the spring mantra arrives with distinctive citified sparkles

a family of ducklings splash, mimicking young children,
shaking, spraying, squeaking, babies bath bathing,
jumping in and out of a fountain pool
of a tall-storied Manhattan apartment building,
the mother-leader attends them well for she recalls
the untimely end of the babies of last year,
lost to wanderlust on York Avenue,
cars and taxis as instruments of mass murdering,
but new spring is the season of new birth

the Cercis Siliquastrum tree trunk (!) oddly sprouts
unusual pink flowers
well before it’s branches grow up into a fully blossoming tree,
a signed spring time ritual, but since it is a/k/a, the Judas Tree,
we wonder if spring hints of Cerci Lannister’s fate betrayed,
in this, her final May dance, oh, which Judas brother/lover
will bring us a winter fin finale

the temperature control dial busted, the variability too wide,
the youngers are skipping the interregnum season,
going direct to elect shorts and T-shirt, while those who no longer bloom in the semi-warm, recall the wet chill of past evenings,
voting to dress defensively, wearing their aging skepticism
aware that all changes are exact crossing line-defined, wrapped in
medium weight coats, concealing embarrassing gloves in pocket,
decorative silk scarfs for non-decorative purposed,
all betting the under/over the spring is here all-in not yet sighted

the streets are busy, the momentary pleasantries
of warm sky and sun push the apartment dwellers out,
a magnetic force pulls us to the outside to exhale, in order to inhale,
guises manufactured excuses appear, a loaf of bread, a latte necessity,
the children desert happily their wintery confinement,
by pushing their own carriages, containing in their stead,
their lilting accented nannies, excited by their version of spring break

Me? toy shopping for this month brings rashers of birthdays,
more May galorey, singing come Dancer and Prancer, Ian and Isabel, Alex and not-a-baby anymore Wendy, and because the weather so pleasant, cautions ignored, the credit card swiped repeatedly, frequently and joyously, xmas reimagined, another May time ritual, rooted in the September month of *******, of staying warm, staving off winter *******, and winter planting for spring harvesting

children score grand-multiplicities for god made in his place
grand parental substitutes, each with two hands each equal,
so both must be filled with maypole ribbon, brightly colored
toy bags, presents wrapped in paper unicorns and all manner of
sporting *****, as we turn 2 and 6, 7 and who ate 8?

all that my eyes did see when we surfed strolled the streets,
vignettes fell like the spring rains, they, now, from daytime banished,
to after-midnight to do their breast feeding of tulips and weeds,
letting little children grow up snuggling in still over-heated rooms,
naked legs kicking off winter blankety snow remnants while dreaming of springing onwards and forward
into the party of life by inhaling nature’s

nature.

Palpating the empty cavernous realm of intellect and morality,
I find a restricting noose constructed of the finest strands of insecurity, but it's more proportionally comprised of self-doubt. Each fiber's soaked in a vat of social restraint, the ineffective capability of people to deny injustice. Choosing instead the intoxicating mirage that hereditary lies has handed down throughout the centuries.

Helping the constructors of irrationalism build their platform upon supports of popular opinion.
Equipping it with the ingenious trap door many a potential scholar of entropy and fatalism has fallen through. Snapped necks they suffocate on the breath of pseudo-liberty; as the French have, and Americans still do.

Hands bound behind their backs by indecision, latent anger, the belief in a system far from progressive. Where morals and codes of conduct are tempered, and deliberately shaped into devices of torture sugar coated, and worn pridefully without knowing the restrictions nor the pain, any form of progressive thought is absent. The mass majority select intellectual stagnance over the enlightening evolution of attempting to understand the human condition.

They are not to blame.
For shame and resentment are left for frugal debates over each new candidate, sheered from the same wormwood poisoning the stream of consciousness ****** by a nationalistic fervor full of flavor, no long lasting integrity, only iron clad walls of discretion and misrepresentation.

Traveling great distances, shoulders encumbered with regret, apathy, and triviality; the phantom that is a patriot has left his burden laden tracks for the next poor sap to find his way far from freedom, closer to slavery. The yoke fits loosely but unlike the bumbling oxen his purpose is indiscernable, his capacity to think of a way to escape is neutralized by the bag of oats and blinders he himself accepts; by abhorring what he’ll call disrespect and irreverence toward a slave driving body masked by the right to live fruitfully, albeit sedentary.

The joy of complacency is not holding responsibility, not feeling accountable for any choice where the dangers of rational thinking may awaken the bitter, savage realization that he is merely a by-product, a cog in a larger scheme to keep freedom a longer journey than it is according to the whip holder’s theory. The excruciating knot is pulled tightly together by hunger, so the worker satisfies this hunger with more intricately designed knots. His concentration isn’t in untying it, it’s merely compounding it with greater enigmas he’ll leave for the omniscient to decipher, and untangle.

He’ll wash his hands of the assignment and swallow what he deems nourishment, but the hole is never plugged. The hole grows and the abyss growls, the sounds of thousands of souls in constant traction, but this man of many fantasies can have no distractions. His focus remains selectively aimed upon projects the future will later ruin, yet without foresight the ambition has no name so the cycle remains the same.

His lifeless body now swings to and fro above gallows where the omnipotent applaud the writhing spirit of free will convulsing violently; gyrating while the sedated world of the executed continues being recreated to disguise the sincerest, deepest pain he’ll never know, because knowledge is will and the power struggle is one of isolation and possible destitution. So only when he wakes after his fate has been sealed will free spirit, and free will assault his no longer inebriated body, showing no mercy and reminding him of every time they tried to save him.

He’ll scream in utter agony placing his voiceless soul amongst those bellowing from the abyss he never tried to close. What’s more, choosing to ignore such an enormous expanse of nothing, makes the punishment perfectly sufficient, and succinct with every bit of skepticism he had that such a void of expression, virility, and endless suffering even existed. The twisting twine that holds this wretched, still body of reason securely above the wastelands of awareness makes the most insidious noise. It’s like rubbing famine and pestilent ridden bodies together; the crunching sound of bones absent of mass, riddled with brittle chip marks where the consciously aware soldiers of misfortune have attempted to shape spearheads of vindication, but are then left where they were found because even the potential tools of warfare are less sturdy and strong than the flesh bound mind of sterility from whence they came.

So there is nothing this heap of biological ingenuity and imagination can offer, but to swing in each gusting breeze like a sign posted “No Loitering,” “No Trespassing” would when pushed by the conglomerate gales of assembled hundreds. Ignorance prevails, those who fight are made to accept this evil mantra not out of doubt, but hope that once one awakes before his/her spirit and will has been completely removed, they’ll feel the refreshing irony of those who prayed silently that their army of insolent rewriters of justice has grown by one more.

Still breathing, within a masked struggle fought on separate planes of reality, behind curtains weaved of Kevlar, lead, and iron, many perverts of theory co-opt covertly in absolute anonymity fashioning plans: the plans of liberty, freedom, and prosperity.

They’re his only means of acquittal. Slashing the ropes and allowing those long since dead to die in peace, and those whose breath still has a bit of resistance to fight; the chance to view in full honesty and tragedy the gallows where weary travelers of theory are beaten by conviction and moral restrictions.