If you don’t know who’s side you’re on,
Come stand by me, it’s mine.
If you don’t know who’s right or wrong
We’ll sort it out in time.

If you don’t know what choice to make
For none of them look good
Come join me for convenience sake
It’s something that you should.

If you don’t know what you should do
Come sit by me and learn
I’ll tutor you the whole way through -
Teach you which way to turn.

If you don’t know who I might be
Come here and take my hand
We’ll help this country to be free
And once again the promised land.
ljm

This land that God so
Bountifully blessed us with
Is now being run by *****
And he buddy named Gomorrah.

All that was good
   Is being torn down
And all that is selfish and
   Evil is being glorified.

And we who care
   Can only stand aside
To watch and pray
   in hopelessness and sorrow

That we stood by while *****
   Planted ugly seeds of
Avarice and greed
   And we just sat

And watched them grow
Only weeping useless tears
Instead of pulling out
Those evil weeds
When they first poked
Their heads into our view.
                             ljm

I found her in the vapor of a summer dream
She was standing in the door to Paradise
When I asked if I could see her in the sunlight
Her laughter matched the sparkle in her eyes.

Her smile was like a sunlit pond at twilight.
Her eyes resembled sapphires at high noon.
Her hair was like a swirling touch of midnight.
Her voice as sweet as birdsong heard in June.

Her appearance gave me cause to stop and wonder
If who I saw was really standing there
Or was it just my wild imagination
Creating loveliness from smokey Summer air.

I crept a careful step or two towards her
My pulse was pounding madly in my throat
She frowned at me then edged a little backwards-
And suddenly between us was a moat.

There was no bridge or any walkway over.
She was securely on the other side.
It seemed as though she couldn't let me join her
She made that clear no matter what I tried.

I wrote a note of love on parchment paper
And sailed it to her in a little boat
She reached down to fetch it from the water
And read while lumps were forming in my throat

She tucked the folded note into her *****
And wiped a forming teardrop from her eye
She smiled and then she sadly whispered to me
The only word I feared - it was Goodbye.

The moat became a little stream of water
The doorway, two tall Jacaranda trees
The paradise that somehow she had come from
Transformed to smoke, soon taken by the breeze.

And I was left alone to stand and wonder
If everything I’d seen was truly there
Or was this just a middle-aged delusion
Providing me a thrilling tale to share.
ljm

With half the world ablaze
And the other half under water
                 I gaze at a beautiful sunset
                 And wonder why I am so lucky.

With half of the world now starving
And the other half made newly homeless
                 I sit in my comfy two-story
                 And wonder why I should deserve it.

With half the world hating each other
And the other half crying for peace
                 I sit with my pen and blank paper
                 Hoping somehow to fix it with verse.

I’ll write for the fires to burn themselves out.
I’ll write for the floods to abate.
                I’ll write for the hungry a banquet.
                Write refugees a new home.

I must write an end to the hatred.
  I must write a way to find peace.
   I must write to solve all the problems
    That bleed endless ink to my pen.

It wants to compose lines of beauty
  Not pity for those so abused.
    It wants to paint scenes of agreement
      Outlining tallies of evil.

It wants to share themes that enrich us
  Written in Poetry’s creative blood.
    Will this moment arrive in my lifetime -
      My subscription to miracles sadly expired
                    ljm