THE END OF INNOCENCE Listening to Henley’s – Heart of the Matter
Just when you think you’re ‘grown’ – Oh no, honey. That never-ending day? Just beginning
You don’t see the Heart of the Matter Until bits of flesh and brain matter come at you Flying with force spraying red onto the porch and the Window glass of the passenger’s side We draw our curtains – to watch the trial As the beast, powered by fear – goes dark Returning in a suit and tie – explaining itself to White juries – Some will empathize As science explains quickening heartrates The Battle Royale; An amygdala punching its way to gold Destroying its prefrontal cortex Science will explain ‘early trauma’ choking up What resembles pity for the perp Whose name we know Not the victims’ though. They die twice Getting lost as we scatter The holy water of good intentions Over the mass graves Of forgotten identities Forgotten answers Emotional forensics Why we fear? Why we hate? Why we act? Why we don’t? We fail every day that We don’t eradicate what kills us With every bullet With every dollar rise in A murderous stock pumped up In ability to kill and enrich at once The mass murder of hope suspiciously Triggered by happy believers Those with thoughts and prayers Like casket wreaths Obscuring the many Hearts that matter
THE UNBEARABLE EXCITEMENT OF BEING
They’re there every morning – the ones you don’t
Want to be
And before the sun reaches its crest
Something has sprung
Morbid and murderous
From an angry breast
No cure.
We’ve buried the key
In tangled banks
No antidote for certainty
We’re at the interstices
Life Vs. extinction
Trapped and sordid
Beings fighting
Pleasuring ourselves
In tears and blood
They’re there every morning – the ones you don’t Want to be And before the sun reaches its crest Something has sprung Morbid and murderous From an angry breast No cure. We’ve buried the key In tangled banks No antidote for certainty We’re here at the interstices Of life and extinction Trapped and sordid Beings fighting. Pleasuring ourselves In tears and bloodThey’re there every morning – the ones you don’t Want to be And before the sun reaches its crest Something has sprung Morbid and murderous From an angry breast No cure. We’ve buried the key In tangled banks No antidote for certainty At the interstices Life Vs. extinction Trapped and sordid Beings fighting Pleasuring ourselves In tears and blood
To Dorothy Day: MY UNCONQUERED SOUL
I don’t get the God “CONQUERED” Redeemed There is no light that dazzles me If I was made in His image seen Why the question of my right to be
If His is the sway of circumstance
To cause suffering and cries out loud
I’ll take my gamble with luck and chance
Off my knees my head unbowed
Don’t fashion a heaven amid sin and tears
An afterlife to counter man’s evil
Hatred and destruction – are things to fear
To battle now – in righteous upheaval
I’ve seen the Road straight to the Gate
Detours aren’t mentioned in His scroll
If He is the master of my fate
Then why the bludgeoning of my soul?
LAND
Land is language
Flowers trees its catechism. Mountains its religion.
The Weather its politics.
Land – ignorant of ownership
its fealty only to nature – the one solitary truth.
Enter man – the animal- his imposed hierarchy of language
Slick flowery flawless cloak despising dirt: his slang, the poetry of the weed. But Earth laughs at the concrete towers replacing Her trees. Cement sidewalks She cracks for the flower. Mountains that retaliate in anxious subduction as Weather – in convocation with wind and water, declares sovereignty; redistributing Earth’s wealth – the python in the Arctic; ice in the Gulf.
Ownership, fabricated in the shadow of Earth’s smile
Guns of deceit ordering Her children
to sing in the chains of servitude.
It happens that momentary distraction;
Earth’s innocence rendered tooth and nail.
DETENTE
I’m done with this fiction
Formatting
The quest for
Heartbeat
Success
From the keyboard
Through the screen
Words pressed – compressed
Into hope – legitimacy?
Until then – I won’t run
I’ll push ‘send’ instead
I’ll swim
Slapping the water
Ending battles with the alphabet
Each lap increasing détente
Approval
Rejection
MAYBE
It has occurred to me
That
I may not live long enough
To love my neighbor
Indeed
We may all perish if we don’t learn (quickly)
To love one another
And maybe this is the deficiency – like the dinosaurs
That will bring about our extinction
ADULTING
Aristotle says;
Education is the best survival tool for old age
What Ari doesn’t know is that the
Truth found in education at night
Is now the lie used against you
Circling the continent twice by the
Time you awake
But you carry on as if it hasn’t
•
There’s frustration in being adult
When grown men fight in high-rise sandboxes
In suits bullet-proofed with dollar signs
But you carry on as if they don’t
•
There’s frustration in behaving grown up
When the agony of the human condition
Can be rationalized
And we carry on as if it isn’t
•
There’s frustration in being grown up
When the door to respond-in-kind
Remains locked by decency
Yet you pull on it anyway – as if it isn’t
•
There’s frustration in being grown-up
Knowing that civilizations have been lost to dreams of retribution
Ungovernable desires
For the “blood-dimmed tide”
To drown the babble
AND the rabble
But you desire it anyway
•
There’s frustration in being grown-up
Knowing the constancy of war
Feeling the subliminal connections between
Truth and chaos.
And we carry on anyway
Holding our truth in hands folded in supplication
As we kneel, unreasonable, at the edge of age
Amid the *signs that tell us to behave like adults
*Invisible ink
•
We drag our middle-class, care-worn hearts
Across years of capitalist tyranny
Through periods of relative decorum
Retreating waves allowing enemies
Time to deep-fake truth
And we must behave as if they aren’t?
QUARANTINE: Week Two
Like our electronic toys
The world has a reset button
When we ignore her overheating
She admonishes with flames
When we foul our nests
She sends the oceans in retort
And when we ignore the world’s health,
Its inhabitants’ well-being,
Choosing to chase vicious luxuries
Because – we can
She sends the enemy invisible
The virus incurable,
Barely namable
Scoffing dreams and schemes
Our world has reset
An algorithm for stimulus
Six-degrees of separation
Leaves room for empathy
We leave food for the hungry
We drive the immobile
We care for the sick
We handsomely tip the daring
Souls who venture into the
Empty streets of commerce
Bringing food to those of us with money – to eat
But, the natural world wants us
To open our eyes
She wants us apart enough
To see those lives
That will never change – even with
A conquered virus
She wants us to see the fallacy of
Putting profit before people
She wants us to see those
Who have always been
Quarantined by poverty
In spirit and in purse
Yes, the world has reset.
Sadly, the culling
Won’t be equitable
Reset people
Reset!
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE
Gwen's World 