Inside, the waiting room is dull and drowsy,
patients disperse, each one sunk in misery.
The office has the same tasteless decor
as anywhere in managed medicine
uncomfortable modern seats and innocuous carpets,
vacuous magazines and insipid pictures.
Here the sadness and emptiness of life
expands until it engulfs the room, the building and the valley.
Its then that I pick up my pen
and use words to describe the scene,
making it possible to live,
at least for a little while.
Reproducing the scene reinvents it,
and I begin to exist again, somewhere instead of nowhere.
THE DENTIST
Its horrible! Its indecent!
Does my turn have to come?
As the receptionist greets me at the counter,
the landscape of the room
is stripped of objects to discuss;
bemused, I stand staring,
at her blind bigoted delusions,
as her gaze descends on the room,
its as if she can discolor and darken it,
and at my content figure,
which faces her, patiently waiting
to finish being checked in,
reading Demosthenes, inadvertently seeming to
flaunt my relative freedom in the World,
a black veil of crepe of woe,
as if such an existence were enough
to provoke the most malicious thoughts.
Look at her, all she can think is me, me, me!
If only I could be anywhere but here.
A SUDDEN GUST
A sudden gust of wind through the trees
drives the soggy leaves scudding across the deck,
one can faintly hear the city
bellowing in the distance.
The day had been growing cold and dark;
the afternoon light falls from
a thick ceiling of clouds, which gives
an intangible solemnity to the scene.
Everything seems extraordinary
Rameau's Gavotte Variations, the fireplace,
and the steady rainfall;
today, they're remodeling my house,
and its as if all the doors, windows
and cabinets of my mind are thrown open.
Living in Civilization we become entangled
in certain assumptions
thinking some things are wrong
that are really not wrong at all;
while other things that are
horrible and indecent are all right.
The media today states how
the radical right are still murdering people,
they think it clever to turn themselves
into sadists, and mendaciously prostitute their loved ones.
I look at my house, garden and the afternoon,
they are all strangers to me.
I am isolated from these people,
it feels as though anything might happen;
a large dump truck lumbers, like a dinosaur,
through the forest; a red squirrel
barks its warning and disappears
still the World is a beautiful place.
OH WHAT INFINITE YEARNING
Oh what infinite yearning
blights our unborn lives.
The pulsating sea of blood
swells to receive us
like the roses at dawn
softly sinking into the day-
so we fall into love.
Yet the shadows of this time
lie like sorrow, like unanswered questions
hovering over your secret answer of hate.
We begin with those whose hearts yearn,
with those who love,
with those who feel ill when they must part.
We begin at the moment of a chance glance,
in hands which fumble searchingly in darkness.
We began when life still smelled of Spring,
and now we permeate your being
suffusing further with every breath,
into the waking dream which is the Earth.
Let us exist and grow,
until your image reflects in us
like the mirror of ourselves
that resides in your eyes,
or the sound of our voices
sings sweetly in your ears.
We fly like moths
enraptured by the light of your desires,
like moonbeams showering the Earth.
We who are the morning
that never will exist;
because, some fanatics somewhere
exterminated God's grace
with the cinders of their hate.
FROM OUR PORCH
We watch,
while the white moon
finally frees itself
from the whispering wood's
dark clutching branches....
"Do you remember?"
Black mirrors,
the darkeyed windows reflect
the white dress silhouette
of a blossoming plum tree,
where a sweet breeze carries....
"Our dreams as big as the night sky."
Immense and sorrowful
darkness has crept
from every nook and cranny
overwhelming the city
defeating all our hopes....
Tenderly you take my hand.
IT IS MORNING,
It is morning,
and the fog has left the river
and is working its way up the hillside,
whose russet colored leaves tremble in the breeze.
Dead ahead the sky is slate-grey,
the lawn and trees
glisten with freshly fallen raindrops.
I step from beneath an incense cedar
and make my way between tombstones
toward the silver shining street
that looks like a river,
as it winds its way through the cemetery.
I like to visit here, it serves to remind me:
how we are all nothing.
AUTUMN IS HERE
Autumn is here and Winter is approaching,
as the afternoon shrinks and the sea's incessant roar
is disturbed by the crying of gulls.
There is the hopeful trips to town,
where bodies, disintegrated into atoms,
are buffeted by the wind,
swarming in the full sunshine,
of your face teeming with stars,
of rocks pounded by the surf,
clouds, sea and sky assembled externally
the jumbled parts of the internal vision.
In the mirror of men's mind,
in the tidal pools of disconcerted water,
in which clouds and shadows form and reform
in kaleidoscopes of color,
where dreams stubbornly persist;
and, it becomes impossible to shake
the notion that nature is
sometimes one immense mockery.
I long to walk the beach, with my crystal intensity
searching for the absolute good,
remote from mediocre pleasures and inverted virtues
something alien to conventional bondage.
Instead I sit in the grass overlooking the surf,
sparks play and among the passing shadows
I dodge the flights of showers
that seem to posses the knowledge
of the sorrows of mankind
FROM THIS DAY ON
From this day on, my heart is dead.
Dead to the last deception,
the one most difficult of all.
I had thought that my life really was my own.
Now, I realize that my hoping, and even my wishing
to be so dearly deceived, have vanished.
May it rest in peace.
The struggle has raged through my heart,
has ravaged it. Life is not worth
one beat of a flies wing,
one shiver in the cold naked light of early morning.
The World is corrupt. Rest easy.
For this is the last.
What mercy has life shown to man - but dying.
Now, you disdainfully vanquish human nature
and the ugly force that furtively
disfigure humans with its blind stupidity
and the entire infinite futility of the universe.
ON THOSE GREY WINTER MORNINGS
On those grey Winter mornings
when the light has died
and the programs silently vanish
over the languid disorder of everyday routines,
I sit, beside the diffuse light from a window,
and gaze, at the skein of your hair
scattered on the pillow, and your wild-rose cheek,
and the shadow of your eye lashes,
and listen, to the quiet
rhythm of your breathing
while the city that was only dark before
almost imperceptibly begins to brighten.
AUTUMN RED AND GOLD
Autumn red and gold,
beneath bleak and blue skies,
the house is quiet as is the street,
the garden is lit up
like house lights just before
dimming for the show.
The scene stare at me
beautiful and bright, but
only on the surface,
effervescent and ephemeral,
poised before the colors pour together
in the russets and rubicunds of late fall.
It is good to be here,
steeped in silence,
pondering the paradoxes
inherent in existence; remote;
I rest in the obscurity of human relationships.
How fecund is this moment.
IS IT REASONABLE
Is it reasonable to expect
everyone to think the same way on any given topic?
No! Only fanatics demand that all people should think and act
as they dictate.
This being impossible, it forces a certain percentage of people into
one of
three categories. Either, they become fanatics. Or, they
actively oppose the
fanatics' tyranny. Or, they become hypocrites and behave as base
autotons
blindly behaving as the tyrants compel. For with fanaticism their
is no other
way.
Two of the three alternatives
lead to unfortunate consequences. First, to
actively oppose results in resistance and rebellion and the social
disruption
that way represents. The tyrant then must use force in order
to coerce and
oppress their fellow citizens. People will at least be fined
and imprisoned, in
an attempt to compel them to behave in ways which otherwise they would
not
freely choose to do. How far are fanatics willing to go to force
compliance.
Are they willing to lie, cheat, steal, spy, prostitute, pervert and
murder?
What then becomes of the would be masters, to say nothing of their
victims? Today, observe the radical right. Who would be
forced to behave in
ways which are unreasonable to them? And, how can anyone who
professes to be a
Christian deliberately do to others what they would not have done to
themselves?
Is this a good scenario to orchestrate for anyone, let alone for the
sake of
children? Second, the other alternative, sycophancy, leads to
repression and
hypocrisy. Both alternatives, active resistance and hypocrisy,
result in
unhappiness, the moral degeneration of society and the deadening of
the finest
feelings of mankind.
Our founding fathers were
wise enough to know that power corrupts. They formed
a more perfect union in order to protect our rights from abuses of
power- abuses
always done for the best of excuses of course, like children or safety.
They
held that "all men were created equal" and that we are " imbued
by God with
inalienable rights including but not exclusive to, life liberty and
the pursuit
of happiness.". (Please excuse the paraphrase)
Virtue can not be accomplished
by compulsion. If anyone has an idea that they
think is right, then they should appeal to the reason of their fellow
citizens,
and, not reduce themselves to the brutal exercise of force, thus compelling
the
blind submission of their fellow human beings. If it is reasonable,
people will
readily adopt that course of action; and, if it is not reasonable,
then force
should not be used to make human beings bend to the yolk of tyranny-
no matter
how well intended. Either way the use of force is wrong!
WTO IN SEATTLE
I would like to state, at
the outset, my unabashed bias in favor of big
business and market driven economies. Anyone against World trade
and / or big
business is incredibly ignorant and opposed to the relatively high
standards of
living throughout the World. This is not to state that there
are not negative
externalities derived form the market place. There are, but market
driven
economies provide mankind with a potential effective set of tools to
enhance the
materialistic well being of everyone. So much for my opinion
now on to Rumors.
Rumor has it that the riots
in Seattle were a staged event
put on to influence the WTO. At this point some of you will be
thinking that
this is only to state the obvious; however, rumor says the disturbances
were
designed by the Radical Right to influence policy in four areas.
First, they were designed
to indirectly increase the Radical Right's influence
on the WTO and thus World trade to the benefit of the Radical Right's
factional
business interests. An analogous example that serves as a precedent
Rumor
maintains is the protest movement that attacked Nike for child labor
and
deplorable working conditions at factories, without giving the same
attention to
Nike's competitors, some of which are controlled by the Radical Right,
who use
the same child workers and factories. If the protesters were
legitimate the
attention would have been the same for all the industries participants
not just
the most successful competitor to the factional interest of the Radical
Right.
For, when one considers their informational base one realizes, the
so called
protestors had to have known, so claims the Rumor Mill.
Second, they are designed
to distract the WTO from the Microsoft antitrust
trial. Rumor contends that when the wealthiest man in the World's
company,
whose corporate headquarters is in Seattle, is taken from him for building
a
better product, which the Radical Right's factional interests couldn't
compete
with, then the major financial concerns around the World, who are at
the
conference, will take notice and become alarmed. What better
way can be found
to prevent discussion, than by distracting the conference's participants
attention and shore up support for oppressive measures than to stage
another
phony riot against big business in the North West. Earlier this
Summer, Rumor
contends, a staged riot was held in Eugene, as a sort of dress rehearsal
for
Seattle (see issue # 25 or 24(?)) by members of the Radical Right pretending
to
be anarchists.
Third, dissent becomes dichotomiesed.
Legitimate dissent is to be displaced
and channeled by the Radical Right, who hope to turn it into a vehicle
for their
propaganda purposes. Illegitimate dissent becomes discredited,
which will help
the Radical Right's candidates in the upcoming elections.
Fourth, it is hoped that
President Clinton, who has done such a masterful job
managing the economy and is a Democrat, will be embarrassed and discredited
by
these staged riots, when he addresses the WTO; and, that this will
be harmful to
his approval rating with the public, which it is hoped will then be
transfered
to the other member of this administration Vice President Al Gore,
and thus
hurting his chance to be elected as the next President.