UNCLE

I thought you died

In the last war but I

See you are up to your

Old tricks again

Pointing your finger

Bullying boys to join

Your cause of killing

People

O say can you see the

Fields filling with those

Who believed your old lie

That freedom means fighting

Now more clownish than ever

In those striped pants and hat,

Yet not as real as rocking children

Waiting, waiting to follow you, Sam

MAINLANDS

No compass or maps to guide them

            Across cruel, unchartered seas,

Only hungry eyes to lead them

            To distant, alien shores.

No crosses to commemorate first steps,

            Only curious on-looking gulls.

Yet two thousand years later armed

            With compass and Greek math and logic

They headed West to find the East

            And sailed upon the western Atlantic,

Yet missing two seas and an entire continent

            They claimed their New World.

FIRE FLIES

They glitter and glow like flashing stars

The fire flies we chase in summer’s sky.

With some power we can not understand

We try to catch them and hold in hand

Yet can only watch and wonder why

The ones we catch and place in jars

Will not shine and seem to refuse

Until we open the jar and turn them loose. 

And just like us whether a fly or kid

No light shines under glass or lid.

LAST RITES

I heard they buried you today

Laid you to rest next to

“in God we trust”

And the last of your eagles.

It was a closed casket ceremony

Because you were so badly

Disfigured being run over

By a billion evasive species.

We sent your widow a card

Signed by all us

Unemployed union workers.

                        PLATO’S CAVE

                        Of course the rooms are still filled with shadows

                        While lazar lights and computer programs prove

More cost effective than fire yet the cardboard

Cut-outs and the curtains have remained the same

As well as those old lies that trees are real,

That the way out really goes somewhere,

That Math leads more than circles

And that Apollo himself is behind the curtains

Keeping their domino world from collapsing.

Only a few banned poets or other down and outers

With only a pocketful of Zen dare climb

The arduous way out as most prefer

To sit and argue about living conditions

Or the quality of food and have learned to love

The rope while accepting some back door reality.

            FOR ELBA, 2012

Pale would be the waters

            That reflect only skies

And grace not the splendor

            Of your enchanting eyes.

Pale would be the moon

            That only marks its pace

And fails to look down upon

            Your more fairer face.

Paler would be the poet

            Whose words can not express

One word to match your smile

            Or something deeper no less.

UNPRINCIPLE OF UNCERTAINTY

I keep it always quite natural

In my perfectly unnatural

Selection this bigfoot in boxers

Freaking nature no Brownian

Movement could ever detect.

Indeterminate yet principled

In my unprincipled principle of uncertainty.

You can find me hunched

Behind a wall of billboards

And thinly disguised bas-reliefs

Leading to the center of unreal cities

Where I keep my temples tall.

Pure bacchanal

From the barrio bringing

Basketsful of baryons

And binary broken bits—

Careful, the alphas will leave

You quite brain dead

And all quite meaningless

Among the unions and uniforms

Except for the dream of

Unicorns and unisex.