Treachery and Terror

  
Treachery and Terror
 
What use are treaties if they are
Ignored and violated—
Not once or twice—repeatedly,
With greed and lust unsated?
 
When leaders lead in treachery
And the rest of us are blind,
Then those who deal in lechery
Leave all the rest behind. 
 
So public crimes and private ones
Compete in cruel sin,
And horrors terrorize the world—
The one we all are in.
 
****** 
  
If one has more of weaponry
And even more of lies,
And allies who support one’s acts,
Then all resistance dies—
 
Or so one might believe, until
It rises yet again
In phoenix-form, from fire and ash, 
To strike back yet again.
 
But this is not acceptable.
It can’t be tolerated.
This challenges one's dominance—
So genocides are slated.
 
2025 September 30, Tue.
Berkeley, California
 

Sacrilege

 
Sacrilege

The only g*n*cide memorialized,
The only one in which we all are drilled,
Repeatedly, through schools and books and films,
With monuments erected, tributes paid,
With pilgrimages due, from those on high
Before we vote, is that which stands alone.

No other slaughters, even those that cleared
The continents on which we settlers live,
Can ever be compared to that Event
Of horror that is singular, unique.

And so our taxes can be used to send
Not only funds but lethal armaments
With which to maim and slaughter thousands. This
Cannot be questioned, nor compared to that—
The One whose name is all but deified.

So through this means, such horrors still are wrought
As might make even hardened mobsters pause
And yet are waved away or justified—
For there can only be that G*n*cide—
That One, that Only, Duly Guarded Thing—
That shields the ones who massacre and starve,
With critics charged with vilest heresy.

And so it is that all the horrors past
And all the ones succeeding that Event 
Of special, primal status, never count,
Nor those that happen right before our eyes.

So truth itself is buried deep in lies,
As bodies are—the dead or still alive—
Beneath the tons of wreckage. Still, we see
The women, children, elders, blasted, burned,
With cats and humans, huddled, homeless, starved,
And lies repeated—till a nation dies.

And some of us have slowly come to know
That even mentions of the victims or
Their land had been forbidden, seen as crimes,
Within the realms of those who’ve realized
With ardent help from other nations, this—
The crime of crimes. And now, in other lands,
The moves are underway, or well in place,
To stem the images and stop the words. 

The goal is not to simply end the lives—
And so the people—but to wipe, erase
The names themselves. What’s nameless can’t exist—
Or so the thinking and the feeling goes,
As power and wealth direct our human flows
And shape our sets of facts, our thoughts and views
By every means—including nightly news.

So is this something new? No, not at all,
Except for what those windows let us see
And hear, as if the ones who sobbed and screamed
Or spoke to us in fright, in measured tones,
Were present where we are, and not where lives
Are snuffed like candles by the blasts of bombs. 

And so we now will see those windows close,
Unless we rise together and resist
And dare to say the word we’ve all been told
Is sacrilege—and yet is naught but truth.

For what had occurred in the past and then
Repeated in our lifetimes is again 
Revived and walking, dressed in black, with scythe,
But wielding now the weapons we have wrought
That burn and blast and bury thousands, while
We coddle those who perpetrate these crimes. 

2024 March 12th, Tue.
Berkeley, California

What Still Remains?

What Still Remains?

Whatever be your credo or belief,
At times, you'll need some solace, some relief,
For that, on which you based your hopes and dreams,
Might be, in time, your aspiration’s thief.

For who can live for long without a loss,
Or never, racked and torn, tormented, toss?
Whenever we may think we’ve mastered life,
It turns and swiftly shows us who’s the boss.

The very things for which we’ve labored, fought,
Have focused on and all the rest forgot,
Those things, as life unwinds, may turn to dust,
And all our strivings then be set to naught.

And what remains, when all appears amiss,
When we, who’ve labored long, are still remiss?
Remember then, there still remains the dawn,
And in the darkness, smile and blow a kiss.

And when a faker, in a tie and suit,
Demands accounting, in his mad pursuit,
Then bow and hand to him a chit, on which
It says, “We’ve quit the race, so all is moot.”

For when our life’s account is drawn and closed,
Then what remains, of all we once supposed
Was worth the life we offered as its price?
“This question,” we are told, “is poorly posed.”

What then remains is still the work we did,
Though this, with time, will be in cobwebs hid –
But more than that, and lasting still a while,
The love we offered, though we weren’t bid.

Though falsehoods live, while truth appears to die,
And most accede, and few still question why,
And though the cause appears as hopeless, still
The truth remains the truth, and not the lie.
    
Let all coercion and compulsion be
Dissolved by that, which lives within a tree
And lets its branches, in the sun, delight,
That joy that makes us each, for a moment, free.

So in the valley deep of sorrows, sigh,
But never, to your courage, say, “Goodbye.”
There lives, in us, the stillness and the fire,
And these will live, though you and I will die.

2013 December 6th, Fri.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
 

The Age of Packaging – Part II

       
The Age of Packaging – Part II 
             
in which the state of these United States (and perhaps of other countries) is described and reflected on, albeit with eye and mind of prejudice... 
           
The Age of Packaging is what we're in.
But there is more to say.  And we had thought
To leave that out, as it's dispiriting.
But pessimism has its uses, too.
So we shall venture now upon that road
And leave to you to follow us or not.

We shall endeavor now to wail a dirge,
With sordid details woven in that seem
To indicate the death was homicide –
Except that we're recounting the demise
Of what was left of sorry humankind,
And so, perhaps, it's suicide that fits...

And some of you, I'm sure, would disagree.
For soon, that dream we had, when realized,
Will let the village boy or girl access
The knowledge – and, perhaps, the wisdom – stored
And ever growing, of our human kind,
So all can use this – and can add to it.

And soon, that other aspect too
Of that same dream – that when their citizens
Converse – and see the others' sufferings,
The nations then might bomb and war no more –
This too, we hope, could be reality...

And that might be, but isn't yet, and those
Who're cynics – or are realists – might ask,
“When families and clans and villages
Resort to violence, can nations cease?”

And others yet, more hopeful, might reply,
“If provinces and cities find their peace,
And often do not care for race or creed,
Then nation-states may surely do the same,
Or else dissolve, in time, so men may move
About and do, what they have always done
To live, without the burdens of a state
Or nation or of empire on their backs.

“And as they talk, across the distances,
Their narrow prejudices then might yield
To broader vision, while what's local still
Is treasured, drawing vigor from the new.”

But all of this is dream and speculation.
We look around and view reality –
And though our sighting may be jaundiced, we
Perceive, that as before, each step we take,
Made possible by reason and by work,
Is then reversed – and all, that labor wrought,
Is turned around to deepen slavery.

This keeps us busy, as we need not be,
While even more distractions rise to cloud
Whatever vision gave us hope of clarity.

When life was simpler, and we ran with apes,
We cannot doubt that many still were caught
Within that web that beings weave, with selves
Emerging from that weaving, like those shapes
That close inspection sees are only threads
Of colors, magicked by embroidery.

But when that weaving too is done for us,
So we have even lost that freedom sole,
Then what remains, is to our ancient selves
As are the plastic prints to cloths of yore.

And so, while in the past one still might hope
To clearly see the woven self and so,
With gentle art, unravel all its knots,
What hope remains, when distant hands conspire
To tangle us so even gods despair?

And as we tire of all that comes our way –
In print or via copper, glass and through
The air itself, on oscillating fields,
We're even less inclined to look within
Those boxes black that run on magic code
That seems beyond our plebeian minds to ken,
To ask, from where the things that we consume
Have come – and how – whose labor was involved –
And whether what we're told by Congressmen,
By rabid ranters on the radio or
By salesmen – archetype of current age –
Is true or false.  A numbing apathy
Descends – and all we wish to sense
Are colors, sounds and titillations.  Pablums feed
Not only children, but our adults too.
We substitute, for facts, mythologies.

So all are turned to salesmen, pitching sales
Of goods and services and attitudes –
Plus wars, of course, as needed for the rest...
And all depends, at end, on packaging.

And only violence appears to wake
Our souls from somnolence.  We vent that rage
That stems from fear, frustration, ignorance.

We cannot see, through blinding prejudice.
We cannot hear the subtleties of tone,
With ears that have been blasted by the noise
That issues, amplified, from gadgets' mouths.
We gladly dance to tawdry piper's tunes
That lead us further into misery.

The package, when it's opened, then is seen
As having content that is clearly not
As we envisioned from the packaging.
So we're enraged, but rarely blame ourselves
Or even packagers, but someone else.

The system's rarely questioned much in depth,
By him, who is a modern fatalist,
Conditioned to be so, by all he's seen,
Despite the jive and all the packaging.

“A pinball game it is, this life,” he says,
And some will win, and hopefully, it's me,
But all of us are losers in the end.”

“So let us all consume, as best we can,
While running fast to earn, so we can spend,
Or if we're prudent, sock away that sum,
That's ever growing, for that future time
When we can either work no more or else
Are rich enough to finally relax.”

But then, too often, the unraveling:
The wealth has disappeared, along with health.
And what's now left is argument, divorce.
The dream's still distant. What is real, is debt.

And as with persons, so with larger realms.

“What happened?  This was not to supposed to be.
We cannot lose, for we're the winning kind.
It must be those and that and all the rest
That's come between us and the very best.”

And welcome, all, to world, as it's perceived
By optimists who flourish in the west
And surely, in our day, in east as well.
Mirages will be chased, as empires rise
And even as they fall to sordid death.

“So what, in this, is new?” you well might ask.
Our masses, long ago, to sheep were turned,
That did, as wolves-turned-herders, class of lords,
Commanded.  Violence was always used,
With law and church subverted for the ends
Of those who reigned and profited the most
From all the labor of the ones “below”.
This came to them along those feeding chains
That still exist.  But times have always changed,
With evils old acquiring newest names...

So now, it seems, the ones who do the best
Are those adept at selling, to the rest,
The products and the myths that propagate
And feed yet more the cancer that has spread
To all the globe, devouring all of life
And humankind itself.  For it's been found
That we've been numbed and dumbed enough to yield,
And gladly, to the art of packaging...

So commerce rules, as many had foretold,
And finance now is openly our king,
And as predicted, local business dies
As giants dominate the globe and run
Their races for resources, markets and
For humans, too, that robots can't replace.

And since so many care for price and show,
And little else, the jobs, to places go,
Where pay is least, conditions often worst.

And labor thus gets cheaper by the day
And yet must face replacement by the ones
Who need no wages, pensions, benefits,
Nor even sleep nor pause from constant toil,
But clank and whir – or function silently.

So many now are jobless. There's no land
Or village to return to.  Others strive
To join their ends – and work themselves to death.
Yet others thrive – or else make do on what
The race throws up – or government largess.

The ties of village and of clan are lost.
Traditions, cultures dissipate and die.
While some may celebrate the evils gone,
Some others see that evils new have come,
With horrors often even greater, yet
So packaged that they tempt unwary souls
And snare them in the nets they can't escape.

What once was virtue, now is seen as vice.
And newer vices rise, as virtues hailed...
So soul departs, with all of substance lost,
And all that's left is lust and violence.

There's more today of entertainment, food,
But less, by far, of depth and quality,
And dare we say, of plain humanity.
We live and die on “bread and circuses”.

The children are corrupted.  Innocence
Is quickly lost, impatience, shallowness,
Suspicion celebrated, trust misplaced,
Sincerity misunderstood, abused...

And yet, on all of this, the marketers
Are able still to put a glossy sheen,
As we can see in plastic packaging...

We do not know, what misery's behind
The food we eat, the clothes we wear, our drugs,
And all that we so willingly consume.
But there are those who suffer.  Yet we're told
They do so willingly – or else, it's God,
Who has ordained they serve our endless wants. 

And if we're scolded for this painting dark
That spreads the shadows, at expense of light,
And does not show the ones who benefit
From all that vision, driving labor, wrought,
We answer, “Surely, of those things, you've heard
Enough.  Discern advances genuine
From those that are yet more of packaging.

“Remember, we are beasts of local scope.
The more the distance is, the more the chance
Of scams.  To pipers, near or distant, do
Not dance – or if you do, step carefully...

“And open, if you can, the packaging.”

2013 August 4, Sun.
(additions made August 10, Sat.)
Brooklyn
   
The Age of Packaging -- Part I