Western Desert

 WESTERN DESERT

It is an ancient land.

It changes slowly.

So slowly it seems not to change.

                        **********

Long times ago it was vast ocean.

Slowly, so slowly, the ocean receded.

Ocean floor became mountain peak.

                        **********

Others were here then,

Strange creatures in unknown seas.

Now they are embedded in the high rock.

                        **********

Slowly, wind and rain eroded the hard rock.

Weird shapes emerged.

We came and gave them names.

                        **********

They will remain after the names are lost.

They will remain after we are forgotten.

It is an ancient land.

A Killing Frost

 A KILLING FROST

A killing frost has settled over the land.

It withers the first flowering blooms.

It freezes the bees in their hives.

                        **********

It stifles the voices of the people.

Their words freeze in the air.

They dare not speak.

                        **********

The land has turned cold and barren.

The ground has turned hard.

Ice is everywhere.

                        **********

Summer is a distant and forgotten memory.

Spring is an illusionary hope.

It is winter in America.

Change the World

 CHANGE THE WORLD

How to change the world?

            How to rearrange the world?

It must want to change.

The American Dream

 THE AMERICAN DREAM

Work hard.

Play by the rules.

Everybody gets ahead.

Isn't that what the Dream said?

                        **********

            The Dream is not for you.

            The Dream is for the few.

            It's plain to see

            It's for people like me.

                        **********

But I work hard, like you.

I play by the rules, like you.

I want to get ahead, like you.

                        **********

            But you don't look like me.

            You're not white, like me.

            And only I can dream the Dream.

Dark Desert Skies

 DARK DESERT SKIES

The first time I saw the desert sky at night

            I was frightened by the sight.

In the bright lights of the big city

            The night sky is black and empty,

            With a few faint pinpoints of light,

                        Far and away.

But the dark desert sky at night

            Is sprayed with light,

Sprayed with blazing diamonds

            In uncountable number,

                        More than you ever knew,

                                    Ever could know.

And they are not far, far away.

            They are close, very close,

                        Pressing down on you

            Across the dome of the sky,

So close you could reach up

            And grab them in their

                        Infinite number

And fill your burning hands with them

                        If you only dared.

All your life there was a blazing universe

            There, just above your head,

                        So close you could

            Reach up and touch it.

                        And you never knew.

Going Home

GOING HOME

Going home, going home,

            We're always going home.

No matter how long we stay,

            We're always going home. 

                        **********

Some stay short, some stay long,

        We're always going home.

From the moment that we come,

        We're always going home.

                        **********

No matter what we say,

        We're always going home.

No matter what we do,

        We're always going home.

                        **********

Even if we'd like to stay,

        We're always going home.

There's no way that we can stay,

        We're always going home.

                        **********

Going home, going home,

        We're always going home.

Old Friends

 OLD FRIENDS

Old friends,

            Like old clothes,

                        Are well-worn.

They fit you well.

            They are a relaxed fit.

So you wear your old friends

            All the time,

Even if your old friends are frayed

            Here and there.

There may be some wear and tear,

            Something that needs to be patched,

                        Perhaps a new button or two.

Then your old friends

            Are as good as new.

Without such old friends

You'd walk around naked,

            And soon be arrested

                        For indecent exposure.

When...

 WHEN...

When you're going through changes

            Into something terrible and strange...

When you're going through tough times,

            And the times ahead seem

                        Even tougher...

When you're going through tragic loss

            And epic failure...

When your life has turned to ashes

            And you're going through hell

                        And you can't go on...

                        Keep going!

Pieta

PIETA

She is immaculate

           In  birth,

        In stone,

And in her sorrow.

            **********

She was Chosen to

         Give her son life,

         To watch him suffer and die,

And to hold him in death.

            **********

In the immaculate stone

            Her suffering is eternal,

            Her sorrow is eternal,

And that is the pity.

            **********

A memento mori

            That we all,

            Come tomorrow,

Must suffer her sorrow.

            

The Cruelest Twilight Zone Story

 THE CRUELEST TWILIGHT ZONE STORY

I was saddened to learn of the death of early science fiction writer Lynn Venable on March 31, 2025, at the age of 97.

A local TV sub-channel airs episodes of the original “Twilight Zone” every late weeknight. Recently I caught the 1959 episode, “Time Enough at Last.” The episode is based on a 1953 story in IF magazine by the female science fiction writer Lynn Venable.

I’ve seen every episode of the series, both at the original airing time and since, so I’ve seen this episode several times. But, I always watch it again, because I think it’s perhaps the most memorable of many memorable episodes.

It stars Burgess Meredith as a meek, harmless, and sympathetic bookworm who is so nearly blind he needs thick eyeglasses to read the books he’s constantly, everywhere, reading. He’d love to talk about what he’s read, but he lives in a world of philistines, beginning with his wife and including his co-workers in the bank where he is a teller. No one is interested in talking about, or hearing about, the books he’s always reading.

One day, after he has retreated to the depths of the bank vault to eat his bag lunch and peruse the book he carried to work with him in privacy, his world suddenly changes. The nuclear war erupts that all the newspapers and radio broadcasts warned about. The entire city, nation, world (?) is wiped out. But, he is spared because he was in the bank vault reading his book.

He emerges to find only a ruined city. As he stumbles among the ruins, he comes to the public library. He goes inside and finds that the tens of thousands of books inside have been mostly preserved.

He joyfully stacks the books in numbered piles and plans the weeks, months, years of pleasant undisturbed reading he now has ahead of him, now that he has “Time Enough At Last” to read everything he wants to read.

Then he bends over, his glasses slip from his face, and the lenses shatter on the pavement. The camera shows the world from his viewpoint, all fuzzy and unrecognizable, as he is almost blind without his glasses. Now, of course, he will never be able to read all those wonderful books he loves, and which he has stacked all around him. He collapses on the library’s steps and pitifully cries, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair!” And the story thus ends.

And, of course, it isn’t fair, as he has done absolutely nothing to deserve this fate. As I said, he is a meek and mild man, harmless, put upon by all around him who don’t share his love of reading. Our sympathies are entirely with him. This should not happen to him. It’s a cruel joke of the universe. Indeed, I think this is the cruelest “Twilight Zone” episode in the entire series.

Which is exactly why it is such a memorable episode. Good stories, memorable stories, gut-wrenching stories, are about bad things happening to good people, ideally people who don’t deserve those bad things. We don’t care if bad things happen to bad people. They deserve their fates, and we feel that justice has been served. We nod approvingly, and quickly forget them.

But, when fate defeats good people, people we care about, even identify with, people who have done nothing to deserve their defeat, our guts are wrenched and we recoil at the injustice of the universe. And we remember it. That’s the reason we remember the sad love songs, the hurting love songs, most of all. That’s why the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet still touches us more than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote of those young “star-crossed lovers.”

In Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” published in 2000, he said that a writer (and, thus, a reader) has to “love” his or her people. “There is no horror without love,” he said. This is because only if you love your people do you, the writer or the reader, care about what happens to those people.

And now, after watching “Time Enough At Last” again, I finally understand what he means. I always disliked this episode because of its gratuitous cruelty to an undeserving victim. But, I always remembered the episode vividly. And now I know why. I love that Burgess Meredith character. And so the horror – the undeserved horror – of what happens to him is unforgettable.

And this is no doubt why Rod Serling chose Lynn Venable’s story to dramatize as the cruelest “Twilight Zone” story of them all.

Water Drops

 WATER DROPS

A drop of water

            Evaporates into the air.

Yet it hollows stone.

            **********

A drop of water

            Multiplies into a stream,

Into a river.

            **********

A drop of water

            Can become a raging flood

Ravaging the land.

            **********

We are drops of water.

            But when we are many drops,

We change the whole world.

Love Lies Bleeding

 LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Angry men raging

            In the desperate land.

Wounded warriors wandering,

            Making one last stand.

                        **********

Helpless angels crying

            In blazing broken bands.

Searching mothers seeking

            Lost daughters in lost lands.

                        **********

Weeping women pleading,

            Holding out their hands.

Love lies bleeding

            In burning desert sands.

The Same Old Story

 THE SAME OLD STORY

Mars glories in gore

            And Venus is forgotten

In a world at war.

The American Dream

 THE AMERICAN DREAM

We're building a wall.

It's a wall of sharp barbed wire,

Sharp and keen,

Sharper than you've ever seen.

            **********

It will keep us safe

From the huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free.

Here, on this shore, 

There is no free air

For the ragged and the poor.

            **********

We're building a wall.

It's a wall of flickering fire.

It's flames reach higher and higher.

It will burn

All who yearn

To come near us,

And make them fear us.

            **********

We're building a wall.

It's a wall of iron.

It will encircle us

And enclose us,

So no one can touch us

And make us

Feel their pain.

            **********

We're building a wall,

And we call our wall

The American Dream.

Waiting For The Plumbers

 WAITING FOR THE PLUMBERS

I'm waiting for the plumbers.

They're coming to find the leaks.

Because someone has been leaking.

They're leaking to the Washington Post.

They're leaking to the New York Times.

They're leaking to

Signal,

            Facebook,

                        LinkedIn,

                                    And X.

They're leaking everywhere.

So the plumbers are coming.

            They will find those leaks.

                        And they will fix those leaks.

Fluttering Butterflys

 FLUTTERING BUTTERFLYS

Fluttering butterflys

Dining on hummingbird tongues

And snails from Majorca.

Spiked blonde hair and blue toenails.

Shaved heads and tattooed eyebrows.

Holistic sandals and scented candles.

French Chablis and mystic crystals.

Pass around the sacred talking stone.

Laugh and tell us of

Your life crisis du jour.

But

Don't talk of the shuffling poor.

Don't talk of the beggar knocking at the door.

Don't talk of the plague that rages.

Don't talk of crying children in cages.

Don't talk of the barbarians at the gates

And such dire fates.

Don't talk of a world that is burning.

We Know What To Do

 WE KNOW WHAT TO DO

We're been here before.

Not in a past life,

But in this life,

So we know what to do.

            **********

We hanged witches in Salem

And Quakers on Boston Common,

So we know what to do.

            **********

We killed the Indians

And took their land.

We banned the Irish,

And the Catholics, too,

So we know what to do.

            **********

We enslaved Africans

And sold their babies down the river.

We took Mexico,

And then called Mexicans

Foreigners in their own land,

So we know what to do.

            **********

We called them dagos and hunkies,

Wops and spicks, polacks and kikes

Because they spoke with strange accents,

And followed strange customs,

And wore strange clothes,

And ate strange food.

            **********

So we banned them,

Deported them,

Hanged them,

Jailed them,

Shot them,

And

Stripped them of all hope.

            **********

We've been here before,

So we know what to do.

The Last Hill

 THE LAST HILL

The dust of decades

And the soot of past eons

Cover this last hill.

            **********

The dark clouds gather,

Ice and sleet cover this hill,

Yet still, we fight on.

            **********

No one remembers

How long we have fought this war.

Yet still, we fight on.

            **********

No one remembers

Ancient lives when we were young.

Yet still, we fight on.

            **********

No bard sings of us.

No poet writes of this hill.

We are forgotten.

            **********

We are the last hill.

No paradise awaits us.

Yet still, we fight on.

The Future

 THE FUTURE

Death stalks the wide lands.

Lost bodies are never found.

Blood drips from their hands.

            **********

Innocence is jailed.

The guilty sit on the thrones.

The system has failed.

            **********

Rulers rule with lies.

Subjects applaud their new king.

Now the future dies.

Coming Down the Road

 COMING DOWN THE ROAD

Well, I'm coming down the road,

            Coming down the road with a load.

It's a heavy, weighty, load,

            A heavy, weighty, load,

                        But I'll keep on coming,

                                    Keep on coming,

            Coming down the road

With my heavy, weighty, load.

Get Angry

 GET ANGRY

Get angry about multi-million-dollar weddings in Venice, Italy, while children go hungry in Venice, California.

Get angry about the thousands who are homeless in the richest country on earth.

Get angry about those who can't afford dental care in the richest country on earth.

Get angry about those who can't afford health care in the richest country on earth.

Get angry about working long hours in shit jobs for starvation wages.

Get angry about our public schools starved for resources while the rich send their kids to private schools.

Get angry about the top one percent owning fifty percent of our nation's wealth.

Get angry about tax cuts for the rich.

Get angry about tax cuts for giant corporations.

Get angry about hidden taxes disguised as tariffs.

Get angry about military forces patrolling American cities.

Get angry about the militarized border with Mexico.

Get angry about Alligator Alcatraz.

Get angry about private prisons.

Get angry about mass deportations.

Get angry about the arrest and deportation of immigrants who pick our crops.

Get angry about the arrest and deportation of immigrants who fix our homes.

Get angry about the arrest and deportation of immigrants who mow our lawns.

Get angry about the arrest and deportation of immigrants who clean our hotels.

Get angry about the arrest and deportation of immigrants who make and serve our food.

Get angry about a nation of immigrants hating immigrants.

Get angry about Americans voting against their own best interests because they hate immigrants.

Get angry about the rape of our natural resources by corporations greedy for a quick buck.

Get angry about defunding our National Parks.

Get angry about defunding public television.

Get angry about banning abortion.

Get angry about banning the abortion pill.

Get angry about ICE having a budget larger than all other federal law enforcement agencies -- FBI, CIA, ATF, the Secret Service -- combined.

Get angry about ICE having a budget three times larger than the Marine Corps.

Get angry about the militarized police.

Get angry about living in a police state.

Get angry about living in a surveillance state.

Get angry about unaffordable college tuition.

Get angry about unaffordable housing.

Get angry about unaffordable gasoline.

Get angry about unaffordable good food.

Get angry about junk food poisoning our bodies.

Get angry about junk media poisoning our minds.

Get angry about a felon in the White House.

Get angry about his minions running the Senate.

Get angry about his lickspittles running the House.

Get angry about his co-conspirators running the Supreme Court.

Get angry about his ignorant toadies running government agencies.

Get angry about defunding essential government agencies.

Get angry about defunding the Smithsonian.

Get angry about defunding scientific research.

Get angry about denial of climate change.

Get angry about banning books.

Get angry about banning vaccines.

Get angry about the return of measles.

Get angry about the death of newspapers.

Get angry about the death of bookstores.

Get angry about the death of labor unions.

Get angry about the death of democracy.

Get angry about death of compassion.

Get angry about death of decency.

Get angry.

Lady Liberty

 LADY LIBERTY

We're dismantling Lady Liberty today.

            We're shipping her back to France.

She's just too much in our way,

            And we can't take a chance.

                        **********

Look at those pages in her hand.

            The date is that of the Declaration.

It proclaims equality in this land

            For all, throughout the nation.

                        **********

Can't have any of that.

            Not in this land of the free.

No real American proclaims that as fact.

            The real truth is plain to see.

                        **********

Some are more equal than others.

            Some are born to run this country.

Some are born from the right mothers.

            Some rule in this land of the free.

                        **********

She welcomes people of all classes.

            And that poem at her base?

"Give me your huddles masses,"

            No matter the race.

                        **********

We want none of that here.

            No welcoming the tired and the poor,

No welcoming riffraff from far and near,

            No welcoming just anyone in the door.

                        **********

And she's standing on broken chains,

            Standing on shattered shackles.

That really gives us pains,

            That raises our hackles.

                        **********

Those chains keep people in their places.

            Shackles are useful tools.

They keep down those unwelcome races,

            They keep down all those fools.

                        **********

So, she's just too much trouble.

            No more of this "Mother of Exiles."

We were going to reduce her to rubble,

            Then those weeping Francophiles

                        **********

Said, "Ship her back to France."

            So we're dismantling her today.

We just can't take the chance

            That she'd get in our way.

Teach the People

 TEACH THE PEOPLE

Teach the people and you'll never get rich;

            You'll live like a beggar

                        And die in a ditch.

                        **********

For the rich flourish like weeds in the Spring,

            And all your knowledge

                        Don't mean a thing.

The Last Leaf

 THE LAST LEAF

"No Italians now out in our park,"

            Tony said to me slowly and sadly.

"It's not like the old days, now it's all dark,

            Dark days ahead, as far as I see."

                        **********

I nodded and I had to agree.

            I remembered it was such a lark,

Old days when our park was the place to be.

            Now our park, our park was all dark.

                        **********

In the old days we'd sit with Bruno and Ida,

            They'd tell tall tales of Old Country,

Of bountiful orchards in their Ateleta,

            Of vineyards as far as eyes could see.

                        **********

"Remember when Bruno drove his full van

            Way into our park?" said Tony.

"He took out his grill and then had to stand

            Grilling for the whole family?

                        **********

And Maria sang an Italian song

            That day in our park?

And we all joined in and we all sang along,

            And we all danced until it was dark?

                        **********

Those days are long gone," Tony then sighed.

            "Nobody's left but me, and now you."

Tony fell silent and he almost cried.

            I wondered what I should say or do.

                        **********

"But we're still here," I said hopefully.

            "We remember the days in our park."

"Yes," said Tony, a bit wistfully,

            "But no Italians now out in our park."

Passing By

PASSING BY

In Ancient Greece one day

            A young swain happened to spy

His lover, where she lay

            In the hot embrace of another guy.

                        **********

He later confronted his errant lover,

            Saying, "I saw him lay you on the sod

And ravish you there in the clover!"

            "Yes," she said, "He was just a passing god."

Instagram Blues

 INSTAGRAM BLUES

Instagram, everyone said,

            Was what you need

If you want to get ahead,

            If you want to succeed.

            **********

So I created an Instagram account,

            Sure I'd get ahead,

Of that there was no doubt,

            That's what the people said.

            **********

But before I could post

            A single word on my account,

Instagram told me I was toast,

            Told me I was out.

            **********

"Community standards," Instagram said,

            I had violated them in some bad way.

I had to scratch my head,

            I wasn't even gay!

            **********

So my account it suspended,

            Of that there was no doubt,

And my great career ended.

            The day I started, I was out.

Singular or Plural?

 SINGULAR OR PLURAL?

"The United States of America."

Is that singular or plural?

The United States "is,"

Or the United States "are"?

E Pluribus Unum.

Out of many, one.

Really?

We fought a revolution

For the freedom of some

In a land that denied freedom for others.

We are a nation of immigrants

That hates immigrants.

We herd the "huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free"

Into an Alligator Alcatraz,

The American Dream

Become the American Nightmare.

Out of many, one?

Really?

When it's

South against North,

Whites against Blacks,

Bosses against unions,

Heartland against the Coasts,

Red states against Blue states,

Us against Them?

Is it singular,

Or is it plural?

I want to know.

Ghosts in the Machine

 GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

I am surrounded by ghosts.

            Old friends,

                        Old comrades,

                                    Old lovers.

Once they posted daily about

            Their lives,

                        Their loves,

                                    Their sufferings.

But years ago

            They crossed over the rainbow.

Yet, they are still here,

            Living their life beyond life

                        In the world wide web.

They cannot be exorcised.

            Once in the web,

                        Always in the web.

How long will they continue

            As ghosts in the machine,

                        Haunting the web,

                                    Haunting me?

They keep multiplying,

            Crowding around.

They are waiting for me to join them.