1.
Donald John Trump
Just sits on his ****
As his deplorables feast
On whatever he tweets

2.
Donald John Trump
Is wicked and plump
But not nice and fat
Just more an ******

3.
Donald John Trump
Has a **** that's a stump
Women won't take him to bed
So he grabs their ******* instead

4.
Donald John Trump
Owns a golden sewage pump
Except it can't keep pace
With all the **** from his face

5.
Donald John Trump
Is a cancerous lump
On America's nose
That really must go

6.
Donald John Trump
Never gets a fist bump
His hands are so small
We can't find them at all

7.
Donald John Trump
Is a foul putrid clump
Who makes us quite sick
Bragging about the size of his ****

8.
Donald John Trump
Really likes to ****
Women without their consent
And he'll never repent

9.
Donald John Trump
Is a mean old grump
Who tells people they're stupid
But we know who the fool is

10.
Donald John Trump
It'd be best if he jumped
From the top of his tower
Since he's always so glower

11.
Donald John Trump
Is a dim witted chump
Whose head is quite large
Though Russia put him charge

12.
Donald John Trump
Likes to take a dump
On hookers while snorting blow
Many people are saying so

13.
Donald John Trump
Is in a terrible slump
He can't even enjoy his throne
Because the press won't leave him alone

14.
Donald John Trump
Only wants to flump
In a chair with women kneeling
After a long hard day of stealing

15.
Donald John Trump
His voice makes a crump
Like the sound of an engine
Or last breath of a dying pigeon

16.
Donald John Trump
Would never date a frump
Just nines and tens
Preferably ones who're quite dim

17.
Donald John Trump
Has just a cold swampy sump
But unlike humans no heart in his chest
He still says it's the best

18.
Donald John Trump
Is a clownish orange schlump
Who said he'd make America great
But just stoked up a lot of hate

19.
Donald John Trump
Always gives a nasty thump
To anyone who disagrees
Or gives facts to counter lies he believes

With an archangelic blessing
they stand open naked exposed
one gaze of longing
one gaze of wonder
there is need of nothing
save one another
beneath stark colors
beneath fluttering imagination
beneath divine sky
neither highest peaks
over verdent fields
nor deepest riverbeds
under raging flows
prevents this sanctification
As trees may burn
As serpents may strike
As gilded beams beat down
Time halts or never was
Whilst raptured crimson wings
effortlessly suspend
any pretense of twoness
worshipping this momentary
omnipotence
cursing the ludicrous
notion of morrow
Their curving bodies are
but one--
*--at least for now.

Too bad we can't have both; but no,
it's one or the other. That's the trouble
with gods and Bosons: Admit one spirit
and you're no more than a Planck length
from the soul; measure position
and your divine momentum is gone,
deader than deadest poisoned cat.

If God (The God) were God He'd surely
be laughing as Jess & I tried to explain
quantum entanglement to each other,
several superpositions removed
from grasping how causality is preserved
and He'd muse at our suffering
surely in the face of First World fascism
and conspiratorial delight of ignorance;

Jesus would forgive us the hubris
of our collective sartorial malaise:
He'd writhe there painfully but patiently
on the cross w/ bile & gall while we
scrawled out partial differential equations
on the backs of cocktail napkins
and pretended that Lye groups—
sublime Algebra—hooked up
with the Standard Model in their own
perverted and slutty way—yes! Christ
would redeem the heretical pronouncements
on this dark matter,
spare us Pauline judgments—in abhorrent
reality of Time & Space (that's how
He rolls, I guess);

Zeus would just hurl thunderbolts, jealous
as ever of the atom smashers and
their Olympian acolytes' true lightning;

And what about Buddha? He's so full
of himself and compassion, bloated
by enlightenment he may not notice how
much rice we'd had on the way to these
Poison Arrow questions. So what's another
******* rebirth if it's needed? Too late
now for transcendence or transforming
Yoda-like into the Force;

Vishnu in Absolute Now says
Nothing's left but a bunch of fractured
protons, lovely alpha particles and
their asymmetric cousins, ever inward
but ever outward as cosmos go. One day
maybe we'll stop colliding and listen
to the whispers of Revelation—
that is, if we have the science, the ears
and the time.

We never asked of Einstein, sadly,
his divinity not being well established,
and his opinion souring
with the passing of the nonlinear,
the non-local and the grandiose—
Albert may still chime in though,
may be watching from that spooky
neighborhood universe
we seek but eternally dismiss.

We exist with the reality we have, not
the one we want. Until then it's an either/or
we must accept, because we are serious folk
who know gods and Bosons coexist only
among the superstitious and ill-informed.
You can't mince words when there are
so many atoms to split.

One moment you're tenaciously checking pulses
chopping carrots and tomatoes and measuring
Spoonfuls of syrups and splitting pills and counting
Capsules to prove your sister-in-law skipped a dose

And you sign the cards and you lick the envelopes
And you write the checks and do your math and
You dream of France in the summertime after falling
Asleep in front of the TV at 9pm on a Friday night.

There are dishes to wash and shelves to dust full
of five lifetimes of bric-a-brack amassed and leaks
To mend - so much that really matters enough to keep from
Breathing too slowly or speaking of the implications

The next moment it's all vanished and there's one less
Complication but at what point do you cry and at what
Point do you relax after cathartic loss as ineluctable loss
and when is it exactly that it hits you if ever

That some day the complication is you and the vanishing
Provides a blank check to forget and an invitation to
Dance around the vacuum of absence

We dryly sweat when she with maiden tongue
Rebukes with haste the wicked ways of men
For all do writhe and feel most tort'rous stung
When from calm lips eschew our mortal sins

Are we not well equipped to follow rules?
When now the forms of long ago return
And look to us who do not come as fools
For time and heart require no subtle burn

But ne'er was one brought down too far from grace
To cry from fear alone with need to flee
For deepest cuts spur us to upward race
And that which does not **** will make us free

When deep within our souls we still believe
That curse of hope is still our best reprieve

Now hiding hearth and packing wools away
A careful tide arrives to mark changed towns
Chartreuse of verdant blooms commence decay
While we can’t stop what grows by leaps and bounds
Which soil holds firm or shifts beneath the clowns
It’s blind to glimpse so far as nations go
Unfaithful seed of those whose blood still grounds
Our stars and stripes which fly through ebb and flow
Mothers may darkly wail by morning glow
Seeking to raise their daughters to bright dawn
And burn hewn totems to some men they know
Dancing through smoke which wafts hither and yon
Yet fools by terror ******* and billions mocked
Win while we wait with angst by tics and tocs

scars are love and memory from the world
which (though oft accused of indifference)
does care enough to pierce the skin

not the broken glass
not the rusty nail
not the bedspring from an old mattress
or the handsaw that slipped
or the edge of the coffee table to a wobbly toddler
not the knife
or scissors
too blunt at first - but try, try again

not the careless indifference of others
made manifest in flesh

or the million failures headaches heartaches
sicknesses
tears

no, pain never forgotten is formed
on brain and skin

just like cheeks flushed, heart pounding, sweat-dripping
you make your move and are checkmated by a far
more skilled opponent-- it doesn't take much

feel something if you try
feel alive and awake and know

that somebody loves you, and remembers
just like your skin.

Ponder:
How founts evoke
some kid 'neath weight of wishing
our masks feign smiles as players strut...
And scene.

quiet dogged spring
emerging right as rain dims
translucent sorrow

I want to have six with you, the first–
a mellow lot, a bit playful
like a debate about Aristotle
after getting drunk in the moonlight
while your underwear floats
then sinks somewhere
in the Greenbriar River;

then the second–
well that’ll be stellar
like the clarity of flaming hydrogen
from the hilltop grass
surrounded by bovine tranquility
and parsecs away
from light pollution
or the strangeness
of our separate lonelinesses;

next the third–
nothing so special ever
like a moment
in a park,
crepuscular attitudes,
lips tasting of star fruit
and optimism;

after which comes the fourth–
somewhat more surreal, methinks
like the loft-attic in an ancient local house
sitting legs-crossed on the floor
gossiping perhaps
sewing a costume for a skit
while planning world *******;

next to last is the fifth–
side-by-side staring outward
holding hands, a breeze cools
and familiarity lubricates
all friction of years;

and the sixth–
that’s my secret agony
made from wax and wick,
where a tiny spark divides memories
from imagination.

A bulb
withstands the stream
flooding muddy pasture
no silt will be its tomb this morn.
(It's home.)

Cheesesteaks and grimy streets
with a broken bell walled 'round by glass
over cobblestones trod weary feet
and love is born and hope is born

Strong fountains sweep in summer heat
sparks blaze in artful air at night
recalling every future song
when love is free and hope is free

Autumn ripeness sewed the flag
lofting parchment highly penned
before Billy ever stared us down
til love became and hope became

Cold souls all hunched in grand salons
broadly fluttered civil strifes
two hundred years were faded long
but love remained and hope remained

Reborn of blossoms freeing most
Who stretch on Spring Garden to South
And tumble past down to Navy Yard
until love grows until hope grows

Once wise as Ben struck under tree
If ever Delaware George had crossed
—If this Republic we can keep—
it’ll've been by love and a little hope.

In summer gath’ring they invoked the sky
Just throw of stones from where I sit, so bold
On pain of death, they risked both names and gold,
By pen for chance of freedom staked their lives;
Once bought with blood they’d plant some autumns nigh
A tree whose branches ever since could hold
Against the force of storms, growing so old
Though none can say now if its roots have died;
As children huddled ‘neath its shade cry out
Some grasp an ax, ready to strike, upend
Afraid these leaves once-green no longer breathe
While up on eager feet they march and shout
Unsure what perils may on them descend
Many yet hope to climb and still believe

Search...
It's time to castle?
Don't lose direction!
Just keep buzzing and sting
the earth.

Purpose
gathers matter,
moving stellar dust
in the direction of
heaven

She wasn't afraid of dirt, and never painted her fingernails
until she was old and her youngest daughter did it for her
But she planted Petunias in the springtime and made green beans
with Mrs. Dash and oil in a *** where they boiled on the stove
And she could peel five potatoes faster with
a knife than I could peel one with a peeler. And she dried her car
in the garage after it rained and pressed our shirts.
She quit guitar in her seventies, or maybe earlier I can't remember
because the arthritis was too much for her fingers but she
still sang and still made her pancakes crispy and still went
to church to sit on the pew next to last from the back
And she sang hymns with her sister until her sister was gone
And she drove a pickup into the woods at eighty and wasn't afraid
of getting hurt but she was afraid of the dark
She played Hand and Foot and Checkers and Rummy and went to
yard sales and sent cards to the sick and loved red roses
and the color purple but not the color yellow which she
told my mother she looked bad in and also my aunt.
She spoke with authority and knew what was right without having to ask
anyone but the Bible and she told you what she thought
and loved you no matter what and would always give you a job
if you were sitting because there was always something to clean
or fetch and there was little worse than being lazy.
She bought wagons for the grandkids and covered the fire at night
and sang about heaven and took walks up on the hill until it
got too hard to walk. And she never gave up and she always held
on so tight you could see her knuckles turn white because there
was no letting go.

I saw most minds of my generation
(and a few generations past)
all boiled together
in the cauldron of history,
a simmering creation from ancient recipe–

who take one breath of fearsome air,
positioned on false arousals
erasing ****** decades
badgering doves with tropes
of noble hearts
protecting fiery hearths
with flag of nation raised;

who mix in a dozen distasteful cities,
adorned in luxurious isolation
producing delicate ennui
which finds each donation harmful
as colors pretend monochromatic
talk of godless violence
withstanding headstrong lusts for nil;

who devour a whole fetishized messiah,
crowned by galloping anxiety
obscuring bulleted defects
battling monsters mounted
on imaginary horses–not crosses–
whilst saving purest virtues
of every child & mother

who torch refuge under murderous lights,
presented as shackled dilemmas
casting diabolic martingale
pitted against those urban sissies
of shallow flimsy heart
mirroring frozen affections
for bizarre cloven rambling about “facts”

who finish with crooked saucy error,
whipped from soft flesh
converted into rusty treasure
absurdly vacant demonstrations
topping brightly flavored cries
still couching ambiguous decrees
amid gaunt periodic theatrical spectacle

who bellow “THIS IS US COOKING!”
awaiting timer dings to hail
the proud tentative product
of their latest ghastly confection,
seasoned with salty tears
and wrought of troublingly familiar ingredients

who pair sacrosanct identities with Pinot Noir
and speak of black & white & queer as if
they know who is what and why and think
they’re somehow differently acidic
in a stomach digesting stale bread
sopped up stew of circus elephants

who hardly know to laugh or cry,
when sadly forgetful, they’re surprised
by the unsatisfying result!

who hold their noses, ignore the taste,
with eyes downcast,
some mumbling, most shouting
“Just serve and enjoy!”

hearts long butchered out and filleted
but still pumping as they fed
millennial masses raised on milk
of Secular Western Humanity

gulping slurping moldy vestiges
forgotten soulful terrors consuming cannibal cravings
passions relit by ignorance of the poem
of life replaced by the hum of sly echoes

ricocheting in revolver chambers
ricocheting in rifle chambers
ricocheting in machine gun chambers
ricocheting in chambers of bombers
ricocheting in chambers of bone in skull

oblivious to decimated cities
–struggling against straw men ignorant to the epidemiology
of the ideology of the very viruses they created–
unworthy of mention or count or even noticing brown lives lost

beating beating beating pounding
till knuckles nearly break
atop the drum of warheads’ quiet boom
Long gone are all objections to escaping
the phantasmagoric discomfort of Actual Reality!

beat on beat on beat on end whimperingly
–with renewed amnesia–
in contemporary post-modern
dullness fading sparks of anticlimax
then no denouement… *Il est vrai pour nous aussi…
Au nom de quoi?

Keri nudged me crying as they danced to Peter Gabriel,
"The way he looks at her," she whispered to me,
choking through tears as she had me look
And indeed his eyes said everything
and we could both see the serene ridiciouslness
of it, how it makes no sense
and how you can still ache so much to look
at anyone the way he looked at her, to have
anyone look at you the way he looked at her
as if nothing else mattered in the world.

And of course, cynically it would seem it should
have been exactly that on their wedding day
but the thing is that years later now
on tired nights with a sink full of dishes
and kids barely in bed and work gnawing
the thing is that Keri and I still see him look
at her. We still see it with our own eyes.

And my imagination wraps me in a world where
nearly anything is justified
by a silly notion that something matters
in the world.

Night falls
in parking lot
emptied of cars, crisp air
and not a pathogen in sight
Breathe out

You don't need to use a word
like quiescent to describe a lonely
Saturday morning
You don't need to use a word
at all, let alone a pretentious
one
You don't need to use a word
for how you feel when
you can just stare blankly ahead
You don't need to use a word
to express loss or heartbreak
or the devastation of time
but happiness is another story
entirely:

Jubilation notwithstanding
the possibility of succinct
impressive diction can represent
one's joyful self
in the morning
as one explicates to one's mirror
some magnanimous memes
some serendipitous sentences
some fortuitous phrases
spoken aloud - in gratitude
more than one ever grasp, envisage;
You need those words.

Rome
burned bright,
brilliant light ceded,
smoldering ruins bid Earth
breathe.

Poverty is the shadow we can't discern
From the ash tree in harshest winter

It begs a nickel and we give it a side turn
And structure it with bells and tax dollars
And stipulations whilst buying shiny
Organic apples with fancy paper

Sustenance is hard to come by, and shelter
But ignorance is cheap and in great supply
To be freely traded for scraps of humanity

It is surely written to gift but those leftovers
Grow moldy in the fridge instead of calming
The stomach of one who doesn't mind
Devouring your bite marks & saliva

Better from your hand than a dumpster
Crummy lots and crazy brains and foul teeth
Indicate a need or two unmet but persisting
Through change we can't bare to spare

And there's no time to sit down for a chat
Because you know you can't throw all
The starfish or rescue every kitten either
So I refuse the personal, and feel only

A second of guilt, and then annoyance:
I'll reflect now, and write him dignity but...
Next time I'll remember my headphones.

so much depends
upon

an elderly Jewish
woman

possessing an acid
wit

and having survived
cancer

Dear
rain washes
steel, cobblestone remnants;
teardrops evaporated now tumble
home.

The ground's still cold at the end of May,
And all I want is another day.
Winter will come far too soon,
As middays lapse into afternoons.

Crickets tweet despite the dark,
And I don't run though all dogs bark.
You never know what's past the trees,
As Betelgeuse glimmers too faint to see.

Hacking out verses numbingly hones
That strange sad effort to make here home.

She wasn't afraid of dirt, and never painted
her fingernails until
she was old and
her youngest daughter did it for

her But
she planted Petunias in the springtime and
she made green beans with Mrs. Dash and oil in a ***
    where they boiled on the stove And

she could peel five potatoes faster with a knife
    than I could peel one with a peeler. And
she dried
her car in the garage after it rained and

she pressed our shirts.
She quit guitar in
her seventies, or maybe earlier I can't
    remember because the arthritis was too much for

her fingers but
she still sang and still made
her pancakes crispy and still went to church where
she sat on the pew next to last from the back And

she sang hymns with
her sister until
her sister was gone And
she drove a pickup into the woods at eighty and

she wasn't afraid of getting hurt but
she was afraid of the dark
She played Hand and Foot and Checkers and Rummy and
she went to yard sales and

she sent cards to the sick and
she loved red roses and the color purple
    but not the color yellow which
she told my mother she looked bad in and also my aunt.

She spoke with authority and knew what was right
    without having to ask anyone but the Bible and
she told you what
she thought and loved you no matter what and

she would always give you a job if you were sitting
    because there was always something to clean or fetch and
she said there was little worse than being lazy.
She bought wagons for the grandkids and

she covered the fire at night and
she sang about heaven and took walks up on the hill
    until it got too hard for
her to walk. And

she never gave up and
she always held on so tight you could see
her knuckles turn white because there was no letting go.

Let's get lost in the grace of forgetting
past mistakes and errors of our foolish youths
and let us live amid the worldly hope
gained from exchanging sentences of solitude
for paragraphs of insight into better days

Let's abandon our halcyon memories along with
our sordid ones eschewing their credits and excesses
and let us eat chocolate cake now while we still
have teeth in our mouths exchanging bites of confection
for those trim waistlines we never really had

Let's play in the fountains like kids without
cares about having kids of our own or owning gardens
and let us plant gardens on fire escapes and in alleys
growing herbs from the soot and exchanging harvests
for wisdom and a proclivity for jigsaw puzzle completion

Let's debate the merits of interstellar politics
without the fuss or nuance of believing we were ever right
and let us pray for our righteous *******
earned by sweat and salt after exchanging fear of rejection
for a fuzzy blanket and a burger on a snowy day

Let's give up on fixing blighted communities drowning
in the pity of their own sacrosanct infirmities
and let us beat our own swords into ploughshares to sell
online if anyone will buy them exchanging broken guns
for cold hard cash that binds better than pectin

Let's sleep all day if we feel like it until
we've slept away all our regrets and fears
and let us awake whenever we **** well please to eat
baconfat and sip bourbon exchanging all the calories
for the lives we've always wanted but never had

beautiful humans
reality's interlocutors
ever presencing

Listen:
You'll hear
that broken bell
ring across the world
silently

Awoke to masked and yellow light of morning
Six days of joy preceded shades of holly
You crept away as my heart was warming
And left with me this wayward taste of folly
Which tongue and teeth did press on those wet lips
Who had ne'er known nor spoke but songs in prose
Now sang of curves that in soft light eclipsed
When feeding mouth, mine eyes and soul arose
I still can see the memory of your face
Those shining giant eyes and softest skin
Transport me to the realm of your embrace
Where then we lived as if life just begins
But if somehow love took me whilst I slept
These days I wait and wonder if I dreamt

Lines—
verse/code
running invoking providing
stomachs full ; souls sustained
& intersecting

Smug like irises in the park is how I hope to be forgotten
Years from now when I am become only dust
Floating across the vast geography of sorrow

I want kittens to laugh at the sight of my visage
And films to churn what human desires are left
Though I have no concern for the afterthought

Still, it's impossible not to speculate in hopeful wonder
And let an imagination ponder the expanse of lapse
Farther than a second to the poles and back a spark

To light the world on fire and stare through rolling smoke
There is so much cruelty and love and frozen drinks
And I have no reason to believe we're sanctified in the least

Zebras do exist I insist because I've seen them though
And I've held these infant humans, felt them breathe
Wanting nothing save soteriological potential for to be

Now can't last I know and so tragedy ensues generically
For the last of us must grasp the verse and measure tight
Til humble prose unwraps the sin of self within

And magically perhaps our memories can take flight.

An idiot clown
Now has the nuclear codes
We should we worry?

Tied to the tracks
you can hear the inevitable:
Whistle blows in the distance
and it must be getting closer;
but you've been lying here
for years.

Pizza
I'll eat
every single day
when I am old
(supposing)

Alight,
cares pause.
Warm December air
metastasizes under hopeful breath.
Exhale.

Der Blitz kommt an, aber
wir können er nicht
sehen.

Die Schatten heißen, aber
wir können sie nicht
hören.

Das Alatheia leiden, aber
wir können es nicht
finden.

It's cold for August, we say, hiding in air conditioned
negative pressure controlled light high rise rooms;
"Be good", my mother used to say, "or they'll take you
to the 9th floor of Ruby", except now you're here:
After having done nothing so crazy that I can notice
as might merit the magnitude of our current incarceration.

But August is like that, hot or cold, and cruel all the same:
It runs past us before we notice, shoving us clumsily away
from the salvific summer and into the scorching one, subtly
insinuating one's whole life has been prelude to hellfire;
It reminds us what an apex feels like when it's seen
from the wrong side, bitterly recalling greener grasses.

We haven't the fortitude for all this sweat–we who're made
of blood & bones, all full of fat & sinew and circumspection–
I might say we're not august enough for August, if I were
trying to be clever, which, so far it's seemed, has served
as a milky, generally inadequate substitute for real intelligence.

There's no time now, a supermajority of months behind, to vote
for a better life, notwithstanding November's fine shadow or
October's spectral quietude, or the laborious catharthis
of September rains. No. It's time to get ripe. It's time to take
the yellow bus to school and back home. It's time to sweat it out
while we still can.

Groups of two are called a pair
and sometimes a couple, and in verse a couplet

Two is a beautiful number full of symmetry
And the wholeness of love

One by itself and plus one is the magical
connection of friendship

Addition makes for strange bedfellows and unwelcome crowds;
let’s just leave us alone together

Even is fair and fair is better said twice
for thrice would just be too much (overkill)

But two is not too of anything; it is
the warmth of company and the smile of one child

The most important things are twofold with us
and we must have one heart because we need another’s too

For balance, the dual strains but holds, sustains
yin pulls yang and tight embrace joins old and new

Division is eternally sad but easier to withstand if
there’s no remainder and you have someone else there

And finally two can multiply if they work hand in hand
to avoid the sting of desperate isolation

You can’t play paddy cake by yourself but it’s ok to try
You have two hands and along comes a partner

What grief do we bear by ourselves for naught?
As flames turn to white dot and smoke, then smoke
So fiercest light must wane where hearts do hope
And yet dim tears in vain alone are wrought;
Fear cleaves us from the skies that once we sought
And seeking words that none should e'er hear spoke
In cold of shadow hiding there afloat
Still linger dreams until they are forgot;
Cling fast to wax of candles that now shine,
Do pray some wandering souls with you may heal
And scatter darkness with bright friends at night;
Where severance is a hell of self-design,
Know who and what remains are still most real;
No eyes can see what is beyond the light.

One body in one bed
For thirty-three years has slept
One body in one bed

Waiting 
to connect 
like pre-digital existence;
Always outside but wanting
in.

I red them all, from dawn til dusk
They blue me still with little fuss
Then greying soon we stole away
Until night fell; we oranged all day!
But purpling fervor came too soon
And midnight blackened afternoon
Now all that’s left is what we’ve greened
We’re ever yellowing, or so it seems.

For now we find ourselves in fear beset
As if these trials arrive from new angles
To form, congeal and harden shelled regrets
One shard of hope which just cuts and mangles
Though torn we pray the blind may discover
How truly gruesome lies were dangled
Which spun their hate into this awful blunder
Bidding sisters’, brothers’ hands to strangle
Not reaching down to lift, but rip asunder
A people’s love for neighbors, laying blame
On all who won’t ennoble he who plunders
Mocking facts, weighing truth and lies the same;
We know not where to look to make us whole
Bodies resisting, barely cling to souls.

there is still water, clean and clear
and fresh that falls and collects
nourishing plants and quenching thirsts

there is still sunshine, bright and warm
sustaining life and encouraging growth

and there is still human kindness
amid tears and fears there are hugs
and there are hands reaching out to lift
trying as they can to do no harm

strangers smile and greet each other
in places where no bombs explode
or bullets pierce or blood is spilled

songs of praise still reach rafters
in churches, stadiums and hymns extol
the virtues of peace that passes understanding

look for these and to these and see them
see them always and hear them speak and sing
and stare defiantly into the face of death
refusing to acknowledge his pull or hold

for we are Humans, all of us and we have
nothing to fear but ourselves and we have
nothing to lose but everything to gain
in the calm stillness of now knowing
none is alone

Hear—
stranger things
tower over imaginations;
comedy yields to tragic
whimsy.

Just-
ice
to-
gether
our-
selves
a-
lone?

No.
Know:

Just
us
to
gather
are
selves
a
loan.

“We
will all
have lived,” she
says. She speaks the
truth.

Don't
you dare
pray for me
if I'm shot dead.
Your worthless words won't resurrect.
Vote.

***** fortresses and palaces
write tightest code
reach the pinnacle of artistry
painting raindrops
composing sublime orchestrations
from furrows where germinate
the double-helical zenith
of human engineering outside
nanotubes, transistors or
our private clouds—
all the emergent complexity
we've harvested in semantic grace
—to seem like life is comfortable
and tastes good and may actually
be worth something in the end;
yet, bloodied or coddled, chessmen
march on, moving into position
guided by the arbitrariness of their
quest, immune to the nuance
of getting caught in a summer rain,
hugs from your grandmother,
some memory of reciting Bible verses
in Sunday school, singing a hymn into
the depth of a passionate smooch
or the fancy of imagination's depression,
but the arrow of time points on!
And eclectic rumination notwithstanding,
etropy always wins.