1.Republican bumper sticker about their social policies:
BAH HUMBUG
2.Republican campaign slogan:
Help Hire The Mentally Handicapped
Vote Republican.
3.Why does the Radical Right think that they're better than
anybody else, and can order everyone around?
Because, God made them
first. On the third day God made vegetables.
LIGHT SIFTS THROUGH
Light sifts through curtained windows,
as above bunches of lights beam darkly downward
over the mostly empty chairs
randomly scattered and colored bland blue.
Through the doorway, the big recreation room
mutters a larger loneliness than the blaring T.V.,
while the residents silently sit staring
off into distant vague years.
An attendant collects trays. Some of
the senior citizens have returned to their rooms
leaving behind the meal's cluttered remains,
in silence that lays like tile.
Down corridors where open doors
conjure rooms, the artificial lights
cast an ethereal pale.
Its there you'll usually find them
isolated, like ancient ruins,
the mute phones, made for calling
(if friends existed) communiques from exiles:
now shadows fade, wearily night descends.
Sunset expires behind the West Hills.
THE ONLY LIGHT
Finally, in the noon hour of my life
when I can't go anywhere anymore,
I see that here in Portland
the sun dials are useless.
There is time enough,
to pin life (squirming) on a sheet of paper
with a carefully crafted phrase;
but not too much, as I gaze about
this land without shadows.
Remember those first nights together;
the moon, like an audible sigh,
peeking between boughs,
and vanishing with the stars,
street lights and city; and, how
you closed your eyes.
Afterward, we had a smoke
and the door opened
on a rare and beautiful land;
we drove around town,
the trees leaned over the car,
and inquisitively peered in,
and then ran away
laughing down the street.
People where out, enjoying the evening,
and talking to one another.
Music floated dreamily by,
mixing with the fragrance
of flowers from the park.
Now, behind opaque windows
people are crying,
its enough to break your heart.
And, when you walk in the park
someone is sure to follow you.
A policeman stands on guard
inside the door to the city council,
and just recently curfews,
roadblocks and strip searches
have been instituted,
as when Jewish furnaces blasted,
and brown shirts swaggered
in the streets, either to bully somebody,
or to swell with a sense
of their own self- importance.
But, your eyes are
as soft and bright as ever,
even if today,
they are the only light
that can be seen.
ONLY AT SUNSET
Only at Sunset did I hear
the day whisper its secrets
to the night. Ominously,
as the Sun disappeared blood red
beneath the black horizon.
It seemed as if
someone had opened
the floodgates to hell
and inundated the World with darkness.
We all know where hell is,
its ubiquitous and parades
about on its hind legs
spreading misery in its wake.
Paradise, is the sparks
that emanate from your lips
when they meet mine
in the darkness;
and, in that fleeting
vertiginous instant
when we forget
the existence of hell.
IN THE LONELY VIGIL OF NIGHT,
over the snow powdered landscape,
where a small breeze stirs
silver glinting waters,
and dark shadows create
a thousand vague shapes
and imaginary visions
among the slumbering waves
and forest covered hillsides;
pausing at its apex,
above the Cascades and Coastal Range,
or flooding the Willamette Valley
with reflected light, while wandering
through black infinity,
the moon pauses before sinking;
and the World fades; shadows disappear
mountains and rivers merge
into one immense oblivion;
but, night stays,
softly singing a dirge,
blind; the interstate trucker
salutes the last feeble flicker
of fading light that looks like
a lost street lamp.
And, as it vanishes,
so too does our youth,
scattering those mortal years
in their wake.
Gone are the shadows,
the womb of our secret dreams;
fading into obscurity
are our hopes,
the crutch on which
mankind leans.
Dusky and forsaken,
widowed, life remains.
Blindly groping, the perplexed wanderer
vainly searches for some meaning,
some purpose; and realizes
he has lost touch
existing in a totalitarian state.
How happy would we be
if the freedom we knew,
during the intensity of youth,
had lasted throughout life.
How harsh is out fate,
or is it kindness,
that half of life
is harder to endure
than the dreadful
prospect of death.
Sublime mind that devised
the blight of old age,
where we retain desires,
but hope expires,
pleasures become exhausted,
pain grows ever greater,
and bad becomes good,
while vice pretends to be virtue.
Mountains and valleys,
from you the splendor has fled
that dusted powdery white
everything beneath the veil of night;
but, your period of bereavement
will be brief; even now,
in the East, the sky reddens
while giving birth to dawn;
Parading after is the Sun
ebullient, casting color
on broad beams of light
flooding the illusionary city
and you.
But, that is not how life works:
once youth has departed,
we will never see
the light of another day;
and, serving to seal
the darkened stage of Earth's play
is a tombstone.
THE LIFE THAT THAWS
into secret streams where we've
mysteriously merged, you and I,
growing together into a totality
that's somehow greater
than the sum of its parts.
And, when life overflows
its narrow confines, with joyful bounds,
we harmonize our fates,
in the immensity of time;
and, emerge, memories intact,
stronger from the darkness
that threatens to engulf us,
even now, after Winter rains,
when green tentatively returns
and flowers blaze on emerald sprigs.
We understand one another
communicating with wordless messages
that nurture us, while on our way:
your vague form reflecting
indistinctly back at me,
as in a dream,
swept along in time's
ruthless rip tide,
which rages and roars
while it devours the shore.
Until, nothing remains
in the waning blank verse hours,
grey mist shrouded Autumn,
other than the mournful tolling
of a fog horn
marking a ship's way out to sea.
HOW THICK , HOW LIFELESS
How thick, how lifeless is twilight!
A sunset like a cadaver.
I almost want to drive
the languid clouds along.
On empty evenings like this
kids hot rod their cars,
computer programers race over the keys
with their flying fingers,
gardeners cut like crazy
large, flat lawns....
and for those poets among us
who see, in the palms of their hands,
the unfolding of universal rhythms
past, present and future:
they craft phrases with wings
that wake the World from its lethargic sleep.
I SAT DOWN
I sat down beside you; and we felt
the joy that grew within you,
and, for the first time in our
married lives, we were brother and sister
who whispered of the blessed event.
Tentatively, I touched your belly,
a ripe swollen fruit, and gently
uncovered your breasts. They opened
to me like two roses; and,
from somewhere deep inside your milk
welled up into twin living fountains.
Embarrassed, we were a kaleidoscope
of conflicting emotions; we shared
with each other our mutual concerns;
and we fell into each others arms,
once more man and wife
frightened over life's cares.
GOLDEN APPLES
Remember when we walked in peace,
but that was before, taking joy for granted,
there were no disasters, no bad dreams of war
of ruinous retreats, or the deafening din of triumph.
Remember when we - see the sun shining at its apex,
like the spirit beaming down on us warming, healing-
sat and stared, heedless of storm clouds
that gathered glowering on the horizon.
Our souls blossomed like Spring flowers,
rending the darkness like lightening;
the body obeying blind impulses,
knowing nothing, feeling everything- growing.
Up in the wild, wonderful highlands,
wandering in the quiet holiness of the pristine forest,
the heart knows no torture
nor mind any trouble.
It will soon be Autumn:
the Sun's light will be thin,
and people will pick golden apples
from the tree of life.
SOMEHOW
The car slowed as it crested the hill,
leaned and darted around the curve,
disappearing behind a green wall of vegetation.
Below, in profile, a home owner
mowed his lawn, while two neighbor
women were sequestered
in a driveway. The children,
dressed in their after school play clothes
swarmed on their bicycles
cavorting like butterflies,
or bounced basketballs
that were worn smooth with wear
on their way home.
The older girls gathered in groups
of two or three and conspiratorially gossiped
looking, in spite of themselves,
an awful lot like their mothers.
In a nearby backyard, a boy played
with a dog. A mother carried in a
grocery bag. From across the street
pots were already rattling
among the other mysterious sounds
that accompanied a tide of dinner odors.
And, above in an endless blue sky
the golden Sun congenially beamed down:
somehow, it all sounded like happiness.
DOOMSDAY
Evening descends like Doomsday.
A doorway opens like a gaping wound on to Sunset.
Ruthless like oppression, the vast silence weighs on me.
Yards are tortured by the fences that bind them.
The city is like yesterday's refuse-
only more worthless.
Was it an angel's wing,
or merely the day's death rattle,
the breeze brushing my face.
Already, night pours over the Cascades
flooding the valley, the sky is still
a conflagration, reds scratch at your eyes,
orange screeches assault your ears.
Yellow the color of Western Meadowlark breasts
jostle for your attention, and blues
very suggestive of poetry and infinity
subtly ease towards....
Now only the mountain tops are touched by light.
Disembodied, lidless eyes,
set in their sockets,
show through an arched trellis
floating in the garden.
Are they the eyes of God?
So many simultaneous environments: the suburbs,
the city and the countryside dissolving into night.
Today has had its rich rewards, too:
children's laughter, Sunset and the doze of evening.
Lights appear on the distant hillside,
magnified by their relative isolation among the darkness,
where I feel curiously comfortable
in the dark, ominous hostile night.