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Irises
Mockingbird
UP ON
Upon opening my eyes, the fast running trees
randomly flee like bewildered refugees;
while, below the ground drunkenly lurches,
like an undulating sea of asphalt.
Enveloped in the green valley, churches and service stations
direct towns filled with computer designed cars
and homogenized houses, which lumber past in herds
of black and white cattle;
and, the high mountains blissfully float:
the serpentine river, flashes silver, while writhing
through the verdant landscape; the entire city
darts out and pounces. In my car I’ve just startled awake.
DEC.
The day wears its best gray overcoat,
a wind rattles the limbs
in the fruit trees;
I work winterizing the bed
where the irises are already rising,
where the Greek sculpture
stands startled half-naked,
and where the dormant roses rest.
My sons, who I love more dearly than life, help too,
spreading manure,
around the trees and shrubs,
sharing jokes;
the raindrops descend,
they hit heavier and harder
turning the vegetable gardens and berry patches
into muddy quagmires.
The day is cold and wet,
and the work is hard.
I have to rest
in a well of pain,
the next time I collapse
maybe I’ll not be able to get back up.
Breathing heavily,
I look over the valley
and wonder at the crimson sky,
intently listening,
while the wind’s shrill scream
is muffled by the rain.
REMEMBER
how the neighbor’s great meadow
and the delightfully cool copse
smelled sweet with the fragrance of flowers,
and the tree house fort.
How I loved them, each tree, shrub and stone,
the mystery of every shadow,
the stream with its crawdads,
and the frog filled pond.
Everything seemed to shout,
"Over here, come and play!"
Life was so sweet, either solitary, or with my friends,
the finest sapphire days were like Heaven.
And, above the distant horizons,
the huge, billowing clouds;
suddenly, I would know,
know in an instant how it all worked.
Then came the Winter storms
and sleet filled winds
that buffeted until finally
they narrow the paths of life.
Instead of in my youth,
when winds blew with me
and I would fly as on a ride;
but, when we lost our freedom
what endurance became required
to show all mankind
how abuses of power
do violence to everyone.
BONDS
Busy with bonding , I banished all selfishness,
when we first began playing at love’s sweet strife;
a ripe fruit free falling from the tree
the moment I held you, pressed to my breast, close as life.
How many fights threatened to tear us apart,
which an instant would mend and find
us in love again. And, then this morning,
I found you gently sleeping, in the soft light of early morn.
The fruit that once fell, in love’s garden,
took root and grew, and bore grace and togetherness.
Have I ever regretted it? Never, not even for an instant.
No its true: God knows how much I love you!
BEN
Ben, my friend, be free -
you’ve always loved the desert;
because, its a mirror that reveals your soul
in its infinite panoramas;
where your twin images merge,
you love to walk, testing your strength and knowledge.
Sometimes you lose yourself,
in its primordial rhythms and eternal dirges.
You two, among shimmering heat waves,
are showy reflections wide and high.
Hiking the pathless wastelands
no one has explored before.
Desert! No one discovered
the treasures you posses,
both are so private
of the hidden wealth you contain.
Still, everything is change
and age after age comes and goes;
while, you, with your quiet wisdom, continue
observing the struggle and hardship, eternal and enduring.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Merry Christmas? I hear Christmas carols disturbing the night.
And to these shrouded sheets have set my pen.
Remember sweet music! All happiness flees me,
and I’m overwhelmed by my vast sorrow.
These songs in the night that sing of Merry Christmas
bring before me the vision of churches with lighted spires
a silent token so loving, so sincere
that my poor aching heart, bursts in my breast.
In the darkness, I listen to music
I am a pilgrim of the family of man,
where outside my modest home the cold wind
bitterly complains about the distant celebration.
DIVINE MYSTERY
Ruined one young girl, with her face in the grass,
the time of pupation is over.
On the back, the ache of broken wings;
a fading pulse radiating towards oblivion,
into the infinite sea of transfiguration.
In the darkened day the shed integument lies spent,
a bloody sacrifice cast at the feet of others;
who mouth hypocritical prayers
and exclaim their dismay,
while their victim’s body is bathed in rain -
preparing the corpse for the devouring Earth.
Whispering doorway to darkness,
quietly you rest in the gentle Earth’s long embrace.
PORTLAND’S SYBIL
Portland’s Sybil, little freedom’s heiress
spiritual owner of our most precious possession,
how little did you deserve this sad destiny!
With what wit, and charm, and grace,
definitely a style your own,
you placed your words together
in melodic phrases, like songs.
Full of life, never tiring, from dawn to dusk
you filled the World with harmonies
like the mockingbird that sings so sweetly,
so small and now so utterly alone,
flitting among the green leaves all day long:
until, silence suddenly fell, a dark sinister shroud.
The shear terror you must have felt,
as time expanded ‘till it burst:
our small fragile bird,
your song, barely started, was stopped too soon;
and, even now I regret ever hearing you,
whose few pretty lyrics are paid for with these tears.
Its odd, how even in Death you still sing to us.
Lovely little wren: "Dear Mom, I’m sorry.
Forgive my youthful mistakes that I’ll never be able
to learn and grow from. I must be silent and go away.
You won’t see me any more."
These were her last thoughts, her final song.
And, so God’s blessing to their home is gone,
and, all I can do is echo a bitter sweet good bye.
Her parents’ poor hearts have suffered
such a shock that they can barely beat.
DEVIANT DESIRES
It’s done.
The subliminally implanted deviant desire
has viciously entrapped him, with the fulfillment of sensual delight.
They rose and hurriedly departed,
quickly whispering a stolen, parting phrase; furtively separating
feeling uneasy and vulnerable, he seems to suspect
that something, somewhere, somehow is about to betray
and expose the illicit rendezvous he has just left.
And, he reflects how it began, as an old man
sitting alone at home, how little happiness
he had enjoyed through the fleet footed years.
He realizes how much he had aged; he knows it, sees it
and the time when he was young seemed like only yesterday.
Then, the thoughts would come
at first stealthily and finally more and more
it began to erode his resistance; until,
it devoured him completely.
He would see, in his minds eye,
the lips of his would be lover,
now in an embrace, now beginning to yield to him.
Finally, he is lost completely,
consumed by the alien, sick, sensual desire
that he knew would stigmatize him with shame.
But, what of those who perverted him
and prostituted the little boy:
for profit and pleasure:
there are many forms of pervert!
Futilely, they try to hide, for even now they hear
a sinister, tumultuous sound rattling at the front door
and shaking the stairs; intuitively, they know
what the noise is . It’s the furies, and they’re almost
there!
RUMOR MILL
Here is hoping every one has a happy new year. However,
a happiness obtained by a state of blind ignorance is nothing to wish for.
Included in this collection of poems are a few dedicated to individuals
no longer with us. Rumor Mill suggests that around here a young girl
was deliberately murdered by the radical right, this child was targeted, as
was her murderer, to make a $5,000 pay day for the field operatives, and to
put a damper on this years new years celebration - beware there is a monster
in our midst. The girl in question didn’t use illegal drugs, with
the exception of perhaps cigarettes and drinking, and had refused to be recruited
as a prostitute for the radical right. Does this represent a new escalation
in terror by the radical right?
Unfortunately, the Rumor Mill thinks that this was not the
only "crime" manufactured this season by the radical right. It thinks
that a young boy, in grade school, was deliberately prostituted to entrap
an older man. Senior Citizens do not suddenly develop perverse appetites,
and sex deviants who are attracted to children rarely recover.
So how could a 65+ year old man suddenly become, without any previous perverse
relations, sexually interested in young boys?
It is rumored that he had refused to throw (being a ref) a
sporting event. He respected the integrity of the event. He thought
that cheating was a lie that demeaned every one involved, and made a travesty
out of the honest effort of the two individuals involved. A travesty
out of something that was good and fine, honest and decent. But, the
radical right disagreed they, in their paranoid delusions, maintained the
misguided opinion that you are either with them, or against them; and, this
individual, by showing a shocked indignation and open disdain, became the
target of the radical right, to be subliminally perverted. No drugs
were ever involved in this case. The crime was committed without the
prior knowledge of field operatives to improve sagging moral (as only a $5,000
tax free pay day can) from recent exposures of gross improprieties,
and, so that they could pretend to be a positive contributing element of society,
protecting the public and children from sexually deviant behavior. And,
while child abuse in any form can never be condoned, what this unfortunately
successfully attempt represented was an attack on truth and honesty
by vice and corruption.
Rumor Mill has previously contended that this sort of assault
by vice on virtue is inevitable when one disregards the rights of others,
while embracing fanaticism and its fundamental inequalities between members
of a society. Further, Rumor Mill suggests that these events are going
to occur when ever one group blasphemously puts them self above God, and disdains
legal restraint (what ever it takes) by placing themselves beyond the reach
of the law.
The Rumor Mill also would like to draw your attention to more
recent events. Consider a group who earlier, during the last elections
engaged in escalating acts of political violence targeting ever younger victims
in Democratically controlled districts; until, a toddler was kidnapped and
murdered just before the election. And, we all are aware of the escalating
wave of school violence this country has recently experienced, which some
have attributed to the radical right who were trying to discredit and under
fund public education. Simultaneously, we witnessed a wave of sexual
misconduct cases where here locally it became as though no other occupation,
beside teachers, for weeks on end engaged in statutory rape, which is statistically
impossible without the contrivance of external mitigating factors, at least
so the Rumor Mill contends. So here is a situation where the radical
right are about to be exposed; and it would be terribly beneficial if the
public were distracted. And, we witness a parent murdering their wife
and two small children and then dumping their bodies in a slough to be discovered
just before the New Year. Rumor Mill does not wish to suggest that it
has inside information on this heinous crime; but, the multiple murders are
awfully convenient and the crime wave pattern falls into previous known criminal
patterns alleged to the radical right. Draw your own conclusions.
Remember the radical right can not exist without ( and financially benefit
from) these kinds of crime.
In conclusion the Rumor Mill would like to point out a lesson
of history. One that our founding fathers knew. Abuses of power
are far worse than abuses of freedom.
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