Night was settling, in its black velvet nest, when I returned;
the little boat was still there, land locked without water
to bathe its tired slumbering sides.
Such is our own short fates! In the early morning freshness of
life
we dance and sing with such joyous dreams,
and sail for a while on the tides of happiness;
but, when evening descends its dark silent veil,
the currents that carried us desert, and in the somber shadows
we are nurtured by memories and nursed by our families love.
In the dying of our days, wisdom shelters our hoar covered head
which wearily welcomes sweet repose and safe shelter
to Winter’s cruel cold blasts!
Each phase of life has its attributes and charm,
for I prefer the variety that life’s procession brings,
to stagnating at some oppressive spot forever redundantly repeating:
the same worn out things and wondering – is this all there is to life?
And, added to life’s wonder, the bliss of being able to spend its
with that someone who awakened delight; and, who shared life’s raptures
and culminating moments, experiencing unknown senses,
our souls merging like twin flames,
scattering sparks, as we burned scented woods;
gently expiring together experiencing the warmth of glowing embers,
precious treasures as sweet in their own way as love’s first ardor!
LOST
Often the Columbia
gleams with somber stars,
the beehive hums, while sulfur
swirls around my head.
Bees are swarming; and golden honey
floods my throat
fresh with solemn sounds;
at noon
a shadowless raven
perches on gray headstones.
Fluent airs:
are taught death
by cosmic quiet,
and night’s dialogue
phonemes of black sand
that speak
of homelands: stupidly lost.
EULOGY FOR A BOUQUET OF STARS
You may as well take flight
this wings silver slicing suspense
to prevent plummeting, or riveting the delightful airs
transfixed, as a crucifix, skull sunk chin to chest
futilely trying to keep separate twin hearts
whose touch ignites the envy of angels,
their feathers scorched and charred
black molting fall and hearts cinder and ash.
Seek no glass shutter eye – to freeze
the passing stolen moment in Harlequin
black and white profiles, fire and ice,
words instant flare for future rendezvous;
shooting stars scatter fireworks and scimitar moon slashes razor sharp
to bee hived like honey comes housed inside my head.
Now in the crucible o our vows hang our hearts
whose sounds are eternal as the sea in a conch:
safe and secure as museum treasures
for the blank stare of astonished generations;
they strive to defeat cinder’s dominions,
in the stroke of an instant
and stash faith safe in an ancient temple.
But, though they’d impale limbs on granite
and point every weathervane toward their lightening bolt kisses,
as if to out flame poor Prometheus,
the moment’s flare explodes blood to quick
for a dream to tether: they fly night long,
in their heart’s harmonic pounding,
until the phoenix dawn births the comets falling pedals.
And, dawn expires spent stars,
only to re-emerge next Spring
from this years nutrias bed of leaves humus;
and evergreens extend their light green growth
readying their blood red cones: new life!
the old vows renewed, coupled to new life’s growing responsibilities;
as old couples share knowing smiles, congealing veins,
and the warmth of last night’s dying embers.
POET FROM PORTLAND
He sits in his Cadillac, with imitation leather upholstery
Mr. Wretch, his neck protruding from his silk shirt collar,
like a stuffed turkey that the cook has roasted and served on a porcelain
platter.
He arrives at the bank and oversees the minimum wage earning teller
counting my change; a poor poet from Portland, with frayed collar
and soiled pants, standing at the counter, shifting weight from foot
to foot
like a gull perched on a pole.
Suddenly, the drawer springs open from beneath the empty counter top
devoid of any human touch, like a mole trap
buried beneath the bed in the rose garden with its thousand thorns
and few beautiful blossoms.
If anyone had seen the bankers somber face, his furrowed forehead scowling
while the impassive teller counted out my money like a machine; they
would have thought a hold up were in progress and behaved by compulsion
with a pistol pointed
at their belly, “to render unto God what they had gained by the devil.”
My worn bills in small denominations that they minutely examined
is less suspect and suspicious than their hate glinting eyes
that smolder like an ill smoldering fire.
The door has slammed shut beneath their blank counter; Mr. Wretch
has disdainfully turned toward his plush office with its opulent desk,
and as for me, I bid a hasty retreat, a poor poet from Portland
with frayed colar and soiled pants.
EDEN
Beautiful goddess, as fair as dawn
scented with Parisian perfume and Portland,
work of some spell, the sprite of the woodlands,
angel with fair flanks, daughter of Aurelios – dawn,
You entrance, a devote mendicant, cannabis
a magic burning offering from God, the elixir of your kiss
loves_______; your eyes are twin pellucid pools where my bliss
returns home and my pain drinks at a thirst quenching oasis
From your gentle doe brown eyes, your soul’s eye a balm,
and I pray, oh loving angel, assuage my pain;
I am not Orpheus to return you to life twice,
Oh, Margy, sweet love,
I can’t alter these terrible times, and bring you Heaven on Earth,
As you transform our marital bed to Eden!
DISMISSED
Dismissed trees rumble off on trucks,
Let fields of asphalt replace them.
Just think about Bush shutting off his computer;
He puts on the red silk tie picked out for him and worries and cogites
(if he only knew what the word meant) what would Daddy do
and tunelessly hums “Me And My Shadow”
Cool salutations sir, from the West coast, my wife
collapsed exhausted in Portland. Now the house
walls all echo with pounding, as rubble sprawls.
My wife and I, we saw the sights…
acts of deceit, criminal and immoral, in vogue
among a people eager to be enslaved
and who’s to wonder; subordinate subsurface basalt
serves as well as brimstone, a heartbreaking prospect.
Just add that to the August heat.
So bombs and bullets, prostitutes and perverts are job opportunities.
Both brain and heart understands, as they wage slave away.
My back feels like a shattered glass rod, how its splinters impale
me!
But, excuse my digression, nothing’s more boring than someone else’s
complaint,
when one really would rather burden them with their own.
I’ve returned home, for all the good it did me.
Looking for Liberty, I found shadows dogging my footsteps instead;
and, soon discovered the old truth, no matter where you are
there you are; but, axioms aside, this is a good place to die.
THE DROUGHT ENDS
The throng of dancing children carved a channel
the current of their lives merge and flow together,
and alleviate the drought, through the water plants and reeds,
the thin limbed human plant grew on pure light and air.
The exiled wanderer felt his estrangement,
From the toeholds of his old roots, as an agony.
In that golden age, in a moment’s sunrise, we lived
On the happy river; now, even sacred names and hair style are considered
sins.
THE POWER OF DESIRE
Self-seeking extremists
tour with exiled immigrants
through the radiant heart of water,
and the demonic night
is astonished by the beauty
of the lonely light of fire,
the earth’s flowering births,
and pure air, which bursts in song
and escapes the annihilating breath.
Desire is tyrant,
the invisible eagle
savagely rips its prey apart;
and, bears its bloody, mangled corpse
home to its rapacious young.
SECRETS OF A GRAVE AGE
Crickets chorus from pools of darkness, Mars vies with the full moon
over the sleeping valley
Black and white stone slow my head is full of clouds.
The magic smoke sings, it sings in harmony to the songs in my soul;
the World is radiant from my lover’s face, everything else is a sea
of shadows.
From the beginning of time I’ve loved the high country,
I’ve always loved to greet dawn recumbent among the clouds.
And, I with simple sincerity know beauty and wonder
The World is radiant from my lover’s face, everything else is a sea
of shadows.
I’m a poet, I live in privation, I live with truth.
I serve my land as its conscience What else can I do,
when all is this blood red sunset that floods my heart?
The World is radiant from my lover’s face, everything else is a sea
of shadows.
In my native land, I walk among my friends graves,
and wonder what corpses say about liberty and love.
A skull grins at life’s great joke.
The World is radiant from my lover’s face, everything else is a sea
of shadows.
Mysterious indigo rivers silently smoke beneath the moon,
the night no longer sings, silent are its many subtle rhythms;
but, the one who sings loudest, only one, is the one who used to watch
and not sing at all.
The World is radiant from my lover’s face, everything else is a sea
of shadows.
OBLIVION
In the pastel finger of Sunset,
in the downy softness of clouds,
in the daring leap from branch to branch
of the squirrel, dun colored,
between bodies of still flowing rivers
lies this city
A cool twilight breeze, a Mozart quartet,
sweet smelling gardens
wafting waves of fragrance,
pools of street lights
and the valley covered with neon lights
like a colorful carpet of fallen stars
jocund green, and Stravinsky,
bridges rainbow over birds domains,
streets tunnel through darkness
rubies and diamonds flying through the night.
Morning shadows,
skeins of a girl’s dark tresses,
morning moca java, steaming cups,
at liapilis lips in the shape of a kiss
stupid mannequins parade by
foam breasts protruding,
continually cut graveyards
that recede into the evening, rollercoaster like
merrily,
merrily,
merrily,
life is but a dream…
RUMOR MILL
It is an old truism in life that there is nothing more precarious than
success, to expose weaknesses that otherwise would have lain latent and
never have had the opportunity to develop. The Rumor Mill believes
that the recent political events, involving the radical right, have reaffirmed
this idea; and, proven beyond all doubt during the last century that Democratic
governments, too, need to limit the exercises of power over its citizens.
It was not only Bismarck and Hitler and the axis powers who were temporary
aberrations of the institutional abuse of power where a usurping few individuals
displaced the integrity of popular institutions, but, in time Democratic
republics have become subject to the same criticisms. When people
have no limit to their power, then phrases such as “self-government” or,
“popular government” become erroneous and empty and do not express the
true case. Those with the power are not the same as those over whom
the power is exercised. To an ordinary citizen, with their programmed
biases being substantiated, this is perceived as a satisfactory arraignment;
however, what has happened is that the will of a powerful few has supplanted
the will of an individual over themselves. And, the consequence of
this development is profound to the society’s citizens.
Rumor Mill believes that the will of the majority no longer means the
will of the largest number of people. Currently, it means, with the
overwhelming of the electoral process with money, the individuals with
money package political campaigns from national to local races, in Oregon
a leading republican official started a pac, whose publicly stated purpose
was to control every republican candidate running for political office.
The comments and conduct of the Republicans substantiate this fact, according
to their recent public statements the upcoming national elections should
be cancelled, because of their overwhelming financial advantages.
This creates a scenario where we have the majority of people’s opinion
purchased by a wealthy active few who view the electoral process as an
investment. Their perspective of government is symptomatic of all
tyrannies, it is an investment designed not by the people to meet public
needs, or, provide models of good government; but, it is merely a means
to make money for a few at the expense of the many. Controlling government,
under republican leadership, becomes a means of optimizing the returns
on their investments in the public sector. It is important to realize
that inherent in such a political system is a desire to protect their investments
and interests, and certain groups are viewed as potential threats that
they feel should be oppressed. Needless to say for freedom loving
people this is extremely dangerous, and precautions should be taken to
prevent this intrinsic tendency to abuse power by the power elite.
It is essential to understand that the limitation of power is equally important
to Democracies that hold regular elections, specially when the political
process is dominated by a limited number of people who hold the power.
For over 200 yrs. it has been recognized that tyranny of the majority is
extremely dangerous and must be guarded against with eternal vigilance.
It has early on been recognized that when manipulated the collective
majority functions as effectively as any tyrant. What started out
as a means of re-establishing Democracies in Latin America and freeing
their people from the bondage of junta’s and their death squads by the
Democratic Party, has been utilized by the radical right around the world
as a cost effective means to superimpose their private factional interests
on unsuspecting populations. Witness the recent assassination of
a Shiite cleric who stood in the way of a radical right manipulated ethnic
group in Iraq. Domestically the primary benefit is that in America
a political base can be maintained whose conscience is assuaged at supporting
Democratic forms of tyranny who would never support the more expensive
and vulnerable dictatorships. It is one of the cruelest ironies in
political realty that populist forms of oppression are the most virulent
known to mankind; because, they are not held in check by any restraints.
The extremist elements who are attracted to these movements and almost
without exception lead them engage in irrational positions that are extremely
injurious to their countries. They feel that they have the right
to superimpose their strongly held beliefs on their fellow citizens thus
undermining the equality that their countries’ Democracies are built on.
Further, not tolerating dissent among them selves, the leaders soon pursue
excessive policies based on expediency without anyone bothering to openly
check if they are false positions or wrong policies. Remember you’re
either with them or against them. And, being for irrational emotional
excuses like “for children” gives them the illusion of the moral high ground,
which they then transfer to cover all the wrongful acts that they do.
Simultaneously, any one in opposition to all of this is vilified and subjected
to negative consequences so that the general population is soon motivated
by fear, which is another characteristic of tyranny.*Society can and does
impose camouflaged mandates, and its means of tyranny are expanded beyond
the sphere of traditional government activities.
Any intelligent individual will realize that when society, and
particularly manipulated societies becomes the tyrant, it will soon execute
its own mandates. If those directives are wrong, as most extremist
measures are, and if those directives pertain to areas it should not involve
itself; then, the tyranny of the majority soon degenerates into worse forms
of oppression than traditional forms of dictatorships. Protection
of individual’s Civil Rights becomes fundamental to any good Democratic
government, because protection against the tyranny of the manipulated mass
of public opinion, whose natural tendency is towards imposing its prevailing
opinion by extremist means, is identified by the power elite as being necessary
towards dissidents from the herd, in striving to protect their interests.
They endeavor to chain human development and stamp out all forms of individuality
not subordinate to its interests and compel, by extortionist means, all
individuals into line with their models of behavior. They have, with
subliminal technology, already established predispositions of individuals
in order to induce the targeted victim to commit immoral-criminal acts,
which goes well beyond existing standards for entrapment guidelines and
makes a mockery of our egalitarian safe guards and our legal system based
on presumed innocents. And, in doing so the radical right have surpassed
all legitimate interference of collective opinion over individual independence.
A return to previous tried and proven limits of encroachment on individuals
by the manipulated majority opinions is indispensable to a healthy Democratic
state of human affairs and a protection against political tyranny.
Rumor Mill wonders how practical this issue is considering current
political realities? All that makes life worth living to any one
is dependent on its successful out come. Some laws must be made that
recognizes that the function of law originally was and still should be
the protection of the rights of individuals both personal and property.
Democracies must stop over legislating and realize that only a few areas
are fit for legislation, many others are for opinion. Understanding
the difference is fundamental to a successful Democracy.
*The Rumor Mill believes that the radical right efforts to manipulate
the mass of public opinion has largely been successful, however, they have
resulted in several unfortunate consequences. Here is an extremely
short list of some of the more important effects. Please see various
previous issues where these items are addressed individually. The
radical right was responsible for the rising wave of school violence.
The radical right unleashed a number of serial rapists on various communities.
The radical right perverts private citizens, in an effort that resulted
in systematic child abuse. The radical right deliberately promoted
hatred in an effort to generate violent hate crimes. The establishment
of radical right field agents, whose function is to create immoral criminal
acts; which, they are then paid for when the crime they plan is carried
out and the apprehension of the destabilized perpetrators has occurred.
The radical right’s interstate trafficking in child prostitution, some
for acts of a perverse nature. All of these activities are illegal,
and yet the radical right makes money on making these crimes occur.
What has happened is that we now have a hardened and habituated class of
career criminals, whose artificially elevated standards of living is dependant
on causing immoral criminal acts to occur. Acts which make our communities
less safe places to live. All members of the radical right are above
the moral restraint of religion and because of subliminal technology beyond
the reach of the law.
RUMOR MILL
Rumor Mill encountered what it believed was a blatant attempt
at misinforming the public in an attempt at shaping its opinion.
It was front page in a subsection of the local Sun. paper, and was odd
considering that the story was 15 yrs old. It dealt with a local
fascist youth gang called the skin heads. What it claimed wasn’t
exactly a revelation that they were terrible. Unfortunately, what
wasn’t mentioned was the radical right’s involvement. During that
period several youths carried baseball bats and bashed somebody’s head
in. What the paper didn’t point out was that each youth gang was
dominated by members of the radical right, who used the gangs as means
of setting up a whole generation of kids very profitably for themselves.
Each arrest resulted in a substantial bounty for the involved members of
the radical right. The net effect was an extensive entrapment effort
that made our communities streets unsafe, but increased the radical right’s
influence in the black community; and, it was hoped, by the radical right,
eroded the Democratic Party’s constituency. And, as previously mentioned,
it made the radical right field operatives a lot of money. It’s consequences
are still felt because we still have the victim’s of the radical right
imprisoned, and our cemeteries still contain the bodies of the murdered
victims. Also, we passed legislation that resulted in longer
mandatory sentences for youths, at great public expense. Youths made
great victims because they didn’t know their own minds yet and so could
be induced to commit crimes fairly easily. On one occasion the author
discussed what was happening with the some of the local radical right skin
heads, as a beautician dressed them up for a skin head riot in the downtown
area, where extensive damage to property was done and experience provided
to subsequently be used against the World Trade Organization up in Seattle.
These people according to them were ordered downtown and paid to participate
in the riot. And, they were not racist hate mongers, their hatred
ran in different programmed channels. The youths in the story who
were destabilized by the radical right were guilty of committing a violent
act that they were induced to commit; however, the master mind and radical
right field operatives who were behind the crime got clean away, and live
among us still. The reason these kids were entrapped was because
it increased the radical right’s influence, it was profitable for the radical
right and they didn’t like how these kids had been pursuing happiness -
that is before they were poisoned by the radical right with racist hatred.
Also, it left the radical right’s young thugs in a more dominant position
to intimidate the rest of the communities’ children. The radical
right’s propaganda machine engages in three types of propaganda, it distorts,
it omits and it overtly lies. The Rumor Mill believes this article
did all three. Also, the story was designed to make the radical right
not seem so extreme, but when you watch a group of fools look behind them
for the knaves.