A Poem for America

Breaking of the shackles
A new nation was born
With the breath of freedom
Uplifted by the joy!
The Declaration of independence inspired
That all men are equal!
Endowed with rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Our struggles for democracy hoped to prove
That people are the king!
The brave women of America fought
And won the right to vote
The brave African Americans fought
And won the right to vote
For thousands of years our native Americans
Looked after this beautiful land
To them we must make amends
And restore them in every way
We now must pledge to
To care for each other
And build a sense of community
White, black, brown and others

Brothers and sisters are we all
Natives, Europeans, Hispanics, Africans, Asians and others
Make the beautiful mosaic of our land
Our army is mighty strong
And our soldiers are brave
May they defend our great land
And be fair and just to the world
They put their lives on the line
So we must take care of them
Our planet is now warming up
Looks like it has a fever
Fossil fuels we must leave behind
Green clean energy is our future
For climate change we must lead the world
For we have so little time
Our mothers we must trust to care
For children unborn or born
Our teachers we must trust to teach
The past, the present and the future
The quality of our nation depends on them to prepare
Productive, skilled, moral and caring students
The quality of our nation depends
On healthy, happy and caring people
May the ingenuity of our people blossom

So we lead the world in enterprise
May the big help the small prosper
So the benefits are spread around
Our farmers we must support
So they have joy and pride
They grow the food for us
That helps us to survive
Today, we may stand divided as if we are bitter foes
But we must begin to talk and find that common ground
For that we must abandon all untruths
And face our future with truth and caring
Autocracy and dictatorship we must reject
Democracy we must strengthen to have more
Transparency, openness and accountability
For that is the only way we can
Have true people’s power where people are the king
Hatred, anger and violence we must reject
Love, calmness and nonviolence we must embrace
We must all be brothers and sisters
And express goodwill and take care of others
Macho means to have strength and resolve
To protect others from injustice
To protect others from bullies
The great Chief Seattle told us

“The Earth does not belong to man:
Man belongs to the Earth.”
So let us resolve on this day
To build an America that is green and clean
Our lands and coasts and bays and waterways
Where our brother and sister species prosper again
Where everyone is healthy, happy, sustainably prosperous and at peace
Where our women feel empowered and free
Where minorities join with the majority to build a better nation
Oh! America you can be
Free and happy to eternity!

The Sun of Time

The sea of love is frozen 
Ships are like a painting of a painter
The sky does not breath
Cloud hides under water
Wind sleeps in the lap of Nature 
Sea beach is like empty vessel
Tourists' footprint is vanished 
The sun of time is absent 
Spring does not smile
Only silence walks here and there
Two sailors are not one
Communication is broken down
But two hearts are one
Fountain of Love flows from one to another
Nothing can stop love
None can break down communication between two hearts.

Ancient Egypt: Zahi Hawass and the True Face of the Golden Masks 

Prof. Zahi Hawass is the world’s most famous archaeologist and has been active for decades in bringing to light sensational discoveries about ancient Egypt that illuminate the modern world with knowledge. 

The archaeological mechanism works that from one discovery you access another and so on and so it is happening regarding the latest discovery of Prof. Hawass: the “Lost Golden City” in Luxor, the most important discovery of 2021, as Daily News Egypt writes.

Over the millennia, the sand of the Egyptian desert has covered archaeological treasures, but ancient Egypt itself must be explored through an immense maze of secret underground passages. It is as if an immense golden mask, which would represent death, covers and watches over the secrets of life that rejoins death, in a flow that challenges immortality. 

Prof. Zahi Hawass achieved a personal success in 2023 through his lectures in the USA and a real triumph in SF at the De Young Museum, directed by  Thomas Patrick Campbell, for the colossal exhibition of the pharaoh Ramses curated by Mrs. Renée Dreyfus, the most relevant curator of exhibitions of ancient civilizations in the world.

The United States wants Zahi Hawass back and he will be returning to the US and Canada in the spring of 2025 with his very interesting lectures that will widely reveal in detail the most sensational latest discoveries of the mysterious ancient Egypt. 

(Photo of a female statue in a dress with no head and no left hand, surrounded by stones and trees)

A stunning photo from Brian Michael Barbeito’s collection of vignettes and photographs, Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through 

The digital net of Brian’s camera captures the look of so many things, and his visions linger long and sink deep in the well of memory.  Sure, as the Winged Victory still stands tall in the art history of Greek sculptors, the artistry in Brian’s photos lingers in a sensitive viewer’s memory and thoughts.  Each pictorial image preserves a certain place at a certain time, and the reader of this book’s writings can experience vicariously the feelings and thoughts of its author, over and over, time and time again.

From forest paths to bridges over bogs and water lilies with ducks and swans abiding, to crowded shops, carnivals, city streets old barns and snow-clad woodlands, Brian takes you on many outings through his world and shares his intimate thoughts and feelings of the unseen as well as the seen.  Brian presents the subtle other-worldly as a robust and palpable part of everyday life.  Brian, as an image-builder, shows us ways to see the plainest of ordinary things as special and wonderful.

Each image in this book Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through makes an immediate impression, as the writing adds more and more gateways through which one’s imagination can enter to roam and mix with Brian’s own.  The spontaneity of the photographer’s own actions moves a reader to welcome their own heartfelt spontaneity as it encourages one to venture out exploring and preserving in photos or in writings some impressions of the local natural scenery, featuring combinations of as animals, plants, rock walls, old barns, road signs, marbled skies, and other wonders.

I have known Brian for many years, and he has a wealth of photographs and vignettes, which I hope he will be presenting soon in additional books comparable to Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through.

John L. Waters

Gastric Juice

What is a woman if not fluid 

cursed and born bubbling up the esophagus 

meeting fingers at the uvula and spewing

heated siren songs of stomach acid and

torn-up lemon slices and cucumber bile. 


if not trapping and festering life

with eyes of gold and silver-plated teeth,

they cover tobacco stains under lips stapled tight

shrouding their deadbeat heart 

with red right-hand knuckles.


What is a woman if not a frame imagined 

too plump, if not a figure

malnourished from longing, yet so full

from desire, of indentured servitude 

to their own stomach rumbling

with craze and clouded appetite. 


A woman, if not

A sickly yellow vomited like 

a scream amplified 

From the depths of the womb.

Antelope Field

There are antelope
in the field down
the road. Okay, 
well maybe not
antelope, but nyala
or oryx. & maybe
it’s not a field
but a patch of
garden which in
reality is too small
for the eland &
in reality is not
even a garden but
a window box in
which the cat sits
soaking up the sun. 
& since I don’t have
a window or a cat
it’s quite possible 
that this scene
from the wilds is
nothing more than a
screensaver that
comes on after
I’ve been away from
the PC for at least
three minutes. Which
I haven’t been, I’ve
been sitting here
all the time. So maybe,
just maybe, it all
comes down to
a plasma rectangle
that is framed by
tool- & scroll-bars
but is otherwise
entirely white except
for the two words 
floating at the top.
Field. Antelope.



Putsch

He picked
up whatever 
thoughts
were upper- 
most in 
his mind at 
the time 

ran with them
for a while

& then 
discarded them
as if they were the 
children of 
a past regime.


Nijinski reminisces

Exuberance
is in an eye
much more

beholden
to the magic
of the mo-

ment than to 
the pattern
of the dance.




Inside knowledge

Or:
knowing where
the bodies are
buried. 

Or:
knowing when
the berries are
bodied.


On Journeys

The shape of the journey
has something to do
with color. A small part
but important. The color
has to do with the shape
of those things you are
looking for. Also important,
not so small. The taste lies

on your tongue. Sound is
restricted by allowing one
album to come along with
you. Either earphone music 
or that playlist in your mind
cycling through an endless loop.