Through an evanescent mist I see a vision,
Of four horses--white, red, black and pale,
Galloping from the four points of the compass,
Towards a preordained meeting that will end the world.

The white horse tramples freedom in endless conquest,
Along its path of false glory, extremists reviving dead empires,
Thirsting still for lost hegemony under red and black banners,
With hammers and sickles, swastikas and waxing moons with stars.

The red horse crushes the bones of the innocent,
Under its ****** hooves as they march to a steady drumbeat,
To **** brothers and sisters born in other lands, as well as
Neighbors near and far labeled enemies and marked for death.

The black horse sows famine with its every hoof fall,
Leaving blight, thirst, and hunger in its dusty wake,
To the everlasting glory of misguided, foolish, evil rulers,
Of countries once graced by great people and wealth.

The pale horse leaves death in all lands it touches,
planting seeds of hate, fear, and envy that bloom into unbridled evil,
In the hearts of fatuous, self-righteous, hubris-filled monsters,
Who defile humanity to impose their ends by any means necessary.

Take your eyes away from the mirror, put away your smart phone,
Shut down your computer, turn off your television set, wake up from your slumber,
Scan the horizon, you will see the dust clouds growing near, and hear the soft,
Galloping hoof falls above life’s normal din—they’re coming for you.

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.

Goddess of wisdom, justice, inspiration, law,
Warrior goddess that is nobly so much more,
Than in what ages past held the known world in awe,
As the patron goddess of all heroic lore.

You sprang from Zeus’s head in armor, fully formed,
Grew to be among the gods his favorite child,
A warrior who as patron the arts transformed,
Fiercest defender of truth, enemy of guile.

You live today in every woman’s heart who knows,
The road to freedom is not paved with words of air,
In the fertile ashes of battles freedom grows,
Those battles fought and won by women everywhere.

You, paragon among all heroes from the start,
Live on triumphantly in every woman’s heart.

I am an ostrich, hiding deep within myself,
My head submerged in murky moods,
Screaming in a vacuum.
No, not a vacuum, but a sound-proof room,
With walls of ten-foot stone,
A fortress,
Clammy, cold and, dimly lit,
That admits no sound,
But the monotonous percussion,
Of a heart that knows the one eternal truth:

We are born dying,
And every breath that we take,
Every beat of our heart,
Brings us one step closer,
To the grave.

It is easy to forget a world exists outside,
My diminutive cell when my teeth chatter,
Not from the absence of warmth,
But from the absence of meaning.

Perspective, perspective, perspective,
Echoes through my fruitless cell.

I am a foolish,
Ugly bird,
Cowardly bird,
But needlessly.

I heard a song today, a soothing melody,
Sung by an angel dressed in woman's clothes;
Oh, sing again, dear love, I had
Almost forgotten your sweet voice!

Flowers bloom next to rusting Pepsi cans,
Watered by the spit of ******* dealers,
And the ***** and vaginal fluid,
Of hot lovers groping under blankets,
Under stars dimly blinking through thick smog.

Nightly haven for muggers, rapists, fiends,
Whose every breath profanes the species they,
So poorly represent, turning Plato’s,
Featherless bipeds, to dead plucked chickens,
Soul-less, pointless wastes of protoplasm.

Abomination-- not in itself but,
For the use it’s put to: a bone for dogs,
Who’ve never tasted steak, and are gleeful,
To feast upon the scraps of fetid meat,
Clinging to well-gnawed bones that they are fed.

Central Park, the bone we are to chew while,
Smiling complacently at skyscrapers,
Daily rising where wild flowers might have grown,
Our humanity proportionally,
Shrinking inversely to their daily rise.

If I seem narrow minded and unkind,
Or blind to the beauty of Central Park,
It is because I’ve stood on ****** ground,
In summer, fall, winter and early spring,
And cannot bring myself to love a *****.

In troubled times I've called your name,
My love, and clung to it as does a child,
To the belief in Santa,
Or the sightless, to the hope of light;

It is for me,
The visionary dream,
That drives perseverance,
And decries despair;

It is the hope of wretched souls,
In purgatory awaiting,
The seemingly forgotten promise,
Of their eventual release.

When my stale words confuse, confine,
Confound my mind, and images converge
Into the swirling blur of madness,
I call your name.

Then hopelessness recedes,
As does an incorporeal nightmare,
Slowly fading, leaving behind only sweat-soaked sheets,
Yielding to the purifying rays of the dawn’s rising sun.

A simple word, your name, but to me, a powerful amulet,
Which pierces the darkness and melts away,
The deformed forms that haunt and taunt my darkest days,
And fills them with all on earth that heals and renews.

A simple word which simply is my all, a synonym for sincere,
Unpretentious love that seldom asks yet freely gives,
That does not question, but simply knows,
That does not quickly burn, but always, and forever, warms.

I stand alone in the dark Fulton Street subway station,
Breathing in the *****-scented air,
Breathing out clouds of steam,
A subway train rushes along,
Not stopping,
Biting at my eardrums,
With the painful percussion,
Of thousands of people,
Silently screaming,

I don’t want to see,
     I don’t want to see,
          I don’t want to see,

The air fanned by each subway car,
Rushes against me,
Pushes the ozone and the smell of burnt brake linings,
Into my nostrils,
Along with the air,
****** through the iron gratings,
Along miles of Brooklyn sidewalks,
Carrying the odor of a *******’s festering sores,
And the cries of a hungry, fatherless child in ***** diapers,
And the hoarse moaning of a city councilman mentoring a young intern,
And the cheap perfume of a fourteen year-old runaway,
Turning $20 tricks in an alley,
Smelling of stale Chinese food and wet dogs,
And . . .

I don’t want to see,
     I don’t want to see,
          I don’t want to see,

. . . the smell of spoiled cabbage soup,
And the rancid remains of a hotdog buried in sauerkraut,
And putrid lilies lying in a gutter,
All assaulting me, forcing me backwards,
Until my back presses against,
The grimy once-white tiles,
That coldly burn their graffiti on my spine:

God is dead,
Bake a ****,
Whitey *****,
**** the *******,

I don’t want to see,
     I don’t want to see,
          I don’t want to see,

The train finally passes,
Its red eyes receding into the dank,
Dark tunnel beyond the platform,
The screeches and screams slowly die out,
Their echoes ******* behind them,
The smell,
Of my,
Warm
*****.