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.

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.

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.