Nascent Scream

There is a nascent scream

forming in my throat

its origin runs deep

within the labrynth of

my psyche,

embedded in the fabric of

my persona,

beneath the scaffolding that

supports the beating of my heart

intermingled with my breath.

 

I've endured for far too long

the pathetic nature of the

human condition,

the endless stream of senseless violence

that circumnavigates the globe,

pointless murders based on

an infrastructure of crazed logic

embellished with religious beliefs

that tolerate no answer except the

ridiculous ones purported to come out of

the mouth of psychotic deities,

untimely deaths of men, women children,

victims of ludicrous struggles for power

wrought by nations that seek nothing but plunder

disguised as self-righterousness.

 

I've lived through too many wars,

too numerous to detail,

too horrid to contemplate,

too stupid to be believable,

wars that have grinded bodies

to dust,

buried alive thousands too

weak to resist,

wars that have wasted entire cities,

turned civilization to rubble,

sent mothers and their children

to screaming deaths,

wars that sacrificed reason and intellect

to the desire for oblivion and ruin,

wars that have murdered hope and

offered free license to despair,

wars that thwart human progress and

consign many to an early grave,

wars that unwind the clock of the future,

launching history into the

darkness of the dreaded past.

 

I've grown weary of the

endless streams of nonsense that

fill the bandwidth of the present with

tidal waves of petty thoughts and

nearly useless information.

 

I've come to tire of the

misuse of language,

vocal chords no longer the

gateways to our minds,

words strung together haphazardly in

nonsensical arrays,

communication no longer a tool for

exploration of self and other,

all has become insufferable vanity.

 

There is this nascent scream

lodged within the signature of my

innermost self,

brief sojourn of life so delicate and

wondrous,

turned into a shadow play

filled with circus and

steeped in illusion.

 

Reality has become sidelined,

the trumpets sound,

the noise deafening,

humanity herded into

a vast and perplexing hall of mirrors

where all protest is muted and

within the blazing lights of a

multitude of artificial suns,

what is essentially black and dismal

seems somehow golden,

young and agile children

armed with baskets

filled with a bounty of ornaments

disperse wondrous arrays of color

without substance,

fill the domed enclosure

shrouded from the incessant darkness

with idle and cheerful songs.

 

Dread has become enshrouded by apathy,

fear by pitiful amusement,

architects of the future

have crafted a world

impossible for humanity to endure.

 

This nascent scream

nesting within my belly

is an incipient cry of anguish

over all the needless suffering

carried by so many for

no acceptable reason,

for all the mindless insanity.

Existence in All its Naked Wonder

Within the house of innocence

there are no mirrors,

no telltale inkling of the truth.

 

The spin of the disc jockey,

the alluring call of the

near-naked model with the

fabulous jugs

whose nipples entice with a

suggestive glance as she

mounts the hood of a honda accord

urging the hapless to buy with abandon,

the clearasil politician with

flatulence in his pants

constructing a doomsday device

within his agile brain

who tells quite another story

stitched together with

lies and misinformation,

all the nimble admen and procurers of

bottled pleasure and innocuous daydreams

designed to suppress rage and contain despair,

armies of fabricators of digital delights

carving a prodigious mountain of bits

into the essential pabulum of the age,

all occupied with the formidable task of

erecting a wondrous tower of imagery and

delusion that bears no resemblance to existence.

 

Within the breast of every human

beats a heart designed to live,

to move about the planet,

to breath whether the air be fetid or pure,

to gather energy in bits of flesh and fruit and

root and leaf and stem,

to penetrate the core of desire and

conjoin egg with itinerant seed to

sustain the species.

 

Within the boney skull lies the

a fabulous organ crafted from

millions of years of practice and experience

honed from diligence and potent error,

assembled from happenstance and the

incessant greed for life.

 

Within the core of this fabulous

piece of organic magic

resides a gifted sculptor

armed with wondrous circuitry

that distils from the chaos

of the flowing universe

a sense of order and purpose,

the formidable idea of god

who makes all things possible and

helps contain the ever-present shadow of

inescapable mortality,

the need for language and the

idea of civilization that flows from it.

 

At the helm of this neuronal wonder

rides the captain

constantly compelling his minions to

act upon matter and

extract from incessant desire

and petulant curiosity

a purpose for existence.

 

Civilizations have come and gone,

have endured the jaugenot from

lofty beginnings,

through anguish and confusion,

from fire to ash

finally ending in ruin.

 

Beneath the rich panoply

of all the raucous theories

regarding divine purpose,

underneath the perpetual shell game

of contrived enjoyment and

the lofty edifice of indifference and

delusion,

at the very core of

sublime pleasure,

and inevitable suffering

lies a simple truth,

existence.

 

Idle self-proclaimed truth tellers

fill the airways with vast yet

shadowy edifices of pure nonsense.

 

Beneath the arch of the

endless cosmos filled with

rapturous starshine,

humans convene at the marble factory

where conformity is fashioned and

idleness constrained

 

At the marble factory

within great expanses of real estate

under a magnificent domed sky

a bland facsimile of the sun

is projected to fill the space with a

cold and unforgiving light.

 

At the marble factory

there is no place to hide,

there is no place to gather and recollect,

there is only an endless array of machines

that hum incessantly and beep and flash,

that manufacture things

we are compelled to need and

urged to acquire.

 

At the marble factory,

data is collected, digested, regurgitated

and reshaped to ultimately create

the most magnificent machine of all.

 

It is called by many names,

it is referred to in hushed tones

and regarded with great pride by the

master builders,

it was built to be indestructible,

it was contrived to sustain itself,

it was forged from illusory materials

to contain and perpetuate and

world of shadows and delusion.

 

Life has been likened to a

perpetual game where

truth is obscured by wily magic,

life has become a peep show

where the participants can only watch

but never touch or feel the essence of

passion or desire.

 

There is an endless queue at the pawn shop where

the present moment is exchanged for

innocuous glitter and happiness delivered

in an empty bottle bound for the recycler.

 

Yet, when this fabulous warehouse

of concoctions falls apart from

lack of substance,

the vast terrain of existence remains

strewn with chaos and desire,

passion and suffering,

pleasure and longing,

where the essence of matter and time

cavort with naked truth

that does not abide illusion.

Art Is

            ART

Art is a lonely business,

its fire rebukes the tepid reality

of casual behaviors.

it is a fire

that always must be fed,

it is ravenous,

it is contemptuous of compromise.

Art is a deadly endeavor,

its ultimate goal

to consume itself,

to come to the final resting place

of definitive union with being.

Panning for Gold

 

I travel on the road

to nowhere.

 

There are old people in wheelcheers

queueing up at the food banks

with hopelessness dawning in

their eyes.

 

There are the hapless children

of the street,

wayward and indifferent to the

suffering they inflict,

hollow is their journey.

 

A growing army of those

on the margins,

desparate for joy and relief

from the unrelenting grayness,

from somber mornings and the

nightmares that plague their dreams.

 

I travel on the road

to nowhere through

miles of parched terrain,

towering hillocks of blackened earth.

 

Men, women and children

features darkened by the

coarseness of dirt

crouch down on aching knees,

relentlessly searching for any bit

of gold that might be

trapped within the fabric of the

beleaguered soil.

 

I travel on this road

to nowhere,

into a future

overtaken by humanity's

horrific conclusions.

Earthquake

 

Volatile and restive planet,

cities are dispatched like

annoying growths

at the end of a surgeon's scalpel,

civilization's handiwork,

marvels of human engineering,

products of tireless effort

delivered to oblivion

within the fleeting grasp of

passing time.

 

Humanity is but a transient

miniscule passenger

on this vibrant world,

terribly unconvinced about

our theoretical importance,

order delivered to chaos

one moment to the next.

Early Morning on Thasos

Earth thrusts upwards to

ensnare the sky

newly enshrined by

sun's sweet and enabling kiss.

 

Along the hillside

engulfed in bedrock

white, red-roofed houses

shine softly in the grip

of eastern light.

 

From a distance

unmistakable chants of roosters

welcome the dawn with

characteristic erudition

chasing the foreboding

dreams of children out of

their sleepy heads

 

Synchronous sounds of a

multitude of bells

echo off the hillsides

as shepherds move their flocks

to neighboring fields

where no fences intrude.

 

An old man waits with

patient anticipation for the bread man

as he makes his rounds

along narrow winding village roads

hawking his fresh-baked goods.

 

Two uniformed girls

books in hand

step out of their houses

still laden with quiet

and walk the path to school.

 

Early morning on Thassos

mountainess isle in the north agean

enraptures us as willing hostages to

sun, azure skies and emerald water. 

Idle Thoughts on a Wistful Afternoon

Wistful moments entice me, yet

reality continues in pursuit of

all the inescapable consequences of

being.

 

It is indeed a remarkable planet

circling its star that

delivers life as a simple outcome of

its unruly nature, yet

humanity has no appreciation of this

wondrous bit of magic.

 

Crows disrupt proud eagle's

carnivorous intentions,

plants yield up their

brilliant flowers to entice

industrious insects and

impale on human vision the

breath of the divine.