What We Know

We are sure of nothing

As omniscience is hard to come by.

Not being God and all,

Are pronouncements are subject to error.

We are emotional beings

Tending to exaggerate when under stress.

When our prognostications prove accurate

The ego inflates,

We become prideful of our prowess,

Filter out all the inaccuracies

In our hypotheses,

And assume we know

What we are talking about.

Resolution

What will happen when the new year comes?

Will anything change?

Will any thing be new?

Or will we just go on

Doing as we’ve always done,

Fulfilling the requirement of insanity,

Expecting different outcomes

If we shout a little louder,

If we bray at the wind?

I do not know what to do.

I am as afraid and unsure as everybody else

To pry open my rib cage.

I know my heart is no more broken than yours

But, it’s all I have to offer.

Walls of Mud

We are undone.

We lay scattered through history,

Pierced by our transgressions.

We disassemble each other.

We hack away hoping to find ourselves

Somewhere in the blood.

We self-immolate

So we can sift through the ashes,

Find penance for our crimes,

Proof of our existence.

We scratch at the dirt

For evidence of our passing.

We build walls of mud

To protect what we have destroyed.

All These Things

Oh, how woefully unprepared

We humans are to be ourselves.

The admission seems to be too much.

We would like the view

To be so much brighter,

The foundations so much more secure

Than the teetering structure it actually is.

Aren’t you tired of constantly creating the universe

In your own image?

It must be maddening,

The unending realization

Of things you didn’t account for,

The constant acrobatic maneuvers

Necessary to maintain your position?

It’s so much easier to let the universe be what it is

And trust to its design.

It is someone else’s job

To hold it all together.

Don’t you know it is okay to be who you are?

To move on from where you actually stand?

You are not required to leapfrog into the future.

You are admonished not to,

Not to worry about tomorrow,

But to live a day at a time, according to the design.

Tomorrow, it says, will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I cannot be a time traveler

Or a diviner of things to come.

I cannot be a shape shifter,
Molding myself to the desired pattern.

The world is what it is.
We are what we are,

Called to live one moment at a time.

All your disapproval Will not change the way
The world or humanity were made.

You and me and everyone else,

We can only try and change ourselves moment by moment,

And if anyone is changed because of us,

It is not by what we do or say,

But by the grace and will of the unknown

Who is able to hold all these things together

And works to complete what was started.

Time Crunch

This will have to be a short one

As Jackie is about to get up

So I’ve little time before she

Begins to fill the space in the kitchen

Crowding over onto the keyboard

Leaving little room for my fingers,

Not to mention I’ll have to relinquish

Her chair next to the fire.

Simpler Times

Oh for the simpler times of the

Old time zombie apocalypse,

When a shot to the brain

Solved all the pressing problems,

When a decaying face

Showed readily the opposition,

When the heroes got top billing

And you knew where you stood

The moment the lights went out.

It’s all different now,

Fast or slow,

The nuance of good and evil,

The risk of trust,

So much more difficult to figure,

Like real life.  

Christmas Poem

This may not be the poem you want to read

As it has already begun to veer away

From the traditional holiday fare.

Sometime, the more you want to believe

The Christmas promise,

The harder the actual day is to wake up to,

Not that I intend to bum you out,

But it will take a little faith

On both our parts

To find out what I’m up to

When I get to the end of this poem.

Faith, after all, is what the day is about,

That a poor wretch born in a stable

Is capable of saving anybody,

Considering he grew up to be

An itinerant, rabble rousing preacher

Strung up on a cross.

And, if we’re honest, we do all identify

With the lyrics to that song,

At least when we sing it.

We do admit our status as poor blind wretches all.

Sometimes when that status is upon us

It is hard to leap over to the joy of the not yet,

Even though, In faith, we believe.

And we do believe, so there is no need

To feel bad for us

Because, mixed in with our despair,

Coloring it in a way that makes it ok,

Is that thing no one can explain,

The peace that, after all, passes all understanding,

Giving us the ability to truthfully say

A very Merry Christmas to you.

Kicking Against the Goads

Yesterday was also the anniversary of the day

They put what used to be my father in a bag

And pulled a zipper over the empty husk.

He was ready to go,

Seeing no better prospect.

It was time for him to quit trying

To scratch an existence out of hard yielding ground.

He made it very clear he knew what he was doing

When he’d decided he’d had enough.

I was glad I got to tell him

It was okay with me

If he quit fighting,

Quit kicking against the goads.

Birthday

Today, on my mother’s birthday,

I used to get all the S&H Green stamps from Wieboldt’s,

Paste them in my books at the last minute,

And buy her Corning ware for birthday/Christmas.

I don’t know if she felt cheated

Getting only one gift

Or having a skid row wino bum for a dad

Or having T B

Or growing up on welfare

Or trying to scrape two pennies together all her life?

Anyway,

I, hope she didn’t feel cheated

About the presents.

A Christmas Carol Revisited

Little Norman Rockwell flakes are falling.

The fire is flickering in the stove.

Outside I’m sure brisk cold air is blowing.

The season not amenable to a carpenter’s income

Is upon us once again

Leaving my wallet as empty as Scrooge’s heart.

I’m not destitute by any means.

Pay check to pay check,

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is old hat

For working class winters.

I’ve even been feeling a bit wistful and nostalgic

For a block of government cheese

Or a can of their excellent butter

My father brought home as an occasional happy surprise.

Unfortunately unrepentant Scrooge’s spiritual offspring

Have been running for office lately.

Sorry Timmy.

No turkey for you.

And, I’d keep those crutches handy.

Waiting On an Inscrutable God

Life, it says, is like grass

That grows one day and withers the next.

It says, to Him,

One day can be like a thousand years,

So waiting on God

Can be a dangerous proposition.

If God yawns, He might do it,

And millennia might pass

And the thing you’ve been waiting for

Is long since dust,

Or, anyway, you are.

I understand why polytheism is more attractive.

Having a pantheon of gods to choose from,

Depending on the situation at hand,

Would be far more convenient.

Unless, of course, they're impersonal

Like the gods of ancient Greece

Favoring their demi-god offspring

With the rest of us pawns in their petty rivalries,

Though, come to think of it,

That would explain a lot,

And explanations, however unpleasant or bizarre,

Are easier to live with

Then waiting on an inscrutable God.

Perspective

Sitting in the dark by the fire,

Coffied,

Waiting for the sun to come up,

To lift its cold brow

Over the garage roofs in the ally

Revealing the dirty, tire tracked snow,

If I cared to look

At the darker side of city life,

The little rat tracks through the snow.

I could see it for the dawn of a new day,

As, technically, it is always

The dawn of a new day somewhere,

Or darkness can be said to be

Always falling.

I suppose if you get far enough away

You can see both of them happen at the same time,

Darkness worn like a jaunty hat

Over the Charley Brown head of the earth,

And the moon,

Howling through space at Snoopy.

Unknown Variables

One thing I know is I don’t know a thing

Due to my cultural biases

And lack of infinite knowledge.

Fox News doesn’t help either,

Nor, to be fair, does anything on TV,

With it being mostly concerned

About the redistribution of my pittance of wealth

In their direction.

Some used to say science is the answer

But it is only speculation based on observation,

Subject to future unknown variables.

I could turn to various sacred texts

Where, with diligent application,

I can make them mean anything.

My lifelong pursuit of truth

Has led me in the wrong direction.

Truth finds me if I am open to it.

If I hold it with pride and attempt to show it off

It doesn’t have to abandon me

As I have already lost it.

Squint Adjustment

I’ve got my backup glasses on

Causing me to trust my fingers

To find the right letters on the keyboard

Or, if I tilt my head just so

And close one eye or the other,

Things clear up a bit.

I’ve tried that with you,

But you’re still as much a mystery

As you always were,

No clearer than the day we met

That day in my perpetual fog.

I could stand on my head

But it appears there are some things

I will never understand

No matter how hard I squint.

The Unfortunate Consequence of Privilege

Everyone,

Let us all take a moment to consider the plight

Of those suffering under the burden of wealth.

Consider their isolation from 99% of humanity

Producing in their offspring the sickness of entitlement

And the unfortunate consequence of privilege.

No one can argue the increased stress

The forced interment in exclusive private schools

Will later produce in subsequent

Higher echelon employment opportunities

Those of us of the lower classes

Will rarely experience,

Nor will we likely have to endure

The cross-cultural complications

Inherent in excessive travel.

Be thankful to fully imbibe in the realities of life,

An not, like the wealthy, be financially removed

From the character building qualities of want

And the many lessons privation has to teach.

Providence

It must be nice having enough money

Not to trouble yourself with the health care of others,

To have such high ideals enabling you to ignore

Those who fail to live up to them.

There is, after all, that famous saying

About it being equally illegal for a rich man

To steal a loaf of bread as a poor man.

It isn’t your fault which side of the equation

You think your righteousness

Gives you the right to live on,

To dispense your moral authority from.

In a land claiming all men are created equally,

Where it becomes ever more apparent

Some are more equal than others,

History will repeat itself

And you and yours

Will get to see how nice it is

On the other side of the tracks.

The Horror of Omnipotence

It must be difficult having

The only valid point of view,

Being up there all alone seeing through

All the cloudiness hovering over the world,

Or are you looking out,

Spinning every which way

Like one of those gyroscopes,

Keeping an eye on everything,

Making sure there’s no surprises

Catching you off guard?

How do you put up with the horror of omnipotence,

Knowing what everybody is thinking of you,

That none of us can possibly understand

The kind of things you’re dealing with

When all the time, to you

Things are so self-evident?

Do you wonder why we don’t get it?

Or do you chalk it off as us

Just being not as smart as you.

Inheritance

They say the sins of the father

Are passed down to the son.

I watched my parents struggle to make ends meet,

Grow old as the ends grew further apart.

Health issues, recession, a depressed housing market,

Sound and feel familiar,

A misspent youth, too, I guess,

Fueled by dim prospects.

Doing what you have to do

Don’t seem like sins at the time.

Still, they add up,

The long line of ancestor’s sins,

The genetic memory of getting by

With the means at hand,

Self-medicating the rough spots

Sometimes blending together

To form a seamless slide through a life

Littering the future with unprepared progeny.

We do our best, we struggling descendants,

Struggling to make ends meet.

If we know anything,

We know how to struggle,

Go to our graves

Trying to make ends meet.

Say What?

I don’t know what to say.

Nothing new, never do.

I’ve been making it up as I go

Seeing nobody gave me the blueprint

On how to be. Consequently,

I’ve always lived with a foot

Outside the lines,

Or at least my thinking.

And it seems there is no barrier

For thoughts that come in,

From who knows where,

God or the devil?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell which.

Unless, of course, it’s only been me

All along,
Trying to get back across the line.

The Little Poem that Could

Every poem has higher aspirations,

Want’s to claw its way to the top

Of the pantheon,

Want’s to be remembered,

Anthologized,

Read, after all,

By school children,

Or at least one child

Who says,

What the heck,

I can do that,

And goes on to a lauded literary career,

And when asked in the famous interview

Everybody watched,

Cited that one poem

That inspired it all.

Mystery

I don’t know about you, but

God is still a mystery to me.

They say he speaks in a still small voice

And maybe I move too fast

Or my ears are too big

Or I’m just plain hard of hearing,

But I’ve no definitive answers,

Just other people telling me who God is

Or who they're afraid He is,

Or cryptic messages filtering through my brain

That could very well be of my own making.

All the Super Pastors seem to have

A certain number of steps, or books or cd’s

That promise to tell me the way to go

But I’ve been told where to go

And how to get there before

In much clearer language at no monetary cost.

The best I’ve come up with

Is to keep living my life

And eventually I’ll get to the corporeal end of it

Where I’m told all my questions will be answered.

I guess I’ll find out then

Which directions were accurate or,

If I don’t,

It won’t much matter.

The Patience of God

I’ve never much liked to wait

For the things that stop me from moving,

Without sufficient information to proceed

Towards the desired end.

Which is to say I pretty much

Don’t like the limitations

Of the human condition.

I don’t think I’d like

The omniscience of God, either,

Knowing everything,

Living without surprise.

I don’t know how God does it,

Keeps from being bored to death

Dealing with billions of us

Making the same mistake

Over and over again?

The Problem with Muses

I don’t know what word

I going to write after this one,

But I’ll keep going

Trusting that some muse

Will wander by

And maybe I’ll notice,

Because you never can tell

What form they’ll take,

The sneaky devils,

Not that I’m saying

They're devils.

That’s just a figure of speech,

Meaning their mischievous,

Liable to send you

In any number of directions.

The Inadequacy of Poetry

It is times like these

The inadequacy of poetry becomes apparent,

When language is not enough

To say what should be said,

To pay a debt that should be paid.

It is consolation remembering is better

Then never having been.

Memory turns the debt to honor

To have lived the same time,

To bear witness it is possible

To reach across the planet,

To transcend vengeance,

To teach the whole world how to live.

1918 - 2013

Supporting Your On-line Poet

If you click the little add next to this poem

I make about forty-five cents.

I don’t know if telling you that

If I’m being immoral or not playing fair,

Or if AdSence will find me guilty of breaking the rules

And terminate our little arrangement,

But I’m guessing they don’t really care

What causes you to click their add,

Or if you even read them,

So I offer this as a public service,

Strictly in support of the literary aspirations

Of your humble on-line poet,

Or, if you prefer, a crass plea for mammon,

As carpentry work this holiday season

(Do you like how I slipped that in?)

Is a bit thin.