A poison is in the land
without antidote
we wait the effect.
May God bless America
in this her poisonous state.

A chief
entirely good
with assent
sought when
he aspired
leadership in
parochial while
his lifestyle
supported a
ritual in
high court
though his
reason without
doubt there
is solid
with omnibus
opinionated height.

Would that I,
a lowly grunt
could make more than
the average runt
just out of school,
degree in hand;
While I survive
on meager plans.
Equality is a grand concept
full of flaws
and many steps
that most among us
will never see-
for man is not known
for his humanity.
We strive to be better,
but what do we gain?
A fistful of debt,
and a mountain of pain?
And what do we learn,
except that life isn't fair?
Playing cards with a bad hand
and a dare?
That bleeding hearts and open minds
will make us quite impaired
and are considered bad qualities
that make us unprepared
for the lambast that life is,
for the spears of betrayal-
for the knowledge that everyone
as some point is a failure?
We enter these halls
as creatures of learning,
yet exit these doors
suspicious, discerning-
our youthful optimism
shattered and dashed
by ancient old teachers
with an impressive moustache.
So, what is the point
of institutional leeching?
Is this how we want
our teachers teaching?
Do we condone the lack of equippable smarts,
instead replaced with limited starts?
Or perhaps yet, there is another solution-
Quit hampering learning with political pollution?
Maybe thats an option-
maybe it's not;
but I'm a student;
that's all I've got.

Lippy Dippy the hippie,
Always so much to say.
Protesting, picketing
Never quite gets his way.
So much about us
The world and how it runs.
Someone to carry a sign?
Lippy Dippy is the one.

He started out with war
Calling out President LBJ.
The issues kept happening
Up to and including today.
Lippy and his hippie cohorts
Protested for human rights
Whether it be about gays
Or brown, black or white.

Get him and friends arrested?
That just may have to be
As long as law and lawyers
Practice their legal infamy.
He reminds of Dred Scott
And how the law of the land
Immorally took the freedom
And dignity of that poor man.

Too little water here
Too much water over there?
Veterans getting gypped?
See if anybody ever cares.
Lippy Dippy and friends
Will gladly show up at your place
And show you what you are;
Bad example of the human race.

Oh, they made fun of him
They called him many names
Including Dippy, so unkind
But it gave him a kind of fame.
It would be nice if maybe someday
There were no need for him.
Unless things change someway
The hope of that is very dim.

So, he and others like him
Which will, of course, include me
With stand up and protest
As long as we citizens are free
To gather publically and say
This sort of situation is wrong,
Then Lippy Dippy and the rest
Will come sing our protest songs.

For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ,
    in them that are saved, and in them that perish:
    To the one we are the savour of death unto death;
    and to the other the savour of life unto life.

                                            [II Corinthians 2:15, 16]

I take an ember from the pyre
and consecrate this smoldering fire:
a glowing coal on which to burn
an aromatic thought, and earn
a crown, perhaps… or a stampede:
mad hooves to make a poet bleed.

An ode to the dull-wit herd’s defensors:
self-appointed poetic censors.
Where would we be without the squeal,
their rolling eyes, their bovine zeal?
Quick to enforce what’s orthodox –
(upon their coward souls a pox)
swift to castigate dissent
their peeved opinions swift to vent –
lest people think that poetry
should harbor strength or liberty…
They offer up their condemnation
spiced with righteous indignation:
“Racist, sexist, bigoted too!”
(which means they disagree with you)
Their catch-all battle-cry for trouble:
“INTOLERANT !”  (They are intolerable.)
“It’s narrow-minded, mean-spirited, hateful.”
Such input ought to make us grateful.
Theirs the reactionary faction:
poetic thought-police in action.
To stand opposed, reviled by such
may indicate perhaps, a touch
of true and living inspiration
causing unsympathetic vibration.

If wit in rhyme has touched a nerve
for bold opinion, dissident verve,
then let their frowns be crowns of laurel
rather than further cause for quarrel.
Accusation by the herd
is compliment enough. Preferred
to empty praise for vapid lines
from toilers in depleted mines.

Cows are fattened for the feast.
They have a space to moo at least –
then comes the reckoning at the end.
But a Poet’s curse is to defend
inviolate, his chanted word
against the corn-fed lowing herd.

When they, in turn,  inflict their verse
no vengeance dare we take, nor curse.
But calmly, let us pour upon them
words that build into an anthem
strengthened by scorn, a song of change
to goad their dullness, and derange
their poetaster fantasy
exposed as moral bankruptcy
symptomatic of a dying nation
set against lyrical liberation.

I pray my words may rise to heaven
free of rancor, void of leaven
a fragrant smoke of life to life
ascending God-ward through the strife.
(But let them rot, a charnel breath
to dying souls as death to death.)

I spot a drone today;
No bombs,
But with plenty o’ potential –
A will to malice,
To malcontent, to ******.

I seek it south
And at its zenith,
Above dissent,
And the bastion that’d never know
Better, from worse.

So too, I spy it over the sands
And over cave,
Over Manhattan, over perdition,
And over “god,” over greed,
Over "great," and *******
Guaranteed;

A glistening, wrought silver teething,
“Dead,” come one wrong,
Word, or whatnot,
Anything antagonist “corporate,”
Our contradictory content,
Blessed, this,
“Complacency,” – indiscriminate.

Unbeknownst and melancholy-ridden,
The bombs have dropped,
And for some time now,
A sooner to be eternity
Whilst we’ve managed nothing but
The simplest of slumber;

We’re lucid but one second
And sheep more so the years.
The flock afar-critical,
As abstained become the hours,
The minutes, until, “then,”
Atop, “when,”
Whilst we learn again to breathe,
Maybe even dream,
And relieve the nooses continually
Knotted by others –

It’s an imaginary rebellion. Sure.
And I’m sure you’d agree;
Yet still, I soak a nightmare’s sweat
Whilst we gladly assume our
Peasant’s role
And as long as we do,
“They’ll,” gladly assume their
Thrones.