Beneath the Surface

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

 

Beneath the Surface

 

The sky is clear and blue today

A calm breeze caresses my face

Smiles and pleasantries abound

Everything seems to fit in place

 

Beneath the surface another world

Looms in hidden spaces

All is not well

Nor has it ever been

Chaos and misfortune lay in wait

Anxious to emerge and pounce

Eager to spread their misery

Ready to strike again

 

We strive to move forward

Put on our smiling faces

We go about our days

Nothing can disturb us

We cling to certain ways

We set and follow patterns

And rarely will we stray

 

Beneath the surface of our joy

There lies a certain desperation

A sense of overwhelming pressure

Traps and trepidation

Nothing is as it seems

Nor has it ever been

We live inside our dreams

And fight it to the end

Desperate Hours

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Desperate Hours

 

Hurling through the expanse of space

Our prospects dimming by the hour

We cannot turn the clock around

Building weapons extolling power

No one knows just where we’re bound

We are in the desperate hours

 

We live in fear of our fellow beings

Guarded communities brazen towers

Losing touch with beauty and grace

Natural wonders and simple flowers

Our lives slipping from our control

We’re in the desperate hours

 

O how we wish for simple pleasures

Our techno lives have turned us sour

We cannot live without devices

Our hopes now seem so dower

We turn around but it’s too late

We are in the desperate hours

 

The Ni-ni's of Columbia

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR:  WORLD DEMOCRACY

The Ni-nis of Columbia

 

(Ni-ni: neither work nor school)

 

They fill the streets of protest in Columbia

Their numbers are growing in

Chile Argentina Brazil and Mexico

Young people without hope or promise

There are no jobs and those

Who cannot see past the hour

(an hour of hunger and rage)

Have no need of education

They are the disenchanted

They are the disengaged

They have lost faith in institutions

Government has failed them

Democracy has failed them

Free enterprise has failed them

The church has abandoned them

God has betrayed them

 

They have only one endeavor

One remaining purpose in this life

To fill the streets of protest

Day after day

Night after night

 

They feed on hopelessness

They feed on social media

Some say they feed on fake news

But reality is more than sufficient

You cannot beat them into submission

You cannot pound them into hope

 

Your corrupt institutions have failed

To serve the heart of your society

The time has come to step down

Let the next generation take over

Give them a place at the table

Allow them to remake the world

That you have molded in greed

Give them their due or

Face the dismal consequences

 

Finality

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

 

Finality

 

There will always be doubt

Like the virus itself

Some trace of it remains

To haunt us with its deadly legacy

To caution and warn us

Life will never be the same

 

Yet it begins to feel normal

It is not my first thought each morning

There are times I forget

Times when the mask seems strange

Times when it feels like a movie

Times when it feels like a dream

 

We are resilient beings

It is our nature to overcome

It is our nature to survive

 

Somewhere in the folds of our minds

We know it could strike again

That place of darkness will always be

But it will not drive us insane

 

We will move on

We have moved on

Life returns to normal

And we give thanks

 

Democracy Down in Belarus

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WORLD DEMOCRACY

Democracy Down in Belarus

 

In Belarus as in Moscow

They imprison dissidents for being dissidents

For expressing opinions contrary

To the state propaganda machine

For encouraging others to stand in protest

For writing and distributing pamphlets

For reporting the news

For being leaders and believers in democracy

For being journalists and doing their jobs

Honestly and well

 

Putin puppet Lukashenko has gone so far

As to hijack a passenger plane in flight

To abduct journalist Roman Protasevich

And his girlfriend Sofia Sapega

(girlfriends are dissidents too)

They are now subject to torture

As terrorists and enemies of state

Their friends and families must also suffer

As collaborators in terror

Their confessions and apologies

Will follow as night follows sunset

 

Do not believe them

Do not allow them to escape consequence

For crimes against humanity

For crimes against us all

They are the great oppressors

And they walk among us

Anxious for their turn at power

 

It is the way of tyranny

It is the way of dictators

It is the way of Putin and Lukashenko

Left standing it is the way democracy falls

 

Reclaim Patriotism (On Tyranny)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: ON TYRANNY

Inevitability

 

We have fallen under

A spell of comfortable passivity

 

The past is forgotten

The future is inevitable

 

The arc of history bends toward justice

 

Why fight for a cause however worthy

When the die is cast (alea iacta est)

And the future is ordained

Why bother with it all

Sit back and witness as our

Heroes on tall white horses

Save the day

 

Ask the victims of Mussolini

About the arc of history

Ask the Spanish about Franco

Ask the Jews about the Reich

The Chinese about the purge

The Russians about Stalin

The Ukrainians about Putin

Ask your elders about McCarthy

And the letters KKK

 

The future is not written

Nothing is inevitable

Nothing belongs to fate

 

Tyranny is enabled by passivity

Passivity is enabled by faith

In the inevitable

Howling Wind (for Phil Mickelson)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Howling Wind

 

Blow wind blow!

Howl like the scream of banshees in a raging storm

Let all god’s creatures beg for mercy

Howl like a rage of angry demons

Caught in a maze of thorns

 

Blow wind blow!

Blow like a ringing echo of horror

Let tall trees bow down before you

Let the dirt and sand carry your name

Shake their spirits into full flight

Put all of them to shame

 

Howl wind howl!

Push the sun and the clouds aside

Put all the earth’s forces on due notice

Let the whole world witness your glory

Let them speak of you in pubs and taverns

Let them tell your fateful story

 

Who dares to stand against the wind?

Who dares to break the chains?

Let him be called the last man standing

For he alone remained

 

[Congratulations to Phil Mickelson

2021 PGA Champion

Oldest winner of a Major]

 

Courage (On Tyranny)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: ON TYRANNY

Courage (Choose Sides)

 

There are many kinds of courage:

 

The courage to speak out

When others remain silent

The courage to be silent

When others say too much

The courage to go to war

And put your life on the line

The courage to refuse to fight

When a war is unjustified

 

We should not be lulled into believing

Democracy has no price

Like anything of value

It demands sacrifice

 

We speak often of our founders

As if they were gentlemen of reason

But when they fixed their names

To the declaration

King George proclaimed treason

 

They are heroes now because

They were on the winning side

Had we lost the war we cannot know

The nature of the world in which

We now reside

 

They had great courage

They were willing to give their lives

They expected no less of us

If the republic is to survive

(Based on the excellent pamphlet  On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder) 

Book of Forms

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

 

Book of Forms

 

Because it was written long ago

Some will say it must be so

Perhaps it was written that god embraces

A privileged class of superior races

Some would say it must be so

Why?  It was written long ago

So some are smitten

With what was written

Not I

 

I must find my own forms

My own guiding principles

My own codes and philosophies

My own measures of being

My own methods of seeing

Let others walk the trodden path

I will brave an unspoiled forest

Of dreams and novel mythologies

Exploring untold psychologies

Knowing that many years from now

My path may also be trodden

And braver souls will find

A braver and bolder way

To keep the faith

And claim the day

So be it

Monet's Garden

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

 

Monet’s Garden

 

Explosions of light and color

The simple mind cannot contain

Reflected in a pool of pristine water

A sky of hovering grace

A mirage of beauty so striking so clear

It challenges the fiercest imagination

A symphony of water lilies

Colors so vivid they awaken the senses

The sweet scent of spring in bloom

Embellished by genteel parasols

Enchanting faces beneath white bonnets

Blessed by the sun’s full glory

This earth this whirling sphere

Has never been so teeming

With the breath of life

Rules

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Rules

 

The rules of economy

The rules of civility

That guide our morality

And inform common decency

 

Broken and scattered

Pummeled and shattered

Like particles imploded

Nothing lasts forever

To change we are devoted

 

The laws of gravity

The laws of motion

Suspended with revulsion

The real beneath reality

We haven’t got a notion

 

The rules of writing

The rules of grammar

Smashed to pieces

With a two-ton hammer

 

What’s young is old

What’s old is new

Yesterday’s false

Is sometimes true

 

The children have abandoned school

Their teachers are a band of fools

They don’t need no goddamned rules

They have their own survival tools

 

And so it is for old folks

Our truth becomes their joke

Accept it and then move on

We’re here and then we’re gone

 

Genocide in Gaza

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

Genocide in Gaza

 

The Holocaust

A policy of extermination

The buffalo massacre

Forced relocation

The slave trade

The Trail of Tears

Milosevic and the Serbs

 

There are many kinds of genocide

From methodical mass murder

To the evacuation of a people from

Their homelands under threat of harm

 

When we think of genocide

We think of the Nazi’s and the Jews

We think of the American Indians

We think of the Armenians in Turkey

We think of the aborigines in Australia

Maybe we think of South African apartheid

 

We never think of Israel and Palestine

We rarely think of Gaza

The forced relocation of Palestinian

Families women and children

Perhaps we should

 

If there is no right to fight back

Against genocide

Then there are no rights

 

The irony is just too rich

Israel

Palestine

Genocide

War Crimes

 

Are our memories so short?

Less than a century later

The victim becomes the perpetrator

 

Leaders Lost

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR:  WORLD DEMOCRACY

Leaders Lost

 

Adrift in a rocky sea

Deserted in a naked desert

Tied and suited on a sandy beach

Untethered in an empty place

Floating through oblivion

Like a drifting speck of dust

 

Our leaders lost our way

Absent map compass or divination

No one noticed until the day

We awoke in a foreign place

Where everyone had much to say

But no one had salvation

 

You promised us a rose garden

You delivered only thorns

We turn away in consternation

Curse the day you were born

 

Where now shall the people go?

To whom shall we turn?

After all we’ve seen and suffered

We’ve lost our will to learn

 

We struggle to find our bearings

Struggle to stay afloat

We’d settle for a good night’s sleep

Safe passage on a sturdy boat

 

Throw the captain overboard

Let him swim himself to shore

Take all our lousy leaders

And toss them out the door

Reclaim Patriotism (On Tyranny)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: ON TYRANNY

 

Reclaim Patriotism

 

Tyranny flies under the flag of patriotism

Authoritarians always lay claim

But if we live in a true democracy

There is no greater lie

And can be no greater shame

 

The cry of patriotism fuels the lies of war

Demands the sacrifice of basic rights

Justifies unspeakable crimes

Defends the indefensible

Leads to internal strife

 

It is time to redefine patriotism

It is time to reclaim the flag

 

A patriot believes in the nation

For what it represents

Not unconditionally like lemmings

Marching blindly into the sea

But for what the nation stands for

And for what it proudly could be

 

A patriot defends the nation and her flag

Against those who would abuse her

Fomenting violence and immoral acts

Committing injustice in her name

And demanding we excuse her

 

A patriot knows and upholds

The bill of rights

Against pretenders who never read

Past the second amendment

 

A patriot stands for free and fair elections

The foundation of our democracy

Without regard for the outcome

But with respect for the ballot box

 

A patriot supports a free press

Including mainstream media

Especially when it conflicts

One’s own beliefs

 

A patriot raises a hand

Takes an oath to democracy

And swears to defend it

Against all enemies

 

(Based on Timothy Snyder's excellent pamphlet.)

Bodies in the Ganges

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES

Bodies in the Ganges

 

Bodies float down the Ganges

By the dozens by the scores

The result of too many corpses

To bury or burn and mourn

 

Take care it does not happen here

It can and surely will

If we do not heed the warnings

Our cemeteries will be filled

 

We have declared victory

Just as India and Brazil did

They opened the doors of commerce

They took the highest bids

 

Now there are bodies in the Ganges

There are loved ones left forlorn

And there are leaders in Mumbai

Whom the people have come to scorn