Red White and Blue Glare

 

Gate to Seoul

Independence Day
In a military town
Filled with fireworks
Real and metaphorical

Sitting on the patio
With the family
As rockets burst
Beautiful melancholy

Emotional displays
Remembering our freedoms
Our victories
And our losses

Sipping away the evening
In brilliant flashes
Celebrating America
Understanding the cost

Different types of Boom

Fireworks

There are deflagration and detonation

which differ in how they shock

That’s pedantic, if not too frantic

and I do not mean to mock

Incendiary times need cooling down

with caution and celebration

To avoid a sad conflagration

have your fireworks out of town

 

Blessings, Damnations, and Woes

Blessed are the protesters
In peaceful assembly
Demanding justice and equality
For yours is The Dream made real
Mahatmas one and all
Standing before Nirvana
On the Road to Shambhala
Yet You lack one thing to enter
You must shed your violent alter-self
You can not harbor violent souls
And cross the gates to the peaceful happy land
Though the price of peace may be your life
Unyielding while bearing your cross
As all the martyrs that came before you

Blessed are the peace officers
When they live up to the term
Protecting and serving the people
For yours is the Badge of Honor
When you protect the people
Nurturing them under your shield
Of peace, and prosperity, and equality before the law
Yet one thing you lack to stand before The Judge
You must purge yourself of the wolves
Hiding themselves in your ranks
You must cast aside their violence
Before it destroys your flock
Or they drive you into the wilderness

Damned are the troublemakers
Hurling insults and bricks
Setting fires and looting
Your anarchism nullifies the voice of the people
You doom the saints that are actually bringing change
To another round of violence
Your bile drowns the discussion
And poisons the fields before they ripen
Your harvest is nothing but ashes
Repent before you are consumed
Broken shards of glass and flames
Become your funeral pyre

Damned are the cowardly bullies
Who instigate events
Demanding people respect their authority
And choking out innocent life
Simply because they can
Using guardian positions to prey upon innocents
Your black-hearted hypocrisy dooms you to failure
As the people rebel against your evil empire
Your anger and cowardice besmirches your profession
Repent or suffer the fate of the wolf and rabid dog
That must be put down
In order to save the flock

Woe to those in authority
Who abuse their power
Making themselves and their friends rich
On the backs of the people
Using crony capitalism and politics
To keep the people divided and
Inflamed with daily tragedies
To distract the people from the fact
That you are robbing them of their future
By poisoning their present
You do whatever is necessary
To hold on to your positions
And enjoy the succulent feast
While the people languish in misery
Repent and turn from evil
Before the greed in your calloused heart
Fans the flames of street protest
Into your Thermidor

Woe to the Cassandra prophet poet
Who sees the present in the past
Augers the future through discernment
And knows that the voice crying out from the wilderness
Is seldom heard and understood
Because the heart of the people
Is based in primordial violence
And even in an advanced state
Relies upon tribal fealty
Like troops of monkeys
Fighting over the best fruit trees
To clearly see the pathway forward
Knowing it won’t be taken
Is perhaps the worst punishment of all.

The Thaw

As the world heats up the institutional glaciers are melting
Revealing the boulders that were trapped in the flow
Erratic stones that can be chiseled away and made into art
Monuments to mankind’s ability to make progress