They drop bombs
Made in the USA

Blameless
Bunker-busting
Bombs

Made in the USA

Thirty thousand tons of
Blameless
Bunker-busting
Bombs

Made in the USA

Each
Two thousand pound bomb
A grim reaper
Of death and destruction

Made in the USA

Each crater
A mass grave
Made by descendants of
Holocaust victims,
survivors,
And their sycophants

In the USA
And
Around the world

Silenced sycophants
Singing Christmas carols
Exchanging gifts

In the USA
And
Around the world...


And those who dare
Speak up
Or march

In protest

For the innocent
Silenced victims of
Blameless
Bunker-busting
Bombs

Made in the USA

For the twenty thousand
Silenced Palestinian victims of
Blameless
Bunker-busting
Bombs

Made in the USA...

Are labeled
"Anti-Semites"

And silenced too.

~ P
(12/23/2023)


Image credit: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Fell from a space spiritual
Into this physical place
Called Life.

I'm a Late-Boomer.

Memory takes me back
In time
To a blue brick house
(Or was it wood? )
With a door painted white.
A rental.
I was five.
My baby sister was four.

Mommy, a nurse,
Rode a bike to work.
Our Daddy fought fires;
Rode a bike to work.

My Godfather, David,
Rode a bike to work.

He fought fires too.

No one I knew had cars.
They all rode
Bikes to work.

Too young to ride,
I walked to school
Or took the round-de-town bus
For a jill or two.

That's how my life began in
this physical space;
A winner among winners
of the human race.

Lucky me.
Lucky us.

Then I grew up;
Too slowly.
I was too short
For too long.

One year -
'77 or '78,
I grew so tall,
Mommy didn't recognize me,
At all.

Her own son!

That happened again,
Sadly,
After a fall
In '07 or '08.

She's back in that
Spiritual space now.
Heaven,
I suppose.

She was a Believer.

Lucky her.

Ashe.

~ P

I wish you had found me
When I was six.

I wish you had entered my world then
And stirred by consciousness
Like you did
When we first met,
Two decades later.

I think of all the children
Like me;
Young, spirited
And vulnerable.

Who didn't know
They were poor.

Who had no phones or TVs;
Only radios
In their homes.

Who didn't know
There were literary giants in the world
Who looked like them.

Who were fed a steady white diet
Of history, literature and
Religion...

I would've had an albatross
On my deck.

I would've had big-dream winds
Beneath by sails.

I would've been
The black mariner of lore
Shielded through the raging storm...

Not shipwrecked;
Left like shark bait to navigate
The turbulence of prepubescent life
Rife with philistines and predators.

My ship and treasure
Would've landed sooner,
Safely onto destiny's shores.

And my poetry
Wouldn't be

So blue...

AYO

~P
#iwish
(3/27/2023)

Until we see the world
As a space shared by all living things,
Each having a right to exist;
As nature intended,
In the beginning.

Until we see the world
As an infinite wonder
Through which we wander finitely
With a duty to care and share
That all living things
Might be fruitful and multiply;
As nature intended,
In the beginning.

Until we see the world
As our most valued asset
To maintain and grow
That our children
Might thrive and prosper
Without fear of disasters,
man-made and cataclysmic;
As nature intended,
In the beginning.

Until we see the world
As the only world
There is
Or will ever be;

And reform our lives
From greed to green...

We shall ALL be victims
of the worst crime
In the history of the world:

Ecocide.

AYO
~P

Every voice of reason
Screamed Yes
Do it
Excise it
The malignant ones
Steeped in hubris and narcissism
To the bone
Breaking bad beyond repair
Like toxic air
From a saxophone
Blowin off-key
Down Bourbon Street

The coup de grace
Of Mardi Gras
And freedom

Onward
Christian Nationalists

Onward
Putin sympathizers
Who despised Hugo and Fidel

Sieg Heil
Hypocrisy and homophobia

Sieg Heil
Misogyny and xenophobia

The tumor grew
As cancers do
Ignored

The day
Democracy died

~ P

He pulled a gun
On me
Stuck it in my ribs
Like I was steak
Well-done
On the wrong plate
At a place and time
When flour was scarce;
That was my first brush
With fate and destiny

I was just a boy
Then
Of nineteen
When
It happened

Six years later
It happened again
A scare
My sophomore year
At Skegee
He waved the gun at me
This time
Screaming obscenities
From Clarendon

I did not run
Like my friends from Soweto
Where guns meant death

I had no fear
That day
Miles and miles away from home
I stood my ground
And won;
My second brush
With fate and destiny

My third
Occurred in a smoky bar
Not far away
From Carver's farm;
He was nuts
That night
Almost blew a hole
Through my guts
When all I wanted
Was a Bud Light
Ice-cold;
My third brush
With fate and destiny

Time has been kind to me
Unlike the lady
From Stone Mountain
In the backseat of my rideshare;
"I'm gonna **** you,"
She said;
The cop searched her bag
There was no gun
This time around;
My fourth brush
With fate and destiny

A mere man of 56
I was
No longer an immigrant boy
Was I
When his Luger's laser
Pierced my eye;
Yet here I am
Alive
Having survived
My fifth brush
With fate and destiny

Maybe I should buy a gun
Of my own

AYO

~ p

White-on-white crime is at an all-time high.
The color of power bleeds red.
I'm Ukranian and I am free is a lily white lie.
White-on-white crime is at an all-time high.
Eat these bombs babushka, don't you cry.
Vladimir doesn't care if you're alive or dead.
White-on-white crime is at an all-time high.
The color of power bleeds red.
~P

#makelovenotwar
#peaceplease