A Man, Today
In a square, in a city, in a country I'd never known, a man approached me from the ground saying he'd made the dirt and gutter his home. His introduction quick, void of inhibition, no name no title his place with the untouchables was beyond prayer or superstition. A dirty earth had made him tan, birth had stolen his legs, his arms rippled with another days work, he reached for gifts with manic hands. The man had become a rapid beneath a city's stampede, he drug himself through the ignorant river waiting for that fallen tree branch to grasp and climb and be freed. He was king of a castle noone took time to see, an invisible kingdom of the waste and shit that drips from you and me. We rejected his resignation and returned him to his throne and masked our shame and robbed his potential and made improvements upon our homes. Off one road of broken brick and curbs and on to explore another, enslaved a coffee can as his crutch, he asked for help in screams, then pleas, then mutters. He had dropped his trident, his staff of sovereign shambles, so I fetched it from the dust and returned it to him with the blessings of a thousand priests that ramble. With no regard for the Man of the revolution, I elevated my eyes from this fleshly manifest of human pollution; to make my speech and reveal how I'm righteous, I needed to not see the piss upon this excrement so I could feel like I could fight this. I made my fists and I clenched my jaw and stood with teary eyes, and the masses wept a touching poem-of-promises called, "the abolishment of demise". And all the while a starving man, with whom we'd all since lost touch, watched a thousand armies march in a movement amounting to not much. All he needed was a meal, he told me from the level of my shoe lace, but our ears were deaf to reality beyond the ceremonies of saving face. That night, his majesty died in the cold of his potato sack suit, crimped and mangled by the failure of social ideas the struck advocates as "too new". His carcass decreed the ally, bartering with the walls to tell his final tales to the ears of his absent family. His hand gripped discarded wrappers where only scents remained, the aroma of grease boasted others' peace which his desperation had borne into fame. The eyes of the fallen king refused to close completely, his head leaned back, he lay on his side; his muscles still clenched from shivering in the night, loneliness and hunger forever his loyal brides.
A Preacher at His Podium
A preacher at his podium, his hands stretched to the world,
the congregation's up in arms, his eyes begin to tear, as their hands begin to curl.
but his chin raises to level and he says, "I'll never preach to deceive...
...the truth I've told you today is not just a truth about me..."
"your love's not real", an accusation from the back,
as the sheep surround the shepherd and hatred scripts an attack.
Pictures of signs with "god hates fags" emblazoned in proud bigot fashion,
parade for this preacher's demise, while a minute back he preached compassion.
A quarrel over love seems the oddest of all,
where humanity stops running, takes its knees and crawls,
where 'A' group hates 'B' group and 'C' group just watches,
till 'B' group's extinct cause 'C's sentiment is toxic,
in that town I have a vision [of] a little girl that's on the edge,
she's taken up the outskirts she knows the downtown means death,
the masses gather at city hall to decide what will go through,
where they assemble in all things arrogant, where white cloaks are tried and true,
she's tasted the bitterness of a sick decaying soul,
a life of lies based on the worth elitists hold.
the clicks have deemed her 'outcast', and the leaders just lead to lead,
so there is no change when she cries at night, a reason, a want to be freed.
she's imprisoned by the freedom of those allowed to judge,
shackled by the impotence that names tolerance 'too much',
and her little head hangs as the crowds refuse acceptance,
and her little heart tears more cause her hope remains relentless,
her face screams a need for change,
her insides writhe but her outsides can't complain.
they say this preacher's different, and they've been right before,
they give her food, they give her shelter, who is she to ask for more?,
but the problem's no longer when the lynching begins,
the problem's at the pulpit when love becomes sin,
hatred is the bastard lover
of stoic prejudice in affluent cover
so who dares hope for change,
the hands of Iraq raised in fists for better days.
nonviolence yields this, the crumbled corruption of an institution,
from voices versed in silent protest the ancient tongue of revolution,
who will charge the gates of Hatred Estate,
and dethrone the powers that steal and rape,
where vocals float and bodies dance,
where people want change to change there's a chance,
that preacher, that day, didn't know the world was at his palms,
a world bred to be indifferent to the way complacency scalds,
from shanty town to senate house, from kenya to illinois,
from Tommy to Johnny to Sudan's lost boys,
one message, one hope, persists to bitter ends,
we are one race, we are one people, it is on us to make amends.
the congregation's up in arms, his eyes begin to tear, as their hands begin to curl.
but his chin raises to level and he says, "I'll never preach to deceive...
...the truth I've told you today is not just a truth about me..."
"your love's not real", an accusation from the back,
as the sheep surround the shepherd and hatred scripts an attack.
Pictures of signs with "god hates fags" emblazoned in proud bigot fashion,
parade for this preacher's demise, while a minute back he preached compassion.
A quarrel over love seems the oddest of all,
where humanity stops running, takes its knees and crawls,
where 'A' group hates 'B' group and 'C' group just watches,
till 'B' group's extinct cause 'C's sentiment is toxic,
in that town I have a vision [of] a little girl that's on the edge,
she's taken up the outskirts she knows the downtown means death,
the masses gather at city hall to decide what will go through,
where they assemble in all things arrogant, where white cloaks are tried and true,
she's tasted the bitterness of a sick decaying soul,
a life of lies based on the worth elitists hold.
the clicks have deemed her 'outcast', and the leaders just lead to lead,
so there is no change when she cries at night, a reason, a want to be freed.
she's imprisoned by the freedom of those allowed to judge,
shackled by the impotence that names tolerance 'too much',
and her little head hangs as the crowds refuse acceptance,
and her little heart tears more cause her hope remains relentless,
her face screams a need for change,
her insides writhe but her outsides can't complain.
they say this preacher's different, and they've been right before,
they give her food, they give her shelter, who is she to ask for more?,
but the problem's no longer when the lynching begins,
the problem's at the pulpit when love becomes sin,
hatred is the bastard lover
of stoic prejudice in affluent cover
so who dares hope for change,
the hands of Iraq raised in fists for better days.
nonviolence yields this, the crumbled corruption of an institution,
from voices versed in silent protest the ancient tongue of revolution,
who will charge the gates of Hatred Estate,
and dethrone the powers that steal and rape,
where vocals float and bodies dance,
where people want change to change there's a chance,
that preacher, that day, didn't know the world was at his palms,
a world bred to be indifferent to the way complacency scalds,
from shanty town to senate house, from kenya to illinois,
from Tommy to Johnny to Sudan's lost boys,
one message, one hope, persists to bitter ends,
we are one race, we are one people, it is on us to make amends.
To Sell Your Christ in Heresy
Ignorance is bliss based on a ludicrous premise, that what I don't know won't hurt me,
Unless I know I don't know, and in knowing see I'm not the least bit deserving.
See the fact of the matter is there are no facts cause those truths are written as follows,
tonight we'll lace the headlines with lies which will read to our convenience tomorrow.
And on billboards that border what's known as White America happy little decrees will decry,
the little girl who wants neither hemp nor jewels as her necklace.
Unacceptable that she plays in the yard with her imaginary friends,
and that those friends have problems like her.
And the neighbors wander over and ask her who she talks to, she says Ahkmed, Katrine, and Raul,
they ask, "Why would you invent someone who's imperfect and in pain?", she says, "I don't know, how does God answer you?"
But blue eyes and blonde hair will earn her the lesson that her race has never cared and the curriculum will achieve its antithesis,
Soujourner Truth smiles in expired outh as we examine a past bleeding flaws,
but diverts her eyes from years unchanged for we've failed to pair faults with a cause.
History's not philosophy so we don't discuss more than what we're not to be,
but I thought Civics, Civics was about duty,
that every person, first a civilian, can vote and work and pursuit prosperity,
but that banks on you being civil and to assume so you must sell your Christ in heresy.
Civilization is defined by those who call themselves civil and so the argument is a bit circular,
regardless, by those standards it seems gentlemen can forget their brother's burden and ladies, their soul's entablature.
What testament is it that says "thou shall not buy your house across from trailer park"?,
the same one that says "don't breath too deep tasting life might stop your heart."
Please, allow me to avoid hypocrisy, leave your feet and stop with me,
lets adopt a purpose together,
if nothing else this, each night we pause and observe the weather,
we'll name the clouds out loud and understand that whether its war, starvation, or shame,
only those who opt for their mind's paralysis can claim they've got it made.
and we'll never curse the rain 'cause whether it ends someone's famine or brings someone's flood its not falling drops on trial,
its me and you as our tongues catch the sky's elixir,
it's whether we'll wed the world our bride and in doing so redefine a gentlemen's style.
Unless I know I don't know, and in knowing see I'm not the least bit deserving.
See the fact of the matter is there are no facts cause those truths are written as follows,
tonight we'll lace the headlines with lies which will read to our convenience tomorrow.
And on billboards that border what's known as White America happy little decrees will decry,
the little girl who wants neither hemp nor jewels as her necklace.
Unacceptable that she plays in the yard with her imaginary friends,
and that those friends have problems like her.
And the neighbors wander over and ask her who she talks to, she says Ahkmed, Katrine, and Raul,
they ask, "Why would you invent someone who's imperfect and in pain?", she says, "I don't know, how does God answer you?"
But blue eyes and blonde hair will earn her the lesson that her race has never cared and the curriculum will achieve its antithesis,
Soujourner Truth smiles in expired outh as we examine a past bleeding flaws,
but diverts her eyes from years unchanged for we've failed to pair faults with a cause.
History's not philosophy so we don't discuss more than what we're not to be,
but I thought Civics, Civics was about duty,
that every person, first a civilian, can vote and work and pursuit prosperity,
but that banks on you being civil and to assume so you must sell your Christ in heresy.
Civilization is defined by those who call themselves civil and so the argument is a bit circular,
regardless, by those standards it seems gentlemen can forget their brother's burden and ladies, their soul's entablature.
What testament is it that says "thou shall not buy your house across from trailer park"?,
the same one that says "don't breath too deep tasting life might stop your heart."
Please, allow me to avoid hypocrisy, leave your feet and stop with me,
lets adopt a purpose together,
if nothing else this, each night we pause and observe the weather,
we'll name the clouds out loud and understand that whether its war, starvation, or shame,
only those who opt for their mind's paralysis can claim they've got it made.
and we'll never curse the rain 'cause whether it ends someone's famine or brings someone's flood its not falling drops on trial,
its me and you as our tongues catch the sky's elixir,
it's whether we'll wed the world our bride and in doing so redefine a gentlemen's style.
One Seat Tables
There is an inherent danger in seeking the genius of the past, the truly in touch with the world and its unseen mystery. Next to the goddesses of kowledge, hidden in the romantic forests of truth and wisdom, sit the guardians of that knowledge - the beasts named insanity. And their bite delivers a venom for which there is no remedy: the poison of solitude, the toxicity of uninterrupted introspection. It seems though the woods welcome many - indeed, this goddess sings to all the masses - most just turn away. And the few who enter the forest they smell the wind, and watch the brooks do their babbling but come sunset, night in those woods and the songs of a muse like this one, are too much to bear. And so again, most of those few will dabble in the forests only as part time residents. Yet a select couple, a few in every generation will wander to where its darkest. To where there are no distractions to comfort the eye away from the mind's questioning. There is no music, there are no ipods, no family, no friends. Just a continuous monologue, which reads from invisible walls the scribbling of history's hermits - individuals of the past whose obsession with that goddess brought them to an existence of darkness and deafening silence, where they test the teeth of the beasts which guard the goddess - and play their chances against the insanity that may or may not accomany knowledge. Some of these people wrote books about their lives, some of them ended up talking to trees or invisible friends. Tragedy is, perhaps, best exemplified in that place where a person finds the truths they've sought after for so long, only to realize that the wisdom that allows them to look at a night sky and drink of its profundity, is the very thing that distances them from the person next to them.
Camping
I'm living by myself but I'm not alone. An individual, alien to this whole scenario, might gaze upon my south-eastern Oregon camp ground and assume they'd chanced upon the inhabitants of an apartment building recently having spewed its residents onto high desert, only to then perish into remnantless nothingness. But i guess we are the remnant - a mass so traumatized by the day's catastrophe that a silly looking man wearing a forest service badge, whose threads-in-hues-of-green are shaded by his exaggerated brim, conned us all into paying to live outside and reside in a slightly less comfortable state than normal. How else, aside from the coercion of a traumatized body of homeless groups, could money be persuaded from its pockets in order that I might have my walls replaced with porous canopies and dirt carpet?
The rock face I scampered up today surely housed a thousand cougars. They, of course, would have taken up residence there in anticipation of my coming - the family across the frigid DeSchuttes, through which I had just swam, meant nothing and would most certainly not see it when the mass of teeth and tails emerged as a cooperative feline battalion in order to scare me off their cliff - initiating the chase that would grant them so much joy, while killing me so thoroughly. Funny what one experience with three cats will do to a man. But I'm happy for the sun.
I hope the great star doesn't mind my spectatorship (it shouldn't, its up in my business all the time) but I watched it chase its mistress again tonight. I'm jealous of the sun in fact, this night more than most, because its gone to lay with its lover. The slow crawl that the sun, in its waking, employs to leave its bed and abandon a night's passion so it can perfrom its eternal duty infects the populations of its rocky recipient and they too, at least the one's who've done it right, resist the rising and the leaving like moths drug to darkness. But noon approaches and the first flirtations emerge from Horizon's sheets and whisper charms inappropriate and sublimely sensual past the billion-head audience below to their blazing target aloft. The noon Sun pauses.
Like a school girl has murmrued secrets in her palms and thrown them to the Sun before disappearing around brick corners, the great star halts in dazed attraction, and the world beneath burns until Sun recovers its stop. But now it won't wait, it can't wait, it rages against he duties that hold it. The afternoon's weather is violent; thunderstorms descend upon the planet, plains dry and crack and explode in flame; the singing of the muse drives the sun to madness' gulf and on that edge the world waits. Finally though, the woman who so tightly holds Sun's leash shows herself. Her fingers are cirrus - crisp, fragile, and they reach out offering to take the sun's frustration as soon as Sky agrees to allow him into bed. Lady Horizon splashes perfume upon herself and the tides turn and run, noses in the occean air, that they might receive seduction as it wafts. Dusk which sits always aloft befalls Earth's watching eyes again and finally Sun's wrath is foregone. Instead of storm and flame, he drapes lavendar where the blue of his sorrow has sat the day's length, and he smears peach into his masterpiece with the sliding, weaving motion only a composer of the skiy's shining and a stellar lover's fingers can achieve. A painting he presents his beloved. The rage of morning red has left and the cool calm of a deepend violet and entrenching charcoal allows the world to simmer to its slumber. Like a radiant drip from a faucet poised just above the world's edge, the sun take his mistress to his lips and delivers the first kiss in a night of countless others, insisting in its passing that onlookers do the same. The couple falls into Horizon's bed, and so the last drop drips.
I suppose we the homeless mass do not pay in a moment of incoherent misjudgement, but only offer recompense for lessons we steal from peeping at such affairs as this one.
The rock face I scampered up today surely housed a thousand cougars. They, of course, would have taken up residence there in anticipation of my coming - the family across the frigid DeSchuttes, through which I had just swam, meant nothing and would most certainly not see it when the mass of teeth and tails emerged as a cooperative feline battalion in order to scare me off their cliff - initiating the chase that would grant them so much joy, while killing me so thoroughly. Funny what one experience with three cats will do to a man. But I'm happy for the sun.
I hope the great star doesn't mind my spectatorship (it shouldn't, its up in my business all the time) but I watched it chase its mistress again tonight. I'm jealous of the sun in fact, this night more than most, because its gone to lay with its lover. The slow crawl that the sun, in its waking, employs to leave its bed and abandon a night's passion so it can perfrom its eternal duty infects the populations of its rocky recipient and they too, at least the one's who've done it right, resist the rising and the leaving like moths drug to darkness. But noon approaches and the first flirtations emerge from Horizon's sheets and whisper charms inappropriate and sublimely sensual past the billion-head audience below to their blazing target aloft. The noon Sun pauses.
Like a school girl has murmrued secrets in her palms and thrown them to the Sun before disappearing around brick corners, the great star halts in dazed attraction, and the world beneath burns until Sun recovers its stop. But now it won't wait, it can't wait, it rages against he duties that hold it. The afternoon's weather is violent; thunderstorms descend upon the planet, plains dry and crack and explode in flame; the singing of the muse drives the sun to madness' gulf and on that edge the world waits. Finally though, the woman who so tightly holds Sun's leash shows herself. Her fingers are cirrus - crisp, fragile, and they reach out offering to take the sun's frustration as soon as Sky agrees to allow him into bed. Lady Horizon splashes perfume upon herself and the tides turn and run, noses in the occean air, that they might receive seduction as it wafts. Dusk which sits always aloft befalls Earth's watching eyes again and finally Sun's wrath is foregone. Instead of storm and flame, he drapes lavendar where the blue of his sorrow has sat the day's length, and he smears peach into his masterpiece with the sliding, weaving motion only a composer of the skiy's shining and a stellar lover's fingers can achieve. A painting he presents his beloved. The rage of morning red has left and the cool calm of a deepend violet and entrenching charcoal allows the world to simmer to its slumber. Like a radiant drip from a faucet poised just above the world's edge, the sun take his mistress to his lips and delivers the first kiss in a night of countless others, insisting in its passing that onlookers do the same. The couple falls into Horizon's bed, and so the last drop drips.
I suppose we the homeless mass do not pay in a moment of incoherent misjudgement, but only offer recompense for lessons we steal from peeping at such affairs as this one.
Scotch and Granola
Dance, seduce, entrance, and use,
and fuck and cum and find the groove,
to mate the needle with that lusting vein,
amplifty your climax saving nothing in restraint.
What have you got to lose,
conquer seven men a week,
the fetus inside you's bullet proof ,
and aleady native to the street.
The only thing that packs more punch than your fury of maternal fists,
is the seclusion your baby inherits when you freebase that shit.
Its stronger than genetics,
pulse one, let the syrum circulate,
pulse two, destruction is endemic.
Your lesson's crimson leaks to her from a seatbelt's twist and a needle's stick,
and you think because she's two she can't understand it.
But she crawls in rooms confettied with condom wrappers and mom's friends become too friendly.
The torrent of men warrants installing revolving doors,
and her four year old fingers fortify further the castles in the corner over which she reigns "queen".
And thus the counterstrike has begun.
She molds her moat to construct a defense
and to distance herself from the wills of men.
And she orders her archers to the guard towers above,
and says 'shoot anything that moves me, even if its love'.
And in the present setting I can't blame her for this,
where what she sees suggests that lips are for kisses and fists.
'Cause that image will carry to the face of her first crush,
and she'll have never learned that lovers don't have to swing to touch.
Its not the pinch of the needle's push that sells this toddler her tears,
its how her mother gives her body away to all the other pricks in here.
And our four year old Highness says to her court, 'to what do I owe the occasion..."
"...that you all would be so adamantly ensuring my future's mutilation?"
But from these subjects her address tendors no heed,
this home houses five other castles, five other queens.
In life its assumed we learn that certain things don't mix,
like little girls and their granola, against your scotch and a morning fix.
and fuck and cum and find the groove,
to mate the needle with that lusting vein,
amplifty your climax saving nothing in restraint.
What have you got to lose,
conquer seven men a week,
the fetus inside you's bullet proof ,
and aleady native to the street.
The only thing that packs more punch than your fury of maternal fists,
is the seclusion your baby inherits when you freebase that shit.
Its stronger than genetics,
pulse one, let the syrum circulate,
pulse two, destruction is endemic.
Your lesson's crimson leaks to her from a seatbelt's twist and a needle's stick,
and you think because she's two she can't understand it.
But she crawls in rooms confettied with condom wrappers and mom's friends become too friendly.
The torrent of men warrants installing revolving doors,
and her four year old fingers fortify further the castles in the corner over which she reigns "queen".
And thus the counterstrike has begun.
She molds her moat to construct a defense
and to distance herself from the wills of men.
And she orders her archers to the guard towers above,
and says 'shoot anything that moves me, even if its love'.
And in the present setting I can't blame her for this,
where what she sees suggests that lips are for kisses and fists.
'Cause that image will carry to the face of her first crush,
and she'll have never learned that lovers don't have to swing to touch.
Its not the pinch of the needle's push that sells this toddler her tears,
its how her mother gives her body away to all the other pricks in here.
And our four year old Highness says to her court, 'to what do I owe the occasion..."
"...that you all would be so adamantly ensuring my future's mutilation?"
But from these subjects her address tendors no heed,
this home houses five other castles, five other queens.
In life its assumed we learn that certain things don't mix,
like little girls and their granola, against your scotch and a morning fix.
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