Thursday, May 28, 2015

Wanted For Immediate Employment

Position:  Fearless Philosopher-King
Length of Contract:  Number of Heartbeats.
Compensation: Our Gratitude and Love.
Duties: Don’t starve the people,
Don't rob them, don't lie and tell them
You’ll fix what can't be fixed,
Don’t attack foreign poor people,
Almost everyone’s grandmother
Was once poor, and foreign,
Don’t ship away our jobs as if
We had outgrown them while selling
What we outgrew making.  Feel free
To gut the wealthy as you see fit,
But you can’t stash the stash
In Swissland for your kids’ sake
Or set up Foundations to end
Poverty and let the chips
Fall where they may.  We pray
For as little violence as possible. 
If you think you have what it takes,
Write for an appointment.
The job begins immediately, after
The coup and an interview with the historian
You feel best captures the future.

All the Lame Our Glory Provides

It’s impossible to get to me.  I’m surrounded
By the best of the nest. And still, orphans show up,
The blind, the old, women too, many whose limbs
Were torn from their bodies, their stumps like erasers
At the chewed ends of pencils broken beyond use.

Hundreds of thousands have limped past, dragging
Themselves through their I-tragedies like monsters,
Learning how to live without an arm or leg, learning
To eat without faces, to chew without jawbones,
How to swallow without heaving it back on the plate,

Teaching patience to their loved ones.  I see them riding
Punishment’s conveyor belt, top billing in the drama
When I lift the curtain of my eyes, driving or dreaming
About my place in their suffering. And that’s when
I imagine myself as one of them, over the guardrail

With a carload of guilt, exploding in a ball of flame,
Like a more cinematic Jesus, dusted for the world’s sins
And souls bound for hell. That’s when I grip the wheel
A little tighter, and clear my eyes. That’s when I think
To pat the backs of all the creative-destroyer types,

Because, otherwise, chaos would be the only author.

Monday, May 25, 2015

The Beginning of the End

It all started with Enlightenment scholars
When they tried to fix stupid, and it will end
With unfixed stupid wielding the mirrors
Of the Enlightenment.  Once Professor 

Einstein called civilization an axe
In the hands of a psychopath.  That guy
Was an Einstein about more than the shape
Of time, he knew the Adam in the atom.

Now people get so excited about technology
When it comes in the form of spaceships
And devices to unlock the mysteries

Of our souls, that when wars begin they
Run to see just how lethal smart can be.
Thus, the original target gets enlightened!