GOOD NIGHT
When day departs over the West Hills and birds nestle in for night,
and, the exhausted wind expires, trailing after the setting Sun;
then, the adumbrate darkness drapes me behind an indigo veil,
just as you’ve tucked in the Earth,
gently as the dew washed blossom chalices
of the upright tulips, who stand swaying, divinely drunk, at twilight.
From the weary wanderer, whose wallet is empty
who stands before home and warms his heart,
with every garment he possesses, in his suitcase soiled and wrinkled;
his strength at an end, remove the false stain of shame and tear of poverty
and refresh his life, like the flower
having slept under the kind cover of your pleasant night.
THE TREE
Love for you fills me to brimming,
with bitter sweet feelings my mother earth,
when evening exudes dark perfumes of fir,
or pine trees, or serene roses;
in its strong steady turbulence, the current carries
unseen mysteries beneath its dusky mirror surface,
whose numerous digits diffusely resolve beautiful harmonic fractals
into nothing as it reaches its estuary.
But, I return to your headwaters
bursting with a personal Renaissance whose roots extend to my youth.
A longing for other climates and new growth tugs at me,
but, to pull me away from all that I love wouldn’t generate growth:
it would destroy who I am.
A RAIN FUGUE
An oppressive humidity
bears down from a fine gray sky
on variegated green,
as a rain fugue plays through the night.
Voices from the river street stripped naked,
in you the nerves are exposed,
as fresh fruit are tart and their sound sickens;
you disturb me, boisterous youths
disappointed by spoiled alternatives
and every blasphemous pre-planned alternative recycled through
that disfigures and rots with arrogant poisonous mold.
Pity our phony pious time,
sacrilegious as its self-righteous;
as scattered light is all reflected
from dark troubled waters;
where our furrowed hearts
are disturbed, before they disappear
down the open veins
that course across the earth.
TRANSIENT
In an infinite sphere silence swells
with golden galaxies of interweaving star clusters.
A cosmic scaled Zen Buddha rock garden decorated with jewels
but, each one glints in desolate isolation.
High in the wondrous unknown gossamer
solemn sown furrows of radiant rubies, emeralds, and sapphires
tentatively glisten as delicate sparks:
a patriarchic sentinel, whose path is embedded in febrile space.
Antecedent ancestors are arrayed, a host arcing across the vast velvet darkness,
various precious stones, where on one, oppressed blue Portland sadly stares up;
and, in the gathering gloom a solitary soul sits alone, because he’s good and right,
in his fragrant garden, the various flowers’ colors are barely discernable –
who wonders at the immense, mysterious, beauty.
A fragile, ephemeral, creature,
transient spec of cosmic consciousness,
reflecting for an insignificant instant,
he ponders this, and then, writes his poem.
FOGGARTY CREEK
And, so we return rejuvenated and aching in an early deceitful dusk.
The red clay of Tillamook’s sedimentary rocks are scattered seaward
among scents of forest and estuary, and, stealthily lengthening shadows
that relentlessly devour everything in their path, as they in turn are devoured by darkness
ultimately like some black void that’s dull and useless.
The sea stirs undulating landward the crashing roar
concludes the gray study in racing foam lines.
Rising from the constant coupling are shapely fir spires
and fading red faced cliffs shining with evening mists
the livid spring evening descending into dusk, and, I revive, a limping cripple.
In the tree top a raucous ravine cries voicing its displeasure at us.
The vague horizon is lost in shuffling gray cloud banks,
where fishing vessels light up and blink among the swells,
like a merry myriad of ideas that come and go in my mind.
An otter head bursts through the silver skinned sea
stretched taut across the bay at Foggarty Creek
it bobs among surf and seaweed then disappears.
A cool breeze lightly brushes my face.
The shore’s mage faintly reflects from the sea.
The endlessly rocking fishing vessels are cradled by waves,
their nets are spread in a vast web of interconnecting lines,
or, are they a series of empty spaces all interconnected by lines of filament.
Life goes on like that, it’s awash in its own reflections.
I’ve returned to the sea, not to swim, and surf, and trespass its non-humanoid skin,
as slate gray as the color of a blind person’s sightless eye
but for the sight, sound and smell of all those drops of water
eternally uniformly different and all appearing just the same.
The waves crash and roar and hissing resolve into a silent darkness,
which the phony placed people jealously inhabit and guard.
VEDI, VECI
Storm shaped trees....
In those times a more congenial sea wondered
while invisible visitors haunted slumbering shores
where dark towns with empty streets
were interspersed by vast sylvan distances
and narrow highways were gorged with car caravans
who passed farmer’s fruit stands stuffed with fresh colorful produce
fish stalls selling angry red crabs, secretive shell fish, and salmon for the rich
and rock cod for the poor – and the ubiquitous birds.
In those credulous days with pungent affable fragrances
clinging to antiquated uniforms and casual festive attire
betraying by breath the pleasures of a previous age;
and, by the sole redeeming artifice of the apple tree
in my dysfunctional family’s fenced in yard,
oh time of clever ruses and hypocritical wiles,
resplendent with scales that weighed miracles and recondite clouds,
and, armed for youthful adventure
a vague wonderful world run riot.
Ah, what joy deserving praise! We were young and had heart,
so with Don Quixote for our guide
we tried to save the world.
Oh abundant time of a troubled feast!
LOVE, FROM ON HIGH
By a little beautiful dreaming, once I kept
myself wandering woodland paths and flowering mountain meadows.
I exposed nights of stealth watched while winds wounded
and destroyed life, while society was deaf to the hate fueled changes as a crypt.
The paradox of honoring names etched on walls which contain no doors,
where Democracies died by Brutus’ faction; and, I hid out with my family
behind another wall, while lies scarred faces with heinous inspired hate,
to still the center, of the rotting wheel, with rivers that ran bloody.
And this carefully contrived factional Revolution their leaders hailed
as Man’s Fate was a failure of ignorance, hate, and fear produced by those
who were pathologically stupid.
And people picked destructive failures from America’s history, like Reconstruction
where elitist groups raging across the country sadistically murdering and oppressing
in the name of Law and Order.
It was evident enough watching perverse appetites ravaging others for pursuing pleasure
that I howled.
I knew self-serving self-deceit grew from people like Goring, and his infamous speech.
It was an eternal lesson we needed to re-learn to re-establish the new departed
delicate balance, as society in a state of dysfunction unwound and our yearnings were
torturously placed out of reach.
Once I modestly spent a small amount to construct beautiful dream gardens
their deceit and hate destroyed with long vigils in their Nights rage
and the tread of their measures proved them to be all a rotten fabric of lies
bursting rotten from within unctuously parading children which they erroneously and
irrationally claimed
were their exclusive esoteric domain, by slyly systematically sexually and physically
abusing them, while they chained them to ignorance and poverty, and yoked them
to the caprice of their bigotry, like every tyrant who has ever blasphemously reigned
and arrogantly paraded their vices as virtue, and assumed the moral high ground,
while wallowing in their sewers of iniquity.
They kept the death toll elevated, as people burst from within
and they looked in wonder, while I refuse to be consumed by their hate;
and, I live a quiet life happy cultivating myself and refusing to associate with them,
as the country’s Democracy died, and, I built the pyre for the Phoenix to return.
REEFER REVISITED
Pot can paint in beauty
the abject misery of the most poverty stricken slum,
and build resplendent ethereal palaces,
with its magical celestial chemistry,
like the gold and crimson splendor of the setting Sun.
Not oppressively heavy like a foul opium dream
past anything present plumbing the dark depths
of lethargy that physically addicts, to an introverted scene;
devoid of love the satiated soul listlessly wilts
and experiences the black hole of oblivion, forlorn of the joys of life –
little better than the living Dead.
But, because both are smoked
and the recent excessive consumption engaged in by some of our youths,
smoking pot has been misconstrued as a bane,
when nothing could be farther from the Truth.
It merely reflects one type of recreational fun, from my happy, multi-faceted
self-actuated life: a productive, well-rounded, joyous life filled with dreams and hope.
Ah, there’s nothing foul and monstrous about getting high,
when responsibly used and moderately consumed;
it doesn’t permanently incapacitate and obliterate reality, it decorates life with beautiful
visions that divert and delight;
and it turns social occasions with friends into pleasant felicitous company
who kindly and happily celebrate, not negates, our lives with this joyous gift from on
High.
Then, those weary with the ways of the world, rested and restored,
can rejoin the ranks of the responsible citizens productively employed,
to creatively and assiduously complete their respective arduous tasks, happy and content;
my miseries assuaged and agonies quenched all swept over the vertiginous edge
of the bitter abyss,
and, replaced by my wondrous happy dreams, to begin again refreshed.
BE STILL
Be patient –
and you’ll drift languid among the clouds.
Already the transformation starts
breaking the borders between external and internal,
lowered you descend again into the bowels
of your loving Mother, the rapacious indifferent Earth;
and, you’re raised diffuse and incendiary scattered among stars,
an awaited guest, who already tried to drive premature
airmail, and the clouds ignite in a crimson conflagration
a celestial reunion: hush now, be still....
PRISONS
They’ve assaulted the city,
and locked everyone up:
I’m left outside the walls
while you’re imprisoned within.
But, that’s not so bad,
the really terrible part
is when the citizens,
whether aware or not,
walk past with prisons within themselves;
most of the people are forced to become wage slaves,
you see them every day, good, honest, hard working -
with tombstones for eyes.
The ideas presented and developed in the essays and editorials of this progressive electronic magazine are the express opinions of its authors.
THE RUMOR MILL
In this months issue we’ll interrupt our extensive study of the social, political and economic consequences of contemporary faction, and, in its stead we’ll analyze and evaluate what we hope to accomplish with our essays and editorials, as well as tidy up a few miscellaneous concerns. The last issue developed recent health care concerns as a perfect example succinctly exposing how the radical right faction Republican Revolution deviated from Democracies historical mission of protecting the Civil Rights and Liberties of it’s citizens, and how it has degenerated into a manipulated majority’s tyranny that fronts as a facade for the radical right faction’s transformation of government into a bald face grab for greed. Further, the function of government under faction is to generate large amounts of wealth for a few members of the ruling elite at the expense of the exploited many. And, when the Republican puppet-president Bush Jr. refuses to appropriately, cost effectively intervene at the national government level by developing the necessary measures to effectively protect Americans from the bird flu menace, it does so in order to make faction’s ruling elite more money, by afflicting the public with inferior models of government and medical intervention. Then, the nation incurs the extra expense from a needles duplication of administrative costs and supply and logistics expenses, while simultaneously losing the potential savings obtained from economies of scale; the radical right dominated Republicans would compel America to incur a ruthless competition between states and local levels of government designed to drive up health care costs for the public: hence, profits for faction, by tardy responses that are cruelly tragic and exorbitant in their consequences in terms of losses to human life. However, there are important additional factors that are expedient for the citizens to consider. First, as the saying goes, the good news, it’s been learned subsequent to last month’s issue that there is potentially a new method for producing a supposedly effective vaccine that is currently being developed; and, if the report is true, this is a significant development that will aid in alleviating the current bleak circumstances, because it is able to rapidly produce large amounts of the vaccine in a short period of time. Second, the bad news, in any flu epidemic that creates an emergency there are three components that need to be successfully medically managed. Initially, a vaccine needs to be developed, produced and distributed to the public. Next, an effective intervention strategy and the necessary health care facilities need to be established and constructed; and, a professional staff sufficient to implement the strategy and adequate to operate the facilities during the emergency need to be recruited, trained and deployed to effectively intervene during the flu illness’s critical acute phase, which should be on line before the health care crises becomes acute. Finally, a post crises care capacity must be available to handle up to one-third of America’s population, which represents roughly 85 million Americans in the next three to four years. This must be done in addition to meeting the existing health care needs of the nation. Obviously, a private health care model that is designed to benefit the insurance industry, with competitive rates of return to the energy and industrial military sectors of the economy, which is the basis of the radical right faction Republican Party’s private plan is inadequate and incapable of meeting the nation’s projected health care needs. The radical right faction Republican Party health care plan has failed to provide any form of health care for an additional 10 million Americans during the last couple of years, and it is facing annual cost push inflationary pressure in excess of 20%, in order to provide worse health for half of Sr. citizens, poor people, and chronically ill every three years, in what has been described as the most unfair and expensive to operate health care program in the world. The Democratic Party alternative of a national plan could succeed if initiated in a timely manor. The fact is that in the world today only Canada is optimally positioned to meet this fast approaching world-wide health care crises. It had the socialized medical health care model for the foundation and it has recently experienced a Sars health care scare, which left them advantageously positioned to meet their future projected health care needs. But, many countries that provide socialized universal health care, like Great Britain, are already responsibly establishing the capacity to meet the bird flu emergency by stock piling vaccine for significant percentages of their population. The rest of the world lags behind. The previous unbelievable point of the radical right faction Republican Revolution and its inadequate incompetent greed driven response that’s consistent with their radical right faction view of government’s function being to make their ruling elite large amounts of money clearly demonstrates the failure of their Revolutionary view of Democratic government.
We may follow closely recent radical right faction responses in an effort to cast light on their future intentions in consequence to the obvious complete failure of the radical right faction Republican Revolution at all levels of government. In the state of Oregon who has the double edged benefit of initiatives generated from the public, which provides faction and other special interests in addition to it’s good citizens with ample opportunity to manipulate the state’s political process. The radical right faction initiated disguised efforts to consolidate the current two party primary system into a one primary system. The radical right faction stands to benefit in a variety of ways. First, it saves them money, by dominating more fully the political process at an earlier level, they can determine at the outset who the active participants will be, and thus, they save money by not having to overwhelm well funded fully developed adversarial campaigns later in the political process during the general elections. Second, it tends to blur the role and responsibility of the respective parties, which tend to make citizens dissatisfied with government in general, and then, the public doesn’t correctly identify the radical right faction and its Republican Party political pawns, as being the responsible parties for the recent fundamental failures in government. Third, it enables the radical right faction to manipulate political developments unidentified from behind the scene by their old ploy of infusing and overwhelming America’s political system with large amounts of money, at the relatively less expensive primary level. Fourth, it provides an opportunity for muscling in and displacing the institutional integrity of their primary political opponent, the Democrat Party, which would leave America’s bi-party Democratic system seriously impaired; and, if the Democrats could retain an independent presence with a one primary format, it would necessarily be impaired, due to the radical right faction’s increased fifth column influence. The United States would be left without a legitimate pluralistic multi-party system, any political opposition to the radical right faction would be disorganized and under funded; and, thus unable to compete in America’s contemporary political arena with packaged candidacies based on computer profiling, and the public exposure of candidates established primarily through the extremely expensive electronic mass media: all of which takes copious quantities of money. It is the intent of this magazine to inform the public of certain contemporary political developments and evaluate their ramifications, by stating the principal facts without unnecessarily alarming anyone, to not advocate a false claim on a monopoly on Truth, or not to minimize anyone’s advocacy for human conscience; and yet a direct line must be maintained on Democratic ideals and the principles which were responsible for making America the broad pluralistic Democracy with the social and political characteristics essential for its preeminent prosperity and high degree of Happiness, which have been central to the American experience for these last 200 years, with government being by the people and for the people, rather than government by politicians controlled by money for special interests. This is a discouraging development, because it reveals the nefarious intentions of the radical right faction are still corrupt and deceitfully avaricious. They’ve learned nothing from their recent overwhelming failures. They still view government from the same fatally flawed view, as a means of making large amounts of money for the exclusive benefit of a few individuals by exploitive measures that make government a conduit from the public’s collective pocket to the private account’s of a few ruling elite, with the assistance of an adjunct media propaganda machine that manipulates the majority, as it isolates and discourages and oppresses potential political dissidents. It’s no wonder Americans hold their heads up and stands tall. We are in deep shit!
What is necessary is to fundamentally look at what we as a people are about. What is government if it’s not the manifestation of the goodness of its people? This can not be accomplished by the greed and corruption of faction. It must be realized, if at all, by a direct consistent logical extension that runs seamlessly from its social and economic environments to its political institutions. Government must be by all the people, who develop programs that truly benefit all of the people. It must be government based on a Constitution that’s committed to protecting the Civil Rights and Liberties of all citizens, and particularly the unpopular minorities; because, even the left and right wing tyrants like Stalin’s and Hitler’s championed the rights of their supporters. And, we must realize the primary function of Law is to protect the rights of citizens and its not to function as an instrument that injuriously assaults its citizen’s rights, as a club of self-important, impenetrably ignorant, profoundly stupid, tyranny driven bigots!
The government must initially be conducted by citizens with the necessary skills, which means technocrats will have to initially be utilized on a transitional basis. This will gain us the time for citizens to educated and gain experience to do the civic jobs themselves. The media must be re-tooled and responsible to the public as its light giver. Now the media functions to blind the public. It helps the public to blindly grope, like Voltaire’s parable of the blind men feeling an elephant and describing what it was. One touched it’s side and said it was a wall, another grabbed it’s trunk and said a hose, another grabbed it’s tail and said a rope another grabbed it’s leg and said a tree, you get the picture even if they didn’t. The media ungratefully earns its wages by disseminating ignorance. The media has violated an almost sacred Trust, it’s re-nagged it’s tacitly understood contract with the public to provide an adequate information base from which we the people must make reasonable, prudent and just decisions that build a free, strong and prosperous nation. This must be our nation’s top two priorities in climbing the mountain and re-establishing a just Democracy. Also, the country needs to reassert public ownership of free air ways that are public domain.
The problem confronting the re-educating of America can be broken into three basic tiers. The first level entails involving the scientific and technocrats communities constructively, whose participation in an advisory role will gradually diminish during the transitional phase, while America retools its citizens to optimally function in a Democratic context. The scientists and technocrats can’t run things for our benefit, because it leads to stagnation and apathy from the majority of Americans; besides, the specialists functioning as supposed experts don’t posses any magic golden bullets. What we should strive to cultivate is an active participatory pluralistic society comprised of self actuated individualists who identify with larger social units, as they share in the benefits derived from their skilled labor, whose productive value will increase as their education and experiential base improves. The second level entails improving the skill levels of the political participants, which will prove impossible while running for office is so expensive that the majority of politicians’ and their staff’s time is delegated to obtaining the necessary amount of money sufficient to adequately fund the modern packaged candidacies. The problem becomes dichotomous, because the large amounts of money give the money interests a disproportionate influence in the political process; and, it requires a poor pattern of resource allocation, which should be utilized in learning to understand the nature of government, economies and society. And, its American citizens’ fault, that they’re governed by ignorance, which turns to technologies for answers that it can’t comprehend. We must demand better for America, than mere politicians who function parasitically. Its time we re-introduce statesmen to our American government. The third level is multifaceted we need to insist on candidates who are educated and experienced which will take time, and the government’s administrative staff needs to be filled with qualified staff, people with training and practical experience, too. And, ‘till we obtain this high level of professionalism and ‘till we elect candidates who are qualified we’ll be blindly lead by programmed popular prejudices based on ignorance, rather than the knowledge based on experience and well educated serious minded individuals, which results in judgment that when morally and intelligently applied results in the wisdom we should be aspiring toward; instead of the stupid, superficial egotists, who end up being corrupt and incompetent flunkies of faction we’ve recently been afflicted with. We are embarking on a difficult task to win a nation habituated to oppression and conditioned to corruption back from wickedness to a pre-requisite free environment, where through hard work we gain the delights and benefits that are derived from an adequate education, which enables us to pleasantly progress into prosperous and virtuous free futures. The majority can’t be knowledgeable and wise, but they can be educated to be industrious, temperate, prudent and just and to recognize merit and wisdom. The few extremely gifted can be afforded the freedom to optimize their creative contributions, too. A free society is a safe and stable society that’s prosperous, progressive and happy. By constructing a free society with the necessary social characteristics like Equality, Private Property Rights, Public Entitlements, Public Education, Universal Health Care, and Liberty, its people can develop into free, well rounded individuals identifying with its larger social units that are diverse and pluralistic communities, which are vibrantly alive, and grow, and learn from its past mistakes.
However that may be, the radical right faction Republican Revolution has been allowed to run its uninterrupted course based on its own merits to ruinous conclusions -
see the last ten issues, it is an original deviation that forms its own chapter in the development of the history of our American Democracy; and, when to distinguish it from other eras and to accurately characterize it, one observes that there is nothing to admire and a great deal to lament. In close study without bias of its labors and their effects, I can only justly conclude that terms such as corrupt, iniquitous, ignorant, avaricious, and incompetent spring forward to describe their misanthropic and malfeasant misconduct, and, discovering its true nature, we repudiate it and hold it in contempt and disdain, as we see the inevitable conclusion lying ruinously before us in it’s last chapter; and, observe what happens when greed runs amuck, lead by impermeable ignorance, and encouraged in its destructive course by blind stupid hatred, which justly describes their work, without rancor and exaggeration; to many things that have ended tragically, and resulted in ruin for the nation, which hopefully now will recede into the distance and will last as a legacy of shame on the lessons of faction that in the future no decent persons will claim.