Showing posts with label Pathology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pathology. Show all posts

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Ghouls

  
Ghouls
   
When living in a city such as this,
One wonders where the virtues all have gone.
For here’s a source of much of all the vice
That darkens this, the planet we are on… 
   
And some will say, “This place is not the worst.”
And this might be, for famine, war, disease
Are horrors – that our burghers here are spared – 
Whose ravages, in places far, increase.
   
And surely, there are decent folk who live
In cities such as this, where Mammon rules.
But these are quiet. They accept the vice,
For those who don’t are treated here as fools.
   
What place is there, in such a city, for
The ones who dream – or even write in verse?
Along with those, who point to right and wrong,
Such folk receive the cynic’s shrug – or curse.
   
What space is there, in such a race as this,
For those who pause or even dare to stand?
For both of these require a state of mind
The racers shun and will not understand. 
   
There’s sugar piled in heaps along the streets
But even children do not pause to taste.
And only when the pavements too are glazed
Do passersby attempt to check their haste.
  
For this is New York City – as in towns,
Across the world, of industry, finance,
The citizens are racing.  Each awakes
To those alarms that start the fevered dance.
   
You’ll see them running, so’s to catch the train.
You’ll catch them napping, while they ride, because
They’re short of sleep. So workers feed the fire
In which they burn.  The mills can never pause.
   
Some race because they must, to just survive,
But others have the dollar in the eye.
“Accumulate, and in the hustle, thrive!
And shove aside the ones, who question why!”
   
So finer instincts yield to coarser ones
As each competes and pushes, pulls in turn.
So men and women turn to zombies crazed,
As spirit’s ashes fill the urban urn.
     
It’s winter.  So the heaps are fallen snow
That’s sullied by the city’s soot – with light
Reflecting still from crystals – in the day
From angled sun – and from the lamps at night. 
  
But soon enough, the snow will turn to slush
And people, as they wade the pools, will curse,
As poets too, whose shoes and socks are soaked
With fluids dark and chill, neglect their verse…
   
So beauty is ignored, until it turns
To ugliness that taxes weary souls.
For this is New York City – like its twins,
Around the globe, whose denizens are ghouls.
  
They came from places far, from villages
Where people had the time to sit, converse – 
Or even towns where paces might have been
A little slower, and the speech less terse.
   
What happened?  You can see it in the kids.
In places such as this, you’ll often find,
Among the ones who still are whole, the ones
Afflicted with the illnesses of mind.
    
2015 February 7th, Sat.
(with stanzas added Feb. 8th, Sun.)
Brooklyn, New York 
   

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Beware, the Planes!

 
Beware, the Planes!
   
And some now fly in jet-planes through the sky,
While others labor closer to the dirt.
And surely none would either space deny,
But who does more of harm to this our Earth?

Some fly across the continents and oceans
For reasons every human understands.
But others fly, as part of world-elites,
To propagate the ills that plague our lands.

Yet these, who fly in arcs across the blue,
Are adulated by our pundits wise.
There may be sky enough for pundits too,
But is there oil enough – as waters rise?

“The wealth-creators” is the term that’s used
For flyers high – they make, we’re told, the wealth.
Yet one more term, in ignorance, abused!
Do tell us, why we still should worship stealth?         \1

The theft of labor – that is nothing new.
On that was built the empires of the world –
But never on the scale that now proceeds,
As all the planet is, in hellfire, hurled.

We each were one among the myriad,
As person or as species, part of a whole,
With all our conflicts, still in harmony,
And playing, each, an individual role…

For each has senses – so that each perceives
What’s best for each and for the others too.
If a cell or other being does not care
To listen, then – it's deafness, it will rue.

Can this, our world, bear such an overrun
By one deaf species, maddened, cancerous?
And does this species have, as destiny,
This lunacy? For what’s become of us?

We have the financiers, the ones with cash,
And those who serve them, in their penguin suits –
And then the masses, laboring for bosses –
And then, there’s jet-planes, bombs – and marching boots.

For who can stand against the megatons?
And who can down the devil-drones that fly?
Omnipotent, omniscient are those
Who fly above – while village orphans cry.

The brigand kings, their lords, the emperors,
And all the ruthless feeding chains below,
Were gone, we thought, with “rights divine” and worse.
But now we’ve more, to whom we all should bow?

The empires gave, to each, a place, indeed,
In which, at rung on ladder, each could toil.
A few could climb, on others, towards the top,
While most, near bottom, worked the planet’s soil.

But now our emperors are globalized.
We’re cogs in gears, within their great machines.
And where’s the place, where we can flee their reach
Or hide our children from their venal schemes?

Our kids, corrupted by what’s marketed
From all around, ignore the words we speak.
They eat of fire – so they each then burn,
And in their turn, yet more of havoc wreak…

So classes new are born and take their place.
They toil, consume – as profits rise, like cream.
What’s left of cultures, profiteers deface,
As missiles, guns and jails enforce this “dream”.

Whichever nation tries to dam this tide
And so survive, however small its bay,
Is flooded, by the dollar, as the plane
That flies on high ensures that all obey.

A state that tries to sing a different tune
Is quickly crushed – or suffocated slow.
It's demonized – until we all agree
That states like it should bleed to death and go.

Its leaders, pressured, may then means devise
To stay in power – means of brutal force.
And this adds powder to our media’s guns.
Our leaders stay upon their ruthless course.

For what they do – or what our allied states
May do – are not revealed to us.
Who bulldozes the shelters that are left
Or bombs from high – except the goons we trust?

And there’s resistance – here and there, we see
The workers, peasants or the tribesmen rise.
And then they’re crushed, with hammer-blows, while we
The sorry truth, but rarely might surmise.

We scarcely know, what happens down the street,
Much less, what occurs in another city.
So when the flyer makes his distant deal,
Who’s there to watch – or those, who suffer, pity?

Our minds determine what we humans are.
Who captures minds, directs what humans do.
And so are media used to start a war –
Or make us work to buy a product new.

For guns and bombs alone do not suffice.
Along with fear, they’ve yet more tools to use.
For every human virtue, there’s a vice
That works – to capture, weaken and abuse.

And seeing their societies rot, we see
That some, alarmed, for reasons right or wrong –
To privileges, rights, as case may be, preserve –
Have grown suspicious of the siren song.

So there’s resistance of another kind,
That rears its head and howls with ancient fury.
To violence, it answers loud in kind.
A “holy book” is made the judge and jury.

Go read the Torah, Bible or Koran.
Hear Krshna weasel Arjuna in rhymes.                   \2
Of what was lauded in those ancient texts,
You’ll hear the echo then, in present times.

In our Manhattan, as the workers toiled,
The towers rose in grandeur in the skies.
And then they fell. But others rise again.
So who has won? A widow softly cries.

In the autumn sky, a plane that arced and dove.
And Sodom then it was, in Mammon’s city.            \3
So zealots here repeated, as they did
In Bamyan, an ancient, sorry story.

But it was wealth that challenged wealth that day
And does – across the globe, as angels dark
Do battle, as the people cringe and die.
Beware, those streaks that through the heavens arc!

2014 January 18th, Sun. &  25th, Sat. 
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York 


1. The word "stealth" has been used here in its original (now archaic) sense.
 
2. The reference is to the Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krshna persuades a reluctant warrior, Arjuna, to try to slay, in battle, his childhood mentors, relatives and friends.

3. Bamyan, in Afghanistan, was where the huge statues of the Buddhas stood, until they were dynamited by the Wahabi extremists, not long before they successfully attacked the Manhattan towers as well as the Pentagon.  The fierce monotheistic zeal recorded in the old Hebraic texts survives and manifests itself in this and other ways. This zealotry is also utilized, as always, to reach towards worldly ends.   

Please see also:
  
The Wealth Creators  

http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-wealth-creators.html


 

Friday, December 20, 2013

Delousing Time

      
Delousing Time
          
So Christmas comes – and brings, to some, relief.
When schools are closed, the teachers then can sleep,
And so indeed can students – quite a few,
Who stayed up nights on all the items due.

And workers, where there’s simply Christmas, might
Enjoy, perhaps, a bit more rest at night.
But sadly, Commerce rules.  As Christmas comes,
Along with carols, hark – the sound of drums!

They’re calling out to shoppers – “Come and buy!
Consume, consume – and never question why!”
And so you'll see the parents, haggard, seek
For gizmos.  Shopping’s not for those who’re weak.

Thanksgiving, once, was a holiday from jobs,
Except for those who cooked for their nabobs.
But now, we see the stores are open wide.
And at their gates – beware, the human tide!  

And so with Christmas.  As the solstice nears
And passes, we’re besieged with nibbling fears.
So Christmas too becomes a time for worry.
The ones who profit never say they’re sorry.

But still, we’re happy, those who teach at schools,
Who’re treated, through their working lives, like fools.
A week or more to rest, to clean the house,
Do catch-up work and also – to delouse…

For though our schools have long been human mills,
They test yet more our patience, souls and wills.
And infestations grow within our minds,
Whose purging now proceeds, as each unwinds.

So Christmas is delousing time for us,
When teachers breathe – and in their instincts trust.
And then, till June, we’ll labor.  Lice will breed –
And on our souls, till summer, bite and feed.

Whoever engineered this servitude,
Should now be blessed with true beatitude.
Let Bloombergs grow yet richer, every day.
“We’ll work yet harder!” grateful workers say.

We labor for our students, yet we ask,
Who profits most from every thankless task?
Our students – or the ones who want them herded?
I'll whisper now...  So tell me, if you heard it.

;-)

2013 December 20th, Friday
Brooklyn, New York

 Comments are welcome.  Please see below.
 

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Homo Moderni

   
Homo Moderni
              

Bereft of reason and of virtues, filled with much that's vile,
With ancient humors each replaced by substitute of bile,
A prey to all the vices old and host to evils new,
The modern human stands and even struts for us to view.

And all the subtleties that marked the one of “culture” are
Now vanished.  All that now remains are crudities that war.
Yet all the innocence of one who's “primitive” is gone,
With gentle arts replaced by those in cataclysms born.

What once belonged to Nature, just as much as does a flower,
Is now possessed by devilry, and fully in its power.
So songs that issued forth in melodies are now replaced
By screams as only lunatics might voice, with madness faced.

Where was once had pulsed a heart, the metal pistons loudly stroke,
And where there once was mind, we only find a tragic joke.
For garbage fills the hemispheres and excrement now flows
Through vesicles.  And when it speaks, its inner state, it shows.

For surely, “it” is all that's fit for such as human is,
That's been transformed by factories to such a state as this.
And though compassion rises, hesitation follows soon,
For if such products would depart, would not that be a boon?

And yet, this is a human, kin to all the beasts and birds,
And still a child of Nature, yes, despite our vicious words.
And so, to that one spirit that we still conceive as good,
We pray that evil should depart – or we've misunderstood.

2013 September 14th, Sat.
Brooklyn

The Daily Poet


Saturday, December 17, 2011

Addictions


Addictions

I never drank my fill of wine or beer or heady liquor,
Except for once, when I was young and still in youthful vigor.
I never took more drags than one on weed that passed around,
I never smoked more cigarettes than one in a daily round.
I snorted once some powder, when a post-doc in the west,
And knew at once that this, for me, was clearly not the best.

I drink a cup or two a day of coffee, sweet, with milk,
And tea aplenty when I eat of noodles and their ilk,
And I'm addicted now, for years approaching nearly seven,
To writing, typing verses that have more of hell than heaven.
And I had written chapters long on states of schools in trouble,
But more than all of this I've spent on working shifts of double.

If only I were paid for both, I could have now retired,
But since I never was or could, I've just grown old and tired.
And when I cease from working, why—the demons in my brain
That never had a place before, play tricks I can't explain.
For conflicts deep have entered and have ravaged the seat of reason,
And there's no drug to cure that wound, nor hope of a kinder season.

So now I understand, perhaps, addictions all around,
For when the peace within is lost, then devils do abound.
And all around, the manic race, and all around, the wars,
The destruction that is senseless, mad, come not from baleful stars,
But from addictions deep, profound that rise from lack of peace,
And till that peace within is found, these conflicts will not cease.

Babui / Arjun
2011 December 17th, Sat.
Brooklyn