Tigers hunt, Sheep bleat
Eagles soar, Bears sleep
Only one imperfection
One blot on this earth
Only one mistake
In this chaotic universe
The biped that thought
I’m special, they are naught
I will chase them and herd them
I will cow them and hurt them
I will conquer their will
As I sit atop my hill
All that I see is mine
My power is divine

Indeed power is divine
or at least above the touch
Of the lowly biped,
Slave to ego, its crutch
Time cycles around
The circle of life
Each fool with a title
Sits pretty for a while
On a mountain of bones,
Bloodshed, false pride
I’ve won, I’ve crushed them
Look how they run and hide

Oh, don’t you see,
You sad little fool
One of these days that
Boomerang will find you
Your house of cards is swaying
The hounds of hate are baying
Your great successor has arrived
Same delusions, different stripes!

A tragic tradition from times long past
Weak of wit and hard of heart
Thus pawns are born and
Circumstance plays its part

Here we stand again, aghast
Alas, what evil has come to pass!
Questions burn, anger rises
Vengeance brews on the horizon

The world has turned for years and years
On violence and wars, and bitter tears
You build - they break, you smile - they’re fake
Injustice reigns in misfortune’s wake
Struggle for some, victory for others
Caps are waved with fair-weather feathers

Who are they, who are we?
Who is safe, who is free?
Where is the heart that knows no fear?
Where is the mind that’s always clear?

An ephemeral world, a passing phase
The old, the new
The false, the true
A blink of an eye in eternity’s gaze

Yet weak-minded malignancies
Must ply their trade of misery
Dispensed with as refuse in this life
****** as bartered souls in the next
Fate’s hand is heavy and dark is the night
For the vicious heart and feeble intellect.

Why do poets and photographers love fleeting things?
Angled shafts of sunlight piercing a mass
of clouds. A rainbow flashing from dragonfly wings.
Water drops beading like shards of glass.

The fluttering shape of a sycamore’s shade.
The sun sinking into its reflection
In a purple bay.  Smoke’s shadow. The rayed
Curve of a finger reaching for perfection.

Whatever churns, bursts, rocks, flies,
Foams, flickers, roils, evades
In pigments of impermanent dyes
We try to fix before it fades

Once I mourned the endless dying  
Of here and now, the present always past
Elegized each moment, sighing
Beauty is loss and can never last.

But now I think I had it wrong.  In fact
(I learned this from an artist’s eye)
Fleeting beauty reappears faster than we react,
At the speed of a daydream flashing by.

All around, light coalesces into form,
Form explodes into light,
And we live lavishly inside this storm
If we can learn to see it right.

Beauty multiplies, tapering, swelling:
Reshaping, reforming, now familiar, now strange.
This gaudy blur in which we’re dwelling
Is the permanence of change.