I’m not posting this to turn my blog into a poetry critique class. There are plenty of issues to complain about here. I’m posting it because I wrote it 20 years ago this week, while sitting in a hotel room in Amsterdam. Take it for what it’s worth and remember all those who died 20 years ago today.
September 11, 2001:
Three planes
destroy three buildings
that once stood
taller than the
cedars of Lebanon.
Tijuana, 1963:
There’s a picture of mom,
and dad, and me
with sombreros.
I don’t remember.
To early.
Nearly three-thousand people die:
Business or pleasure?
No. Life or death!
In the same week we Jews
pray for renewal.
San Diego, 1979:
A wedding in powder blue.
Yes, it’s true,
powder blue
tuxedos.
Just a few crazed bastards,
some barely 30 years of age,
chose death
to harvest and discard
the entire infrastructure
of humanity.
And where are
the Pope and Dalai Lama now?
And where are
the Moslems who defend life?
And why retain
compassion now?
Redondo Beach, 1984:
There’s a picture of my
tai chi group on the beach.
This
I remember
all too well!
Paris 1987:
A café on the “boul miche”,
with coffee and scientific dictionaries
and the writings of
Pierre Boulez,
by the IRCAM sign.
Nearly three thousand people die:
For a cause no one understands.
With hand written instructions for piety and
the roots of liberty are torn from the earth,
in the same week I read about John Adams.
Paris, again, 1989:
A café on the “boul miche”.
with a wedding,
thankfully,
in black
and white.
Just a few crazed bastards
choose prayer then death.
Clear-cutting over three thousand
people.
Valencia, 1982:
A music degree.
A military industrial complex grows.
An actor for president.
And the law changes now:
They can now tap your phone
by name, not simply number.
The National Guard
checks
baggage.
And pity the man who
visits a pornographic website,
now that they can track the history
of all his visits.
Big Sur, 1967:
A seven year old at Esalon?
No. A family trip
to see “General Sherman Tree”.
Foreshadowing three grown children
whose liberty now stands shaken.
Considering
the threats,
Those few crazed bastards
rightly die.
And where are
the Pope and Dalai Lama now?
And where are
the Moslems who defend life?
And why retain
compassion now?
Los Angeles, 1960
Would I have come into a world
so devoid of human values,
for a lost liberty, in a land of sadness,
had I known and had a soul
to chose?
As my gift of liberty wanes, I fear.
the pope and Dalai Lama
and Moslems who defend life
are overshadowed by the evil.
Tearing the roots of joy from
the tree of life.
Yet, succumb to fear
and lose compassion
and WE discard
the entire infrastructure of humanity!
Los Angeles, 1960:
I think
I have
my answer.
And where are
the Pope and Dalai Lama now?
And where are
the Moslems who defend life?
And why retain
compassion now?
September 11, 2001:
Today compassion was torn from the earth
like the root-ball of a redwood;
taking with it
a rich mass of soil
forty-one years in diameter.
(c)2013 Dandylines Books [From "The New Poetics of Isolation" ISBN 9781490907659]
Bless you all and may this stand as a memory of both those who died in America today and those who died in 20 years of war that, for a variety or reasons, should not have taken thousands more lives and billions of dollars from our children.
Almost Rational 