Circle Family
Can someone find me a map?
Where there is no bloody barbed wire fence
There will only be lines of love
Villages of humanity will undoubtedly reach the sky
The paths along the way will be dreamy
The song of communism will be heard in the flock of birds
The tone of union will anchor the language of the earth
The footprints will not be pierced by the arrows of hatred
A flower's aroma will grow in the congealed wound
Let our children draw that map
Poetry will touch the edge of that map
All the accumulated troubles will be removed
There will be no tears in the world of circles
Hungry eyes will not burn.
Trading
I will trade my rusty flesh and cold blood
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my emotions and lifeless harmony
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my citizenship and foreign passport
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my morals and unspoken ethics
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my broken heart and warm hands
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my ageless smile and falling tears
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my heathy organs and memories
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my unclear accent and colourless dreams
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
But I’ll never trade my past and homeland
for a casket of the war I barely survived by hanging…
Tiny Eschers After Rain
If one of these unrolled pillbugs looked up,
glassy, beaded dew would refract the light
from the sky and bend their world of vertical green lines
into spheres of shining blue.
Even if the pillbugs were too nearsighted
to see the geese above them
arrowheading their way north,
the potato bugs could hear them.
Honking-honked birds with their straight necks
crissing one season, crossing the next:
for centuries they’ve been stitching the north and south together
so that pillbugs can have a whole world
beyond their tiny patch.
on pacifism
I guess I have just recently recommitted to, or decided I need to accept, that I am and must be a pacifist… in this year of 2024, there are wars and armed conflicts in various places around the world… some of these wars seem justified on one side or the other and some just seem to be the result of blundering on the part of national governments… but, the more I read the news, the more I think about these conflicts, the more true it seems that if the human race is to flourish, or even survive, we must find a way to eliminate war from this planet…
my first argument against war is always to appeal to logic… even if one has no moral objection to the killing and maiming of other human beings in pursuit of some national goal, war or indeed, even smaller armed conflict, is seldom efficacious in resolving the dispute… so often international affairs seem like building houses of cards based on negotiations and diplomacy while war comes in with a sledge hammer… that simply destroys everything and makes matters worse…
war is built on the foundation of violence and the belief that killing certain people will make nations live together in peace… that does not work… killing people just makes their families and friends angry and outraged… they do not want to live in peace with the killers of their loved ones, they want revenge on them… war begets hate which begets more war which begets more hate, etc. etc. etc… war is not an efficient or effective way to solve international problems…
my second argument against war is that it is morally backwards… might does not make right… and just because one nation has a better army and can kill more efficiently, that does not make that nation more right than any other nation… usually the things fought over are in grey areas anyway, so there is no one side that is fully right and no one side that is fully wrong… so compromise and negotiation are the way to make sure that each side gets some of what it wants…
my third argument against war is that it is always fueled by greed for money… and the people who wind up fighting in the war and harmed by the war are almost never the people who wind up with the money, no matter who wins or loses… and in trying to negotiate a compromise over things like border disputes, the only way these issues can be resolved is if both sides are willing to dial back their greed and settle for less than all the money, land, water rights, natural resources, etc… killing a bunch of people does not in any way help for any nation to put aside greed and attempt a fair and respectful resolution of international problems…
my fourth argument against war is the obvious moral observation that it is immoral for any of us to take the life of anyone else… I believe that each and every human being is born into this life with a right to live and participate in all of the joys and pains that make up our lives… these include a right to food, shelter and safety… the first things usually destroyed in a war are food, shelter and safety… it is immoral to kill our fellow men and women period… under any circumstances, any time… and it is also immoral to allow our fellow men and women to live without food, shelter and safety… war is always always always immoral… war is always evil… English poet Wilfred Owen, who knew a few things about war, called it a “cesspool…” there is nothing glorious about it, ever…
okay, now that I have convinced everybody that war is ineffective, evil and immoral, let us proceed to the question of how do we end it… one would have hoped back in the 1950s when I was a child, that the inventions of nuclear weapons would make war obsolete… when nations have this horrible weapon in hand that would make any large war, the last war, because the effect of the war would be to eradicate human beings from the planet; one would think that we would look at each other and say, “let us lay down our arms and look for peaceful ways to solve international problems…” before we finish ourselves off altogether…
but that did not happen… instead nations kept building more and more nuclear weapons in an arms race that goes on to this day with weapons armed and ready to launch right now that would bring on a nuclear winter that would end human life on this planet and most other life as well… this is lunacy… it is like a person walking night and day with a razor sharp knife pressed against his or her throat… we must get rid of those terrible weapons… and we do that not by using them, which would be suicidal, but by education and arms negotiations… we need to all know and acknowledge the danger we are in and make our governments destroy those weapons… there is no harm that any nation can inflict on me that makes it morally right for me to launch a nuclear weapon…. killing one person is immoral… killing hundreds, thousands and millions of people is hundreds and thousands and millions of times more immoral…
I am not sure how to go about accomplishing this goal but, I truly believe that military actions of every kind will not lead to the goal of nuclear disarmament… military action does not solve international problems, it always makes them worse… increasing the hate and dehumanizing those denoted as “enemy” makes it more and more likely that an accidental international blunder or an intentional act of lunacy will send us over that precipice and start a nuclear annihilation of humanity…
so, I advocate demilitarization of this planet… I believe that it is the only way to prevent a humanity annihilating nuclear war… there are so many challenges facing humanity… this planet is rich and abundant but we should be carefully tending it and setting it up to support our human communities so that all people can have food, shelter and safety… we are threatened by disease, by natural disaster, by things like climate change and ozone depletion and dozens of other threats…
I think that we could work together to solve these problem and to make a long and healthy life easier for each of us to attain, if we could quit fighting with each other and start working together to make the world a better place for the benefit of us all…
the first step, I think, is for us all to embrace pacifism… we must change our attitudes about military in every way… there is nothing good about military actions… all military action is immoral in that it aims to kill people… that is what guns, tanks, bombs, etc. exist to do… to kill people… so we must stop extolling the warrior… we must stop funding the military… and we should be working with every resource we have to spread pacifism to every human being on the planet… it is the logical, moral and decent thing to do… we must accept that every human on this planet is our brother or sister and deserves respect and all human rights and happiness being born here should provide… and we must always remember that might does not make right… it never has and it never will…
I was lost in the box called life.
In it,
(I)
I wanted learning
but my education was deafening
I wanted truth
but my reality faked its root
I wanted to buy the right counsel
but my mind controller got me its left sell
I wanted to be free
but my pursuit turned a tree
I wanted information
but my vision brought me deformation
I wanted wellness
but my state showed illness
I wanted a wife
but my life mirrored a knife
I wanted a companion
but my plight was in oblivion
I wanted the clarity of pleasure
but my naked eyes saw the dullness of pressure
I wanted to live forever
but my death was to question For-Ever
I wanted peace
but my perception reflected unease
(II)
I wanted to know more about people
but my understanding was a fumble
I wanted to be everyone’s friend
but my experience was the Pal’s end
I wanted to be rich
but my efforts didn’t catch a fish!
I wanted direction
but my limitation was the obstruction
3
I wanted to know the ‘why’ to everything happening
but my answer had to cry to all prevailing
I wanted to invest in good
but my previous return showed ‘fooled!’
I wanted to scream because of pains
but my calmness showed up because of gains
(III)
I wanted people to hear my voice
but my quest was a noise
I wanted money
but my struggle was funny
I wanted to know why the world is divided
but the response was: ‘it’s control is what is favourited’
I wanted to know what happens after death
but my physical life told me I was on earth
I wanted to tell people my experience
but my words failed me in their presence
I wanted to know if I knew what I know
my existence replied me with a ‘NO!’
I wanted to find myself through my works
but my inner-self whispered:
‘If you want to find yourself,
then think OUT OF THE BOX!
It's All My Fault
It's all my fault. I signed up. They had me type.
Left, right, hault. Sit, copy - bored.
Ordered "Drop your pants" in the Orderly Room
'cause my unlaundered uniform smelled ripe,
I gave in, my confidence shook - until now, just look:
office factotums of keyboard
everywhere - screens and computers tied on.
Seeing it happen I've been so floored:
my inaction caused all of this gloom
in wage-slaves to the one percent...
Oh my poor colleagues on whom I should fawn,
my collusion was without intent.
It's all my fault, I saw it coming,
What the media's trying to do to us
besides entertain and inform - unbecoming
to show graphic scenes they make such a fuss
of psychic or physical sexual mayhem
or torture delivered in cinema - then, on T.V.,
bought-up home-videos of groin accidents to them
is fare that is favored by us citizenry -
with a musical track. To those screens'd desensitize
or power'd divide, I admit I'm the one
who kept silently watching - so must apologize.
With positive passions more our kind of fun
I thought I was gracious in showing some ruth -
but I had forgotten that beauty is truth.
I must claim the fault, suspected we're fated -
the lies were there - should have extrapolated.
The equal chance at happiness we're told we get
when behind the ears we're still quite wet
becomes the need to toil for subsistence wage....
The nice policeman they say kids should trust
gives karate-chop pat-downs, backroom outrage -
not protection or service but a torture bust.
As in families infant sibling empathy,
in society populist sympathy -
and later those arrested in the protests we see -
are put up against the wall by our powers that be....
I'm the one who didn't hold free love together
in a world of possessiveness and jealousy -
though my buddy and I couldn't be sure whether
our girls, having ravished us thoroughly,
couldn't just up and do the same for another;
and, when we asked 'em, heard 'em agree
that my buddy and I could be those other!
Ah, we four had commitment and variety
'til the draft wrote my friend, and he grew quite thin.
So, since one of our girls had an aunt who could cover
their expenses 'til his 4-F deferment came in,
they left. Four people, each with just one lover -
living as couples in estrangement's sin.
When school, which canceled band and art long since,
to stop phys-ed, but double lunch-hour, tries,
and overeating children make parents wince....
Blame me! To sedentary stresses wise,
I couldn't my co-desk-workers convince
the balm for our discomfort is Exercise.
T'was sitting, class and office, sixteen hours
a day inspired my half-hour morning jogs,
not my own insight's energizing powers....
Workouts are epicures in stoic togs -
arduous aerobics are invigorating fun
to free sprites from weariness that mind had begun -
I couldn't make it obvious to everyone.
..............................
Leadership
"The marionetteers of capital
who pull our strings behind the scenes
to drain our strength can't sap it all,"
said the puppet with the shears in his jeans."
.....................
Inspiration
When wine country tried my sanity
like a nestless bird with a clear-cut tree
I came to the city for humanity
and a new inspiration for poetry.
The inbound bus was my ship of fools.
Out its window I tossed my last pack of Kools:
I vowed I'd make, 'til the day I die,
the breath of life my only high -
which now was augmented, to my cost,
by the unavoidability of car exhaust.
...
Reconsider
With adolescent dreams we bury
so much of human nature too
when youthful premonitions scary
bring mundane fortune into view.
Though by the water's edge lay
a myriad of sphere-cut gem-pebbles
in thier Milky Way arc of the bay -
a particolor night's suns' trebles -
And each colored flare in its bowl
throbs with the starlight of sol.
...
Marnie had linked-in with Ellie and had developed a body suit with haptic feedback features. Ellie was able to render her lost daughter into real-time, similar to holographic girlfriend Joi—Ana de Armas, #KnivesOut—product belonging to the Nexus-9 Blade Runner KD6-3.7. Instructing Ellie to initiate Sareh, a holographic apparition. A digital avatar of Sareh was generated, magically, restored to virtual existence. #Ellie #shortfiction #interstellar #scifi …
Struck by this, Mia telepathically caused the quantum engine to levitate into the air, both hands spaced apart. Similar to teenage orphan and an avid Gunter, Wade Watts / avatar Parzival logged into the OASIS, except without the visor and haptic technology gloves. She had tilted and rotated the sphere like a Rubik’s Cube, visually, assessing the damage of PLUTO. The meteor orb, dubbed ATOM, was still fully functional, causing the working components to glow. #Marnie #shortfiction #scifi #nostelgia
