poem 1

I keep quotes from Twain, Socrates,
Lincoln and Lao Tzu on my desktop.

There wisdom is not contrary to that of Gates, and all are as relevant to my day as the sun and moon.

But in these times of political pandering,
While our economy succumbs quietly to the interests
Abroad, I am ashamed to be this American,
Helpless even to cajole my representatives…

As their voices cry heresy beneath colors that have meaning, symbolic and historic.  Why have we allowed this to continue?  We who have nestled deep in our memories of lilacs blooming;
We who have forgotten the questions looming;
We who neglect the peaceful nature of our forgotten births,
Split in Twain, as common sense lurking, sulks off into the shadows
Of the ever-waning twilighted middle

Divide! And devise to divide still further,
Two old men and a black and a woman.

Shall we hate them for what they might be, hidden from our knowledge quest?
Muslim or madonna or terrorist or tyrant?
Inspirational viral-ant

Once, within the halls of our great Nation, decrees were made to make all men free and promises were sworn to seize the king from the throne, if ever it were re-erected.
Now with bailouts and corruption the common suspicion, we cannanize another era, and bow to military Maoists, and Sultans of discord.

This country is lost, even as it regains its head.

And the greatest writers of our generations – dead!

Where the Whitman, the Emerson, Thoreau?
Where the Rand, Capote, and Poe?
Where the Hemingway and Faulkner, and Fitzgerald go?
All are lost…we without Hope.

“I fear the coming blight,” says the blind soothsayer, from whence the night he came,
“tis eerie this echoed mourning, hawks of war are swarming.”

Only innovation lasts.  All else fails, all else fails.