1
A Fragment,
or
A Stalactite

the signs hold that this you cannot escape
while only your wife has time energy and incentive to help
The system has a flaw:
you wife’s not the time energy nor incentive to exist
and anyway you anyway have to do the project anyway
because
the real problem is not your aching gut
but
all these animated boulders
that walk like men and whose shoulders
ache and shake with the weight
of the world, which it is their Fate
to gobble without tasting
certain that they’ve earned
what they’re so busy wasting
never having learned
to note their elbows on the table
heavy, made of stones and cables
that tilt it all towards their bellies
which are rock outside but inside jelly
and everywhere
the symphony of innocence
is dying and drying in the sun
like jellyfish on the beach when we were very young
some times are better
some times are worse
better systems let kinder moments shine
worse systems drown kindness with that old line
about how the real world’s made for real men
and only losers worry about how you feel when
everything’s been turned to fortress and war
and no one recalls what that was all for

2
The Time of the Vampires

we were living in the time of the vampires
with vultures circling round our cobblestone streets
everywhere hung bodies without heads
and from their spike-bodies stared
heads without bodies and faces without souls

we had come from the time of the angels
when philosophers and mystics joked around the fountain
in the center of our town
when everyone had a voice and no one feared anyone’s song
when the king and his council ruled at the leisure of the people and their thought
which evolved through tussle laugh and art

we were living the victory of the lie
it had just taken one bandit with the vision to keep on lying
it had just taken one network with the wattage to keep on lying
it had just taken one scholar with the wisdom to keep on lying
it had just taken one lie dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equally hollow
and that nothing is true except victory and its spoils
and that God’s no fool so God knows it too
and that all the saints are wise they also were never fooled
by all that talk of Truth, Goodness, Beauty and Justice
and that that miracle when we could talk as equals
had never happened, not for one moment, no, it was always somebody throwing somebody else down the stairs
for fun and/or profit
there was never a single moment when the government accepted constructive criticism and evolved towards the better and away from the worse
Slavery never ended or maybe it never really was that bad kind of slavery, women and blacks never got the vote or maybe they always had just as much of it as they needed, children are still losing their fingers and the mills and coughing their blackened lungs out in the mines or maybe they’re just whining again; big money never had to accept checks on its power, and every president was a ruthless dictator using the office to cement his power and extract wealth from the system; and what we’re doing here is not perfect, but its better, and holier than all that, because, for one thing, we admit that rulers only care about power and that democracy was always a scam

we were living in the time of the vampires
with vulture pecking at eyes dangling from heads
while little green bugs climbed up the crooked staves
to lick up the blood and gristle drizzling down from slant-chopped necklines
and it was all because we found black and white lies and finalities
more comforting than shades of gray and growing two steps forward one step back always having to start again from zero to start over again from
is this aware and clear, is this honest and accurate, is this competent and careful, is this kind and compassionate, is this joyfully sharing in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone and binds us all in the One Light? How close were we to the mark we never quite make? And how can we relax, let it all go for a moment, straighten up, push out from within, and try try again to tell the truth to ourselves, each other, and the systems within which we live and through which we more-jointly-as-gently steer our destiny
?