A Boy, a Dog and a Mortar

This is not the end of the earth
for war refugees, the end lies a few
miles down the mined highway
or in a ditch nearby, an overturned
vehicle or in a sudden cross fire
between dissidents and government
troops or in a strafing run, carpet
bombing exercise co-ordinates called in
by in-advance-of-a-mission scouts
or by non-existent spook soldiers
on a run through the jungle to nowhere
using non-existent frequencies, dead air,
to broadcast positions of another life;
this is not the end for a young boy
holding a malnourished dog to his chest,
the animal’s discontent, resignation, no use
in struggling look, mirrored in the boy’s
thousand yard, staring into an endless
jungle, look, the boy’s down turned lips
signifying that another move means more
of the same, more loading onto troop
carrier trucks, just another illusion of
mobility and escape, the mortar propped
on the family’s meager luggage the essential
component, to taking the next giant step
toward what lies just beyond the end.

Mediterranean Landscape Fibonacci

Hey
there
master
Nicolas
de Stael, yes you who
vacillated between gloomy
abstractions and luminous style
where your canvases captured chromatic resonance
structuring geometrical
forms, horizontal
planes, cobalt
lead-like
bleak
tones!
Dazzle
me now with
linear landscapes
graphic masterpieces via
applications of grey, blue, and ochre impasto
brushstrokes bold, palette knife severe
leave textured crests where
intense and
tranquil
moods
meet.

Losers


We can never be good enough,
because we are losers,
stamped with ‘rejected’ on our foreheads
right after we popped out of a uterus.

We can never be good enough.
That does not mean we won’t try.
We fight and claw like the bastards we are
or should have been.

It might never get us very far.
It might be better of us
to stay at home all the time,
never leave our rooms,
staring only at the television
and blank spots on walls.

It might be easier, but we can’t do that.
We have to fight and keep fighting
until we have blood on our faces
and under our fingernails.

We must make the world learn
that we have the capacity
to hurt them back,
even if we can never hurt them
as much as they hurt us.



Boxed In


Please, for a moment,
see the box you are surrounded by,
as I take a look at the box
I am inside.

Then let us both try to remember,
as far back as we can,
a time before we were put
into our containers.

Could you do that?
Could I?
Could we become
as we both might have been?

We would need to learn
to think again, speak again,
live again.

Should we try to break out
of what we were never meant
To be?

Figuring Out


Reading lyrics and listening
To music takes me
To dusty roads,
Not just dragons and fairies.
Alternative rock music,
Alice in Chains.
I read the lyrics, it is a piece
Of my heart.
The music strikes a chord in me.
Outright bold assertions
Almost like facing
Truth and consequences.
Some weakness of mine
Also becomes dust
And blows away.
“We chase misprinted lies”
Says the band.
I think of indoctrinated mind,
Pink Floyd says,
No thoughts control,
I think of George Orwell and 1984.
Surely, Big Brother is Watching us.
AI is a new watchdog,
I think of ethical journalism.
This poem is loading
As I figure out
Each line to write,
But I am a human.

All is well

My feet move Slow
On a country road,
The wind blows gently
Upon my back.
White clouds sail south
On a clear blue sky.
Buzzards soaring in circles
High up above,
In their search
For dead treasure below.
Cicadas signal summer
Is near to an end,
Corn stands tall in the field.
A full yellow moon
Will soon rise in the east.
Everything is as it should be,
Beauty with peace,
All is well.

ROCK & ROLL


You looked
into the lens:
wild long,
dark
hair, short
goatee,
half smile
black tee,
svelte
body

Wincing eyes,
sharp gaze,
old man’s
orbs,
pain from
inside
I too,
accidentally
smoked a PCP
laced joint
as a teen
Dance-
teria
patrons
tormented
me

Bodyguard kicked
hotel door down
Pretty noose, you
dangled
between
heaven
& earth

PORTRAIT OF YOUNG MORRISON UNDER COMMAND

Once this populace no longer authors
Their own songs
Outsourcing all creative spark
To a battered adolescent’s robotic dreams,
John Lennon’s soul has been desecrated.

No one could move
To even understand punk
Beyond data, no furious weight
Launched at its demise
When cops show up
Where rebellion thrived,
This was health of
The human to live free
Promptly expelled
Then scrolled over

Mr. Death, you have unjustifiably stripped away my soul,
and I was left to dree your hatred.
You buried me beneath sludge and notorious boulders,
and again, the surge of the flood washed me away.

I lost my soul; my flesh was eaten by mud,
and the water threw my skull onto the riverbank,
where a dog licked my skull.
But that dog did not know which nationality I was.
Its instinct told it only that there was food.

Yet across the ocean, people are commenting on their governments,
saying the people who were killed in Nepal were not of this nationality or that nationality.
The skin of people is determined by their nationality,
but not by where they were born or where they acquired citizenship.

I shut down my social media feed,
with a heavy pull of tears inundating my nose.

Death does not care what colour you have,
nor would the dog on the riverbank cherry-pick the skulls based on inferior or superior nationality. 
or be able to see their nationality.
It simply needs food—and devours it. 

Greedy Death did not even  give me an opportunity to be shrouded with  cerement 
nor did it allow me to take a rest inside a casket.

It’s just absolutely crazy

The frustration rules my life.
The endless quest goes on.
I go to one shop looking then
Go to yet another, still no luck.
Online Amazon has nothing.
Walmart workers have no idea
In which section I should look.
Not surprising for Walmart.
They must train their employees 
To know nothing so you would
See new items while searching.
Where the hell can it possibly be?
I’m not sure if it would be canned
Or come in a box or stink like fish.
Somewhere, somehow, sometime,
I’m gonna find that reason to live.

Grasshoppers and Butterflies

Laughing while frolicking through
Fields of grain chasing grasshoppers
And butterflies and then on to the
Riverbank for a splash or a dip
Makes for a thoroughly pleasant
Afternoon and, if you’re lucky, the
Gators are sleeping with full bellies
From fools going to the riverbank
For a splash or a dip that morning.