She smiled,
but only barely,
like it was a secret she didn’t want
you to know.

And for a second,
it felt like the world
might not be so bad after all.

Power is indeed a corruptive force,
Through all of mankind’s history
This has always been true.
Emperors, Kings, Potentates,
Popes, Presidents and Despots too.

Gathering near the Throne are the
Eager Courtier leeches reaching to
touch the anointed one’s robe.
Declaring their undying loyalty,
In the process selling their souls.
Their rewards, a speck of personal
power, Castles and more riches of gold.

Like their Master, the entitled ones
will lie and cheat, while ignoring
The principals of right and good.
Believing “Decency” is but a poor
man’s word, never uttered within
the hearing of their Ruler.
Truth never a considered artifact of
his desired absolute corrupt power.

To the Ruler the slaves, serfs, the
little common people matter not,
but to serve him and his enablers.
He and his power elite will start
needless wars, or offer up sacrificial
lambs, for deportation all to distract
the unrest of the little people.

They will suppress human rights,
free speech and defame, banish
or imprison their detractors, ignore
our laws and our constitution, tread
on our flag and urinate on our history.

Their smiles and lies are all merely smoke
and mirrors to conceal, their controlling
agendas of limitless personal greed.

Telling us it's all for our own good and
will make our lives and nation great again.
From ancient times down to today this
egomaniacal cycle and agenda repeats.
Kingdoms and Nations have perished
From this kind of poisonous corruption.
Needless to say, it will happen again.
It seems that it already is.

Unless this poem is too obtuse, We all
must endeavor to change our history
to come. Stand up and speak out,
march in the streets, if we must,
defiantly stand our ground!

This is our nations new Ides of March.
It seems we now have our own Julius
Caesar, may he go the way of the other.

Morning unfurls—
thin gold draped over the terrace rim,
the world still dream-fed, undecided.

She moves through it—
wild-crowned in bramble and gold,
a flower skewed in her hair—
stem fractured, wind-touched
but worn as if it could never be
anything less than perfect.

Something in her
the way her chin tilts to the sky,
the way sunlight spills across
the same high cheekbones,
the same quiet brow—
pulls at something nameless
beneath my ribs,
a longing too tender to name.

Her laughter
windstruck — a ripple in the skin of dawn,
spins loose, untethered,
a sound without edges,
without destination—
just the raw, impossible ache
of something alive
for no other reason
than because.

The air folds around her
soft, golden-bellied
as if the whole world
was holding its own
watching, waiting—
for a beauty
too wild to know itself.

I watch too,
not out of wonder,
but out of fear—
that something so fleeting
could slip through this hour
without ever being written down.

She will grow
the flower will fall,
the wind will learn her name,
and the sky will no longer
be enough to hold her.

But for now,
she blooms only for the sun,
for the hush,
for the wild, unmeasured ache
of simply being.

And I swear—
if I could stretch this hour
into forever,
I would—
just to watch her run
one breath longer.

Some joys bloom for nothing—
not for the gaze, not for the name—
but simply because the sun is warm,
simply because they can.

I did not smile at her.
I smiled at the hush—
the unbearable miracle
of something wild
that does not know
it is precious.

The hush lingers,
the morning folds—
soft gold cradling a face
that no longer lifts toward the sun.

The air no longer waits.
Only I do.

And beneath my fingertips,
the photo trembles—
thin, timeworn—
edges curled like petals,
as if the years have tried
to fold her back into a bloom.

now, in this hush,
I turn to her—
and I smile.

She was my mother.
She was a girl once,
unwritten.

And I—
I have spent my whole life
trying to read her.

I watched "Judgment at Nuremberg" last
night, I have seen that film many times.
However, in light of our nation's current
chaotic political direction, that theme and
topic have taken on a new unsettling and
dire significance. The implied specter of
the term "National Socialism" is all too
ominous.

73 million people died or were murdered in
WWII when a nation of otherwise normal
rational people were ****** in by listening to
a homely, little possibly insane former German
army Corporal rant and rave their nation into
a frenzy of cultism, and "National Socialism".
Through lies and deceptions, Adolf ******
plunged the entire world into a chaotic and
destructive war.

I can't be the only one to see and be deeply
concerned by the undeniable significance and
similarities of our current parallel direction
towards a National Socialism agenda?
Inspired and led by the newly appointed wonky
cult of administrative dimwits and their newly
self-anointed unstable KING, that appear not
to give a **** about our laws, our Constitution
or any of us as individual free citizens.

Our US government watchdogs the Congress
and Senate seem to have lost their direction and
patriotism, grown spineless and mute under the
spell or fear of King Trump.

Wake up America!
We are headed in a very bad direction.

This thought has always haunted me.

People you meet once
and never again in your life.

You have a static picture in your mind
of their face
the small conversation
their little story they tell you
the place you met them
in a bus, a shop, on the road
interactions not long
but meaningfully small
yet leaving a memory in you.

I think of all those people
I stopped by to ask for time
seek direction of my destination
or asking where I might find
food or a resting place
in an unfamiliar area.

Once and just once you meet them.

On a summer trip, I was looking for icecream
in a strange place off the highway
walked ten minutes to find a shop
where for that brief encounter
the seller made me feel like
he had known me for long
shared the history of that area
the migration and culture of the residents
before helping me with the right icecream.

Sometimes I wonder
if they would have enriched my life
were they part of my association.

Not scholars, not rich, but simple men
who bring you down to earth
and carve a space in your mindscape.

Sadly you meet them once in your life.

I feel it's so designed.