Saturday, April 29, 2023

Pouring Rain

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CLIMATE CHANGE


Pouring Rain

Rain came down like a runaway train

Listen to the pouring rain

Listen to the pouring rain *

 

Listen to the rhythm of the pouring rain

A jackhammer of the gods

To the driving drumbeat of jazz

As you listen don’t you think it’s odd

That the earth needs so much cleansing?

Like a rusted-out bus that you keep in

the garage, the one that threw a rod

Back in nineteen sixty-nine

Back in the days of glory and youth

Back in the days of cheap red wine

When every day was a new adventure

When peace was the sign of the times

 

Rain came down like a runaway train

Listen to the pouring rain

Listen to the pouring rain

 

I’ve never heard a rain so hard

Seems like the sky is falling

Pounding on the roofs of homes

To remind us of a calling

Back to the glory days of youth

When the world was in our hands

Reminding us of a simple truth:

Take care of this sweet land

 

Listen to the pouring rain

Listen to the pouring rain

 

* Number Nine: The Adventures of Jake

Jones & Ruby Daulton

 

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Tucker's Reign

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN MEDIA


Tucker’s Reign

 

Three million viewers daily

And not a particle of integrity

He pedaled propaganda to the masses

Not the facts, not reasoned opinion

Not a particular point of view

But raw uninhibited propaganda

An alternative universe

A purely imagined reality

 

He was the King of Conspiracy

An instigator of insurrection

A Russian pawn

An apostle of the Don

No one could take him down

Until they did

 

Not even the first amendment

Could protect the blatant lies

The unbridled hatred

The fake outrage

The unashamed racism

Of Tucker Carlson

 

He made Fox News a lot of money

But in the end he cost more

Than he made

 

What price integrity?

 

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Crack in East LA

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN HISTORY


Crack in East LA

 

Remember back in the nineties

When the CIA delivered crack cocaine

To the gangs in East LA

Transforming the crips and the bloods

Into well-armed citizens militias

The CIA used the money to finance

The Contras of Nicaragua

A force against democracy

The CIA doesn’t push drugs anymore

But the gangs don’t need drug money

To buy weapons of mass destruction

It’s easy to buy guns

Any kind of guns

From sawed-off shots to M-16s

If you’ve got the money

They’ve got the guns

The forces of law’n’order don’t need

To start wars in the hood

To kill off the poor people

The people of color

The people who don’t vote

The people who don’t matter

Give ‘em the guns and they’ll

Do it themselves

Shoot ‘em up bang bang

Another black or brown dead

Why not give ‘m an education

Instead?

 

Monday, April 24, 2023

Remembering Ronald Reagan

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

 

Remembering Ronnie

 

I remember Ronald Reagan

The man Republicans used to love

Now that we’ve experienced Dubya

and the Don we know he’s not

as bad as we once thought

 

He was bad but not that bad

He never started a war on one nation (Iraq)

for the crimes of another (Afghanistan)

He never drove the economy over a cliff

He never called for open insurrection

He only sold arms to an enemy (Iran)

He only punished poor people

He only turned his back on gays (AIDS)

 

Some of it was not his fault

He was largely absent in his second term

His dementia was clear enough

His Alzheimer’s was diagnosed later

 

Reagan was elected to his second term

at the age of seventy-three

Americans may soon face a choice of

two elderly men to lead the country

One would be 77 at his inauguration

The other would be eighty-one

 

Give all that America and the world faces

Global climate change

Russian military aggression

A Chinese-Russian alliance

Challenges to democracy

A world in constant crisis

Do we really want to trust the next

four years and the future of the planet

to a man who may not remember

who Ronald Reagan was?

 


Sunday, April 23, 2023

Untold Casualties of War

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WAR

 

Untold Casualties of War

Two tours in Iraq

Two tours too many

The carnage he witnessed

The carnage he inflicted

Tore a hole in his heart

Large enough for his soul to slip through

Large enough to bury the man he was

 

His friends and family said he was okay

They said they thought he was okay

But he was not okay

He was never okay

They should have known

They did know

They didn’t want to know

The young man they gave to war

Came back filled with flames

Teeming with rage and ready to implode

 

One day for some reason nobody knows

The building rage inside exploded

His victims didn’t know

They never saw it coming

A sudden burst of gunfire

A flash of blood and darkness

A rumbling chaos and silence

 

He was his last victim

An untold casualty of war