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.