Relativism

I'd rather I did not exocitize

The cultures I admire; if I could,

I'd see the world through many different eyes,

Take in the bad of it beside the good,

And know (and weigh) it all within my soul

Not by the standards of my own small part,

But as a complex, living, vital whole

Each piece of which has something to impart

But all of which lives, not to service me,

Not for the value I may see in it,

But for itself and its society.

I like to think I've worked on this a bit.

It is a process, though, and not an end,

A process I must constantly amend.

Thin Blue Line

Remember, the police should only be

A public service, for a public need

Not a disruption to society:

If we are cut, they should be first to bleed

Not cause the wound themselves. They often claim

To be the finest of us, but deny

The duty that accompanies that name:

A higher standard. Cops should never lie

And yet see them do so, every day.

They shouldn't violate what they enforce,

But ought to follow it in every way

More than the rest of us. A police force

Should be, but isn't, something to admire

Not thugs dressed up in fancy blue attire.

After Moses

If I were God (thank God I am not God)

I'm not sure how I'd feel about the power:

Having frantic mortals always cower

As they address you would be very odd.

So too would be the times that some poor sod

Rants on and on at you, hour by hour

About some minor thing, like a cold shower,

While you try to restrain your crushing rod

For power brings with it (or ought to bring)

Responsibilities that counterweigh

What might, at first, appear a pure indulgence:

Perhaps that's why God, being everything,

Does not appear to us in any way

That might reveal their terrible effulgence.

Learned

I have not visited in every land,

Nor walked all of the streets I'd love to walk;

I cannot speak the tongues I'd need to talk

To everyone I meet, on every hand,

Nor do I know the histories untaught

In universities--the margin's lives

As lived by children, workers, slaves, and wives.

I ought to be, and often am, distraught

When I recall these gaps. I wish I could

Know everything there ever was to know

And understand it truly, fully, wholely;

But I'm also unsure it would be good

To try: for down that path, if I should go,

Lies thinking I alone know all things, solely.

Transport of Delight

There have been times when I have felt

The endless moonlight call to me

As if the moon itself would melt

And merge into a distant sea.

I have seen stars that seemed to show

A path that leads where none can tread

And in their effervescent glow

The cobbles glistened overhead.

On certain nights, in certain streets,

The clouds that caught each neon sign

Have promised hidden, pure retreats

Lie just behind their distant shine.

But since moon, stars, and clouds all lie

I much prefer an empty sky.

Iowa Gothic

If someone disappears into the corn

You cannot follow. Run. Don't wait for it

To follow you. What comes out isn't born

But grown. Its clothes will never truly fit.

It has too many ears. But don't look now;

Now you should be running. It can't run

Faster than a combine. But don't try

To harvest it until you see the sun

Under the moonlight you, not it, will die.

The worst will come if you approach a cow:

Don't touch. Whatever you may do, don't touch.

I don't care how much you may want the milk.

It can make you want things far too much

And when you touch, you crumble like corn silk.

Half Year Retrospective

This has been a year of change and stress

As every year, we must admit, will be;

But most years seem, at least, to have much less

Tumult across the months. We cannot see

The future, but we have to live in hope

That something will disrupt the madness soon.

If nothing does, we may no longer cope

With all the change that swirls like a typhoon

Around us. Everything is now unsure

And what seemed certain when the year began

No longer can be trusted. There's no cure

For this disruption; we cannot now plan

Another year. And yet we have to try.

But as we plan, we know we also lie.

SPS

Delaying for a year is cowardice

At best. At worst it is a weak deception

To cover up an ingrained prejudice

For fear (again) of its present reception.

If you believe that we need cops in schools

And that that policy ought to resume

Next year, then why this year of different rules?

But if you recognize that the classroom

Should be a sacred, safe, protected space

Where every student has a chance to grow

Regardless of their class, their grade, their race,

Then I would hope by now that you would know

A cop's a hammer looking for a nail:

A schoolroom shouldn't pave the way to jail.

Trial

I try to throw my words against the wall

And see what sticks. It's usually not much,

But then again, that they can stick at all

Is still a miracle. If I can touch

Not even souls, but simply minds, with this

It would be more than I would call enough.

Communication brings a kind of bliss

That can be called on when the going's tough

And thus, if I, when throwing words out, can

Make any difference to anyone

It's more than worth the doing. I began

By throwing words, but by the time I'm done

I hope to catch a few as well, and hear

What others say, and what they too hold dear.

Brut

Holy fuck it's not that hard

(Or shouldn't be) to not be dicks;

And do not give me that canard

So redolent of dirty tricks

That says "I have to be this cruel

Because I fear that they will be"--

You are yourself, and your misrule

Is your responsibility.

If you are human, then act so

And trust that others will as well;

If you do not, then we will know

They aren't the ones you ought to quell.

Your actions speak about your soul

Your fears should not be in control.

Voices

Let it be as it will be

Let it come as it will come

I'm not prepared; but that's on me

My silence shouldn't strike you dumb.

If I don't know how I should speak

But you are ready to declare

I will hear your voiced critique

And save my own as I prepare.

I will listen, truly hear,

Not waiting just to have my say;

I hold your conversation dear

And would not wish your words away.

Let us each speak truth to power

In our own peculiar hour.

Gifts

Lord, you gave us justice

But gave us mercy too

Because somehow you trust us

To know which one to do.

Lord you gave us Torah

Our high and final law

Which Sodom and Gomorrah

Lacked, as you well saw;

But when you gave it to us

You gave us also power:

The strength which you endue us

Is to assess the hour

And to interpret gray

Anew for every day.

The Deep

Imagine an oasis in the sea

Depth beyond depth emerging from below

Surrounded not by sunny greenery

But chemotrophic coral that can grow

Without the aid of light. Imagine swimming

In hard pressed water heated by the vents

Which is by seeming miracle still brimming

With endless fish, who feed within the rents.

And now, since we are human, please imagine

A trawler casting out a deep sea net

To fill our endless stew, chowder, or tagine

With any fish or sea life it can get

Breaking the coral, spreading it across

The cracked and spewing vent. Imagine loss.

Spoil The Bunch

A cop might be a perfect man

An ideal human being, too

The highest zenith of God's plan

For what we ought to be; a true

Apotheosis of our kind;

The best and brightest of us all;

The gentlest person you could find

In virtue, great, in vices small;

He might be all we all should be

In every way that we aspire;

Adonis' constabulary

The pinnacle of all desire

Yet all these virtues still would cease

From socialization as police.

Prophecy

I glimpse the future in a wrack of pain

As if the headache opened up my mind;

Before me lies an endless, empty plain

Birdless and grassless, on which I can find

No spot to draw attention but the whole;

A fire burns somewhere beyond my sight,

Its smoke a shimmer. Up above, a hole

Parts in the whispy clouds to show the night

Illuminated by a bloody moon

Which passes then behind a cloud again

And all is dark. Somewhere a loon

Cackles against the sky. There are no men.

No women either. As I strive to look

Pain surges and it closes like a book.

Eternal Reward

I don't think there's a heaven or a hell

But I do wonder sometimes, if perhaps,

When all of this is over, when our knell

Is rung, and earth itself begins to lapse,

Whatever God there is has not prepared

Some kind of negative, which, when developed,

Shows us the world we made, in which is bared

The pain and hurt in which we are enveloped:

The ways we treated others would apply,

As we were told they someday should, to us.

Do unto others as you'd be done by;

What you would hate, don't treat another thus.

So we were warned; if there is life past death

Perhaps it's just our own acts given breath.

Shambles

Wandering deep in the wood last night

I stumbled across what at first I thought

With the folly of hope, was a tree.

It was, from the first, an impossible sight:

Its wrinkled high limbs like the moldy rot

On blue cheese, enlarged and in 3D.

It swayed in the wind--no, all on its own--

As it lurched through the forest on foot

And I didn't stay long to observe it.

From what I remember, it was alone

But I fear that its spores may take root

In the wood by my house, where now I sit

On a bright afternoon, still afraid:

There aren't any trees, but I'm in the shade.

Fearful

Fear drives these protests

Not protesters' fear,

Cops'. Deadly arrests,

Rubber bullets, tear

Gas: these are fear's signs,

Fear of letting go,

Fear that redefines

Everything they know.

Power becomes right

Service becomes weakness.

Protest is a fight

Unless all is meekness.

Fear brings with it rage;

They won't disengage.