As I contemplate
The things for which I’m thankful,
This Thanksgiving Day,
My thought keep on returning,
Almost without fail,
To this grand experiment,
Managing somehow
To maintain its functioning
Despite ill intent
From an elected leader
Lacking heart, and soul, and thought.
In a former life,
digits were significant,
windows into certain truths.
Now I hold focus
on subjects far more tangible:
Standard Deviants
who analyze variance,
then regress toward the mean!
Somewhere, below, lies
Bristol, famed for it’s street art;
An ever-changing
Desert of stone walls, stencils,
Spraycans, and wheat-paste,
Chronicled by one poet,
And honored by another.
This, I know, is true.
Between these words lie meaning,
Blatant and obscure,
Obviously camouflaged
Within white spaces
Surrounds by darkened lines;
Razor sharp yet, oddly, blurry.
Is there no respite
From cacophonous onslaught?
Grave silence beckons
Offering some false solace;
A dulcet Siren,
Singing softly of retreat
From all worldly suffering.
Oh, that hollow call,
Promising a warm embrace
In the frozen earth.
When’s the time to grieve
Climatic devastation
Sweeping all nations?
When once deciduous trees
Fail to shed their leaves?
Is that our cue for sorrow?
When there’s just no tomorrow?
It’s not lost on me,
This delicious irony,
As I stalk my son
Between Italian webcams
Half a world away,
That I decry surveillance
When conducted by the state!
Barberini Square- Bernini’s Triton Fountain
Piazza Della Rotunda- the obelisk of Ramses II
Piazza Navona- Fountain of the Four Rivers
Every passing year
Drives in deeper the wedges
Increasing the strain
On civil interaction.
How much longer can
This great tree of liberty
Remain unsundered standing?
Name me not Traitor
Because I hold different views
On our country’s course
From those beliefs held by you.
One of us must be
Horribly mistaken but
Question not my Allegiance!
As damp November,
Misty morns, slowly become
Crisp December dawns,
How can we begin to heal
Fractured families
And reunite feuding friends
Once in harmony
When the Fracturer-in-Chief
Still Fraks the beds of hatred?
Poor human flotsam
Awash in noise and chaos
Tossed from wave to wave
At sea in humanity
Borne by wind and tide
Another sad castaway
Drifting, far from safe harbor.
As we rise above
Hate and fear, lies and furor,
Division lines fade,
Differences diminish.
And so we begin
To sense a common union
In this vastness void.
From that lofty perspective,
We must ask ourselves
How can we hope for better
Making others’ prospects worse?
It is often true
Seventh grade is rarely fun.
Hormones run amok!
Feeling like a mindless hun.
What’s a guy to do
Lest his teacher, by good luck,
Deftly makes the learning fun?
Only days ago
Weathered old barns and silos,
Living history,
Stood above this flowered lea.
Icons of the past.
Crowns of strength and dignity.
Upon that hilltop,
Remote source of mystery.
Removed now from sight.
Soon to serve some other need?
Monument to modern greed?
