Poetry is Good for America
From the square plots,
Of clipped Kentucky rye,
And perfect planters,
Where porch colors fly.
To solace in the weeds,
Growing, flowing, refuse,
In between the cracks,
Of neglect and abuse.
“Gone native” they say,
As if it’s progress undone.
But nothing is ironed here,
Except the will to be one.
When your future is uncertain
And your world filled with stress,
Can you mitigate the worst,
And still work for the best?
Can you find hope and happiness
Despite the setbacks,
While girding yourself daily
For life’s constant attacks?
In your moments of sorrow,
Can you still find some ways
To look beyond the chaos-
See through to better days?
Can you view the great maelstrom
And recognize how the spin
Is nothing more or less
Than how opposing currents descend?
Our lifetime is a struggle,
From our birth to our grave,
But all that is required to live successfully
Is to stand and be brave!
So let the storms billow over
Till they lose power and end,
Hold on to your hope
And be human my friend!
I’m in recovery.
I sat down to write a poem about the injuries I’ve sustained,
Both the physical and the mental,
How they slow me down and hamper me,
From being what I once was.
But halfway through I wrote it anew,
For the aches and pains I carry,
Are the marks of a life well-lived.
I wanted to give my scars special meaning,
But I’m not sure that much is true.
My limp and my aches are constant reminders,
Of the miles I’ve covered,
And the victories and losses,
But mostly they are ghostlike memories,
Now etched forever into my being.
The World is full of tribes
Some come riding in on horseback with a sickle sword and a compound bow
Others sit in the halls of governance and plot the destruction of their foe at the ballot box
Some cluster in cloisters under the tallest of white steeples or golden domes
Still others fight as talking heads on syndicated airwaves
The tribe never leaves us- cannot leave us
We are the tribes, and we are many
The world is full of tribes
As the Arab proverb goes
“Me against my brother
Me and my brother against my cousin
These three against our village
Our village against the world”
The world is full of tribes
The concept brings us together as community
The concept tears us apart as outsiders
We do horrendous things to our fellow humans
In the name of our tribe
For the good of the tribe we make sacrifices
For the good of the tribe we sacrifice others
The world is full of tribes
They define us
They defile us
They mobilize us
They paralyze us
In the end all they are is us
Perhaps one day, when we sail the celestial seas,
We will see how small and weak the tribes are
And how strong the individual can be
Perhaps one day we will see the end of internecine tribal wars
Perhaps one day we will see that there is only one tribe
Humanity bleeding the same blood
In the same house
On the same cosmic ark
Hurling, spinning through the void
Until the Worlds are full of tribes
Thinking about thinking
I ponder the imponderable
What capacity has mankind for acts of inhumanity
What capacity has mankind for acts of human kindness
What capacity has mankind for evolving into greatness
And perhaps in the process changing the universe
If we can get past the Great Filter without destroying ourselves in the process
If we can get past tribalism and be who we are called by the universe to be
Thinking about thinking
I revel in the philosophy of Dunning and Kruger
And I worry about the Mount from which I sit and ponder