Three Poems For These Times

They Stand 

They stand;

They stand for water, 

meaning they stand for life

They stand for justice, 

meaning they stand for all of us

They stand for common sense, and dignity, and basic rights

which means the puffy men of comfy chairs and dollar brains

can’t stand them

Each one of them is a standing rock;

They make a stand we all must eventually make

with muscular courage they are

the voice of the human race

Those who bring firehoses, and tear gas, and rubber bullets ~ they do not stand

They crawl, they limp, they cower beneath power;

like the attack dogs they bring with them, they have been taught to be cruel

by their masters

taught to be mere weapons; fangs, fists

taught to mistake those who love them for their enemy

and those who disdain them for their benefactor

steroids and weight rooms and protein shakes and karate classes and weapons training, 

all to mask what their actions betray;

they are puny ~ they do not stand; 

they crawl

But, the standing rocks of Standing Rock

understand

and so they stand over

Hymn For Whiteistan

On Red blood, with Black skin

through White plans, for White kin

did we build beloved Whiteistan

Whiteistan! My father's land;

fought and paid for

killed and died for

hallowed Whiteistan

Our foundries? lost

our steel mills? stolen

crimes of a plotting Yellow race;

our borders breached, our prisons swollen
by Browns who need reminding of their place

Soulless tyrants scorned us

as each outrage stoked our ire;

May they burn! A champion of our cause

has risen - blazed to imperviousness - from the fire

Long may he reign o'er Whiteistan

My father's land,

and his

No scions of the West will wrest

this sovereign land from our strong hands;

the East's elites 
will neither mind our soil nor soil our minds;

though coasts would pen us in

we yield not;

Whiteistan! My father's land

~ not yours

And though our flag be White

as snow upon our northern borders

surrender not shall we

nor from outsiders take our orders

we pledge our souls to Whiteistan

our Fatherland

our Last Stand

home of the free

Anger Year

In the year the music died

a prince slept

 with a kiss

an eagle flew, 

already gone

a changeling fell from earth

feeling very still

and all sang, 'hallelujah'

But, angry songs fill our ears in this

extraordinary year;

we said goodbye to minstrels

but a jester claimed the throne

A child, falls into a pit

- where was his mother? -

a magnificent animal

thirty times his size

with arms like tree trunks

seizes him;

'twas one or the other

and no question, really;

have we EVER chosen differently

when faced off against The Beast?

Ascendant, like Pharaohs, atop 

a mountain of bison skulls

we look down upon sandpaper rivers

rust red bleeding rivers

to drink is to fall ill;

From whence this plague?

Were Pharaoh's crimes as egregious as our own?

The Nile's god-men suppressed peoples

but we, the Spoiled Brats of Technology

have outraged HER! The one dancing orb

amidst a swirling sea of dark inhospitality

that offers breath, and expression 

twirling around a sun we turned away from

Having found her one weakness

her shame, buried deep within her

we gouge at it, feast upon it

fashion totems from it; mock her

could we not obey one simple admonition

though life depends upon it

not to frack with Mother Nature?

Politics;

Two parties, cemented in La Brea

a pygmy rhino suffocated by its own flatulence

and a stag with horns so heavy

it can't crane its head from the muck

scream war cries at each other from

the thick of the pit;

their extinction a formality now -

put them on a postage stamp; might as well 

they're done

Meanwhile, humanity

faces off as two camps

Whiteistan vs. Brownistan

hating each other, even killing each other

as if to prove that inside all is red;

mistakes cannot be learned from until 

they are recognized as mistakes

seen as folly and passed on as such to the next generation;

but we are not ready

we wear our mistakes like badges 

Only radical love - and radical forgiveness -

are what we are called to

only these can lead to yearned-for change

only radical love removes the monster 

from the equation

and raises a stance that doesn't scrape and agitate

Love is the answer, but what is the question?
It seems we've forgotten

or care not