Irises

Mockingbird

LEAVES
Trees are starting to change colors,
like an almost remembered memory,
the recent reds and yellows wearily rest.
The autumn colors are a kind of feigned gaiety.

Behind the bright and beautiful transformations
are thin skeletal limbs; too soon,
their leaves will lie on the ground
preparing a nutrias bed for next year's growth.

Yet, still, the flaming leaves flicker
in thinning foliage every fall.
Summer is dying, soon it will burst
into a fiery conflagration:

before Spring re-appears,
we must endure another barren Winter.

GARDEN PATHS
Restive birds spread in the twilight
among palsied foliage, whose compelling
green is a kind of grief.
And the relentless rain and sighing firs
amplified by the wandering wind.
Vague like all distant things
you return to me on that morning.
Your pale green dress fresh as Spring
among plants burnt by the dessert Sun,
where red mountains rise and a hawk's cry
pierces the blue aching emptiness.

Perhaps deluded by our hopes,
and, happy in our soaring spirals,
at first we were oblivious
to the brutality, the perverted Christian compassion,
and this stark pain of sorrow.
Your smiling eyes reflect the universe.
In the dark house steeped in shadows,
your illuminated face hovers unchanged;
.I hear Faure and the insistent rain,
or, perhaps sad shuffling footsteps
along garden paths among fleeing flowers.

DAYLIGHT-SAVINGS
When our time on Earth has ended,
don't say we loved merely for love's sake.
Nor, say we loved for selfish benefit;
but, rather, for that bond buried deep in both our breasts.

And, if we should be so blessed,
as to merit the good opinion of good people;
then, let it be for honor and our warm hearted love,
and not some cold and arid sense of duty.

For long after we have gone to rest,
leaving the World's joys and sorrows behind,
neither death, nor time, nor the Earth
shall obscure our souls' love.

MALEVOLENT BEINGS
Being malevolent by nature
and malleable to the core,
they acquired a whole strutting suit of vices,
prefabricated and formed after
other peoples' proportions
that extended in a grotesque
pitiable fashion; but, they tried
to be as bad as possible;
and, they succeeded, beyond their wildest dreams,
in becoming cruel and brutal;
I've tried to be fair,
when it became apparent
the monstrous perversions
that they really did commit
were not just cheap imitations
of previous villains, but contended
that their evil ways were sincere.

It is more than evil fanaticism
on command, which is not less wicked
because they embrace emotional excuses;
and, which prevents them
from ever realizing the great harm that they've done.
Harm that continues from city to city.
Until, today they exist as confused scoundrels
with blood stained hands and rotten cores.

EMOTIONALISM
We live in an age rampant with emotionalism.
Nothing is more dangerous to an individual
than to become entangled with insidious emotionalism.

It compromises and destroys all our good deeds
and transforms either highly principled behavior or intuitive kind acts,
and in either instance makes them something contumelious.

Its to bad we can't devise a means
to amputate all maudlin emotionalism.
It is more dangerous than impulse, excessive appetites,
mass conformity, passion and lust.

Then, sinning would become comprehensible,
and human errors could be reduced to controllable limits,
and life safe and respectable once again.

Now life based on sentimentality is ruinous.
It is neither intuitive nor honorable;
but, a decadent, moribund mongrel
breed between both.

Emotionalism makes possible
for individuals to delude themselves
into thinking wrong is right.
I loath the very sound - emotionalism!

The analyst, the moralist,
even basic animalistic drives I can relate to;
however, how on Earth
can I hope to understand an emotionalist!

WHEN
When you appear
the room begins to spin,
I can't concentrate and
my mind wanders.

Fire that doesn't hurt flares up,
and fen fog obscures everything
as it meanders aimlessly
among barren flowers.

You come to me,
and, I forget what I was doing;
I no longer want the ancient book,
whose pages turn to dust.

In the oceans within your eyes
multitudinous walls of waves
wander buffeted by the winds and words
that bind us to our memories.

Each dawn gives birth
to new forms, whose stark desire
is more expansive than the vastness
of the blue domed sky.

THE PLAY
When the play began between us, for a rehearsal,
I played husband and you played wife, as we tried on the parts;
smiles gentle as sunshine, and squalls that turned into frantic embraces,
these were things that we hungered for - the lost years we never knew

Moist lips and pleasures, and pain that stalks by shadows;
all the exhaustion and all the satiation of long delight;
were things that she never knew before,
when she pretended to be half in love with unrequited, foolish lovers.

The years were a chorus, and provided an on going commentary,
on the soft tears and gales of laughter;
then, they came and set ambuscades for him
smashing today and befouling tomorrow with sorrow.

What does time mean; years desolated, amputated limbs;
how love still grows among the laughter and anguish;
these were the lessons she came to know,
and took their full measure, before the curtains closed.

THE LAST EMPTY METRO
Silently,
in the somnolent suburbs
between indifferent
house fronts,
floats the fog
obscuring everything
on gray furry feet;

while, from the gnarled branches
of an ancient oak
comes the erie
cry of an owl;

waiting for midnight
with the dew strewn grass,
whose recondite eye
is riveted on
the last empty metro.

NOW-HERE
When I see some kids
and its readily apparent
that she's a right wing whore and the others
are trained to engage in misanthropic and sadistic behaviors
I know this is hell.

Everyone old enough to have dreamed during their lives-
chains and fears hovering overhead
like a dark sinister shadow,
and everyone wearily treading
the bleak and barren trek to oppression.

I wonder at the unpleasant fools aspiring to be scoundrels
engaged in the sickly pleasure of trying
to make others more miserable than themselves;
because, being endlessly unpleasant is a miserable way to be,
and how else can they compel others to behave

in any arbitrary way: until, what they have saved
isn't worth saving. I wonder if anyone
who lived forty years ago, would have suspected,
that God would be some blasphemers' private bigot; or,
sneaking in the darkness of human ignorance,

Hell would be resurrected on Earth
and promoted as Heaven ; or, perverting religion,
and hiding the cruel things that they
have done behind emotional excuses.
They, too, will have to go down the chute to....

This is dedicated to an alleged r.r. murdered little one - least we forget!
FOR YOU
You've disdained me - little one,
darling daughter! Being poor
how could I possibly provide for you
dear one, an inheritance that you deserved:
your young grace , your engaging charm,
your early intelligence: how your future virtues
shown radiant from your sparkling eyes!
Your young ladies manners, your laughter
that sparkled like water-
The swelling emptiness I feel inside
without all of that! For you,
my love, will never return any more
to warm my poor weary heart!
What is there to do? But, wait and hope
to join you one glorious day!
If it is God's will, in Heaven,
at the end of my time,
your small arms will wrap around me
in a big hug!

RUMOR MILL
Rumor Mill contends that initially society is inclined to think that evil commotion, like the popular movement of the radical right, by purifying the Republican Party and society and by annihilating descending perspectives, must employ the full use of all their natural faculties (this is one reason that they have supposedly opposed the recreational use of drugs) in the beginning, but, after a very short time, the factious party feels toward the enlightened and virtuous citizens a hatred at least equal to their first targeted victims, the junkies and crack users. Violent spirits make intelligent individuals subservient to their purposes, when they wish to triumph over existing established parties; but, when they only want to maintain their fix of power, they strive to testify their greatest contempt for reason, and stupidly state that the intellect and religious beliefs can only serve their selfish ends. All difference of opinion is either perverse or sinful; and, the old states of bondage appear again, only under 'new' terms.
Every tyrant, in whatsoever circumstance, hates reflection; and if blind fanaticism becomes the primary agent of authority, its most formidable foe is, undoubtedly, the person who preserves the ability to objectively judge; the sycophant alone submits to the caprice of the despot.
If the populist movement continues for any length of time; then, authority always descends downward on the slippery slope into the ignorant classes of society. The more mediocre the populace, the more easily manipulated to the tyrants will; they view enlightened ideals with disdain, as something divergent from their domain, and which must be fatal to their empire. This adversarial view is obviously paranoid.
If any faction desires that injustice should prevail; it will avoid, at any cost, giving citizens any encouragement to educate and improve themselves-just look at their recent proposals for education and the incredible costs associated with advanced education in America today. The radical right disgrace themselves by devoting their abilities to the defense and perpetration of injustice; but, if the influence of reason is distributed in any nation it will, as a logical imperative, tend to bring improvement to general morality. The radical right counter this with propaganda that embraces vice, perversion and corruption as acceptable means of manipulating society and controlling decent.
The radical right soon draws its own private agenda, which it expresses in established catch phrases introduced to further their factions interests; and, to be employed as a substitute for thought. They confirm their bigoted beliefs and discourage any analysis from penetrating beyond the superficial. There are certain received formulas of cruelty, from which people, even devote individuals in positions of authority, are never allowed to deviate. It is their version of the "JEUDEN free Deutchland" techniques of controlling society employed by the Nazis.
Suspicions, paranoia, jealousies, naked ambition and calculating avarice all combine to remove superior minds from the radical rights factional efforts; they are replaced by violent and obscure individuals, who place themselves only after order is established; they think themselves authorities, to continue the mess they've created and replace the long held ideas and cherished beliefs of previous generations proven by the tests of time; and, they have become the masters of talent, and of virtue whose captive reflection is forced to serve all the full impact of their ignorance and vain stupidity.
Under the yolk of their popular faction, all freedom of judgment must be banished. Speech serves only to perpetuate hate, and brand their emotional excuses as decrees. The enraged label with disrepute the most republican beliefs- equality, liberty, the love of reason and virtue. The brutal spirit of cruelty arrogantly struggles against reason and blasphemously defies religion when substituting its indoctrination for education; and, blatantly shows itself more indulgent to corruption and vice than to the products of the mind.
If this course continues, we shall no longer own any individual characteristics. Human rights shall be a thing of the past. Future advancement shall follow fanatical paths marked with perversion, sadism and sycophancy; where despicable talents will be harnessed by power, to throw a veil over their actions, with degraded individuals who boast of pretended abilities employed by the radical right in order to abuse them. Brave individuals may struggle against the ascendance of the radical right: but the inspiration of genius will be buried by it. The tyranny of faction will warp the inspiration of talent; and, when manufactured into the herd of public opinion, it will inflict a much worse wound. It appears that absolute power desires that a sort of mystery should enshroud all issues as to the qualities adopted by government, in order to maintain its exploitative policies in an aura of self-importance. Cold mediocrity can only maintain control of a Democracy when kept at a distance from superior abilities and penetrating understanding.

RUMOR MILL
Rumor Mill would like you to consider, how a third party candidate, who has had zero impact on all of the issues and zero impact during the last election, can stage a viable campaign? How can such a candidate receive adequate funding? And, how can that candidate be given large amounts of attention in the radical right dominated propaganda machine? Its as if the unpopular radical right were funding and staging a bogus candidate with large name recognition to fragment the under funded Democrat's candidates again? Just like with Perot and dad and President Clinton.
Also, how can our president say the fact of global warming doesn't exist? We are responsible for 25% of it!!! No wonder under Bush's leadership Texas was the most polluted place in North America and one of the most polluted places in the world. Also, why did Bush Jr. walk out of the germ warfare conference? Who are we afraid of? El Salvador?
What a gift for being wrong on all the issues! No wonder veils of mystery on the issues and a third party candidate are being presented to the public again and again and again and again....

RUMOR MILL

The radical right must not get away with it. Nothing is more important than our liberties! We must resurrect the ancient desire for freedom into our so called "NEW AGE" with its old fashioned tyranny. We must stop pretending that it can't happen here and reassert that nothing is more essential to running a country than reason., more impressive than virtue, and more important than equality and justice. If not then ignorant power and perfidious cunning will sooner or later plunge the UNITED STATES into despotism. Nothing less is at stake than the continued happiness of the country.

Current Issue

volume 1