Thursday, December 21, 2023

Remember the Children

Remember the children

crushed and obliterated

under the weight of 2000 pound bombs

screaming from the sky

dispatched by uncaring machines of death.


Remember the children of

Israel and

Somalia

Yemen

the Sudan

Nicaragua

Honduras

victimized by

insidious bigotry,

religious differences that

seem so oblivious

to the suffering they engender.


Remember the children of the present

and the future

who live in a world

that offers no relief,

no respite

from the cruelty of their captors,

from endless punishment

over which they have no control.


Remember the children

suffering needlessly

for no good reason.


Remember the children

denied the capacity to thrive and grow

for they are our lost treasures

consumed by the raw power of hate.


Remember the children for

they hold in their feeble hands the

ultimate fate of humanity.


Remember the children

to forget is to

consign ourselves to an abysmal future

devoid of compassion and love

leaving us with an uncaring and brutal world.

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Ode to Existence Revisited

 

As the hours and days and weeks and months and years move me along life’s relentless journey, I have been contemplating during those precious moments of solitude the nature of existence.

Ode to Existence Revisited


Enmeshed and so often, entrapped

within this human world

distraction the norm,

conversation distilled into

a kind of relentless babble

born on the wings of bits and bytes,

joy equated with pleasure

and childish excitement,

happiness to be forever

pursued and hoarded like treasure,

a synthetic world of trinkets

and idle possessions,

heirlooms acquired,

building vast fortunes

of synthetic and finite illusions,

all with no consequence

all with little meaning.



And yet,

the reality of existence

moves along its

indefatigable path,

within the boundaries of

the wondrous cosmos.



Surrounded by the matrix

of the living world,

passengers aboard this fabulous spaceship

Earth,

caressed by capricious winds,

greeted by morning mist,

tossed upon perilous water,

enlivened by sunlight,

subdued by nightfall,

intimidated by fearsome storm,

forever surprised by the intrinsic beauty

delicate intricacies of nature’s tendrils

that reach into every corner and crevice,

every delicate spring blossom,

every blade of undulating grass,

every tree no matter how massive or

diminished,

every creature within its domain,

every idle thought that triggers

perception,

every substantive or meaningless dream.



Surrounded by this most amazing

universe,

this most fabulous galaxy

decorating the heavens with

innumerable stars,

witness to the dance of the planets,

subtleties of light and dark,

to the wild configurations of

shape and form and texture and color.



Blessed with this most awesome capability

of the sentient mind

to uncover the mysteries of

the nature of things,

to explore the vast and inner terrain of

self,

to find meaning,

to explore possibilities,

to appreciate detail and

discover function,

to search for truth

and find it,

to know peace

and appreciate the essence of love.



Life is a voyage and a journey,

bounded by explosive birth

and the finality of death,

constrained by the

vagaries and vicissitudes

of unfolding time,

life is to be affirmed

by wrapped attention,

life is to be possessed

from moment to moment and

neither squandered nor abandoned.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Shadows of War

            Darkness once again falls

heavily upon this tiresome human world.

Shadows of war

propelled by ridiculous dreams of dominance and empire

sustained by minds

unable to see the horrid future they project,

unwilling to embrace the pain and suffering

they inflict,

unreceptive to the laments of mothers

over the children forever lost to the shrill

call of bombs and bullets

as explosions rip through the fabric of neighborhoods,

unrepentant for the death they distribute

to the innocent like candy,

for all the blood and bones and carnage,

for all the wrecked lives and distorted hatred

injected into the future,

unable to embrace all of humanity as equals,

ever ready to crawl into bed

with hollow and pointless death.

Shadows of war,

a long and tiresome story

revisited again and again

the litany long,

the dark foreboding song always the same,

the list seeming endless,

stretching back

to the very beginnings of

civilization.

How long can Homo sapiens endure?

how long can the natural world

upon which we depend

sustain us?

when we choose

chaos over harmony

needless death and unimagined suffering

over love and life,

darkness over light,

stupidity over real intelligence

over and over again.

Darkness once again falls

heavily upon this tiresome human world.

Ode to the Elusive Peace of Mind

I wish to say farewell

to all trivial considerations,

all venal and self-serving dreams,

all of ego’s darlings

piled up like so many useless magazines

cluttering the thoroughfares of the mind.

 

I wish to terminate the leases

of all the shabby and unwanted tenants that

occupy the precious real estate within

my neuronal wonder.

 

I wish to finally release all the hostages

reminiscent of bygone desires and

missed opportunities,

they take far too much succor to retain.

 

I wish to welcome all of

life’s truly wondrous aspects,

of nature’s magnificent presence

and finally let all of existence consume me

within the grasp of perfect peace.


Saturday, December 31, 2022

A Hopeful Dream

Truth no longer a whisperbut a flood of clarity,
guns and all weapons of
bad intention or ill feeling
reduced to their base metals
and fashioned into implements of healing,
all who are hungry
are fed,
all who are afraid
are reassured,
all who are pariahs
brought into the human fold,
all who are filled with the bile of hatred
cajoled with sweetness and caring,
all who suffer needlessly
from their own lack of faith in themselves
see the blazing light of true wisdom,
all who have hearts weighted by greed
free themselves from the onerous weight of possessions,
all who love ignorance
witness the rapture and wonder of learning,
all who usurp themselves and others with power,
come to recognize their own impotence,
all who are crippled and torn apart by disease
see their true worth,
artists and lovers of knowledge and thought
are finally appreciated,
all without homes
find shelter in the heart of humanity,
all who are fractured
made whole,
all who are obsessed by race or creed
are freed of their limitations,
all limited and pernicious ideas
fall to oblivion from their own weight,
all who are demagogues
find a life of true service,
all ideas born of avarice and rooted in war
are finally dead,
all embrace all
as members of the human family.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Pathetic Emperors of Greed

 

At this moment in time (the winter of 2022) as the year nears its end, certain individuals of the male persuasion - supposedly worth billions of dollars - are regularly depicted in the news. These individuals are particularly vociferous and manage to project their personalities into the public consciousness with a stunning regularity. This has inspired me to create the following piece entitled,

Pathetic Emperors of Greed


Within the formidable shadow of

accumulated wealth

these two bit emperors

surrounded by their phalanx of

bodyguards and

sycophants ever ready with

meaningless phrases and shallow praise,

inject their toxic venom into the

public space to perpetually remind us all

of the rarified space they occupy.



From shallow mind to

slimy tongue

they elaborate lies

implausible fictions

deleterious conclusions

based upon nothing of substance,

designed to foster hatred

upset balance

foster confusion

incite turmoil.



These preposterous idiots

enamored of themselves

forever admiring their

reflections in silver mirrors

their constant companions,

bathing in their own stupidity,

emersed in the chaos they engender,

murdering empathy

compassion and

the common good

with utmost precision,

suggesting violence,

inciting hatred in

confused minds.



These pathetic emperors

of their shallow kingdoms,

embrace an image of themselves

within their tortured and

infantile minds,

without real substance

frantically attempting to

smother their desperate aloneness,

and the perpetual fear of their

monumental inadequacies.



These pathetic emperors of greed

steeped in the fallacy of their

exaggerated importance

carry the insatiable urge

to constantly remind us all of their

inspired presence,

like hapless juveniles they

insinuate themselves into the public space.


Like all the petty tyrants that

preceded them

they demand unequivocal attention

threaten the peace and

should be thoroughly and completely ignored.

Thursday, October 6, 2022

A Window into Existence

Born into the scope of

sun and moon and stars and night

into mother’s sweet embrace

upon an ever-spinning and wondrous planet

servant to its parent star,

expelled from the womb of darkness

and transformation

in a state of sweet oblivion.


Born into the prospects for love and hunger

laughter and grief and

ceaseless adventure

with a unique genetic imprint

yet simply another member of

the human race – Homo sapiens.


Born into family and tribe and nation

yet forever alone with the

wonder and burden of self.


Born into a kaleidoscope of

emotions,

a labyrinth of escalating ideas,

the enigmatic world of dreams and

the wonder and enormity of

consciousness.


Born into

a living world,

a reality devoid of guarantees,

filled with the many textures

and surprising dimensions of

the unexpected.


Born into the living world

moving inexorably

along time’s arrow

tied to the cosmic symphony

ultimately destined to the finality of

the joy molecular.


Eventually to discover

there is no

singular solution to the

enigma of existence,

no one way to live a life,

no escape from

life’s ultimate conclusion,

no mysterious rescue,

no salvation from the

tenacious grip of reality

and the forward movement of time.


Ultimately to learn

the art of surrender

to the ultimate truth

that promises no alternative outcomes.


A magnificent and wildly haphazard

trajectory from birth

to death

within the rhapsody and dance

of the cosmos.

On occasion, my mind careens through my past and collides into the sweet and bitter taste of memories of friendships come and gone. Over the years I have experienced the deep loss associated with the death of many friends. The names that occur to me are Beatrice, Samiha, Najma, Warren, David, Bill, Chris, Robert, Nina, Noburu, Philip, Michael, Robert and others.

I imagine that they have all gathered, both living and dead, in one place as if summoned to a sumptuous feast filled with color, and light and erotic and sensory images of the fleeting past. At this gathering, I envision a continuous slideshow displayed on a big screen in an endless loop – you know the kind I am thinking of as on display in the memorials of the recently deceased. Such displays rarely if ever display the individuals involved not at their best and most gracious selves. At this imagined slideshow, there is no such inhibition.

All the beds slept in both luxurious and mundane with erstwhile partners. All the exquisite and banal couplings with organs engorged and engaged at the beckoning of love’s insatiable fever. All the anticipation realized or diminished. All the passion spent or eroded by circumstance. The dance and inherent rhythms of bodies in their thirst for both substance and pleasure.

All the friendships accumulated in idle remembrance and fond recollections over the years. The bond created with childhood friends on the block outside the tenement apartment (1E) in my Bronx neighborhood. Visions of sultry summer days with the neighborhood fire hydrant spewing its content, and the bitter cold of winter sequestered in our fortresses of snow and ice as we staged joyous assaults upon our manufactured enemies with our hastily made collections of snowball weaponry.

Friends and enemies intertwined within the web and matrix of all things past. All the intense conversations of youth; all terribly meaningful at the time, but more reminiscent of that self-absorption so characteristic of adolescence.

At this spontaneous banquet, the guests awaited an erudite statement of some significance from their host regarding why they were all summoned. With a great deal of embarrassment, I realized that I had nothing either cogent or significant to say to them. I was speechless. What I finally uttered was pathetically inadequate: I said, “You are all here by pure happenstance; how this came to happen is a mystery to me It seems to be the physical manifestation of one of my exotic thought dreams.” This comment was met by an agitated state of annoyance and confusion.

My dear friend Beatrice, who died many years ago at the young age of forty-one, was never one to mince her words, spoke out, “Are you kidding me, This is why I came out of my sweet repose!”

In a hurried attempt to rescue some semblance of respectability I then said, “Beatrice, I am sorry; I did not mean to offend. I have such fond memories of you. To all of you, my dearest friends, gathered here, my sincerest apologies. I just didn’t know what to say – I was overwhelmed by this amazing gathering. Since you are here, please enjoy yourselves.” For some reason, this pathetic explanation was considered plausible enough and the party continued. Many of those present had no connection whatsoever with anyone else. I did my best to introduce as many as I could to others. As a result, many stories were exchanged that provoked uninhibited laughter, surprise, amazement and sometime disbelief. It turned out to be a wonderful event.

I noted that of those in attendance, a preponderance were women. This reality reflected the fact that I have always felt more comfortable in the company of women than with those of the same gender. However, regardless of their sexual orientation, they were all kindred spirits to me. I have remained in contact with some of these friends, but many have moved on with their lives. I wonder about them and where there lives have taken them.

In life, we accumulate friends, lovers, companions, acquaintances and colleagues. The experiences that are associated with them are all stored in long-term memory – to be called upon later. In life, one is born into a family of one kind or another, a locality we recognize as place and a tribe or nation. Bundled with all of these intricate and interwoven facets are a particular language(s), culture and an unwritten code of acceptable behavior. In this way norms are established that are viewed as natural to young and innocent minds filled with enthusiasm and excitement in the mere and daunting prospect of living. It is only later in life that these imposed values are subjected to scrutiny and questioned within the elaborate matrix of the thinking brain.