Tolled Dull Waste

Fowl wind's
brash past
stashed
sky, blew
flush guts'
gust: blushed.

Sever all
thrill-kilt
stilled
lie, tolled
dull waste
waits: sculled.

Corrupted file's
flies memorize
disguised
profit: net's
nest subsidized.

This Charitable Nation

This charitable nation sends vast sums of money to aid those unfortunates who suffer from the harsh calamities natural disasters wreck. This charitable nation air lifts food, water and medical supplies to the needy and starving citizens in foreign countries. This charitable nation deposes dictators in foreign countries, and in the process of bringing the "freedom of democracy" to the people of those countries, this charitable nation destroys their infrastructure, decimates their economies, induces civil war and imposes a martial law more restrictive than the preceding dictator's government exerted. This charitable nation wants to erect its own Berlin Wall, seeking to prevent the natural, migratory and instinctual urges of the poor who only want their fair share of the affluence available within its borders. This charitable nation supplies funds, and sometimes even equipment and manpower, to assist in rebuilding the infrastructure relevant to the businesses within its own cities - while ignoring the needs: evacuation, food, health, housing and welfare of the citizens in those cities - devastated by natural disaster. This charitable nation offers hundreds of billions of dollars to businesses and businessmen whose insatiable greed induced them to exercise poor decisions, wrecking havoc in the national and world economies, while supplying the mere pittance of $500 to most of its citizens, all of whom were affected by the economic collapse and most of whom engaged in no contracts or other circumstances which led to or induced that collapse. Meanwhile, this charitable nation provides no relief whatsoever to the poorest citizens - who need assistance the most but will, instead, find public assistance to the poor, as well as privately funded charitable assistance to the poor, drastically cut. This charitable nation spends exorbitant sums for projects and policies its elected officials deem necessary, whether or not the citizens concur, and then passes on the bill for payment to its children and grandchildren with accumulated, usurious rates of interest at the same time as incorporating irrational and economically stifling inflation. This charitable nation provides tax shelters and itemized deductions to the wealthy, enabling them to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while the middle class is taxed into poverty. This charitable nation systematically reduces funding to the poor and those who give aid to the poor, stealing the shelters for the homeless as it both creates more homeless everyday and also enacts laws to prevent the homeless from camping on any land within its national borders. This charitable nation has converted LBJ's war on poverty into a war against the poor, everywhere, seemingly seeking to exterminate the poor of every land in a cultural/economic genocide.

The Disenchantress

A teenage enchantress stroked
her chestnut hair one hundred
times every night, gazing
into her full length mirror,
mirror on the wall, pronouncing
herself fairest of them all,
imagining herself in the arms
of the football team captain
in a far off future land
of make believe: white picket
fence surrounding the well
manicured yard of a two-story,
upper crust, suburban home.

Amid the congregation of social
hangers-on, she pointed out misfortune
dripping from the sweat of a feebled,
balding man, a two week stench
perfumed the tattered, dirty clothing
draping from his emaciated body. They
all laughed and snickered, as they gawked
mockingly in his direction, reducing his
crumpled form into a cultural stereotype -
a sub-human.

Years later, the former enchantress
still holds court - now, her snaggle-tooth
mouth verbally accosts strangers,
wheedlingly pleading for spare change
along the Venice Beach boardwalk,
laughing with her disheveled retinue,
each one spitting epithets at ignoring,
affluent passersby, while clear, cheap
vodka drools from crooked mouths.

Somewhere in her backpack,
the disenchantress clings
to the hair brush which once endowed
her chestnut tresses with a sparkling
sheen. It reclines, unused, almost
forgotten, along with the faded memory
of her smug, finger-pointing superiority,
hidden by her collection of methadone,
syringes, a packet of rolling tobacco
and papers, a couple of hamburgers she
liberated from a garbage can, her extra
panties, soiled and scented with brown
and red stains, and her secret stash
of vodka for later that night, when
she would awaken, shaking, coughing,
and spitting up blood from her failing
liver, dreaming about the fairy tale
ending to life her mother once promised.

This poem has been selected by Sabellapress for inclusion in an anthology which they will publish and release in the summer of 2009 under the title, "Unhoused Voices: Granting Change for the Homeless."

Human Intelligence

A seedling sprouts, upwardly mobile,
shooting through seemingly inert earth.
A kite languorously floats
upon nothing visible.
Water spills from the sky
without a sprinkler system
being engaged. Migratory
sparrows return to yearly roosts -
no Capistrano exit sign,
map or GPS marks the route.

Beavers build dams creating habitats,
assisting natural splendor and diversity.
Humans pour concrete for flushing and showers,
for water skiing and houseboat luxury,
sucking ecosystems dry - eradicating
whole expressions of life's currency.

No other animal defaces the landscape,
causes extinction,
or pollutes the land,
sea and air with its waste!

Others' refuse renews the land
and feeds the planet,
while ours chokes, stifles
and poisons our home.
Nuclear radiation threatens
playgrounds and backyards
with contamination.

Some proclaim humans
the most intelligent life form.

Riddles

A fervent cry from the deepest reaches
Within caverns burrowed into the earth
Bemoans the plaintive mourning screeches
Which avail gods to re-invent mirth;
The only answer to these beseeches
Whisper riddles on the relative worth
Posed by arguments held in mind's niches
And whether they existed before birth:

Does folly seek meaning in drama?
Can a being compel tides to rise?
Must insight and growth incite through trauma,
Or does immanence live in compromise?
Do truth's seeds grow in myths of Rama?
Did the Buddha explain all he surmised?
Why do high cliffs house llamas and lamas?
Explain why nature must be revised.