My whole adult life,
I've been running into people
unexpectedly on street corners
and having somewhat profound
conversations in odd languages.

Consider the guy I spoke with in broke *** English
at the bus station in Jacksonville,
or the girl from Kiev I happened upon in
a very expensive gentleman's club in Seattle.

Herat was also a very strange place to find
oneself in, Dari and Pashto and Russian and God
knows what else might be run into.

The wonderful thing about all of the
ridiculous places I've found myself in at
one time or another over the very hungry years
is that no matter what language or background
we came from, if there was ***** we got along.

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
****** standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these ****** despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

What city do you live in?
What town?
What hamlet?
What village?
What homestead out in the middle of supposed nowhere?

Where in this once great land could you live
and be able to say to yourself "No, I haven't
felt the pain of trying to provide for myself
and for those whom I love?"

Where could you be, from West Coast
to the East, and not at least wonder during your
work week once, what is happening all around us?

Or do you sit in relative comfort,
as I do, fighting only personal battles
and yet knowing deep down inside
that there is something not quite right.

Feeling perhaps there might be something wrong
not with yourself, but with where you live
and that maybe your supposed failings as a person
have nothing whatsoever to do with you
but rather, with the land you live in?

1) "An unstable political situation, marked by sharp social divisions and usually, but not always, by a foundering or stagnant economy." Check.

2) " A political objective, based on firm moral and ideological grounds, that can be understood and accepted by the majority as the overriding cause of the insurgency, desirable in and of itself and worthy of any sacrifice." We have yet to achieve that cohesiveness among the various factions and break-away groups within our society.

3) "An oppressive government, with which no political compromise is possible." As yet to be determined. The situation remains fluid.

4) " Some form of revolutionary political organization, capable of providing dedicated and consistent leadership toward the accepted goal." As yet, there is no organization that can muster the popular support or bring disparate groups together to make any sort of legal headway against our common enemy.

And where indeed have all those slim lines
of genuine verse gone?

What has become of the Garden wrought of dreams
and a love so keen that it could barely be spoken of?

Wherefore gone the desires for quiet words
and innocent love-making?

I will tell you that they have been drowned
by the cries for justice gone so long unheard.

They have been swallowed up by the indifference
of a nation so engrossed in consumption that the world outside
our borders and within only exists on television.

But the real fact of the matter is that I am ashamed,
I am ashamed of myself most of all,
for if I truly cared as much as I say I do,
I'd have stopped writing altogether by now,
and started doing more....

I'd be reaching out to whoever would listen
to whomever I could find
to those of us that don't want to wake up one day
and realize only too late
that we are all in fact slaves.

Here I find myself again, low lamplight reflecting a shadow. Waiting.....waiting is all I do now. I wake up in the morning and there's nothing. Nothing but repetition, the demeaning struggle stuck on rerun. I was waiting for work to end, now I'm waiting for the gin to kick in, and soon I'll be waiting to fall asleep so that I can do it all over.

What am I doing here in this room, on this beach in a paradise, hiding out from something that I don't want to be, pretending to be someone I'm not, putting on a smile during the day and acting like everything's gonna be okay?

Justifying so much to myself because I don't want this compulsion, this need to take all of the bad things I've ever seen and use them as fuel to burn this whole world down.

What I've really been hiding from is a part of me that was born in the dark, while wandering down nearly deserted roads in the middle of the night, passing figures huddled in alleys and dying for a fix, meeting strangers on streets I've never been able to find again and wondering what it is that we're searching for.

This part of me that can hide behind eloquent revolutionary rhetoric and believes itself capable of sparking a conflagration of the poor empty masses, truly is only lost, still lost and wandering those nearly empty roads.

Should I give thanks for something?

Should I give praise to Allah?

Should I thank Jeshua for His Compassion?

Should I thank Zoroaster for Dualism?

Should I weep for Peter's Pence?

Should I wonder what world Rumi came from?

Should I give all I have to my love?

Should I cease fearing someone perfect?

Should I stop wandering.....
    
and begin living.