In This Garden, May 28, 2017

In this garden there are no rankling voices

With answers and choices that are neither.

Sunday with a woodpecker and a fat jay, all

Singing for our stake, in the shade of hazelnut

Bushes, now trees you can’t control no matter

How much you need deep down to grab hold

And steer them, hydra-headed they come back

Like offspring of war. Today I let it grow as will,

With squirrels bellyflopping from branches

To help undo the best intentions gone sour,

This moment when the lizard madly dashes

Between nettles both sides of the path,

Their leaves wide open for a handful of sun.
I already hate what I'm about to jot down.

America, the Game

In the game some play

By the rules, others slay

According to the aim

No matter what shame

Gets visited on the game,

The aim is always to win

And climb out of that sin

Losers feel all the same.

Unless your God awaits

With a book of notations

And timeless quotations

For your choice of fates,

Playing the game of lies

And disdain for the whys

Lands you the only prize:

Fear, in power’s disguise.

Rules apply to saps

And those with a vision

Of eternal damnation,

Feathers in their caps

Burning as beacons

For the whole of creation

Like blushing deacons

Witness dog exultation

On the corner where Go

Has an electric fence

To fry the poor and low,

Whose capital offense

Is being. Hence a God

Or a conqueror’s bod

Since the game’s rules

Are meant for the fools

While life means zero

To the capitalist weirdo

Whose one God is fame

And a moneyed last name.