She stands tall.
Shaken by the regime - all the way to a fall.
Still standing firm in her roots,
striving against the cabinet in suite.

She stands tall.
Her roots being hacked at and poisoned,
yet she does not fall.

She does not fall.
Insults hit her heart,
yet she does not begin to stall,
but her heart begins to fall.

She does not fall.
Now she stands taller
like an elegant self-conscious queen,
but with the heart of a mother that no one has ever seen.


Slowly breaking,
She falls.

The abuse has become too much.
Just to name a cause;
It was you with your helpful, root unearthing touch.

RIP Mama Afrika.

They spend their days applauding the rich
To keep them off the streets and make use of their glitch
Is it a disability or a glitch that snatches away their rights
Or that keeps off the sky to reach the city of lights
Where a baby can be born without a risk of a bad eye
By the simple gesture of clap turned bad whereas the birth of the baby should be celebrated with cheer and rye
But I guess that’s just the humor thicked with wryness
But we find many a homosexual whom we kindly and unknowingly address as Your Highness
The abundance of homosexual conquests to give away any hope of the lord to ignorantly receive him
Chopping off their manhood with a sword at every whim
In the bloodiest fashion reminiscent of all that’s wrong in the universe
If we could just find a reverse
It isn’t just the transgendered who feel the curse of their face
What about the acid victims bluntly speaking who won’t make it in the rat race
The media may portray them as heroines
But when the danger is past their past leads to what is simply a couple of street coins
It’s all in a visage
The idea of making money right is just a mirage
It falters with circumstance and birth right
If you were born developed enough for this world success is in your sight
Looks like transgender people have no place to go
The government should know
So why not the army so they can push the agenda of war too
But it seems like they have no country to fight for you
So don’t be afraid of them
They are born at the hem
Of a ship that signals a rough life that doesn’t soothe by a deep REM sleep
So they aren't any less capable because they still deal with deeply rooted social stigmas that would make anyone working through that weep

a business person
     of somewhat dubious reputation
ran for president
promising to drain those swamps
we all believe we know exist
    around centers of power

he delivered on this promise
in his very special way

draining the swamps
     of all the alligators
that are now in his government

go figure

All the same eyes, same minds,
in all the same places -
day in, day out -
casting their sparks
of doubt or defiance,
never bothering to question
what either is aimed at.

The American dream
is only a dream -
a dream in which
the dreamer is obsolete.
For those who
both sleep and dream
in her streets,
America is a reality
too real to deny,
like a ladder too high
to be climbed,
like a bar too hard
to be bent.
And after each dollar
is spent,
after each shining diamond
find its way to a pocket,
the dream becomes
more and more a dream
that we become
less and less likely
to wake up from.

[A child of indeterminate ***--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]

"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"

[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"

"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."

"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.

"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?


"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.

"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian ******* Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]

     translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
     push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
     dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
     expand profligately sunward. . . .

"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."

[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."

How many more unarmed people need to get shot by cops with no repercussion?...

How many more times will a cop get 1-4 years for involuntary manslaughter instead of second or first degree ****** when the prerequisites for "duty" directly contradict the plausible notions of involuntary manslaughter?...

How many more times will chiefs of police feed you the story that they were unaware of internal corruption which took place on a wide scale for decades?...

How many more times will a cop's ****** case get thrown out in the name of 'self-defense' when there are a dozen or more bullet wounds in the deceased victim?...

How many videos need to be released of cops tasering or pepper spraying people who are already face-down on the ground, handcuffed, with no ramifications?...

How many more times will witnesses to police brutality and police ****** (or murders conducted by politicians) 'disappear,' or 'die in an accident' before the trail?...

How many more cops will **** women with no charges before the American public cares?...

How many "internal police investigations" or internal government investigations" need to be conducted with no result before the American public realizes that police and politicians get special treatment or exemptions from the law which they create and "uphold"?...

In antithesis, how much longer will someone get life in prison or the death penalty for killing a cop when that same cop would get ten years if the tables were turned (Given that the policeman or policewoman is even convicted)?...