New Poem: You Are Not Here

You Are Not Here
***
town dump gulls, foraging
like Rio kids in a mound of garbage
looking for edible discards, and
"everybody's lookin' for a
free ride," shallow mockery cries
echo "get a job" = "work for free"
echo "protect & serve" = "neglect & sever,"
and even the gulls are crying,
dying for a seashore
without a high-rise.
still, hear
"quit givin' people handouts, and those
______s will have to
W.O.R.K." = Worry Overpay Rich Killers,
but
would you pay your tithes
if they weren't tax write-offs, or
would you crawl on the floor,
squall, bawl, and bemoan
that lousy 10%
that you didn't get to spend
on Lotto & Beer?
chickadee, chickadee in the trees,
backhoe-fart, no more trees,
so no more chickadees,
no more cock-a-doodle-doo
until the backhoe man goes home,
jacks off over internet porn
until his cock crows,
silently disdainful of the dreadlocks
and cornrows
of kids busted for spray-painting
a new Picasso
on a gray underpass, "Hi,
i'm a cop, and
i can kick your ass and
get a free pass
when i flash my badge."
and it's no need explainin'
that the ones who get paid for complainin'
on talk radio or teevee
look like the fattest gulls in the dump,
knee-jerk reflex action-figures
that aim kicks at anybody
bent over to scrounge nickels from the gutters
or half a sandwich from a garbage can
in the park
where "rummaging through rubbage"
is punishable by law,
you may have to pay a FINE, tee-hee,
from nonexistent funds
stolen from your wallet
by tax-cuts for the rich,
the wealthy Bible-thumpers
who've forgotten how to read
about the widow's great gift of 2 pennies
or the warning about serving Mammon.
for every white suburbian girl
who gets into a stranger's pick-up truck,
a thousand non-white non-suburbian kids
get written off as acceptable losses
in wars that are more about profit-margins
than about the boys * girls who die on foreign soil
to pave the way for those
to arrogant to fight & too rich to care . . .
and you are not here
and you are not seeing this
and you aren't to blame
and you aren't doing anything wrong,
and you aren't doing ANYTHING
and you are WRONG
and you ARE to blame
and you ARE seeing this
and you are HERE
right where the arrow points down
and nails your insignificant mortal speck
to the spot.

New Poem: Know the Refrain

Know the Refrain
***
it's like howling at the moon, and hearing it howl back
it's like watching the trees move in the breeze,
and feeling your veins do the same thing
it's like being tested by fire a hundred times
until only a core of diamonds remains
it's like listening to the same song a hundred times
just to hear the refrain

you wonder if you missed the train
reaching for a grip that slips out of your grasp
nothing but a gasp between you and forever
a well you're falling into
and something in the night calls your name
a phone ringing at midnight
with bad news breathing down your neck
a wreck of something you might have been
and you'll never build anything from the ruins
that won't fall down again
ashes, ashes, we all
fall down.

you can make your home look like a picture in a magazine
you can stake all your hopes on the American dream
you can break a thousand hearts looking for the right one
you can take from everybody you meet and not gain a thing.

something's missing.
meter, rhythm, rhyme
cadence and design
pages full of words that--
distilled into their purest form--
only repeat
LISTEN.
PLEASE LISTEN.
ARE YOU LISTENING?

Jesus saw us as sheep
and they nailed Him to a cross.
Paul called us idiots
and they locked him in a prison.
Socrates drank a poison cup
because he woke too many dreamers up.
Martin and Malcolm took a bullet
that was fired by 200 years of hate.

You're more likely to die for doing the right thing
and more likely to earn a profit for doing the wrong thing
and there's all these things laying around
radioactive, poisonous, dangerous
littering the ground we call history
but it's nobody's story but our own.
You wrote it.
I wrote it.
Worse yet, we let people we hardly knew
write it for us,
and our silence gave them consent
as long as we were kept content.

You've listen to this same song a hundred times . . .
i think by now
you know the refrain.