I need a reset button for my life,
A chance to chart a course on a blank slate,
Unplant the seeds that blossomed pain and strife,
And brought a bitter harvest to my plate.

I walked by open doors that closed behind,
With eyes fixed only forward on my course,
Trying to do what’s right, I’ve been unkind,
Attempts to avoid pain just made it worse.

I should have explored many other paths,
That led to orchards that would bear sweet fruit,
My solitary one has led to wrath,
The seeds I planted would themselves uproot.

What use is wisdom when it comes too late?
There is no reset button to cheat fate

You are a seedling with limitless,
Potential reaching for the sun,
No scars from cutting,
No needle tracks,
No self doubt,
If only you could see yourself,
Through my eyes.

Like sands in strong winds,
Experience wears away,
Sweet youth's innocence.

Como arenas en vientos fuertes,
La experiencia desgasta,
La dulce inocencia juvenil.

Night has come once more,
But the world will not release,
Its grip on my mind.

I can't sleep again,
Will writing a Haiku help?
Nope, still wide awake.

We your inspired clay,
By exercising free will,
Save or **** ourselves.

In Spring I Dreamt of Summer's Sun
In spring I dreamt of summer's sun,
And all the things that I'd get done.

In summer I did dream of fall,
And lovely times we would have all.

In fall I dreamt of winter's due,
When rest and travel would come true.

And now that winter's finally here,
I dream of all the wasted years.

I dream of times we should have shared,
When all were still alive who cared.

I dreamed away my life it seems,
Instead of living it, I dreamed.

Longed for tomorrow every day,
And now I long for yesterday.

I wish I'd lived each day awake,
Left precious moments in my wake.

But wisdom comes too late I fear,
Too many dreams and wasted years.

Voracious cloud lurks,
Drooling, hunger pangs rumbling,
Swallowing the moon.

The moon smiles unhurt,
It proves indigestible,
And must be spat out.

The cloud skulks away,
Throwing fiery tantrums,
Weeping for her loss.

Islands of wonder
Like a broken string of pearls
Scattered in velvet

Glorious artwork
These worlds that are not our own
Sculpted by nature

Interstellar space,
Nebulas coalescing
That will form new stars

Stars die, are reborn,
The Phoenix rising always
From its own ashes

The cycle of life,
Played out on a macro scale,
To the end of time

Every one of us,
Individual artworks,
From those selfsame stars

No matter which pearl
Of our endless universe
Has given us life

We are all but one
In communion with stardust
Why can’t we see that?

You can hear me read this and three other new poems at https://youtu.be/Fy5UfJJ8vOI

I so yearn to ring,
Chimes that waken sleeping hearts,
And lift them skyward.

Like Keats and Shelley,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake,
Or Whitman and Poe.

Sadly my chimes are,
Like a cracked church bell struck by,
Leaves in a wind storm.

__________

Anhelo Tanto Sonar

Anhelo tanto sonar,
Campanas que despierten a corazones dormidos,
Y los exalten hacia el cielo.

Como Keats y Shelley,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake,
O Whitman y Poe.

Tristemente mis campanadas suenan,
Como hojas batidas por una tormenta,
En contra de una campana de iglesia agrietada.

Is there not more to life than suffering?
At times it seems we live only to die.  
Happiness comes most often in our dreams,
Brushing our souls a moment, passing by.

Where are the hopes of youth? When did they fade?
Ephemeral shades of fragile, tender hearts!
When did we break the promises we made?
How brief the light, how dark the night which starts.

I still remember, once upon a time,
Sweet, evanescent images still come,
Bearing both pain and ecstasy sublime,
In ghostly visions of dreams nearly gone.

If there's meaning to life beyond the pain,
It's so hard to discern through all the rain.

Spent three nights this week
Living in 1987
Immersed in both joy and sorrow
Long suppressed

Writing a novel
Of fact made fiction
Relived a critical year
Writing of my former self

Three nights spent towards the end
At my keyboard
Not my bed
Until 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.

Then two or three hours of sleep
And back to weaving again
A renewed tapestry
From frayed and broken threads

The heart remembers
What the mind would hide
Old wounds thought healed
Begin to bleed again

What is broken Is yet mended
Forged in the white-hot fire
Of sweet remembrance
Tempered by tears that can still flow

The novel's done
Reopened cuts begin to heal
And scabs reform anew
Leaving new scars to fade in time

The editing process begins
The mind takes over from the heart
The ghosts return to their cold graves
Their temporary lives expired

Closed doors pried open
Now shut once more
And green paths not taken
Once again turn brown

But oh the sweet ephemeral joy
And deepest sorrow
Of the dead past come alive again
If only for a time to ponder what might have been

When conformity,
Is imposed by government,
Tyranny has won.

If freedom of thought,
Comes at the cost of one's life,
It is worth the price.

In the near future,
One global hyper-network,
No choice to opt out

Justice is unjust,
When it merely imposes,
The will of the state.

_______

Justice
Time: The all too near future
Place: A courtroom
Setting: Final sentencing of a prisoner convicted of the last remaining capital offense on the books of a kinder, gentler, fairer world in which equality is no longer a mere aspiration.
________

The prisoner stared impassively into the camera. The bright lights causing beads of sweat to form above his eyes and forcing him to squint, his perspiration-soaked thinning hair flattened unflatteringly against his forehead. No sound could be heard other than the faint hum of the air conditioning whose airflow was directed from the high ceiling above the high seats of the three judge panel, towards the three judges, keeping their immediate area comfortably cool. The camera trained on them remained a respectful distance away, and no harsh lights illuminated their somber countenances.

All three judges stared at the camera showing no emotion, their hands folded in front of them on the surface of their capacious bench on top of three equal stacks of paper placed before them. Everywhere on earth citizens watched the unfolding drama over the neural net that provided a fully immersive experience indistinguishable from reality, effectively placing every citizen on the planet in the courtroom as the Chief Judge began to speak in a deep, resonant, clear voice.

“The evidence against you has been examined. This tribunal finds you guilty of the charges against you by a unanimous vote. Have you anything to say before we pass sentence?”

The camera cuts back to the prisoner. The lights brighten around him and the heat rises perceptibly, adding fresh fuel to the trickle of sweat flowing down his flushed face, causing a bead of sweat to form at the end of his nose that he is unable to swat away because his wrists are restrained by metal bands at the armrests of his metal chair, outside the viewing range of the camera’s tight zoom on his face.

“I am guilty of no crime,” the prisoner protests in a low voice full of palpable weariness and resignation.

“You are guilty of the most heinous of crimes,” the Chief Judge contradicts, raising his voice and causing the prisoner to cringe.
“That is not open to debate. This is your final chance to make what amends you may to those whom you have harmed through your selfish, deviant act. It will have no effect on this Court’s sentence.”

“But I have done nothing wrong,” the man emphatically protests again, as ribbons of perspiration roll down his neck and deepen the growing ring of dark sweat absorbed by his bright orange jumpsuit, leaving a collar of dark moisture around his neck.

“Silence!” the Chief Judge hisses through tight lips. “The record will show that the prisoner is unrepentant. This Court finds that he willfully, maliciously and without justification removed his neural connector with the purpose and effect of severing his connection to the neural nets. We further find that the motivating factor for this most egregious, malevolent and repugnant crime was the attempt to abandon the Common Consciousness and establish his individuality separate and apart from the Communal Mind. We further find that the subject is in full possession of his legal faculties and capable of understanding the criminal nature of his acts, and, perhaps most tragically, that he fails to see the enormity of his crime.” The Chief Justice faltered slightly, delivering the final words of the Court’s sentence with a slight tremor in his voice. After stopping a moment to compose himself as his learned colleagues looked on impassively, he continued. “It is, therefore, the judgment of this Court that you will forever remain disconnected from the nets from this day forward.”

Upon hearing the Judge’s words the prisoner’s eyes opened wider, attempting to digest their import. Could it be? Might he finally be allowed the what he believed to be his unalienable right to be an individual for the first time in his life? The opportunity to live in a world in which he could have original thoughts, genuine emotions, privacy and the opportunity to be different from everyone else? The joy he felt nearly made him faint with relief and unbridled joy, allowing him for the first time in his life the possibility of hope as tears welled in his eyes.

He found he could not speak, could not express even the simple words “thank you” to the Court. It was as though he were emerging from a life-long nightmare, as if. . .

“The prisoner’s IP address, 999.999.999.999, shall be erased from the Nets,” the Judge continued as the prisoner’s tears now flowed freely. “His existence shall be forever stricken from the Collective Consciousness lest it germinate there and once again grow sedition in our midst.” The prisoner wept openly now while smiling broadly.
“The death sentence for this most heinous of crimes is hereby commuted so that the prisoner may be allowed the individuality he craves for the rest of his natural life, devoid of the comfort of our collective humanity or the distracting influences of life.”

The Chief Judge then paused and took a deep breath, as the prisoner shuddered with relief. He then continued in a slow, resonant voice. “It is further ordered by this Court that the prisoner shall have his eyes, eardrums, tongue and olfactory organs surgically removed that he may not taste, smell, see, hear, or speak with any other human being for the rest of his natural life. Thereafter, he is remanded to a hospital where he shall be restrained to a bed and tended to by robotic life support aids that he may be denied the comfort of feeling another human beings warm touch upon his skin. The sentence of this Court shall be carried out immediately and shall be witnessed by all the citizens of Earth as partial reparation for this most heinous of crimes against humanity.”

The prisoner’s screams lasted only a few moments as an anesthetic was administered and the cameras were re-arranged in preparation for justice to be carried out.

(C) 2011, 2019 Victor D. Lopez - All rights reserved.

La justicia es injusta,
Cuando solamente impone,
La voluntad del estado.

Ebony tower of quiet strength and competence,
A touchstone in my darkest days, the brother I never had,
Different from me in so many obvious ways,
Yet the same in all the ways that matter.

Yours was the face I first saw,
Coming out of a very painful surgery,
Crouching by my bedside in the hospital,
Next to my mom and girlfriend (now wife).

You stood by me as my best man,
You loved my parents as your own (they you),
You sat with me holding my mom's hands,
When she no longer knew either of us.

You stood by me to say good bye to mom and dad,
In the darkest days in funeral homes and church,
With your lovely wife by your side,
And cried with me again not for the first or last time.

We are a study in contrasts,
You are tall, black and beautiful,
Me relatively short, white and worn these days,
You have all your hair while I lost much of mine.

You are a natural athlete and always beat me,
At tennis, softball, and even video games--always,
I was the second-fastest short-distance runner in my middle school,
But you could run faster than me too--graciously invincible.

You are a left of center Democrat,
I'm a right of center Republican,
We both care deeply about politics,
And largely dislike politicians the other supports.

But in our 42 years of the closest of friendships,
There has never been a single controversial issue,
On which we could not find a compromise solution,
We could both agree on as fair and workable.

We spent hours, days, weeks, months, years,
Debating issues about which we are both passionate,
But never--not once--in anger despite the passion,
Every single time able to find common ground.

Our secret on that front is a simple one,
We have a deep abiding respect for one another,
And an abiding faith in each other's integrity,
Born out of four decades living in each other's heads.

If you strongly believe something to be true,
I must seriously consider it and can't ever dismiss it off hand,
Nor do you what is equally important to me,
Our visions differ, but never our goals.

These days we don't see each other or speak very often,
Life has gotten in the way for us both as it too often does,
But when we do speak, write or see each other,
It is the same as it has always been and will always be.

If I never see you again, my dearest of friends, for twenty years,
Nothing will have changed in our transformational friendship,
You will always stand beside me in spirit if not in person,
Every day of my life while I draw breath, and I pray after too.

Kiss a babbling brook,
It will gladly quench your thirst,
With crisp, clear water.

Kiss raging rapids,
You'll be crushed against the rocks,
And drown, thirst unquenched.

Calm waters sustain,
Turgid ones excite us more,
Danger alway does.

La muerte no tiene sentido
Para quienes han sembrado buenas semillas,
Que engendrarán frutos dulces.

Las arenas del tiempo fluyen,
Cayendo hacia el olvido,
dejando algo atrás.

Life is an hourglass,
Sands fall to oblivion,
Leave something behind.

A carnival ride,
Of limitless potential,
With little control.

A brief, brilliant flash,
Leaving afterimages,
In all it has touched.

Lightning rends the sky,
Heaven's blood floats to the earth,
That life may flourish.

Seguramente estás loco,
Cuando piensas tener la razón,
Y que todo el mundo está equivocado.

You presented me your love,
Heart, mind, and soul sweeping over me,
An irresistible wave crashing upon,
The unmovable rock of my immature heart.

The spray exploded into an evanescent mist,
That covered our world completely,
And left you dazzled by an endless rainbow,
And left my blinded by the briny fog of my new love.

You offered free, unfettered, true and selfless love,
While I saw not you but a wondrous fantasy,
You yearned to build a nest in a nearby tree,
I yearned to spread my wings and learn to fly.

You were a woman, and I was a boy,
Not in age but in emotional maturity,
I listened attentively but heard your truth,
As through through an ocean of tears yet to come.

I loved you more than life all that I could,
But not, alas, more than my ego or myself,
I would have died for you, would gladly still,
And yet I killed your spirit most unwittingly.

I should have loved you more, loved myself less,
I should have loved you enough to let you go,
I should have listened with my heart and not my ears,
And seen you with my soul and not my eyes.

I've sown the seeds of true love on fallow ground,
But watered it with vinegar thinking it rain water,
And tender tendrils grew to gnarly trees,
That bore a bitter fruit for our nourishment.

The fault is mine, as is the shame,
I should have taken better care,
To tend our beautiful orchard,
Grown wild with the weeds of my neglect.

I cannot change the past, were that I could,
Too late to make amends, ungrow the weeds,
Or make wild lemon trees grow pomegranates,
But I can say I was wrong, can say I'm sorry.

I loved you then, my love,
I love you now with all my heart,
I will love you tomorrow and I hope,
Will love you even the day after I die.

It is the great tragedy of man,
That we too often learn vital truths,
Too late in life for you if not for me,
To profit from the knowledge gained through pain.

I would do anything to change the past,
To see you happy, not bitter, sad and anger filled,
To see you blossom as you should have done,
With a better mate, in a nest of deepest roots.

All I can say is that I am truly sorry,
That I love you truly and completely,
And that with God's grace I will do so as long as stars shine,
And there remains the faintest hope of my redemption.

Does true love exist,
Or do we simply dream it,
To fill empty lives?

And if it is real,
Do we see it with our hearts,
Or just with our eyes?

Can we ever tell,
Self-delusion from true love,
And does it matter?

Should we not embrace,
A chance for shared joy when found,
If it does no harm?

Believe in true love,
Hope and dream and strive for it,
If it's not yet yours.

It gives life meaning,
Makes all our pain bearable,
Keeps away despair.

Love freely given,
Ripples in the universe,
To outlive the stars.

I used to stumble, weakly as a child,
Who cannot see, touch, smell, taste or feel,
A wandering entity whom love defiled,
And made to falsely genuflect and kneel.

So very many nights through tears I've slept,
Drowning in the indifference of this earth,
So very many years my heart I kept,
Eager to light the fires of home and hearth.

But then one soft, cool night not long ago,
Your love you tenderly presented me,
And in my veins new life began to flow,
As we were joined for all eternity.

When we outgrow our cells of flesh and bone,
I pray our love will freely fly back home.

You are surely mad,
When you believe yourself right,
And the whole world wrong.

Las malas ideas no mueren,
Prosperan como hongos en la oscuridad,
Desarráigalas con luz.

Tender tulip shoots,
Wriggling through the melting snow,
Harbingers of spring.

Asteroid strike nears
Earth mobilizes to save
Humanity's seed

Extinction event,
Two years to prepare to save,
Seed of humankind.

If we had two years' notice,
Of our world's impending doom,
What might humanity do?

Would we bend our knees and pray?
Would chaos reign supreme?
Would we quietly despair?

Would our flame shine brightest then?
Or would we embrace darkness?
I suspect we would do both.

But I doubt we would give up,
I hope we'd go out fighting,
For one final, great lost cause.

Ingenuity is ours,
I believe we would unite,
To save humanity's seed.

Humanity would survive,
Some on space stations perhaps,
Others would flee underground.

Moon bases might yet be built,
And perhaps even on Mars,
That human kind might go on.

An asteroid can destroy,
All that humankind has built,
But not the human spirit.

_____

This is a teaser poem about one of my longest short stories, Mars: Genesis 2.0 about humanity's struggle to preserve its seed in the face of an extinction event. You can download the short story (one of 13 in my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection) free through 3/10/2022 but only at the following link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/428820

An extinction event looms,
Death arrives in under two years,
Riding on an asteroid.

Earth's future is sealed,
Salvation not possible,
Can humanity prevail?

Will chaos rule our waning days?
Will we give in to despair?
Or will we refuse to yield?

Will we sacrifice our last days,
For the slimmest ray of hope,
To preserve our human seed?

Will we face our end,
In triumphant defiance,
Or embrace despair?

You can download a copy of my eBook science fiction short story by the same name free until May 15, 2022, but only at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/428820

I quest for meaning,
Knowing it's not mine to find,
Yet the quest goes on.

We choose to keep the homeless out of sight,
As though they'd vanish if we do not look,
It's easy to ignore their sorry plight,
Treat them as lesser humans God forsook.

We easily dismiss the luckless few,
Though there but for God's grace may go we all,
Yet hubris blinds us to what we once knew,
Before our childhood's end, before our fall.

How different to us the world would seem,
If we knew billions worshipped each of us,
Unheard, unseen, their fates not ours to glean,
The least of us, in fact, a world en masse.

If kings and paupers both are just the same,
Denying each dignity is insane.

Hoy yo volví a cantar,
Algo mas alto que un llanto,
Que aun no puedo evitar
Pero lo puedo soportar,
Envuelto en mi como un manto.

La música sabe llamar,
A lo que ya se a perdido,
Y por no saber amar,
O no querer destacar,
Se enterró en el olvido.

Por profunda la fisura,
Siempre se puede surgir,
La tiniebla mas oscura,
Con una luz blanca y pura,
Se puede sobrevivir.

Unas notas en cadenas,
Empreñan una melodía,
Y en cenizas y arenas,
Crece esperanza en las venas,
Y da luz a la alegría.

Mi madre en su tristeza,
Lloraba lagrimas de canto,
Lo hacia con gran destreza,
Y dolorosa belleza,
Música su diario llanto.

Mi canto es mi poesía,
Sin tono, dolorosa, impura,
No es un canto de alegría,
Pero la tristeza expía,
Y la esperanza perdura.

[ Mi lectura de este poema es accesible en https://youtu.be/sLJJvnyGrkQ ]