Indian pipes rise ghostly
from ancient compost
of needled tears shed
white bells corpse-silent
shunning Light’s vital touch
sleeping instead in symbiotic beds
of gracious hosts, who in turn
kiss the feet of living Giants
lushly burning gilded rays
to fuel their green economy

On the playgrounds of the future
Children will laugh and sing
And we’ll cross the bridge to real peace
Where the bells of sanity shall ring

Until then we’ll play the game
Which will all add up to naught
“It’s your fault, no, it’s theirs…”
Why some fail at what is taught.

We’ve been given new books and bosses
Numerous regs to do the job
But money flows to the burbs
Inner-cities fair game to rob

Touching the future may seem easy
From a point too far away
One could assume it’s all just ditto -
Then lunch -  then math - then play

If this is your belief
You could not be further from the fact
That success is measured forward
As we have our students’ back

So forward we will plod
Secretly teaching to the mean
We will test, and test and test
From which all congress shall glean

Information in nice neat form
Of bars and charts sublime
Symbolic of teachers and students
Who have been sentenced to hard time

And the monied districts shall rule
Golden in and out
And the bootstraps will appear
Accusing all who doubt

Good will be the words to spread
And many who will eat them
The failures will be shown the straps
But for pity’s sake, don’t beat them

                                                                             G. Davis-Feldman

Blessed by Thee, the gift of creation.
Cursed by needs of individualism.

Blessed by Thee, eternal unification.
Cursed by greed, social consumerism.

Blessed by Thee, light the gift of vision.
Cursed by breed, melanin racism

Blessed by Thee, a drop of infinity
Cursed by genes, fates indecision.

Blessed by Thee, the heart of a musician.
Cursed by jealousies rotting prison.

Blessed by Thee, Will of The Magician.
Cursed by bodies physical division.

Blessed by Thee, Love and compassion
Cursed by creed, systematic division.

A moth
        Rorshach
A rat head
        drooping
        seeping
        on
        a
      ­  spit
*******
        sliding off
        a bedpost
A T
A cross
        a convenience store
        back-lit display
        dissolving two-dimensional
        Charlie Brown
feed your dog
Misty
        shaking, dry-ice
        eyes
Find the bed and
        Close and rest on
        pillow lips
Slick black
        gossamer shell
                plastic
Red light
        warning—bleeding—beating
        always on
        always seeing
        always waiting
        But
what do I see?
        Glimpses
        manipulated mutated
I see nothing next
        to nothing.

                **** mirror.

I know how it was in that time
sixty years ago when roads seen
from above were little more than
two thin tracks through grass.

My mind has heard the noiseless roads
cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves,
skirting steepest hills and flat lakes,
making settled burgs where roads cross.

I know how it was in that time
when many-handed harvests,  
sweet smells and back breaking work
were wrenched away without referendum.

Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron.
Wrenched away without option of staying
to enjoy the scale of day-long trips
on foot, in wagon or buggy.  

Our innocent grandfathers too,
wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields,
to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio  
of the one-day Atlantic crossing.

I know how it was in that time.
I've seen it from three or five hundred feet;
the quick shadow and lake-mirrored
image of fabric covered wood and wire.

I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa,
in that time; in a ship as much a product
of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/
designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.

What’s the statute of limitations
        on my obligations
                as a son
        on my victimhood as a
                semi-orphan
        on my blamefulness as a
                father
When does it end—these yet-to-be-seen effects of the mundane
        I make now?
When do I not carry them
        the strings
        of the yarn map tracing
my endless encounters and tacking
        not into cork but
        into my soul stretched pulled
in four dimensions.
Length times width times depth times time. I coexist
         in every manifestation of
myself simultaneously.
        All time all me, all tacked,
        All pulled, all stretched by
more hands than my own.  Vibrating
        into my marrow reminding
of the inescapability of the
        contracts I didn’t sign.  Most of them.

Each day the threads move.
They swirl and choke or puncture
        taut and pull. pull. pull
        me back, back to them.
        To early morning and late nights
        every day
        That old house of repressed
memories and façade bonds
        of newspaper-wrapped electric
circuits waiting for the
spark
        to finally incense the
        old aged kindling of other
        string maps of
        other pasts of
        more and more disappointment.

My heart is a prism. a rock.
        set in the stone of my
chest compressed
by pressure into endlessly
        juxtaposed edges of glass.
        An edge: a time a place a person a me. Surrounded
        onyx black
but yet
        Reflecting.  It’s deep
        yes
        but shine deep enough
        yes, go
        and it will reflect
        go on, go on
        fluoresce
        yes yes yes go
        myriad colors of spectrums
                of me
torn out of the mine of
my own construction of
        the muscle memories of
        the past pains of
        the unceasing variations of
the crude black **** I’ve
made before.

        How long
                        will I be responsible for
                                                     her?
For you?
Was I ever?
Am I at all?