Defeat - 10/30/2009

Distant laughter intermingled
with birdsongs
haunt
the dead city as the fog of
subtle absence of human sounds
no cars
or even footsteps or heartbeats
only a mild sun
and embers of orange leaves
surfing upon a dull autumn breeze

*     *     *

My childhood idly moped about
a desolate crossroads upon memory lane
under a night-blue sky

The fire shimmered
into nothingness in the west
The stars shrouded
the sunlit swingsets
and curious pebbles
in moonshine sunsets
and snow-melted springs

I stirred, slurred the reflected
pools of moonlit memories
on the rocks,
and the earth
rumbled and thundered
sundered and crumbled
as armies with unsigned search warrants
hammered through the
sun baked dirt walls
like the tide on a child's sandcastle

and flames hailed from
the nothingness of the cosmos,
meteorites striking magically true
to the wombs of women
and the tombs of heroes.

The gentle whisper of
a silent city once so beautiful
covered now
with moss and unearthed corpses

Merciful Love, save us. 

Public Speaking

I was chasing the skirt of Liberty on the history channel, in a class at Laney college out of curiosity - a class on Public Speaking

---


The shredded Magna Carta

blew across the
once prosperous

now smoldering
American Dream
while
Uncle Sam cannibalized
Lady Liberty,
grinning back with
bloodstained fingertips.

Children's toys crunched
under unwitting
solders soles upon the
promise land
Mothers' gardens ravaged
by savage
bayonets across the
manifest destiny.

The ruthless executioners
weld the scythe
forged from stainless steel
soiled with civilian sweat

And brothers,
once hopscotch friends,
Now deceived through blind believe
pour the gasoline
on our own crops
pillage the seeds
from our neighbors farms.

I have never imagined we'd
throw away the letters
and signatures signified
in a guarantee of freedom
for the indentured servants
from the imperialistic symbolic throne
so quickly (only after 200 years?)
Now the bond with
the leeching economic machines
is parasitic
and their venom sedates
even the cerebral intellectuals

Meanwhile, time stood still

As word artists
visual poets
sound sculptors

stood on soapboxes screaming truth
through the vice induced coma --

Wake up my love,
wake up.