Dover Breach

The air is mad tonight
electric with fright
but drugged with fluff and flight:
hear no evil, see no blight.
America in cyber slumber swoons
while England grooms jihad goons
like 1937 fascist blackshirts
deflowering 2014 democratic skirts.
France ( peace be upon her)
seethes with same old same old stir--
that angst witch discontent doth incur
from yonder barricaded former age
now slit with new jihadi rage.

The air of Faith
so thin of late
as most prefer to flirt with fate
now cringes in this new birth of hate;
its melancholy, long withdrawing gasp
retreating fast, like slithering asp
unable now to grasp
with slipping grips unfurled
the naked idols the world.

Ah, good Christian, let us be true
to one another! for the world, which casts its spell
of rebel chaos and decadent hell,
has no power when all's said and done
to set our ancient faith upon the run,
though the infernal note of madness floods every byte
while polar extremists clash by night.

(This poem's form was adapted from Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.)

Smoke

could be trouble

The bloody world devolves down toward

a Prophet with a sword,

or Messiah with a cross:

Choose ye this day who is your boss.



By the muezzin call, they said,

or by the broken bread?

God mad as heaven

ridin' in at hour eleven?

or a God mad as hell

while the sword on us fell?



But wait! There's Jacob caught in the middle

playin' his fiddle,

while to the new world we turn,

the old one doth burn.



CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Six feet under

Today we bury a man whose life was fully lived. Some of our strong men lift his earthly remains and lay it six feet beneath the snowy ground.
Today I wonder what ancient men and women must have thought about this death thing. Today I wonder about what the life cycle meant to them-- before there was this complex, overdeveloped modern world. When only the raw earth supported our ancestors' feet and only the luminous sky lifted their simple vision beyond its horizon, then the cold ground was simply where life sprung forth and also where it terminated-- the air above us just a vast mystery from which rain and snow and wind and light descended.

In that primeval existence, before history, before culture, before science and education, humans had no knowledge about where all this came from. We had no evidences, except those found within the earth itself, of our destiny within it. We had only a few clues nestled within the crevices of our desire; we had only a scattering of hope blown among the breezes of our vision.

Then one day, they saw a volcano erupt.
What on earth is that? they wondered.
Hell, I don't know, but I'm not hangin' around to find out.

Hell.

Another day, they saw a rainbow.
What on earth is that? they wondered.
Heavens above! what a beautiful sight.

Heavens.

Somebody died. Where do we put him now?

Back in the earth where he came from, said one.
He didn't come from the earth; he came from the sky, said another.

Oh yeah? Well...ok then. He came from the sky.
I like that ending better, they said.

We put him in the earth; but he returns to the sky.

And they were right.

You believe that?

Jeez... I guess so.

Well...ok then. That's quite a revalation.
A revolution, in fact.

Glass half-Full