Pages
- Introduction
- Written and Spoken Word
- Published Works
- The Book of Books
- Selected Short Stories and Poetry
- Stories and Essays - Audio Versions
- Poetry Audio Versions
- Readings from Original Works - Video Versions
- Video Poems
- Original Sculpture
- Original Art
- Art's Panorama
- Nature's Wonders
- Flickr Photostream
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- Contact Author
Thursday, December 21, 2023
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.