Poem: War On Christmas

War On Christmas

  

“It’s wartime on Christmas,” says the charlatan voice

Reveling in tantrums instead of godly rejoice

Each year like clockwork comes the passionate fury

The attack on what’s “holy” in their self-righteous glory

In a nation three-quarters Christian it is hard to conceive

As to who’s actually threat to exactly what to believe

Perpetuation of fraud lies at root of the frenzy

To whip up the masses, requires indignation aplenty

For where is the gospel in these preachers of lying?

Lacking of love holds intolerant plying

Demanding that all of the people must comply to their stricture

Unbending beliefs seem quite removed from the scripture

The populace shopping to capitalistic vulgarity

Where is the outcry to our moneyed depravity?

And all of the symbols from a pagan’s beginning

Since no origin in Jesus, is a Christmas tree sinning?

The truth is the message is meant to divide us with hate

The fake war on Christmas:  Deceive … Inculcate

It is all an illusion by the worst of the lot

The one thing assured; any God they’ve forgot

 Copyright SGW 2013/2016

Nelson Mandela

I have always felt that it is somewhat excessive when we make a big deal out of the death of famous people. Plenty of "regular" people die every day, too, and many of them were good, caring, decent people who made a difference in the world that will be lasting and positive.

Today, though, Nelson Mandela, has passed and the world has lost something it has rarely held. Nelson Mandela had his flaws and warts, I am sure. However, we would all be hard-pressed to find many people who have lived a life that was so given to good works, noble causes and decency. Mandela sacrificed much of his own life and pleasure for a greater good. In doing so, he never seemed to succumb to hatred, loss of dignity or corruption of even the slightest bit. Hopefully, he has left a path for not only South Africans, but all of us, that shows how we should live with each other and treat each other.

There are few people from history who I genuinely consider heroic. Nelson Mandela was one of those people, and I am truly saddened by his passing because I miss knowing that I share this world with such a great person.

Poem: Red Molly

Red Molly (Red Molly)

  

Harmonious beauty from angelical sounds

The rhythmic flowing of the music astounds

Eyes closed in wonder as the notes cast their charm

Melodious ocean of these songbirds disarm

The healing vibrations breathe a life-giving force

A three-part performance is the stage and the source

Warming of spirit can be felt in their presence

For the purest of pleasures, represent the quintessence

The listener leaves nourished with remarkable calm

Sustained by the power of mellifluous balm

Which finds me next morning with this pad and this pen

Inspired to writing ‘til I hear them again

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Fanatics

Fanatics

  

Fear takes its measure in infinite shaping

An ignorant basis there can be no escaping

Intolerant, fanatic, often religiously zealous

Cling to a panic that is fervently jealous

Limited thinking is the fabric it’s sown

Science discarded, fact-based reason disowned

Blindly accepting carnival barker’s lament

They preach as if righteous; somehow heavenly sent

They can only find comfort in what their mirrors reflect

Frightened by difference; twisted cause and effect

Racism bred from an uncertain dread

“Brown people coming and a black as our ‘head’”

Create boogeyman government to nourish their story

The more they can fear then the more to their glory

Twisted and tangled in deformity of view

The fear’s all they know, so they mindlessly do

  

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Nothing

Nothing

Clock ticks

Counting down windows of opportunity

Until the squeeze is felt

It pinches

Chokes

And it leaves one with vanquished resolve

The aloneness is palpable

Any promise, but a lie’s nom de guerre

Eventually waking up

Taking in reflections

Seeing nothing

Nothing

Nothing at all

Some clouds have no silver lining

They are dark, wide and threatening

And when the rains come

They’ve always come

The torrent never relents

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Pocono Mountain Morning

Pocono Mountain Morning

Pocono Mountain morning

Heavy rain beats down on roof above

Brushing and splattering upon the green scenery on display

Watch droplets on the window

Listen to the pat, pat, pattering

Kayaks sit idly for now

Near the sweeping waters aroused by the storm

Breathe in the morning

Wetness all around purifies the world

And me

Others sleep

I’ll sit in this chair

Shifted to a window’s view

Writing

That’s what I do

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Counsel

Counsel

Awash in emotions long-contained deep within
This perilous path must dig deep ‘neath the skin
The hiding in masks only serves to benumb
And parts need all parts to equate to the sum
Fear is the riddle ever twisting of thought
You’ve been found passing by what’s forever been sought
Where often the journey leaves indelible mark
The lessons of scars can be blessedly stark
Travel in circles, sometimes roads know no end
A map has been laid … and the world will amend
Answers yield questions too numerously given
The perfectly placed left subconsciously riven
The crossroads are met with a reckoning glance
Left yet unwritten – walk away or advance?

Copyright SGW 2013

Khaled Hosseini: "And The Mountains Echoed"

This is not a review.  How could I presume to review Khaled Hosseini?  The author of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and the classic "The Kite Runner," has now given the world "And The Mountains Echoed."

Whether the details of his previous stories remain whole or in part, the essence of Hosseini's work lingers.  It is alive and well again, in "And The Mountains Echoed," as he bring another tale centered around Afghanistan; a country for most of us that is nothing more than "the place where terrorists were and a lot violence remains."

Again, this is not a review; just some random thoughts I find myself holding after finishing reading the book only moments ago.  Hosseini's gift is the ability to bring to the pages extreme pains and hardships, yet blend in an unexplained peacefulness and serenity.  Then, in the tears of beautiful interweavings of life that yield promises that life has heart, hope and love, even within all the struggles, there is also the subtle, stubborn aching.

I loved "A Thousand Splendid Suns."  It is a story of incredible honesty.  It hurts and feels good at once.  As I cried my way through the final 50 or so pages, ultimately ending in a place of calm, sorrow, bitterness, warmth ... life, I am aware that it will be several days before I can even consider reading something else.

Poem: Storms

Storms

Storm on horizon is warning

Darkest of skylines now forming

Calm does not mask what soon beckons

Illy prepared will be reckoned

The heart, it can pulse through disaster

Rhythmic beat ever faster

But can hearts be alive acquiescing

To the death of the void coalescing

Wreckage is strewn all-surrounding

Listen for faintest of pounding

A mixture of living and dying

Spilled milk cares not for your crying

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: Dreaming of Mr. Rogers

Dreaming of Mr. Rogers

The story's from my youthful days

Recurring dream whose memory stays

Not bent of anger or violent mind

I more was mild and rather kind

The dream still lingers, is yet to fade

It's time I tell through poem laid

Of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

His virtues clear and understood

The scene is set with common thread

The homespun den, the sweater red

With sneakers tied and smiling bright

Yet strangely see was late at night

A knocking door, his head had turned

Who could it be would soon be learned

A lion stood upon the rise

A flowing mane and fiercest eyes

And poor old Fred with panicked feel

No make believe, but lion's meal

  

Copyright SGW 2006

Footnote:   Based on an actual, recurring dream I had well into my twenties.  I know, I have a twisted side.

Poem: Tears

Tears

World leaves its imprint in many a fashion
Feeds on our longings, consumes of our passion
‘Nary a notice as to where it will spring
When least it’s expected, best expect anything

Man at the grocer’s is awash in full grief
Need to unburden yet can bear no relief
Son, thirty-eight, was just taken away
The heartbroken father left in shattered dismay

All we can offer is to listen and nod
When the man walks away I unmask my façade
Shed me a tear and my voice loses power
These are the moments where emotion will flower

But tears come from places of often sunny condition
Where a heartfelt conviction writes a warm composition
Simple sent message from a dear, special friend
“Happy to have you in our lives” she’d extend

Eyes start to moisten with the love this conveys
Reminder to self:  Ample good’s on display

In these polar extremes lies the binding of living
Sometimes it’s taking and sometimes it’s giving
Hardship can break us to a point of demise
‘Til angels of mercy breathe new strength to arise

Tears have been shed for the better and worse
Life is a blessing and life is a curse
Life is the challenge of entangled emotion
Nothing is rooted, for life’s constant motion

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Violence

Violence

A world of too much violence

Where impulse turns to rage

A world of too much violence

Of monsters left uncaged

Bombs will never win a struggle

Conflagration yields no prize

The coldness of a conscious choice

A choice of promised lies

The zealots planning mass destruction

A government hooked on drones

Madmen screaming “seas of fire”

Mindless hates intoned

Violence yielding more the same

Death reveals more death

Nothing’s gained for any cause

In ending just one breath

Too many guns; too many “tools”

A weaponized decay

Too many means to take more lives

The murderous bouquet

Enough, enough, this all must end

Build and not tear down

Stop the hate, stop this craze

The rage is all around

Riling frenzied, manic “flocks”

With words of hate and words of fear

The vitriolic platitudes

Breed anger most severe

Blood for blood and eye for eye

Ratchet up the storm

Rocks to guns to missiles launched

So death becomes a norm

Copyright SGW 2013

Footnote: 

Boston, Manhattan.  Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Newtown, Tucson.  The West Bank, Baghdad, Aleppo, Yemen.  The Topeka abortion clinic, a podium where a speaker stands and arouses hate.  North Korea, Iran.

Nothing justifies a terrorist attack on innocent people.  The actions are evil and without any justification.  But drones, missile strikes, propping up dictators, and wars of choice kill indiscriminately, too, and breed more hate.  Some war is necessary; defense is a right.  But more balance – building schools, teaching democracy, farming assistance – these things cost less than bombs and shape people’s views in a better way than bombs and drones.

This nation’s gun craze does not in any way lead to acts of terror such as the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City and the Boston Marathon.  But they kill far more people in many other acts of terror and in daily , routine life.  They can, of course, serve the purpose of defending a home.  But far more often they kill innocent people.  They have a place for hunters and sportsmen, but not to the extent of the weapons escalation we are living with … without even the most basic and reasonable means of temperance.

All of these things are related because they are all acts that lead to amping up the violence.  One act or circumstance does not always lead to another.  Nothing justifies the end result of mass killings.  But they are all part of the same problem.

And it is ALWAYS the right  time to look for change.

Poem: Shepherd

Shepherd
(Dedicated to the thousands of children sexually abused and then betrayed again.)

A “keystone” as timeless as time might forget
Rituals formed by the years long since set
The shepherd’s high platform builds the virtuous mask
Bejeweled and berobed, in the worship he’d bask
Archaic the rules and the doctrinaire dance
Awash in the vastness of adoration’s expanse

The shepherd holds riches unimagined to know
But he will pray from above; wash some feet all for show
The money-held bounty would make any banker soon blush
All the gold and the silver kept in secret’s cold hush

His castle’s been fed by corruption and greed
The sins of the evils as foundational screed
With fraud of no limit by the crimes since amassed
Long been swept under rugs through the centuries passed

Neanderthal thinking from what’s best as extinct
A homophobe, anti-woman and a Dark Ages link

The monsters protected are the shepherd’s right hands
Obfuscation, eluding and a bullying brand
Children as wreckage left abused and destroyed
All the tools of destruction were too quickly deployed
Grave the transgressions laid ‘pon innocent victims
And from Lucifer’s scepter come the unholy dictums

No godly existence in this evil wrung deep
Mindlessly follow stand the shepherd’s blind sheep

Copyright SGW 2013

The sexual abuse of children is among the most vile and evil of crimes that can be committed.  Thousands of children were preyed on by priests in the Catholic Church.  Most will never get justice because the leadership of the Church, all the way to the Vatican, and Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, thought it better to protect the wealth and power of the Church, than the children who most needed protection. 

Poem: Shades

Shades

Calm sets in after the wintry storm’s wrath

A blanketing whiteness that impedes every path

In the bristling cold air moves a singular frame

While I sit in the warmth he will work all the same

Stories reported of the common event

A xenophobe’s ring of repeated lament

‘Round Freehold stoppings there’s a gathering mass

The Mexican workers standing anxious alas

Whether legal or less so is often unclear

The landscape and work crews they would to hope to adhere

Though people scream wildly of jobs they might steal

‘Nary a white man ‘mongst the group would reveal

These poor, decent people only seek daily bread

The venom from racists would be better unsaid

My immersion in thoughts of past dust bowls and decay

Leave me reflective of this man on this day

Call the man to me; crooked teeth, short but stout

Just a hard working spirit weathered inside and out

Hand him a ten-spot as the least I can do

He thanks me and smiles then he thanks me anew

Put in perspective of a national fight

Where some see the brown less deserving their rights

Remove them, contain them and brand with a stain

But they are us, we are them, we are all just the same

My walkway is shoveled and the man shuffles on

Illegal or legal, what this land’s built upon

We all trace our roots to migrations as such

Whatever the reasons, we’re alike much as much

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Carrousel

Carrousel

She was always too busy claiming tasks to be done
Forever en route, endless errands to run
The juggler of missions, a servant of time
Life can be lost on this narrowing line

Excuses came plenty in her martyr’s brigade
The slave to a struggle who’s succumbed to what’s laid
Until eyes of impression are soon molded as well
The tree and its apples on the same carrousel

Too late to notice that you’re benumbed and immune
Cat’s in the cradle and the man in the moon
The children become what the mother has crafted
An appendage of labors has been too firmly grafted

Try to break in to break up the routine
But freedom of leisure only viewed as obscene
Imagination can’t flourish where every minute’s imposed
Where’s the freedom to dream or just wiggle one’s toes

Cat’s in the cradle and the man in the moon
Here’s to who’d craft of a less-perfect hewn

Copyright SGW 2013




Footnote:  Obvious reference to Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle.”

Poem: Different Words

Different Words

Bullies have terrorized a country
Torn at all rational thought
Through combination of varietal methods
A destructive regression they’ve sought

Quietly succumbing in measure
Would be nice if were met with in-kind
But in the face of extremist departure
We must call out the worst that we’d find

Where racism, hatred and bigotry
Use actions and words as a voice
Naming them such is the battle
Must be waged without question or choice

Homophobic, anti-female or immigrant bashers
Elementally these are people to fight
And calling them out is not equal
It is morally given and right

When you say rape can’t impregnate a woman
Or you’d drive off economy’s cliff
While you insist that Obama’s a Kenyan
You’re a loon with no but, and or if

As a grouping of people go crazy
Irrational and of vilest of mind
The damage they do to the nation
Requires the bright light be shined

Calling them what they exhibit
Whether racist or nutjob or fool
Exposes their regressive obstruction
And provides them deserved ridicule

Copyright SGW 2013

This poem is dedicated to the overwhelming majority of the Republican politicians in office or who have run for office since 2008, FOX “News,” most conservative talk radio, teabaggers, S.I.P.E., and the extremism that they have come to represent and display.  Fighting against this with vigor is a must.  If someone is a racist, fearmonger, bigot, homophobe, class oppressor, liar, or, well, fringe, lunatic, calling them by those names is not stooping to their level or “name-calling.”  It is using a necessary weapon to shine a light on their hate, shame them and make others understand how destructive they are.