The Last to Go

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

The Last to Go

 

Daughters before mothers

Sons before fathers

Like warm bathing in icy waters

A disturbance in the natural order

Like night before day

Like a bridge on the border

Like the past before tomorrow

Comfort before anger

Rage before sorrow

The stages of mourning

Turned on their heads

We must mourn the living

And converse with the dead

No one lives forever

The wise ones said

It is a road we all travel

One we travel alone

We can never look back

We can never go home

But oh to the one who is last to go

To him belongs grief

To her belongs woe

There will be no more tears

When we’ve come to the end

There will be no condolences

Our loved ones to send

We will have no more fear

As we round the last bend

We will welcome the chance

To revisit our friends

 

Seven Generations: A Short Story

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: IMMIGRATION

Seven Generations: A Short Story

 

The generations flow

Like currents in a great river

Like waves in the sea

Where each wave is endowed

With the power to alter

The course of history

And all that it encompasses

 

It begins with immigration

(this is not a native story)

Religious persecution

Economic opportunity

Importation of slaves

The great potato famine

The Armenian genocide

The siege of the Warsaw ghetto

The Nazi invasion

The Bracero program

Cold War refugees

The purge of Christians

The purge of Muslims

 

It begins with the journey

A journey of hardship

Discrimination and hatred

Violence and disruption

 

It advances through seven stages

Poor paying jobs

Substandard housing

Poverty and rejection

We don’t want your kind

Go back where you came from

 

It endures through persistence

With the help of friends

Understanding neighbors

And welcoming neighborhoods

 

It advances through hard work

Success and acceptance

Community sacrifice and service

 

It advances through legal proceedings

Stubborn insistence on human rights

Fights in the court

Fights in the legislature

 

It advances when the doors

Of opportunity open through

Representation and demand

 

It advances through power

Money and control

 

In seven generations you arrive

At the American dream

And the keepers at the gate wonder:

What took you so long?

 

Mississippi and Peru

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

 

Mississippi and Peru

 

Peru and Mississippi

Mississippi and Peru

If you had to do it all again

What differently would you do?

 

Your answer for the cameras: nothing

Your answer before the mirror: everything

 

Take the virus seriously

Mask distance isolate and ventilate

Invest in mass vaccination

Put your best medical minds in charge

Trust the science

Keep the people well informed

A virus does not care

Who you are or where

Understand from the beginning

The best economic strategy

Is to defeat the virus

Pound the people daily

With the hard and honest truth

Bring the opposition aboard

Remove the politics

Share the credit

Erase the blame

We are all in this together

Together we will overcome

 

Under the Bridge

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: POEMICS

Under the Bridge

 

There is a bridge down by the border

Where there is no law no order

There we spend most of our days

Trying to find some other way

 

They don’t want us in the promised land

So here we’re forced to take a stand

They say they’ll send us home again

There’s no way forward we cannot win

 

Maybe they’re right we do not know

We often hang our heads down low

But we can’t afford to lose all hope

We must find another way to cope

 

Under the bridge we help each other

There are children without mothers

We must endure all kinds of weather

Yet still we stay together

 

If there is one thing you should know

This is not a moving picture show

We are not animals or crawling things

We are sentient human beings

 

Q ii Revisited

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: POEMICS

Q ii Revisited

 

It feeds on itself

It recycles its own waste

It requires no objective sustenance

It is the zombie of social movements

It died long ago but refused to accept its demise

 

It is the Q

It is the virus of intellectual ideas

It poisons what it touches

And takes root in the core

 

It teases logic but repels facts

It thrives on whispered innuendo

On rumors and reflections

Did you hear what they’re saying?

Everybody knows

Every body knows

 

I hear there’s a vaccine that cures it

That’s what they want you to believe

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid

Don’t breathe the air

Get off the grid

And don’t look back

 

Our enemies are everywhere

Behind the blue rectangles

Beyond the purple horizon

Don’t look don’t look

If you look they’ve got you

Stay strong

Resist

Reject the system

Learn the code

The Q is all

The Q stands tall

The Q will rise

While others fall

 

Are you with us or against us?

Stand up or walk away

Fall in line or stray

There is no other way

 

The Q knows

The Q grows

The Q will not be fooled

 

The Long Journey

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

The Long Journey

 

From Haiti to Chile through Mexico

to the Texas border

Can you imagine a more difficult journey?

Things are so bad in Haiti

Earthquakes hurricanes assassinations

They are willing to pay a series

of unreputable brokers

Leaving behind all property

Leaving behind all belongings

Leaving loved ones and family ties

to be transported over sea

Across land traversing jungles

Across desert and barren wasteland

Through cities of sprawling poverty

Confronting gangs and lowlife criminals

Only to confront the wall

at the Texas border

 

Say what you will

Say we cannot have an open border

Say we must protect our own

Say we must draw the line

But do not deny their courage

or the sincerity of their cause

 

They are human beings caught

in a web of destitution

If we would deny them entry

At least afford them respect

Then you will know what

the promise of America means

 

 

The Flag

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: POEMICS

The Flag

 

Do you support the flag?

Depends on what you mean

The flag has come to mean

Many things to many people

If you mean

Do I support the USA?

Then yes I do

Do I support democracy

Equal treatment under the law

Freedom of opportunity

Freedom of speech

Freedom to assemble

The right to vote

The right of a woman to choose?

(ah, there’s the rub

For I see the hesitation in your eyes

The same hesitation that comes into mine

On the right to bear arms)

 

Do I support the flag?

It is but a symbol

Like all symbols it can be bent

To any shape and form

Do I support America?

I do

Without pause or doubt

Do you?

 

Morita

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

 

Morita

 

She stalks me

She hunts me down

She watches me

She knows who my friends are

She watches them

She hunts them down as well

 

Her eyes are dark as muddy waters

Her heart cold as winter’s night

I loved her once

I fell under her spell

I was young and unafraid

 

She did not hunt me then

She did not stalk

She did not lurk in the shadows

Or beneath the shroud of dark

She teased me with her mystery

I breathed her misty air

I drank from her well

I tasted her passion

And begged for more

 

Her danger enchanted me

Her intrigue pulled me in

Alas she chose another

And lowered her web

 

It was then that I recoiled

She did not inspire love

She consumed it

She did not create beauty

She destroyed it

 

It was then I learned her name

Though I cannot speak it even now

She haunts me

She hunts me down

She takes us one by one

She frightens all she touches

Yet we cannot despise her

Cannot deny her

Without her there is nothing

She is that which injects meaning

Into our lives

 

She knows I will call her

When I am ready

She is always there

Waiting patiently

In shadows

 

Lukashenko of Belarus

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

Lukashenko of Belarus

 

Never was a man so proud

Of a legacy of hate

He is oblivious to the fact

That infamy is his fate

 

Not even Putin is so bold

As to flaunt his cold mendacity

If he wasn’t such a monster

His story would elicit pity

 

That Lukashenko is an ogre

Is plain for all to behold

He spoils the very air he breathes

His power he has sold

 

It is time for every dictator

To dissolve into the sunset

Let him walk upon the waters

Just to see if he gets wet

Innocent Dead

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Innocent Dead

 

On this day of remembrance

We are called to mourn

The loss of so many lives

Office workers

First responders

The ones who fell

The ones who survived

We remember them all

With a sense of dread

We remember the innocent dead

 

We recall the horror unleashed that day

We remember the fire brigade

The heroic actions of New York’s best

The unconscionable price they paid

 

We recall the chaos the sirens scream

Unfolding as if in a dream

On this day of mourning

We hang our heads

We remember the innocent dead

 

Eleven September

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR

Eleven September

 

The eleventh of September

A day we’ll always remember

A day of infamy

Like a symphony of horror

 

The day Americans united

In fear and trepidation

The day we became overtly

A vengeful warrior nation

 

It was early morn in California

When the first plane hit the tower

We knew somehow it was intended

A play for global power

 

Our president cried out Revenge!

They named the enemy bin Laden

How they knew that name so quickly

Is a mystery we’ve forgotten

 

We went to war in Afghanistan

Though they offered him a trial

We could not hear appeals to reason

It would have to wait a while

 

We moved on to Iraq

Before the dust had cleared

Iraq became the nightmare

So many of us feared

 

Two decades have gone by now

Since the towers fell that day

We remember it with horror

As the day we lost our way

The Day John Lennon Died

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

The Day John Lennon Died

 

On the day John Lennon was shot down

Outside the Dakota Hotel

On Central Park West

In the heart of Manhattan

Like a common criminal

Or a rapper on the wrong side of town

A song was written in Liverpool

Three singers harmonized in Nashville

The final chapter wrote itself

In the life of a troubadour on the run

Outside of Boulder Colorado

A dancer found her groove

A native movement was born

On the third and fourth mesa

In the Great Navaho Reservation

In Arizona and New Mexico

Where a circle of shamans

Smoked a pipe of peace

And a child took his first breath

In a corner drugstore on Bleeker Street

 

Life goes on the wise man says

Life goes on

 

Sequoias

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CLIMATE CHANGE

Sequoias

 

The magnificent Sequoias of California

Are now an endangered species

A twenty-year drought drained the lifeblood

And the fires reduced them to kindling

 

Cry not for these majestic creatures

Though they have stood for a million years

Cry for those who will never behold

In all their glory and towering strength

The pounding pulse of their eternal grace

 

Cry for all humankind

Entrusted with their care

Cry for the forest and all the life

Dependent on the Sequoia cover

Cry for the father of all beings

Cry for the earthly mother

 

We are witnessing the final days

Of one of nature’s greatest miracles

And we know as a mother knows her child

It is only the beginning

 

Denial and Rage

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

 

Denial and Rage

 

When someone you love gets covid

You do not want to accept it

It cannot be

You took all the precautions

You did all the right things

You considered others

You watched your step

You vaccinated

You wore the mask

You dined outside

You did not attend large gatherings

 

You faltered once or twice

Is that all it took?

One simple misstep

One walk on the wrong side

Of the street

 

Some random conspiracy theorist

Some antivax zealot

Some fool without a mask

Invades your breathing space

And you contract the disease

You become the victim

You become a carrier

Of denial and rage

 

Inequity

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Inequity

 

He does not deserve this indignity

He does not deserve this disgrace

When a man of honor is victimized

The house of equity is out of place

 

We may look back on this day

And despise those who did not care

Enough to compromise their freedom

Bringing our right to life to bear

 

Are they so blind to the consequence

Of giving the virus room to grow

Of refusing to listen to science

Of being proud not to know

 

You’ve taken too many mothers and fathers

You’ve taken too many sons and daughters

The great pandemic should be over

But you believed in four-leaf clovers

 

Go away and take your family

Go away and take your friends

Thanks to you the plague lives on

Thanks to you there is no end