And as when a shadow descends upon the valley
and there among the surrounding hills
is gloom and sorrow, and its as if the hills themselves
must contemplate the fate of the shadowy,
the darkened, either in sadness, or malevolently
exulting in their shame: so they (the radical right)
currently find themselves enshrouded.
I sit here calm and resolute watching the streets
float among the clouds, my hands on the steering wheel;
they must resist the self-serving tendency
to warp their beliefs to base advantage;
they must not yield to bigotry, hypocrisy and tyranny.
they must make a stand for justice, equality, and liberty.
If not what will become of them?
Rumor mill whispers the radical right, wishing to not turn back from
income tax
evasion, murder, child prostitution, extortion, etc.. And, whishing
to
influence the Hispanic vote in the fall elections contrived, in Washington,
to
have two Hispanics commit two crimes
1) a murder involving a
law enforcement officer,
2) a kidnapping and murder
Both involved more than one participant, to optimize the $2,500 per
felony
payoffs. In the first case it resulted in a $5,000 non-declared payday,
and in
the second case a $7,500 non-declared pay-day. So the rumor mill
is suggesting.
Staying the course has its costs!
PLANE
CRASH
dedicated to the Kennedy's
On the sea, at Sunset,
flames dance and the Sun turns livid,
and the small plane that's flown to far
groans with mounting apprehension.
The blue skies which lured her out
blind her eyes with a heavy mist,
and now she must race along
to the end, above the running sea.
Capricious winds jostle her,
and trying to return is hopeless,
her sleek grey wings
will never bring her home.
And when I looked into your eyes,
lightening skies hidden within them,
I saw the same fear,
the exhausted pilot's same silent despair.
THE SPA
At twilight,
when the red moon
climbs wearily into the sky,
Margy stands in the black emptiness of night.
Waits while moonbeams
powder the landscape a soft white,
waits while night's black veil
slowly slides from her face.
In the recumbent garden,
rose perfume drifts on the breeze
among red, yellow, blue and apricot explosions,
which Margy's beautiful eyes silently take in.
Beneath sombre boughs
the moonlight stealthily sneaks
through slumbering shadows
playing hide-and-go-seek with Margy.
Gathering its velvet cloak,
darkness huddles under the trees;
radiant is the night; sweet the dew's kisses
which washes and delights.
Midnight, and among the happy flowers
sparks dance and the spa gently murmurs.
A Remeau refrain seems to sing-
Margy is bathing.
EVENING WAS APPROACHING
Evening was approaching and the seas incessant roar
was disturbed by the crying of gulls
as though with stained glass.
We were walking out of a gift shop
that preyed on tourists
when suddenly my ears were stuffed with silence,
I froze with horror. I stared at the people
coming towards me pushing a baby carriage.
I stepped aside and turned away,
the experience was intensely painful.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at them again.
Pocks had devoured their faces.
Faces, which the preceding moment had seen
as smooth skinned was now jaundiced and disfigured,
ravaged by a social scourge.
Their honest expressions had become malevolent,
their bearing, deceitful. Discretely, I concentrated my eyes
on the shop fronts and wharf.
I tried to hide my revulsion until they had past.
Then hurried away least I become contaminated, too.
RAIN DANCES
Rain dances on the sea
that surges and dies.
Dull insistent murmurs;
wind swept plains, undulating into hollows,
suddenly swelling, white-haired.
A wave falls like a glass wall:
making way for those that follow,
weltering and wandering, ceaselessly searching
the trackless, vast empty vistas.
Besides the sea, the horizonless day,
buffeted by wind, speckles blank windows:
Reconstructed truths of these times, dark rooms;
profoundly hypocritical and grossly ignorant,
it's these characteristics that makes masters of the Earth,
these characteristics that resurrect
the vainglorious blunders of the past
and prove the instability of our perceptions
and the vanity of our desires.
Man is an echoing erratum.
Each year is a new version revising the previous one
that the next year will in it's turn revise,
until, the final definitive edition,
which the publisher bequeaths to the worms.
PORTLAND SMILES
By the blue water
on the curling grass
in the golden sunshine;
I lean toward
your parted lips;
everyone knows we kissed.
And in that brief moment
there is time for many things,
someone unsheathes a well tempered expression,
a lark sings from a bush,
hope contracts,
a breeze roils the river,
a brow furrows in concentration-
Portland smiles.
ONLY THE EMPTY HORIZON
Only the empty horizon's straight line
disturbs my peace of mind
gradually curving away from itself never meeting
and the waves endlessly sighing
like the ticking of a clock patiently measuring eternity.
Just like the vacant stare
of a corpse gazing into nothingness,
the futile hope of vanity - life after death,
trying to recreate our lost delusions.
But there is no green grass, no blue sky, no music
in that black pristine sea,
only grey skies, incomprehensible fractals
and the malicious roaring that will not stop.
Personally, I hope to be buried in sleep
to take a vacation;
resigned to golden beeches
and trackless blue seas,
where I watch the sombre dark rocks in the surf.
EARLY FALL
Early Fall, and in the fast approaching midnight
I smell the cool decay of Autumn-
from my window at the hotel
everything seems diminished
but the vast indifference of mankind,
I breath, the polluted air of the primordial darkness,
and listen, as vowels collide with consonants,
and watch the younger set work the street,
their voices rise light and translucent as bubbles.
What a pageant spreads before me:
a young girl, dressed in white,
is hustling a middle aged man;
she's obviously an entrapment -a right wing whore-
her voice teems with little-silver-fishes
that school among bright shoals of laughter.
The first kiss
that blossoms into an embrace,
prologue to delights followed by remorse,
of pleasures ending in sorrow,
of joys unfolding on troubles,
impatient moments, furtive rendezvous,
ugly scenes, despair and jealousy, anger and fear-
a moment of bliss leaving only bitter dregs.
As for me, I want nothing
to do with their systematic hypocrisy!
SO WITH THE STREET LIGHTS TURNED ON
So with the street lights turned on
the yellow moon sinks beneath the tree battlements
and the thin rain tilts at the panes
a deluge of overpowering darkness.
Nothing, it seems, will survive this profusion of darkness,
which slinking in at the key hole and cracks
steals into the bedroom,
devouring here a night table and lamp,
there a brace of richly bound books,
there the distinct edge
of a blue and gold antique plate
and the sombre bulk of a dresser.
Not only is the familiar furniture vanquished;
but, the individual features of the mind and body vanish, too,
landmarks which enable one to say,
"This is Margy." or, " That is John.".
Occasionally, among deep limpid pools of silence,
a disembodied voice sighs,
as if sharing a melancholy secret
with the immense nothingness.
Nothing nuzzles around the living room,
under the dining room table
and in the corners of the hallway.
Only the feeble light from a vagrant star, or passing car,
with its pale step upon the carpet
crosses the room and pokes around the bed,
and as if with feathery white fingers,
furtively touches closed eyes and discarded garments.
And, nosing over kitchen counters, the T.V.,
and a whole host of other familiar objects,
each as invisible as your own hand,
it stares with a frank curiosity
and merges with the night's mysterious sounds,
and cold moist air, which swelling the wooden frames
brushes against the blank walls
whose expressionless paper
is discretely beginning to peel.
Whether asleep or awake,
the inhabitants live with their backs to the truth.
DID YOU SEE
Did you see it in the paper?
Steve said sliding into a chair.
Not waiting for an answer he continued
"Bill's kid had been spying on them at school,
and since there was nothing else shaking,
he took them to the coast over the weekend
so they could camp and drink.
Then, after they got them good and drunk
they tried to sell them some pot- just like we always do.
Well it was no dice; but, he did like he was trained,
and started talking up committing various kinds of crimes.
And, to make a long story short,
he conned them into trying to defraud the bank.
What a pay day! Four felonies at $2,500 each
for a total of $10,000 undeclared of course.
All he had to do was encourage,
and sick the subliminal boys on them,
and help plan it. We didn't have to wait too long.
Now everybody gets a piece of the action.
That's the fourth big pay day this year-
not counting the double murder coming up-
and all we had to do was set up a group of kids.
Easy as taking candy form a baby.
It sure beats banging away one at a time;
besides, the big wigs like it because it makes better press.
I silently finished my tea, paid and left.
What I had overheard was grim;
but, inside my car after I had applied the scalpel of analysis,
to the inadvertently overheard conversation,
did I fully understand the sad truth.
It was Steve's and Bill's and Bill's boy's method of catharsis.
Their way of riding themselves of the hurt
that they had inside- profitably passing it on to someone else.
They had received rejection and were mercilessly hurt
earlier in their lives and had been made to suffer.
Now, they had an opportunity, to earn a good living
without any marketable skills, enhance their self-esteem
and identify with something bigger than themselves
that made them think that they were superior
to most other folks. See how they deceived each other
while carefully hiding the truth from themselves.
They were working so hard at trying to believe that this was clever,
when it was really destroying themselves instead.