Wanted: White-Styled Privilege
To Alleviate
Effects of New Jim Crow.
Please Forward to:
Nearly Two Million,
Currently Subjugated
And Awaiting Justice
And Civil Rights
And Restitution
Alongside
Several Lost Generations.
So Many Broken Lives
Can No Longer Wait
for the Promise of the Future.
So
Your Attention is Requested Immediately.
To Every Thing There is a Season.
Surely Carolina Parakeet,
Yours was too short and too colorful.
In wisdom were you made communal,
The earth made full with your divinity:
Separated in hats of divine extinction
Forever.
All Creatures Great and Small
Excepting flightless island dwellers,
Great Auk, for your black feathers,
for your lifelong mating,
meaning you were taken down by the pair,
to the very last meaty couple,
Forever.
Not One of These Creatures Will Be Missing
Bu the Labrador Duck couldn’t make the book.
Were you waning and needing a push?
A mystery why we did it?
No taste, no reason, no notice until
A boy from inland Elmira shot you alone
Forever.
The Fowls of the Air Will Tell Thee
Passenger Pigeon you blackened his heaven
And blotted Audubon’s sun from the sky.
The great conserving state legislature
Declared your flock illegal game
A decade after its final passing
Forever.
I know all the Fowls of the Mountains
Well maybe their savory prairie cousins.
Heath Hen, retiring to Martha’s Vineyard
There your friends planting and supporting
Also legislating before witnessing
On top of the lonely tree; Your Last Call
Forever.
Tragedy with Evil Growing Stronger,
Will Good Rescue a World Once Defended?
A person my age may live much longer,
Beyond times for which they were intended.
My Essence Indomitable,
My Inspirations Invaluable,
My Motives Unassailable,
My Potential Incalculable,
My Growth Unstoppable,
My Hopes Sustainable,
My Achievements Certifiable,
My Future Attainable,
My Education Irreplaceable!
The one-eye Collie and the Manic Bird Dog, too, too excited passing Pasture Gate. Still cluttered with last year’s milkweeds. Too, too many box elders are taking root. Broken Dormer on the old well in the weeds, threatening, as remembered, to take a child away. The pasture’s top edge, the slope still gentle. Abandoned Ladder waiting against Grandpa’s sour cherry. Overgrowth almost hiding Butternut Gateway. The dogs still polite, still excited the slow one came out today, straining to contain the run, Now stinging, slapping black-cap canes. On through to the gully’s wall smooth path quickly rising now forty, now fifty steep feet above the Spring Rush Creek, passing Slate Plate Bank, The aunts always claimed rattlers lived here, Dogs, enough of slowness, making a vertical break as the steepest climb begins. Fallen tree litter tumbles as paws and tails disappear up above and over the edge, into the forest towards Russet Apple Tree Patch, The creek forks, left branch soon ending at Top Pasture and out to the view at One Tree of the whole valley, but it is the right that goes to Shoe Rock in the cascade of spring water and the path’s final gentle downward slope to merge with the creek’s muddy splashes, quickly leading to Trillium Grove at last, Just one so far, still enough for any journey, And look! The dogs are back with presents for the ailing slow one: A grin in motion from the One-Eyed Collie, Eye level leaps from the Manic Bird Dog,and Fresh Rabbit for All!
You are always in the game,
wherever I’ve played it.
Forty cards in the deck,
With a nickel always at risk,
And your special “Oomph!”
And swish of the wrist,
Sending the taking three
or ace to the table…are always,
in my hand biding their time
With twinkle and grin,
Even as you were dying,
You asked if I’d been planning
To let you win. I’ve kept your
mischief and smile also,
to play them as wild cards,
whenever I’ve needed your pluck.
Tears Idle, tears…
“Yes you DO know what they mean”
said the teacher,
and I was so self-impressed.
“But I wonder to the degree …
of dying eyes”
said the blind man,
my teacher, my guide.
So I knew, I’d just kinda got it,
beyond my years,
And the worst to “get”
was yet to come
for the ship I saw
was only still at the pier.
And those I loved,
were only just now boarding.
So I had more to get.
And Oh Others! And
Oh Days! Oh Generations!
Oh, Kisses!
Oh, Tears!
Got it. Oh I did!
While concocting each new poem each day
The poet knew he’d be battling ’til May:
The urge to keep fighting
‘Gainst writing ‘Bout writing
Til he weakened: giving one muse its say.
When I found you your star,
Alphecca to the Arabs, but Gemma,
always from then to you and me,
The Alpha Diamond of Corona,
shining in the Crown of the North on
those summer evenings. The back patio.
To smell fresh cut alfalfa hay, the peepers
and the Fireflies, when the screen
door creaked to say that you
were coming out to the tranquil dark,
sometimes to ask “Show me my star!”
When your sister gave us the gift,
four places of Silver and that note,
A charming tale you both exchanged,
As each family outgrew more settings
that neither could afford. Later I smiled.
But then, momentarily left the wedding party,
with her words “once your mother’s”, for
the empty, tranquil dark yard to bawl in,
Standing with the massive western sky,
First the handle’s Arc to Arcturus and then
upward to Hercules and Corona,
always to hear: “Show me my star!”
When I met your grand-daughter,
her first 15 minutes, eyes intently
scanning a populated new world.
You know she’ll never stop honoring
those, her unknown generations’,
unfilled yearnings to share their love.
But did my sister know when
choosing just a middle name,
it would close a celestial circle?
That on an urban summer evening,
the coals now cooling and
we guests well fed and yes,
the Fireflies have come back.
When my niece, catching my
glances upward towards Corona,
sometimes to ask: “Show me my star!”
Back in the day,
Before Mere Opinions
Became Facts,
Before Free Markets
Enslaved Children,
Before More Packaging
Brought Less Product,
Before a Slice of Cheese
needed a Fossil Wrapper,
Before Garbage,
Became Exportable,
Before Land
Became Disposable,
Before Extinctions
Were Our Distinctions,
Before We Man-Handled
The Seasons, The Climate,
The Atmosphere, The Gulf,
The Arctic, The Amazon,
Before we decolonized
the Honey Bees,
and enslaved the rest.
Back in that day,
Before the Dodo,
We were just
“Bloody Ignorant Apes.“
Not the final days,
We’ll Talk About That Later,
As I approach that age.
But there was a time,
yes, before mine,
Where by your stories,
You proved the world existed,
long before I had my consciences.
And it could be just and
peace loving and forgiving.
Now in my now times,
I’ve found many more of us,
even “of the world”,
that will answer the bell
by refusing the fight.
But no one I’m knowing
cuts out just the good parts
and makes them their own.
As it is written. Like you did.
Grandpa. Man to Man?
I’m proud of you.
If you can just get out of your body,
You’ll discover you know how to fly.
Swoop past your personal biography,
Find a way to where the Time Goes By.
When stars do glow, let Novae light the way,
To the dust from which you’ll yet become.
If you’re stopped here to watch the fall of man,
Well, first, you’re going to need a son.
Do you think you’re now too grand,
Your spirit passes as worlds’ collide?
I’ve been there and would suggest:
That lonely little soul should be your guide.
Don’t shed your wings, you will need them still.
Your greatest test is yet now at hand.
The hardest task for you since taking flight,
Will be learning How and When to Land.
An explanation is but a click away under the big hat
My thoughts
get on the page
quickly, needing freedom
to get to their new home inside
your mind
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The Armada returns in failure… Legs refuse to stand, And, yet! As the Earth turns home for Daylight. When I sense a new morning’s sun, Already Calling Me to Rise. |
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Your trombone wants to KILL the blues.
Doesn’t it? I mean the Baby Boomer Blues.
The All-I-wanna-hear-me is-funk’n-Blues.
Forget what it ain’t, let’s explain what is.
Total Sonic Immersion. But Christ,
if writing it could say it,
why would you use music?
Still our extinction swings (according to you.)
My good friend: we can paint it another
way, you also have been heard to sing.
An eastern rag! The Noise and the Space Between.
Free, it wants to end free.
Poor Poetry and Pompous Prosaics!
Words only glimpse our aural journeys.
For those willing to pay full fare, then
the complete destination’s just ahead…
but only if you listen.
Those are my boys,
Humphrey & Sydney & Peter & Claude & Me.
Quoters & Knowers & Watchers & Readers…
…and Boozehounds.
All of us Warner Brothers.
With formative years: On Top of The World!
Didn’t every guy used to be a bigshot?
My youth was shot in widescreen.
My friends were all the usual suspects.
Together we met Stanley, Marty and
with Francis, we watched more than
a Conversation…
But Grace Kelly’s face
entering two stories high over the
nosey villager…the world’s weariest Stewart.
No. They don’t make us like they used to!
But…wait…You talkin’ to me?
And as Jove’s Sceptre swept me from his throne.
Most heard within – the rise of hubris moan.
Yes, Did I fall through years. (The Dome! Kersplash!)
Hear All! The Alph runs grey with Human Ash.
Mortal. Alone. My Nimbus fades from fright.
Behold! A vision of an unexpected plight!
No matter what….I’ll never hear the words.
A Babylonic Fate: to graze among the herds.
What pool one day reflects this face to dread?
I stare fore-ever at the Gorgon’s Head.