Wednesday, September 13, 2006

View from a Desk

Casting a glass eye round
For approval
He feels winks fall
On his polished page.
Nothing simple and beautiful
Is easy.
He knows that,
Like a childhood pledge.

Yet bells toll hollow success
As heroes morph
From hungry piglets.
He consents to pride
On a Monumental scale
As his capital heaves
On the back of swooning ego.
All puffed puffery.

Back-slapping, boob boys
Chase themselves
Back to sports sheds
And bar rooms,
Telling stories
Of cut-edged risk
And shoulder charged
Confrontation.

Keep it up, Keep it up
If you drop the pace
The team goes down
We're ALL connected,
You know -
For No man's an island
Unto himself -
Any drop will collapse the stage.

In this false cry,
Reason is drowned,
What else can there be,
But complicity.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Pericles Rising

And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.

They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.

Robert Frost 1942


From a swollen earth,
Wrought-cracked and splitting,
Rose Hellen’s dream.
The Mighty stretched out,
Dry and fraught,
Fingering their empires
To city states,
Gold like a phoenix claw,
Pierced upward through wilting flesh.
And the Mighty recoiled,
Snapping back each hand,
One by one by one,
Shrieking and lashing tongues.

A revolt of grime and blood
Burst from pierced arteries
To fill the ravines.
And Pericles kept rising.

As each new city severed
The chord to its mother,
New cracks were filled in the earth.
As each new city found a song,
The land began to glisten,
Woven as a brutal tapestry.
Each song new.
Each song unique.

As time marched on
Kingdoms dissolved
Leaving just their name,
Echoes of a hollow scream
As a new world was born.
And Pericles kept rising.

And the new way spoke
Of freedom and truth
In the place of
Darkness and tyranny,
And Pericles kept rising.

While his monstrous head grew
To caste its shadow
Over free peoples,
And Pericles kept rising.

Until he was high enough
To roar of danger
Beyond the horizon,
And Pericles kept rising.

O great leader save us!
They cried.
Without seeing an enemy,
And Pericles kept rising.

Then he bent down
Sweeping his hand across the land,
Taking up his flock
Crying: “I have created all this for you.
Follow me, to your war.
It is inevitable.”
And they followed.

Friday, September 01, 2006

The Interview

I couldn't let her know
About how I really felt.
About why I shit
On every opportunity
That she felt was so
Beautiful and piqued,
Ready to be plucked by
An enthusiastic whippet,
Just like her young champion

I couldn't tell her I didn't give a shit for any of it.
It was all old.
Stale.
Rude.
Molested by her enthusiasm.
I was too old.
I wanted more.

But I couldn't tell her because
I was trapped.
No escape door in my head.
My perceptions had let me down
And I couldn't scream out "fuck you"
From under my self-made ocean.

I know she wanted me to.
Looking inside my eyes
I think she knew there was more to come out.
But I didn't help her.
I gave her stories of hope,
Confidence,
Development,
Vision.

Now, it will be a matter of time.
But everything is a matter of time.