KARMA, KISMET, PROVIDENCE
To insure the Kismet effect
casino fixers
load the dice and mark the cards:
They rig the game,
annihilate free will.
To achieve a Karma asset,
cosmic accountants
balance debits and credits
of moral worth,
a result called justice.
Gamblers evoke Providence,
invoking mercy
to cancel consequences
that casinos
and accountants require.
But statisticians exclude
Providence, Kismet,
Karma, and all free will too,
Their random world’s
an impersonal one.
THE TREASON OF THE ROSE
A rose is for pleasure
and not for tears, Sir.
No, Bud is not like a rose
though his hair is fiery red
and though his smell pleased my nose.
But he bore no thorns in rows
--a single, fatal, prick instead.
I know now rose’s treason.
Contrasting plant with leaving,
I chose my rose, believing
it would last the season.
So, no, a rose Bud is not.
A rose will stay in its place
or share a family pot,
but Bud forfeited his lot
and left me to deal with the blaze.
A rose is for pleasure
and not for tears, Sir.
THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE
The honorable judge,
a-robed like a hedgehog,
was squatted at the bench
like an endowed lodger.
And that machine of law
read out loud
the preprogrammed sentence
to the court’s turned-on crowd
and the robot condemned,
heads dependably bowed.
The automated guard
led him out.
Next trial was clockwork
as the line moved foreward
till production halted.
Wind-up judge came unplugged,
hedgehog needed a nudge
when it slept.
THE NEW MONTESQUIEU
The factions sort themselves
into the left, right, and centrist
via birthright, and interest,
and contents of bookshelves.
Politicos maintain
the stability of chaos
through civility and payoffs
to competing claimants.
DO THAT HORIZON DANCE
An intimate selfish sharing
of a present timeless instant
of transcendent fluidity.
Your brain and your breath are the key
to its rhythm and symmetry.
You rest and then again embrace
Horizon Dance!
Inanimate, Self-less, shearing,
the present, an endless instant
of transcendent solidity.
Your brain and breathing are the key.
Imprisoned impassivity
unmoves that everlasting last
Horizon Dance.
