now don't get me wrong
i love wordsmiths
semiotic story-tellers
rhapsodists rhythmically reciting
love languages from memory
connecting disparate lines
between discordant thoughts like
gods breathing life into dust

for these steel swords we've
conjured up do not rust
nor do they cut flesh

with mouths like ink fountains
we espouse words at the whims
of pens that often seem possessed
of their own volition and
we are their mere harbingers

they slice to the quick
past bone and marrow to
the human spirit and
tap into sentience through
sophisticated sentence structure
measured meter catalyzing cadences
of consonance in confidence

so by all means
spit rhymes and chime in
on current events
i love the rally cries
that seek to stymy injustice
ridicule bigotry and
foment dissent

but don't preach at me
your words of salvation
fall on deaf ears
you cannot save me
because i'm already divine
one-of-a-kind
just like you

i don't fancy myself above
satirizing fictitious and megalomaniacal
depictions of godhood
i've found that humor
helps us navigate the
half-truths and veiled threats
that inundate our daily existence
regardless of whether
they originate from
preachers politicians pundits
or poets

****-shaming and victim-blaming
are pathetic attempts to cull dull minds
no thanks mine's full to the bursting
you think you're clever for slapping
together a couple of words brewed
for maximum effect but you haven't
got the faintest clue do you no

you're nothing but a bully with a pulpit
fearmongering and shouting damnation
mixing Church and State and business
in a trifecta of tyranny
an orgastic oligarchy
of eternal enmity

when we die we pass
into the black abyss of nothingness
each of us a blip on the spectrum of
life under constant duress
before we ultimately perish
a meaningless speck of dust on
an endless shore of who was
who is and who will come to be

this is not a nihilistic proclamation
nor an atheistic defamation of
human beings but a rational
refutation of misanthropy
masquerading as community

your love looks a lot like hatred

i seek to offer an alternative
to the endless cycles of
condemnation that sprout from
the pages of holy books
like gnarled trees bequeathed
unto us by the seeds
of false prophecies

let's face the music
we will all die alone
and there is nothing
and no one
waiting for us
no white light or
loved ones on
the other side
no arbiter of fate
waiting at the gate
to permit us entrance
to a heavenly place

if we could only muster the courage
to divorce ourselves from fatalistic
fantasies of the afterlife
that keep us bent-kneed
we might find within us the strength
to seize the day and
live life so brilliantly that

we'd create a heaven on earth
if merely we departed from the
hellish impulses that divide us
into despondent collections of
self-righteous hypocrites and
simply admit the only thing we
know for certain is that we
know nothing for certain at all

perhaps then we could salvage
a modicum of freedom from
the wreckage of shattered
egos and emaciated lies
that plague this planet
with circumstantial evidence
while relegating our liberty
and inhibiting conscience

in the spirit of free inquiry
then let us question
everyone and everything
starting with yours truly

Fellow Americans
     Won't is not can't
           We can end this tirade
                This ignorant rant
           Neo-**** crusade
      This fearmongering
Xenophobic campaign
      This point your fat finger
           Take none of the blame
                 This **** flinging ape
            This bombastic baboon
       Rotting all of our brains
Like a ****** cartoon
       This email distraction
            For no course of action
                 Except the word "jobs"
            And a Twitter war faction
        This sick, twisted joke
This comedy act
         Dropping the curtain
             On matters of fact
                 This tax-dodging fraud
             Has stolen from you
         So what makes you think
You're a part of his coup  
         This billion-airhead
             Makes no cents at all
                  He speaks his small mind
             Behind a big wall
        This nuclear bomb
  To diplomacy's voice
        Aborting the right
             To democracy's choice
                  This false god complex
              Disguises his devil
         Deceptions to drag us
Back down to his level
         This Molotov cocktail
              In Putin's back pocket
                  His greedy heart froze
              In a cold-plated locket
          This coal-blackened soul
Toxic demagogue
         Keeps poisoning us
              By spewing speech-smog  
                   This climate change hoax
              Outweighs all the lies
         Deny this one truth
  And everyone dies
         This you're fired show
              Outsources our trust
                   To Chinese steel towers
              Of slave-labor rust
        This loaded handgun
To sanity's head
        Depravity bullets
              Promoting bloodshed
                   This locker room talk
              This all Muslim ban
        This election is rigged
This ******* madman
        This antithesis
              Of all we stand for
                   Great from our first steps
              Onto Liberty's shore
        So I beg of you now
Vote him off of the stage
        This dog's had his day
              Put him back in his cage
                   This nation was founded
              By working together
        And those who attempt
To divide us shall never
        Condemn our ideals
             To an amoral fate
                    Lest we forget
                         That love always trumps hate

Fading falling daguerreotypes
litter the Montmarte of
my fuzzy imagination, after
Isis bombs a train station.
Polizei! Polizei! Polizei!
Gendarmerie! Gendarmerie! Gendarmerie!
Help! I...they need somebody, in three
Separate languages, can't the world see?
The capital is under seige.
What's next,
But the predictable.
Fear, fearmongering, fearmonsters,
Fuckit,
What's now,
Give 'em all a beer.
C'est la guerre

People act like they are only allowed to or capable of using one line of thought at a time, or that negates all the other thoughts or something. Not me, baby, not me. It’s not like I can’t want the Syrian refugees to be well tended to while at the same time wishing we would do more for our veterans, returning, homeless, disabled or otherwise. Hell, I wish we’d feed our kids and take care of our elderly and mind our footing and everything else too. But, just because I’ve got some of my focus pointed here or there, doesn’t mean I don’t see everything else as well. Really, in the grand scheme of things, to me, this whole thing with the refugees is about being human and treating other humans, humans that have lost virtually everything, like humans, because they deserve to be treated like humans.
We squawk about red cups and refugees, we grouch about taking Christ out of Christmas. We complain that we don’t do enough for homeless vets, or hungry kids, or whatever. But, the remedy is to do what you can, when you can, and how ever you’re able. Next month, I’m going to a local venue to “Rock For Tots”. I’ll get to see some pals, hear some good music, and help some kids get a better Christmas. That’s how I’m keeping my faith, some faith, any faith this holiday season. And, don’t be so foolish to think that I’m saying that the only faith I have is in the local music scene or some such nonsense, but it is a place to start because it’s full of good people trying to do a good thing and they’ll get it done.
Maybe that’s the point here. Maybe we should see our opportunities to do good stuff in the world like I’m seeing this town’s local music scene right now. It’s pretty simple really, just do a good thing, be a good person, and try to make a difference here and there.
To say that all Muslims are terrorists is stupid, and fearmongering has no place here anymore. It never has. To say that we are “One Nation Under God, Not Allah!” and to ask me to “like and share” that kind of simplemindedness makes me wonder if you understand what America is demographically and how it got that way in the first place.
I’m an American. I’m pretty sure I’m a Christian. (I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd, Ringo.) I know that I’m an Earthling, just like you, and I also know that I’m a Humanist. (If I see a human being out there that I can help; I’m giving it a shot. Hell, it’s what I do for a living.)
‪#‎Hashtags‬ ain’t gonna cut it, friends. We created this country with action. We’re a nation of thinkers, dreamers, and ultimately doers. We get it done, son!
So, do whatever good you can, when you can. If you don’t do that, it’s like not voting…you don’t get to *****.
In the meantime…
I’ll see ya out there.
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; (2015)

Appalled by the execution
Of the implied devaluation
Bringing down the hopeless rage
Upon all those tainted by implication

I stand in visible observation
With no shield or aberration
To lay blame for my inclination
To find fault in your need for polarization

No left or right or up down
Flows in natural light through my being
I am extant in my word and deed
So blame yourself if you fail...in seeing

That in the most unimagined
Set of convoluted circumstances
I am simply your own reflection...uninspired
By your lack of need ..to learn by taking chances

But even i will not follow you.... into
The depths of your morbidity
If you seek to drag along those poor lost sheep
Into your hatred and fearmongering obscenity

I stand ...
For all...those
... who you knock down!

Beseech God when the marooned epithets of concerted factitious pestilence swarm the fragility of any given mindset and poised circumstance embedded in concrete pangs of waged valor in the tepid waters of malevolence that test men of faith with the plodding crabwhiskers of enduring ignominy

Reach with tenacity and react with temerity to the jilted wisdom of a profligate time and return yourselves to the propriety expected not only of upstarts but also of garden-variety gentility that needs few ways to gerrymander reality so that the exclamations of praise overwhelm the din of negativism

This earth is a temporary test proctored by supernal forces that can be savage, grim, morose or commonplace but wilting in hopelessness is the machination of the schadenfreude of perilous doubt domineering over an age of rampant apostasy, an artifice for evil to flower into the dissemblance of good. Thankfully this draconian subterfuge is an eradicable foe of the stygian imprecations of an otherwise benevolent wholesome design that can recede into obscurity rather than burgeon into a self-fulfilling cycle of enmity begetting the jingoistic fervor of useless antagonism or internecine divisiveness that is fractious in its perpetual erosion of the common good

Remain vigilant in your sempiternal quest to find the modesty of better pastures more lucrative than the privation of meretricious gaudy sentimentalism that infects the world with maudlin pretense rather than perdurable righteousness that effervesces when the ultimatums of the community united by individualistic impetuses outweighs the stagnant gravitas of sobering misperceptions of pragmatism

We exist on this earth primarily but not exclusively because of the magnanimity of creation not the barbarity of destruction that besets the pathways of righteous adherence to a modernism of faithful reclamation of sportive frolicking and joyous exultation of mores that are bolted firmly in place in a configuration suitable for the cavernous prosperity of an evolving planet destined to be commodious rather than pestered by reproachable fearmongering snollygosters of killjoy damnation that condemn by jaundiced standards of hypocrisy or the deplorable bonfires of outmoded witch hunts of depraved perjury against the ‘golden rule’

Most will flicker between righteousness and evil but the prevalent force among the faithful communities is the adherence to credence in belief rather than credulousness in discord a cleavage between those who understand teleological certainty and those who vacillate with the sting of superstition corroding their intrepid resolve to engineer the ingenuity of an artful time without the beguiling artifice eroding every specious gewgaw away along with the prized consequentialism of unheralded heroism that should be bequeathed instead of neglected by the asperity of abominable rejection authored by conventional simpletons marauding with freebooter wealth and ill-gotten gains in pandered exploitation

Tides exist because the moon is the centerpiece of a grand configuration that rivets the earth with eternal lambent light and recondite guidance that withstands the vagaries of modern alienation that pivots upon primal fears and sworn enemies of the gleeful interface of flesh becoming soul and soul becoming flesh the cacoethes of life that refuses to be squelched quietly by benighted ignorance and balkanizing mythmakers who prize useful apostasy over amaranthine integrity to the ultimate veracity of God

Time is the ultimate father of existential doubts but also the solution and gradient of all empirical knowledge and it is the bedrock of primeval constellations that amaze in the foudroyant firmament that has been tested and transcended by the artifacts of modernity but never ceases to flicker with a dainty prestidigitation of the imaginative heart aspiring to be one with cosmogony rather than the insemination of a lamentable lechery with miscegenated and stilted justice

So, when the darkness of solitude and gingerly seances with wraiths of haunted memories clasp you in tenacity and acerbic derision, remember that the perfection of faith is abiding by the precepts that have rollicked and soared upon the convenience of fate without fatalism and determination without determinism
Live life boisterously when the swelling abundance of fruitful generations culminate with felicity and temper the vilification of paragons of the wrong path subside from your countenance and outlook because eternal grace exists to make the sluggish buoyant and the hubristic humble to find a rightful equipoise that exists as a mandala of perfect archetypal divinity

We falter sometimes with venial grievances or dart towards the glossolalia of the glitterati, but this world teaches us that a creative verve and a congenial panache are enough to convey the ultimate beatific goal of any virtual space that exists not just as an inclement test but as a domain for experiments in moral justification of sanctified human communities existing with irenic calm rather than bellicose velocity of depredated pristineness that should always remain inviolable despite the exhaustive nature of combustible finitude

The placid pond of peaceful accord with nature is a staple of a heeded naturalism that seeks the preservation of the sentience of earth and its dalliance with all of the blessed creatures that navigate our seas and our forests and sometimes even our homes as we unite to find communion with the vital energies of animation in a world captured in still life but never forgotten for the staid moments of contemplation that punctuate a good day or flummox a bewildered forest of tribal temptations and the shibboleths of irresponsible stewardship

The wagered war between industry and inferiority is the linchpin of all robust creative endeavors as the nutritive soil inhabited by mustard seeds gets embedded by the bonhomie of prolixity in explicating the stern juxtaposition of livid dastardly discord and beatific redemptive pulchritude… two coexisting forces that gallop by the same circumstantial waggish wits of raillery compounded by the plangent complaints of the oppressed or the exultations of the blessed

Inequity is a primordial condition arbitrated not by a Calvinist determinism but by the apportionment of divine might that is reconciled by the eleemosynary justice of a world quick to forgive and swift in magnanimity that sprawls the canvass of life with the duality of erratic sportsmanship and slugabed acquiescence because the principle of fair charity is incommensurable with the mammon of the selfish but those that transcend mere heroism and find commensurable teleological goals will heal the wounds created by the pesky urchins of infernal origin by the miraculous brunt of technology combined with an attentive tenacity to find the blotches in the tributaries that converge upon an “oceanic oneness” of a virtually infinite universe teeming with life and abounding with the kind of love that makes life worth living

We fight therefore a war that seeks ennobled intellects to wage inveighed invective against the giant tortoise created by the inertia of established monoliths of changeless malversation that stagnates or sabotages the eminence of creative titans because of the credentialed bias of quacksalver apothecaries of protean human manipulation occluding the passage of light to darkened cloisters of poverty and privation

Relics of the ancient law have been pilloried and the stultification of creed is commonplace among the dilettantes of jaundiced freebooting that hitches itself to the yoke of de facto immobility where there would otherwise exist bountiful harvests of friendly gainsay and giddy adventurisms that ameliorate the conditions of the world by the apportioned joy granted with largesse by the visionaries who defied the tropes of their quaint vestigial strictures and gallivanted with punctual temerity towards the favor of the Lord and The Way

Bureaucratic gridlock is the prodrome of an improper concordance with misguided altruism conflated with the boondoggles of trepidation that quivers like a reflexive dependency on banausic pretense hardly worth the limelight of regal consideration because a free-for-all flotilla of endless trinkets proffered by the resourceful but malicious prestidigitation of engorged coffers is not a tenet of true altruism but in fact a malady of duplicitous despotism seeking control in a world ennobled by feral gregariousness rather than huddled conformity around a collectivist bonfire of pilfered dearth
To follow “The Way” is to look beyond pettifoggery in deliberation or the limits of reasonable enumerated consideration and instead to ferret out the sordid from the irreproachable and strike compromise without ontological fault or deontological violation a reclaimed theology modernized and galvanized by not gaudy artificialism but by a generous heap of empathy enriched by the approximation of sympathy that is never certain it knows the boundaries of sentient despair or enlivened beatitude but that is careworn enough to reach the frayed limits of possible consideration that fathoms the prolific wisdom of vicarious destiny

Happenstance often dictates the gamut of opportunity and meted justice sometimes falters on the side of dreary expanses of untenanted time frittered away with either streamlined attempts at etiolated purpose or aimless attempts at vilified destruction of the gambled moments we stake so much in but either way every moment is drenched in redemptive potential to be configured into reclaimed chastity or virtuoso coruscation because few things are irrevocable and many things are instructive in our pursuit of self-actualization

Heap plaudits upon the dreamy dance with creativity in sculpted destinies preordained in the aboriginal abeyance that existed before time itself was a parameter of design and relish the eternal now as the keepsake of placid recompense or dramatic stagecraft designed to amuse but never to deter our purpose through oblivious diversion painted by glibness rather than bedecked with soteriological redemption

Some poltroons stagger through life looking for the crabwise enlightenment of a parceled existence patient to abide by some nomothetic decorum and others dart toward their streamlined destinies with a galloping insistence on the clarity of a clarion purpose to be trumpeted from a perch guarded by bulwarks of sturdy poise enhanced by the bonhomie of righteous solidarity
Those that struggle are tempered by the contingencies of tentative conditions of worth rather than predestined for a vouchsafed failure by design and most people are capable of transcending the wilted anachronisms of dragooning leviathans that withhold autarky to create dependency and trample over divinity to meet expediency in credulous goals that are at odds with viable cohesiveness of design.

The pressures exist to reform our system of codified law not so that it is more procrustean but so that the promethean and herculean forces of nature that enshrine liberty can exert their jaunty exceptionalism for a revived human fraternity in an age of virtualized demassification of loneliness amalgamated by trite rewards for the farcical pretense of banausic conformity exacerbated by the warped genocide of dreamers by utopian conformists who seek nothing more than a tractable pragmatism rather than a capricious diversity of thought, conduct and soldered unity around worthy rather than factitious ideals

The absolutisms of wretched quotidian deliverance from the modern maladies of isolative individuality need to converge upon an outcome that touts some elements of pragmatism but flickers with sempiternal ambitions for livelihood and the faultless regalia of love even when chiseled away at by the bickering of loss and the jaded emeralds of keepsake infatuations evaporating with the cruelty of timeworn contrition and attrition but abnegation only leads to abreaction and the original simpers of inhibition only lead to a glowering lament of what was squandered rather than what was achieved

Seek in life the memorialized glimmer of daunting promises becoming realized certainties that span the ages with timeless wisdom that withstands the vagaries and vicissitudes of aleatory yields that kowtow only to the fertility of gilded opportune purpose rather than the permanence of hallowed relevance to any era beset by portentous pestilence undergirded by groveled heaps of graft or ennobled with swanky prosperity because of the proper apportionment of useful proprieties that are rarefied by sidereal encounters with glitz and chance discoveries of serendipity

The trajectory of divinity is enigmatic because muddled prescience is the prerogative of cherubim that drape themselves with the hedged verdure of secrecy in their furtive attempts to engineer reality but find themselves corrupted by insightful ploys of bonanza guarded by rigmarole and obfuscation commandeered by ignoble wraiths of malicious dereliction bolted to the rudimentary rivets of overriding mammon

Despite this infiltration of sidereal gambits by the sworn benefactors of the progeny of the modern human condition our optimism should graze on the fact that destiny is ultimately the bailiwick of the supreme architect of all axiomatic laws and the lord of all sentient creations that graze upon the pabulum of ascendant times for the barnacles of ingenuity and the creatures of generosity whose largesse enlarges the scope of human endeavors and creates a cyclical expansion of the imaginative prowess of all beings through the tug and tide of dreams that become more extravagant over time because of or despite cultural enrichment or decline

The new paradigm is convalescent because it swerves away from both erratic wretched apathy of destructive manipulation or glorified embalmed foofaraw for sedentary immobility and dares with picaresque flair to challenge the authenticity of established narratives not with a paltry antinomian cavil or a slick Astroturf protest but with a strident mentality of newfangled inventiveness and careful altruism that vouchsafes the decline of opprobrium and the renewal of the righteous pursuit of happiness that extends beyond fugacious memories of judgmentalism that is self-neglectful but of second chances of munificence offered freely to the barnacles of just deeds and proper words

The 2018 election approaches.
Trump is carrying forth his plan
To stoke the fears of his base by talking
About a threatening caravan.

A caravan, he says, is coming,
Bringing bad people to the States.
It won't be long, he says, before
They'll be knocking on our gates.

Trump's M.O. is fearmongering.
He's always been so good at that!
When the "wrong" people show up,
You quickly remove the welcome mat.

This election's about Justice
Kavanaugh, he also says--
Kavanaugh who happens to have
Something in common with the pres.

Ironically, that which they have
In common is--without a doubt--
Something a decent person would
Certainly not be bragging about.

Trump also says this election
Is all about common sense,
Of which he has very little.
One thing we know: his ego's immense.

He's NOT talking about how he
Is chipping away at our health care,
Or how he gave tax breaks to
The wealthy. No, he wouldn't dare.

Or how he put us deeper in debt,
So the Republicans now will say,
We have to go after benefits.
To help the rich, someone must pay.

He isn't wrong when he maintains
That this election is all about him.
The GOP is the Party of Trump.
If they win, the future looks grim.

-by Bob B (10-23-18)

robotic rhythm ebbs and flows
like a well-oiled machine
but you still know it’s a machine
the same voice for a hundred men
proves the falsehood within
your attempts to be relatable
with the dips in pitch you can’t cover it
oh how I’m sick of hearing this
the same songs on repeat
you realise your words lose meaning
when you speak them so often
I switch off when I hear your voice
nothing new to say it’s all the same
your repetitions are offensive
don’t you think we deserve better?
what is this achieving?
do you think you’re helping?
your fearmongering is weakened
your phony supportive sense of solidarity
we’ve turned cold to your tone
I can’t hear those words anymore
they can’t penetrate the wall
the forcefield I’ve created
to protect myself from losing my mind
that’s enough from you and your
robotic rhythm, your ebbs and flows
you know, we all know you’re a machine

Free from distractions,
plain to see media is bad news,
fake news,  covid fearmongering hysteria,
cover ups exposed all propaganda,
Media just ate itself,
no longer distracts me from true power.
The only thing to fear, is fear itself,
accounts deleted,
no longer of any account,
Like Maria Madalena,
she found ecstatic union,
with her Lord, in  her cave.

Turning  back on the world,
of substances, illusion, temptation of flesh.
No temptation.
Realised purity and true love,
cannot be found in decaying tomb.
Christ is not with the dead, He has risen.
I sought my Lord in earthly love,
Strong men came,usurped me.
satellite of Love, small cascaded to big,
Earthly love, redirected my will,
from my Maker husband's Will.
Nothing is bigger than God,
waiting for Him to rise in 'in' again,
Third time lucky,
three times,
Will at Will  evermore,
My Maker is my husband.
Freedom in Lockdown,
from her cave the underground stream flows,
Here rose the Living Word,
the fountain of knowledge,
the way out, is the way in.
Thank you God for showing me the Truth.
Thank you for sending me your Son,
Thank you Mother, your example of love and purity,
holds the dragon underfoot.
With your mantle of protection,
and my Dad holding my hand.
Purity,  strength to overcome the battle.
The Risen Word, is the Fountain of knowledge.
We always had Love.
Zion finds rest.