White-wash
White innocence melts
In autumn’s tired rain
Time an old song belts
Sipping stale champagne
Evening grief welling
Tears in grimy snow
Bleak stories telling
Morning plants a glow
In white vapor clouds
Bright sunbeams flourish
Freed from ominous shrouds
This day I’ll nourish
LICENSE TO CALCULATE
In my Spartan, but important looking office
On a cinder block wall, painted battleship gray
Which joints display good workmanship and solid material
Is hanging plumb and true to line a perfect rectangle
An impressively calligraphed document
By gilded plastic baroquely framed
Solemnly, the Department of State
Presents sealed greetings and evidence
That according to the law, and by proper examination
I have gained the ability and character
To calculate stress and fatigue
To design, plot and engineer
Details, components, and devices
By means of plans and specifications
Practical visions will be built.
But building castles of air Gives me “Gestalt”.
Arbor vitae
What can I say about the tree?
I hang my troubles on
It is a mighty spruce, tall and proud
And black, sheltering
My friends the blue jays
And my enemies the squirrels
Bleeding whitish pitch
To make the ants and my troubles stick
I planted it from
A twelve inch seedling and mowed
It down by mistake
So it grew taller and stronger
Then I leaned on it
To rest and dream, to smell and breathe
Now I pass it twice
A day, evenings going home
I hang my troubles on
It lets me do it, no complaints
Just endures and sways
Mornings when I face a new day
I take my troubles back
Carrying my load again, now lighter
With troubles mostly gone
What would I do without my tree?
To hang my troubles on.
Dancing with the wheel
Snow geese flying north
To glades, birches and thawed lakes
Frozen earth renewal moon
Under quaking aspens
Otters, belly slide snowy gulches
Rest and cleansing moon
Cougars breath, frosty - whiskered
Plantain, leaves emerge healing
Big winds moon
Above twinkling dandelions
Red hawk, eye piercing night
Budding trees moon
Blue camas border
Beavers, weaving willow dams
Frogs return moon
Flickering herds of deer
Browsing on yarrow under
Corn planting moon
Brown bears lumbering
Dragging shadows over purple violets
Harvest moon
Raven conjuring emissary
Strutting among wands of mullein
Ducks fly moon
Snakes skins shed
Dormant, in pits with thistles
Freeze up moon
Stretching black spruce
Elks, antler forest towering
Long snow moon
Leni Lenape
The original people, before we came
Their land and hunting grounds we claim
Carved face, half face
TAM --- TAM --- TAM
Messingwy, protector of the game
You let the Delaware become tame
Red face, black face
TAM --- TAM --- TAM
Their disappearance is our shame
Greed and self – righteousness to blame
White face, no face TAM --- TAM --- TAM
Crack of doom
Saying goodbye to a voice quieted,
Extinction -silenced conversation
Weaving and fraying of creation,
Fellow life in greed we ravaged.
Now spiritually we diminished,
What we had, is lost, no oblation
Saying goodbye to a voice quieted,
Extinction - silenced conversation
Our offspring's heirloom we banished,
Spend thrift ways with no limitation,
Mourning and remorse for salvation.
Song birds and frogs, once we witnessed
Saying goodbye to a voice quieted
AN AUSTRIAN EVOLUTION
Born monarchist
Brought up loyalist
Going to war nationalist
Coming home humanist
Preaching socialist
Silent anti-fascist
Disappointed communist
Dead idealist
--In memory of my Uncle Toni, one of the first Europeans (1898-1980)
DRAWING LESSON
When I first saw him
I had the urge to draw him,
But could master only a few lines
Staring at ominous signs
Of a stick figure
Then searching I found the spot
Where to draw the square dot
My eyes straining, not seeing a face
I started at the wrong place
A three-sided figure
Drawing the square not complete
All lines had to compete
As did, humans with apes,
And those with different shapes,
Like the six-cornered figure
Realistically I edged the mighty chest
And then I drew on his uniform vest
Using a barbed wire grid
So it really would fit
The Gammadion figure
Surely I displeased the grand master
Because of my bungling drawing disaster
He finally looked like Charlie Chaplin
Fittingly dressed Mephistophelian
Oh, what a figure!
LINEAGE
From the four horsemen
Of my genealogy
I received these gifts
And baggage to carry
Along life’s entire journey
Courage and a fancy for authority
From the marching Saxonian soldier
Passion for spice and fierce independence
From the carousing Hungarian herdsman
Tenacity and a stubborn pride
From the laboring Styrian sodbuster
Shrewdness and survival skills
From the wandering Jewish jeweler
And so, as I must, will pass on
These treasures and stumbling blocks
In the Trojan horse
Of my children’s bequest.
PRIMA FACIE
How do we know a person?
Is it by the shape of their face,
Is it by their ancestral line
Or is it by genetic code,
Is it by their countenance
Or is it by searching eyes?
If eyes are windows to the soul,
Can we see their souls, all naked?
If their souls have shriveled-up,
Whisked away by the cold draft
Of endless, hopeless longing,
Do we see then nothingness?
Once a living, loving body
When blood coursed through its veins,
Now a corpse, empty eye sockets
Door way to the netherworld,
But old familiar faces
We remember always.
PÂQUES À NOËL
At first chaos came into being, so we are told
The original big bang, huge conflagration
Within ten microseconds cosmic clouds unfold
Coalescing galaxies from radiation
Shadowy primordial shapes in propagation
Dust molecules relative boundaries overstepped
Super nova erupts in reverberation
Joy to the world, begin is to end, we accept.
Fragments of baryonic substances, all gold
Nebulae of evaporation, condensation
We feel the slight presence of floating souls, all cold
Star birth, endless firmament in animation
Star death, blackness in shadowy degradation
Ultra light frozen in time, from escaping kept
Material essence breeds reincarnation
Joy to the world, begin is to end, we accept.
Afraid, power of knowing we press in faith’s mold
For resurrection we wait with trepidation
A king born, and light escapes from the black hole’s hold
A king dead, and Eastre glows with adoration
Cycle of birth and death, eternal transformation
Our mystification’s curtain aside not swept
Fall harvest brought by spring crop elimination
Joy to the world, begin is to end, we accept.
Kinship of birth and death is our celebration
For great joy and sorrow we universally wept
Recycled matter and knowledge our salvation
Joy to the world, begin is to end, we accept.
Thanksgiving Night
Ninth month nightly window gazing
Doles out fleeting, passing glimpses
In to an empty formless world
Filling out it’s dark depressions
Could it be heavens, stretching high?
Heavens above without a sun,
Nor cheerfully winking moon?
Nothing around but emptiness?
But when looking below, I see
A flickering, faint little light
Dancing on the mirrored surface
Of a tiny, tranquil pond
Fighting its way through gloomy air
All the way to my searching eye
Reflection of a comforting
Ordinary, curb side street light
Awakens vague feelings of hope
Growing to even thankfulness
Something this morning’s humming bird
Late in seasonal departure
Must have felt, when finding the red
Nectar filled feeder hanging still
From balcony balusters void
Of blooms bursting out and over
Close Encounters
Lazily zig zags
A mangy looking
Coyote across
The prairie rolling
Sun-gilded green hills
Black eyed Susans
Saucily forward
Pressing, hanging now
Provokingly out
Over the cart way
Winking at the once
In a while passing
Pick-up truck, watching
His futile attempt
To out run dust clouds
Stubbornly clinging
To tail gate and tires
A red tailed hawk glides
Almost motionless
In the dozing sky
Eyeing a single
Prairie dog sentry
Perched straight on his mound
Sluggish eyes blinking
Prairie afternoon
Weaves a dream catcher
As an ominous
Looking dark cloud grows
To blackened pillows
Drifting over lands
Of Bison and Sioux
Clouds on the war path
Brandishing fierce bolts
Of jagged lightning
Beating thunder drums
Scaring rock climbers
Hanging on the grooves
Gouged in the rock face
By mighty bear claws
The angry spirit
Who chased five maidens
Up Devil’s Tower
In what we call now
Eastern Wyoming
GHETTO PLAY
In the streets of the ghetto
Kids play
Cops and robbers;
Soon cops and robbers
Will play
With them
Monoski
Paraplegic needing breathing space
Day dreaming of snow bound ski race
Tracks carved in heavy snow, clear seeing
Goggle eyed, peerless rear end skiing
Accident induced, odd gamble
Stiff-legged chair lift catch up scramble
Wondering stares and pity fleeing
Goggle eyed, peerless rear end skiing
Hot face caressed by chilly windstorm
Strapped in ski mounted chair, free form
Mind over matter - well being
Goggle eyed, peerless rear end skiing
Rhapsody for Araby
The liberator came
Dressed in the pressed uniform
Of a slick toy soldier
As quiet date palm groves
Bathe in the cold moon light
His khaki backpack full
Stuffed with much make believe
Heavy with shifting sand
Parched by sun, chased by wind
Sealed with a red poppy
A keen a fresh blood stain
Of warm blood not yet spilled
In the distance Baghdad
Shy fatamorgana
Born prematurely now
Before day could wake her
Coming alive struck by
Lightning, stenciling
Destiny in glowing
Characters, which can not
Be read by toy soldiers
SILENT MAJORITY
You – keepers of the gate
You know, fifth column waiting
Banners of faith agitate
You – keepers of the gate
We inside retaliate
Not taking the baiting
You – keepers of the gate
You know, fifth column waiting
At Liberty
From whence once stood the world trade center
A snap shot taken of an island
The hallow ground now a no-man’s land
But a faint beacon beckons – enter
A snap shot of solemn reverence
Our well known lady of liberty
Bystander and innocent party
So we pay liberty severance
In remembrance for nine eleven
Patriotic acts we advocate
Our neighbors we must interrogate
They may have a ticket to heaven
It seems to be a priority
For a slick pentagon resident
To find legalese for the president
Which gives him complete authority
Inflicting much pain and suffering
Just a military campaign
We know the enemy must be slain
In war there is no torturing
And the lady quietly lifts the lit torch
To guide the skipper and the tempest-tossed
Fight for her and not all hope is lost
Burning shame old glory will not scorch.
EDIFICE COMPLEX
Architects of the old world, there is no new
Freemason of creativity’s lodge
Carefully codifying esthetics
Compressing talent, their guardian spirit
In baroque pillars of their egoism
Like water in a pipe
Until one day a pillar springs a leak
A “Hundertwasser” cascading.
COGITO ERGO SUM
Life and death each other require
Of thunderbird and whale we dream
Eyes lightning, flapping wings in ire
The snake swallows its tail, we scream
Order and harmony our scheme
The storm passed, a clean world we hail
Waiting for night and day to team
Our eternal quest to find the trail
The great winged power is dire
Good and evil, lamenting theme
Let our identity transpire
The snake swallows its tail, we scream
To kill Manitou is extreme
No polarity, currents fail
Negative positive regime
Our eternal quest to find the trail
Mythos and science we acquire
Our creation through Big Bang beam?
Destruction and rebirth from fire
The snake swallows its tail, we scream
Terror with worship to redeem
Naked fear in awe we veil
Our eternal quest to find the trail
From the body the mind we cream
The snake swallows its tail, we scream
And thunderbird devours the whale
Our eternal quest to find the trail.
I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER
Windwalkers to be
No more do we wish to fight
It is our destiny
Glory and might our agony
Remorse and penance your plight
Windwalkers to be
Closing the circle in harmony
Share our calumet this night
It is our destiny
Leaving behind savagery
White buffalo now in sight
Windwalkers to be
Praying in quiet camp’s sanctity
Following vision , traveling light
It is our destiny
Bury the hatchet my plea
No more should you wish to fight
Windwalkers to be
Happy Hour
I won’t scold you
Happy hour – though you left quickly
I won’t scold you
Who colored so rosy my view
When wine flows through my veins thickly
I’m alive thumbs my heart quickly
I won’t scold you
SUMMER NIGHT
Dusk yearning painfully
The dark-eyed night breathes heavily
Beastly lust consumes
Morning breeze we crave in vain,
Spam a lot
The screen saver
Peeling back the lid
To outlook express
Zeitgeist flashing
Overwhelming inbox
Mundane subjects
Packaged in spicy
Subject lines
Don’t be shy
By all means
Make yourself at home
It is your home
Explore
Easy ways to refinance
Fake college degrees
Weekend Viagra
Investor’s insight
Rollex replicas
What Mama wants
Size matters
Xanax – multiple orgazmsss
Christian loans at 3.5%
Body you dream about
We owe you money
Want a home?
Free porn – viruses included
Make big money without cash
Your meds arrived
I promised to help 5000 people
Free spam blocker
Famous spam
From humble beginnings
Hails your holy grail
So give them money
Never mind the killer rabbits
Legless knights and Monty Python
Slice them, dice them, bake them
Click here to join
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EMCEE SQUARED
Unruly photons riding a wave
Full of momentum, they don’t behave
Shiny, silvery mirror meeting
Spitefully empty darkness cheating
How many splendid suns must expire?
Swallowing me in brilliant blue fire
Releasing me from earthly troubles
To reflect rainbows on soap bubbles
And gemstones sparkling with affection
Bundle the rays with deadly perfection
Piercing un -dead with lightning arrows
Shining the way to their rock barrows
To ghosts, ghouls and me the night belongs
Bright specters sing voice -less siren songs
Apparitions of atomic decay
Radioactive star display
Made from vivified star dust debris
Harnessing much energy are we
Big bang’s pocket version did emerge
Spontaneous fission on the verge
In pulsating and recycling space
We pursue in denial our race
Trying to move at the speed of light
Disintegrating star dust is our plight
About the Author
John Deer
The engineer
Discovered his name
Playing a game
Teasing his mind
Wordly treasures to find
Always mispronouncing
The borrowed tongue announcing
In accented voice
In my accent I rejoice
“Niemand weiß, Daß ich Rumpelstilzchen heiß.”