The Greatest Gift of the Enlightenment

A merciful machine is the guillotine
Empowering a compassionate society
To actuate therapy efficiently
Imagined by a diverse team of dreamers
Who saw what was why, and asked themselves why not
This greatest gift of the Enlightenment
Built using the latest technology
Sustainable wood from certified rainforests
And recycled metals crafted by artisans
Places the consumer at the center
Enhances higher order thinking skills
And promotes community values
Authentic ecosystem solutions
Embrace the needful progressive experience
A solution addressing social needs
And building teamwork across the spectrum
With voices for the voiceless voiced with love
And it all began with an idea, a dream
In someone’s kitchen, dorm room, or garage

The Sea-Road to Constantinople

                 For Tod on his Birthday

A coastal lugger wallows in the waves
Almost adrift in its poor steerageway
Slow-yawing northeast from the blue Aegean
Into the soft-murmuring Marmara.
Athens is in the past, and soon, ahead,
Constantinople’s walls will catch the dawn.
Our sticks, our packs, a space upon the deck
A book of verse, a cup, a spoon, a bowl,
Some prayers the priest was pleased to copy out
For us poor pilgrims who with weary feet
Were pleased to board a northbound boat at last
And rest through sunlit days with pipes alight
And words and prayers afloat among the sails,
Among the gulls that circle ‘round the mast.
All travelers pray for their hearts’ desires
To wait for them ashore at journey’s end;
For us, ours is to serve the Emperor -
A little further, there beyond the stars.

That Young Man from Nantucket

As filtered through National Public Radio

There was a young man from Nantucket
Whose foot was caught in a bucket
He said with a grin
As he massaged his shin
          “Vers libre is a more affectively responsorial mode of
          privileging  my authentic voice with regard to the cultural
          norms that speak to the existential realities of my heritage
          instead of the mask of the external culture that fails to affirm
          my needs predicated on the living organic wholeness of, like,
          y’know, my own special existentialness, and, like, stuff.”

This week at work I received a Homeland Security form with a terse note that I had filled it out incorrectly - in 2003.  But I had not filled it out at all; this was new form (already out of date by its own testimony) predicated on a Department of Justice form which I did complete correctly; it had simply expired.

Altho’ I obediently completed the form,  I rendered part of the form (page 7 of 9) into not-really-a-poem, in lines of ten syllables:


          I Attest That I Am

employment eligibility
verification department of home
land security u.s. citizen
ship and immigration services u
scis form i-9 omb
no. 1615-0047
expires 03/31/2016
start here. Read instructions carefully be
fore completing this form. The instructions
must be available during completion
of this form anti-discrimination
notice: it is illegal to discrim
inate against work-authorized indi
viduals. Employers cannot specify
which document(s) they will accept from an
employee. The refusal to hire an
individual because the docu
ment presented has a future expi
ration date may also constitute il
legal discrimination. Section 1.
Employee information and attest
ation (employees must complete and sign
section 1 of form i-9 no later than
the first day of employment, but not be
fore accepting a job offer). Last
name (family name) First name (given name) mid
dle initial other names used (if any)
address (street number and name) apt.
number city or town state zip code date
of birth (mm/dd/yyyy)
u.s. social security number
e-mail address telephone number I
am aware that federal law provides
for imprisonment and / or fines for false
statements or use of false documents in
connection with the completion of the
form. I attest, under penalty of
perjury, that I am (check one of the
following)…

I Attest That I Am

An Abandoned School

Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.

A new Ticonderoga ****** into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said.  Don’t you know anything?

Girls are stupid.  They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol.  I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am?  Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid.  Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.

A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead

In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good

Conscripting the Dead

Saturday Night, 12 November 2016

They’ve drafted now his hymn of innocence
Into their revolution against the poor
To sing in praise of dreamers they despise
To canonize the poverty of the rich

They weaponize the poetry of love
And drive sweet words into cold camps of hate
There to be regimented and uniformed
And beaten into a tribute unwilling

His alleluia is not their war song
It cannot be; it is his hymn of hope