survival of fittest

without metaphysics

is cruelty an instinct

organic aggression

the piece of the human

he shares with the beast

are opposable thumbs then

the only

defining distinction

compassion and kindness

mere koans

of mutated spirit

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Windblown

“After the Storm” by Holly Anderson

 

ramshackle lives

knocked about

in the storm

grasp for ethics

no matter the

provenance any

slight handhold

gains expedient

purchase false

principles swarm

helter-skelter

in violent air

immoralities clash

for supremacy

over the winds

that uproot with

ease weightless

tenuous minds

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Cairn 2

“Unfinished Rocks” by Karen Jacobs

 

stone upon stone

marks my presence

my promise to pass

what I’ve learned

of the land that its

posture embodies a

welcoming gesture

an offer to settle

one’s peace build a

home upon ground

virgin fertile receptive

to dignified seed firm

foundation for nutrient

footsteps down arable

furrows who give up

these stones to an

ethical plow one by one

over time of my journey

each facet each jag

a reflection my virtues

my vices my fortunes

and forfeits distinctly

positioned to stimulate

cool contemplation by

those who may follow

 

 

From my book Ephemera

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

Fatal Conceit

“Reformers” by Dana Schutz

reason does not inform ethics
ethics moving as it does
along lanes between
instinct and thought
a spontaneous product
of action not intellect
living experience
spurns being codified
carries no truck with
philosophic design
moral systems rely
on assumptions
about human nature
assumptions refuted by
anthropological history

vying contentions
between man and tribe
between tribe and society
spur an experimentation
a trial-and-error approach
to morality tweaks
right and wrong as they
trundle through time
these contentions need
balance on ethical fulcra
a faceoff of equalized truths
to preserve vital justice
for persons and groups
lest the frail social contract
collapses in ungodly dust

some would say
that describes the world
passing from us
to our children
our fatal conceit
that we better than
all those good souls
who preceded us
finally got it all right

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

“Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.”                                                                                            – Friedrich Hayek

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

Conundrums

Image from pinterest.com

in the swamp
lives leviathan
nostrils alert
for the scent
of men’s lies
jaws engaged
set to snap
the black bones
of deception
and here does he
thrive never once
going hungry

in this fetid
arena where
speeches are
riddles and
trust the frail
province of fools
are great ethical
quandaries civic
conundrums
enough to try
sanity shatter
the mind of an
optimist citizen

no one to pick
up the shards
but the duped
who’ve been led
to embrace the
conceit that the
broken man’s
pieces result
from what surely
must be his mean
sinister judgments
and not from
enlightened
conviction

this dangerous
dark oily place
cannot ever let
truth find escape
it must die here
on tongues of
impostors whose
campaigns contain
empty rhetoric
only to govern as
solipsist rogues
rooted deep in
the slime of all
dead and decayed
noble purpose

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Do the Right Thing

“Choices” by Luz Harpley

 

devil or angel
each voice in my ear
how to judge
unaccustomed advice

both messengers
carry a deity’s
answer to prayer
one has virtue
the other pretends
one is blessed
the other condemned

fingers crossed
have no power
the coin toss
no true guarantee

all I know to be
mortally certain
is I must take
action immediately
in the now of the end
I’ve no choice but
to follow my heart

as I’ve done
through my life
with no voice in my ear
save the human ones
memories spoken
by actions of those
whom I’ve loved

 

 

(From my book Ephemera)