Steal everything you have ever loved.
Set it to another verse
of borrowed phrases
and humble pie.
Somewhere in the spaces
between the song-writer's ohm
and the poet's demise,
others will form your stolen loot,
your dead-sea scrolls,
into the multitude of inspiration
that constitutes your Self.

The banks are running dry.
All freedom is restrained
to the ticking of a box
and the punching of a clock.
There is no shame in stealing
a resonant thought.
It is the way Revolution happens,
an idea projected, then repeated,
repeated, re-written and spoken
in one thousand tongues.
If your lover leaves you,
it is nothing special.

Yet if a stranger's words steal your breath,
stripped to a naked consciousness,
you have every right to pilfer their mind,
to bridge understanding,
to share in a longing,
to replicate a sentence
in which truth was left unconfined.

I don't get bigotry, never have.

I don't get born again Christians,
Weren't they born once already?
I don't get do nothing Tea Party Republicans,
Who as it turns out are mostly the same
Born Again people.

I don't get any fake *** politicians,
They aren't people they're a product.
Manufactured and packaged to please
the tastes of the gullible public.

I don't get why super rich people would
want to go to Washington and take
(For them) a low paying job in Congress
and then sit on their hands and do nothing?
With their money they could go buy a lush
Island in the sun and lay about and really
do nothing while drinking a ice cold beer.
Which sounds like lots more fun.  

I don't get bad wars fought for bad reasons.

I don't get people that **** other people
of the same religion for no discernible reason.
While yelling "God Is Good or Great!" or what ever.
I don't get why they'd think "God" would even
appreciate that.

But then, I don't get people that **** people.
Or insanity, religious insanity is even worse.

I don't get still using oil to power things
while we know **** well there are good
viable alternatives.

I don't get the rabid Right To Lifers,
who want to dictate to all woman
their "One And Only Solution".

I guess I don't get why
People tell you they love you,
Then later change their minds.

I don't get kids killing kids
on school yards with guns.
Or the fools that do not lock
up their guns that their kids
find and use to **** other kids
on school yards.

I don't get why so many people
want things to stand still,
just because they can't keep up.

I don't get those folks that swear
that global warming is not a reality,
while every day the oceans rise
a little more.

I don't get why we little people let the
one per centers run our country and lives.

I don't get why we allow Big Business
to out source millions of jobs to other lands
when people here at home are unemployed.

I get "Humanitarian Aid" but why do we send
billions of dollars to countries that hate us?

I don't get why we need a dozen TV channels
of 24 hour news, (Some of which distort the truth
to fit their political leanings) news repeated and
repeated until we are scared and numb and
don't know truth from pure old *******.

I don't get where honest "News Men" like
Mr. Cronkite and his breed, guys that made
sure of their facts and would only dispense
the truth, went and why there are no more
of them?

I don't get why Bush and Cheney are not
in the slammer for their many lies and
outright Treason! Starting wars that never
end and shouting WMDs when none existed.

The simple answer to all this,
"these things that I do not get", is,
"It's all ******* and It's Bad For Ya' ."

Missing words
softly surge
through her silence
again
like long
soothing fingers
of whispering
rain
that soak
their way in
through her bare
thirsty skin
until
not a dry moment
remains
.

To the Anti-American Teacher…We Knew You Were Pro-World

A clause in your contract slated your signature for patriotism.
You never signed, they never checked, but you took down your flag
after that.
They  didn’t check that either.
So, you stripped and tacked and taped and striped all the flags
from all the world to the walls.

On the east, sat Uraguay, and Paraguay, and Peru.
On the west, we went to Austria, and Hungary, and Bangladesh
for good measure.
But the north wall was your northern star – the shining one
among the rest.
The Chinese stars of social class contrasted against the five-pointed red one, the
one next to the ending of a Tsar in a February Revolution, a marking point found – not in our textbooks – but in all the places you have been.

Oh, the places you’ll go, you began.

In Israel, you had gone in your college years, and you learned of bamboo
tattoos in Thailand, but Korean was a class you completed in
France of all places, and I never had the chance to see the locations of
the south wall.

You were fired.

Over night, they tore you from the walls, lone of which, they left the
tape tacked up in four corners, a collection in each place of a flag
we once saw before us. In my desk, you slipped a map inside.

Oh, the places you’ll go, you wrote.

Such a sorrowful tune.