Do you see change as progress or the absence of a dollar bill?
There are those who would kill for the change some change could fulfill
However many strains remain to contain your brain
If we educated history the events wouldn’t change
We teach ourselves the failures of man yet operate the same
They only stop for red octagons they don’t stop for what I say
See every change has a cost lost profits for those who pay
We avoid the beneficial if the man with the Benjamins isn’t the beneficiary
What that means is our greed reigns supreme
Human nature the fumes and vapors smoke and mirrors
Open clearer and revoke the fear of losing change to make change
Only knowledge brings power currency is currently diverting me
But I would be worry free if I didn’t need it just to further me
See I debit for my credits exchanged paper for my textbooks
Until I’m smothered in my dues feeling like my neck’s hooked
It’s ironic the information you pursue is right in front of you
Free of charge at large but the problem isn’t school
Our mentality teaches us to think of money first it’s almost surreal
Still, do you think of change as progress, or the absence of a dollar bill?

Everything is so new,

Colors and objects to view.

Inside the womb,

Was equivalent to a tomb.

So dark…hearing only mutter,

She would move to give a flutter.

Now all is so unfamiliar,

Although voices and movement seem similar,

I’m not sure what’s surpassed,

First she’s calm, but chaos comes last.

She’ll find new comfort around her,

Sometime will take, being she’ll demur.

Real feelings of love and emotion,

Nestled in Momma’s arms, knowing devotion.

This girl has now entered our world so open and pure,

For her love is so new to us, it is truly a cure,

To anything poison in our mind,

Look closely at your child, it isn’t hard to find.

That love and empathy like no other,

Blessed only with child is her Father and Mother.

I need to

turn down the volume

on the world

sometimes

cus the space

between my ears

done shrunk to

a knot of confusion

Bum rushed by Limbasity

pecked by Beck’s feckless lies

drowned in that  chorus of nonsense

echoed in foxholes

shouted loud

shouted long enough

new truths spring up from lies

and zealots carry banners

as if marching off to war

          “…there’s no evolution

          there’s no climate change

          let’s stop the spooky black man

          should of been John McCain

in the

          white house,”

so

wing nuts take the statehouse

sound their battle cries:

strip women of their right to choose

suppress the young black vote

shake down the working man once more

and ban all union strikes;

stall railroad progress in its tracks

nip green business in the bud

heap more wealth upon the wealthy

while halting healthcare for the poor.

They want their country back again

to 1954?

when white power ruled the land at large

and those of color had no say

 I see their mouths a moving

          and hear a cacophony of lies

 ring in my ears so loud

it hurts to even think…

I need to

turn down the volume

on the world sometimes,

but who knows what they’d say

if I do.

Disinheritance

I remember how you threw a stapler at me from across the

room & when I think of it now the stapler hits a wall in my

mind slams metallically on the floor but I see you weren’t

mad at me you were mad at yourself the things you do to

your children are like etchings on metal plates they carry

these plates with them through their entire lives & when

new situations arise they pull out their etched metal to try

and make sense of what’s happening before them for

example my natural reaction to people is to wonder what I

have done to upset them & it’s because of this stapler

etching you gave to me when I was six because your life

was falling apart not mine so I am giving this thing back to

you it hasn’t helped me & it is heavy.

A Breath

Prana-Sanskrit for

breath—a vital life

sustaining force of

living beings flows onto

the page in symbols

of abstract black

ink which the mind has

bound up with meaning

& our mouths sculpt breath

putting sound to these

symbols that break the

plane of lips & enter

this new quantum

Universe where quarks

& strings pulsate to

every single sylla-

ble so before

you engage the muscles

in your cheeks &

even think of lowering

your jaw &

forming your tongue to

shape this force realize

the resulting rhythms

you skip across

the reflective

surface will ripple

& dance & tickle

& stab the beating

apparatus of

everything that has

ever existed.

I object

to food being left in the fields to rot

while those who have, celebrate.

As Leviticus  says: the harvest is not done

‘til all have eaten.

I object

to calling deserts “wastelands”, lands-for-our-waste,

when all that we are really naming

is our own ignorance

of all that breathes and teems

in a space unknown to us.

I object

to cities lit by fuels of fossil strength

to illuminate the night – for what?

so that we can neither breathe by day

nor see the stars

in whose nurseries

Carbon is born.

I object

To saying “ straight” to mean not gay

( even though it may also mean not happy )

as if to love one’s own

were crooked,

as if to love could ever,

ever would,

be wrong.

I object

to bad coffee

that is also not “fair”

if by “fair” we mean

what it would mean

if I were you and you were me.

It is unfair to use fair as an ambiguous adjective;

even we knew this as kids:

“Fair is fair.”

I object

to obliterating history

re-writing time,

resetting calendars to the year “1”

as if there were not, had not been,

three thousand

seven hundred

sixty one years

already counted

and Lawfully lived.

I object

to forgetting

as if the past were superfluous,

just so much flotsam in the tides of time,

as if, Jean-Paul, all that counts is now.

Refusal to remember is not

an innocent vagueness,

not an individual indolence

for all forgetting takes others’ memories

of moments that have mattered,

and looses to obdurate oblivion what could instruct us all.

I object.