All ideals worth dying for
are certainly worth living for!

pain caused
by love
    and also death
not ever goes away

listening to the news
one really gets the blues

in all their great meetings
    after cordial greetings
world leaders disagree
    for one reason or other

seems they don’t really bother
‘bout what should be their goals

    not to save their own souls
    but the folks in our world

the children all curled
    with pain in their belly
civilians burned dead
    with gasoline jelly

the women attacked for
    (a lack of) their clothing
as if there were nothing
more important than keeping
some men from their peeping

but what really matters
are the people in tatters
who flee from bombed homes
in despair and have come
    to realize
that their possible demise
does not affect those
who’d rather smell a rose
than seriously bother
about the fate of an other

tragedy unfolds every day
yet it holds little sway
in the news of the powers
that makes sure that ours
is different from theirs

until that dream sours
we need to write some
more encouraging verse

is a familiar phrase
we like to flaunt
    especially
when we would like to utter a complaint
    about contemporary grievances
    god and the world & cetera

in doing so
we keep good company
from Socrates to Livius
    to Shakespeare, Goethe, Emerson,
    Whitman, Fitzgerald, Hurston, Vonnegut,
     Morrison, Angelou, Nabokov, etc.

I guess this is because
the times like these
are always those
in which we live

as the biblical saying goes
we should love our neighbors
     like we love ourselves

looking at many people’s relations
with their neighbors
there sure is room for improvement

maybe we should love ourselves more

four decades of professional life
    considered with benevolence
(how else …?)
have altogether
not turned out so badly
even though no party politics
helped me climb the ladder
of not so easy scholarly achievement

often in the beginning I discovered
that my politeness was mistaken
for simplicity

and so I had to learn a bit about
   how I could stand my ground
to kick the shins of those who thought
    they could step on my toes with cool impunity

until they noticed that they were mistaken

over the years I found my ways to garner
    not everybody’s love
    but their respect and recognition
    
which is what we all mostly need

     eventually

some days there are
that make you feel time’s standing still

no matter what you do
it somehow in the end is inconclusive
leaves you bereft of any sense
    of celebrating an achievement

you find yourself in eerie limbo
    work without progress for infinity
a prospect rather dreary for your soul
tempting you sorely to do nothing
     succumb to a  paralysis
caused by external unknown forces

    demons, aliens, devils, hostile spirits
    dysfunctional governments or gods
    & cetera

on which you happily can blame
your inactivity

but be aware

life does not care why you do nothing
it simply steamrolls you
     if you are in the way

you better keep on swimming