The imbued promise of humanity dies, consumed with the cancer of fear. A swan song of church bells, calls to prayers drift on the winds. As humanity prays Salat al-Janazah, The Mourner’s Kaddish, El Malei Rachamim, A Prayer of Eternal Rest, Or Psalm 23– take your pick— While meditations for enlightenment circle the drain of wishes for the humane to be found within what humanity was created to be— Now only found in one minute sound bites of feel-good stories at the end of the evening news to give us hope for a brighter tomorrow, leaving a cloying aftertaste of baby food custard in the tiny souls we have left ourselves. Though drops of water possess the power to eventually wear away stone, these drops of feel-good stories can never fill the promise we never made reality-- the potential we were given and squandered. We fed the isotopes of our hate our selfishness our greed our self-aggrandizement until morbidly obese with evil that overtook our planet our souls our societies, and we became not the sweet dream any God saw in us but the nightmare now plaguing that God.
The captain of industry gleefully looks to history As a populous forgets all the tales of prophecy While writhing in the seduction of blame and lies.
Thus, all the best in humanity is left behind. Firing squads, internment camps, and torture now promised. Yes, the captain says to let the horsemen ride.
The angry populous forgets The path of anger makes the “world blind.” Yes, the captain says to let the horsemen ride.
The sun dons a robe of sackcloth, grieving. The ocean’s rasping last breath, As the moon’s face rained blood tears, Turning rivers red.
Yes, the captain bellowed, “Let the horsemen ride.”
Sitting here in New Mexico and looking at these mountains, I wonder if my mother ever heard the mountains of Appalachia sing as I do these.
The mountains sing their history-- of when they knew only tranquility in the land of their ancient salt seas, when the sun could not touch them, when they were virgin still-- safe from the rough hands of the wind, long before the rise of humanity.
Their song holds the rhythms, the bars, the layers of the time before-- before an angry molten core, containing not a single drop of mercy, drove them from their ancient, peaceful home, forcing them to be refugees in the kingdom of sun and wind.
Their song holds the rhythms of all they grieve in witnessing humanity’s rise, dripping in eternal inhumanity.
At the feet of the mountains, the lilacs, nourished by snow melt tears, bow their heads and dance in the rhythms of the mountains’ song— A dance of homage to such ancient ones.
Nonsense things of twisted rhetoric
hang around the neck of a nation.
Words braided into twisted doctrines
of red and black and white.
Hatred fought so long ago
blended into now
with a new pandemic
in the wake
of aberrant dreams.
Here where truth once
swayed and danced,
offering humanity
a grand romance
of belief in a thing
the world had never seen--
Golden rules made real.
We knew our daughters and sons
would serve as the sacrificial lambs
to keep our rules golden
for all generations to be free.
Though freedom be washed
in the blood of our lambs,
we still believed
in the grand romance--
And oh, how we did dance
For over two hundred years.
Then the roped nonsense came,
tarnished the shine of our romance,
interrupted the rhythm of our dance.
The twisted rhetoric strangled us
as a new sickness spread.
No ease given; no treatment sought.
Pockets lined with gold
more important than golden lives.
Hatred and apathy listened
to the new prophet,
who said they were right--
Everything wrong was
the fault of others:
The poor in spirit are just lazy.
Those who mourn make excuses.
The meek are just weak.
Those wanting righteousness want it all free.
The pure in heart want to give your gold away.
The peacemakers don’t want us to be strong.
Then the new prophet claimed he was the persecuted one,
promising vengeance for his own sake.
His apostles believed his sermons,
proclaiming him their chosen one.
Order is all,
He said.
Law is all,
He said.
He would teach them
by putting all people
in their rightful place.
Justice lay raped,
bloody, raw,
beaten and gassed,
in the streets
as his disciples cheered
while the petty false prophet smirked,
holding a Holy book.
Re-forge the chain of Liberty’s shackle,
he ordered.
Then Truth
stopped swaying,
stopped dancing,
offered us nothing,
flames of romance dying.
Images courtesy of CBC, NDTV, The Times of Israel, and The Forward
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age--
Until a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death.
In Grand Central station,
a man punches a woman in the face,
telling her it is because she is Jewish.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
Yet on a bus, a man screams,
“We don’t wear that in this country!”
to a Sikh teen about the turban of his faith.
A university student calls for the murder
of his Jewish fellow students
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet swastikas are spray painted
on a Jewish business.
In 2018 on October 27th,
A madman entered The Tree of Life Synagogue,
spewing hatred and shooting eleven dead.
But no. It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet remember,
Executive Order 9066,
those rounded up and sent to camps
here in this place.
Look hatred in its devil face,
see if you still can believe,
still convince yourself—
It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
What would I learn
Could I raise your bones
From the earth?
And like some ancient medicine woman
Scatter them like runes to read
Or use them in the making
Of a sacred instrument
To rattle next to my ear?
What would their music tell me?
Would their rhythms move me?
Would there be some wisdom spoken?
Hidden within the notes of rattled rhythms
Of all your dried out unearthed bones
Is there enough marrow left to have
All my ancestors speak to me?
Should I, in some ancient tribal ritual
Of ancestral cannibalism,
Ingest your ground bones
Mixed with magic into an elixir
Infused with your ancestral spirits,
Be given the power of thunder
And lightening that is your strength
Earned by you through the ages?
Is this how your spirits will travel through me
Teaching me of all the earth and sky?
Is there a way to know, to learn
To hear all the secrets you deem I need,
Need to know in this time, this place
For this, this last chapter
Of what I have left to me?
My ancestors, for I have wasted
Away pages and chapters,
Squandered decades of the anthology
You have written into me.
Ancestors, speak to me,
So I waste not the years
Left to be written
By your spirits into me.
Marshal forces
Of the earth, moon, orbits of planets,
Laws of time,
All we hold mighty and true,
Stop everything in its tracks,
Turn it all back
Before the start of any of it,
Falling away,
Marshaled from memory.
For visually challenged writers, theimage shows a pale sun piercing the mists above a green path through a golden field, leading into the center of a circle of stones.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 