War

We watch war happen in real time. Cover it. Analyze it. Comment on it. Picture it. Weigh in on it politically, militarily and diplomatically. Make it intensely real. Just a click of the TV remote.
But what we now know about war, we’ve known about war from the beginning of human civilization. It’s driven by power, greed, religion, envy, conquest and arrogance. It benefits the powerful while destroying the lives of the commoner. It reminds us that hate is easier than love and easier to be an enemy than a brother.

For all the wars—justified or not—we are not able to transcend the ways we separate ourselves from one another. We are not able to see ourselves first as human beings. 

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Feet

Feet in the toxic floodwater.
Feet in the warm spa.
Feet in the mud of the hillside slide.
Feet playing in the sandbox.
Feet bare on the hot asphalt.
Feet in $150 sport shoes.
Feet in the hot desert sand.
Feet in the warm sand of the beach.
Feet in badly worn sandals.
Feet in spike heels.
Feet in the rubble.
Feet in the warm blanket.
Feet on the burning earth.
Feet in the cool grass.
Feet swollen with insect bites.
Feet soothed with rich lotion.
Feet standing in pools of blood.

Hands in the pools of blood. 

Targets

 

2 poems

Two Short Poems

Love

Tireless emerging grass of life
And ordinary
Full with roots and seeds
And ordinary is not weeds
But green and slender
Bent with nighttime sorrow


Tomorrow

I whispered promises
In Tomorrow’s ear
And heard the laughter
Of yesterday…

Who overheard 

Stars

 No need for the densely starred heavens

Too much mystery to absorb
Besides, we have Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”
And magic lights of the sprawling city
And clubs where we can dance
Around our own navels
Living a whole life
Believing stars are only neatly
Sprinkled for human romance
When we could have the universe
In our pockets

Football

 

Conversation

 

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2024 teachers

 2024 requirements for teachers:

1. Each teacher must develop the voice of a TV announcer to hold students’ attention.
2. Each teacher must have a real or animated class mascot.
3. Each teacher must adopt a football player hero for the class.
4. Each teacher must post a personal dance video on a social media site to indicate they are cool.
5. Each teacher must interview the parents of each child to determine their religion, politics and values so they can individualize teaching to each child.
6. For this, teachers get a 2% raise and a personal PTSD therapist.

This world

 In the midst of this world of brutality and hate, I try to focus on some of those who tried to teach us to be human—MLK, Jr., Dorothy Stang, the Delai Lama, Albert Schweitzer, St, Francis, Desmond Tutu, Pope Francis…

Brief life

He was birthed into the world on the farm his parents worked. He was industrious and responsible and began each workday by picking up a handful of dirt and letting it crumble through his fingers. He was the only one of the 3 boys who didn’t go away to college and stay gone. He took a sturdy, reliable woman for a wife and had kids of his own. He was a student of the weather, which made him the best damn farmer in the area. When his wife died in childbirth, he managed the boys and the farm alone. When he died, each of the boys threw a handful of dirt into the open grave and watched it hit the coffin and crumble.

Unrelenting

 The thing about artists is the unrelenting aspect of their work. It’s never resolved. There’s always something more beautiful, deeper, more profound, more human to be discovered. And, of course, the artist is transformed along the way.

Peace

 After decades of hate, war, destruction, civilian deaths, fear, insecurity, political chaos, cost of weaponry and the acceptance of this as the norm, how can peace not be worth all the effort to secure it?

This war only poisons the combatants with hate and makes their lives unbearable. And who wins? The powerful, the wealthy and the weapons merchants. How much money has been spent on conflict and how much on peace?
I have listened to many government officials and commentators, and none speak about peace—not just the end of the war, but a permanent peace. How can people want to continue to live this way?

Unimaginable

 

Fragmentation

 

Israel

 Israel is at war. And this is being covered by the media as a war. Casualties, strategies, security, destruction, analysis, interviews—the whole thing. But how many times have we seen this hate manifested—intifadas, terrorist acts, Palestinian men throwing rocks at Israeli tanks, walls, destruction of homes, killing of civilians, settlement expansions by Israel. The hate and brutality don’t end.

This life for both sides is the consequence when power and hate are more important than the courage to make peace. But this requires seeing the other as a human being.

Shoot the chidren

Let us shoot the children.
Let us train the children for terrorist attacks in their schools.
Let the bullets of AK-47’s rain down.
Let 3-year-olds get shot at home.
Let us narrowly interpret the Second Amendment.
Let assure there is a gun for every person in America.
Let us put law enforcement in danger of their lives.
Let us throw our hands up in hopelessness.
Let the mentally ill have their guns.
Let us put no restrictions on gun shows.

Let us Republicans protect the glorious Second Amendment. 

Hero

 A hero is chosen and accepts the harrowing and mysterious quest. They take the journey, even at the peril of their lives. They return to society transformed and enlightened with the task of enlightening others, a gift they freely give.

These days, media popularity is enough to make cheap heroes of entertainers and athletes while real heroes are lost to us. The real hero should inspire action, not envy and adoration.
The real heroes are not in comic books, but in the military, refugee camps, among the homeless, crusading against injustice and against climate destruction.
Fake heroes abound in the media. The real ones go about the business of making the world a better place.

Anatomy

Think of aging as an anatomy lesson. Suddenly, all the body parts you never knew you had or never paid attention to, all of a sudden cry out to you. Lungs, heart, liver, blood, skin, kidney, spleen, bladder…you get it. Through you and your friends, you get to know all the way they are misbehaving. Oops, a blood clot. Oops, some afib. Oops, an enlarged prostate. Oops, a hip replacement. So there it is. Your body telling you all about itself and it complaints. 

College education

In my experience, a college education is a chance to swim in the ideas of the great minds. It’s a chance to develop your voice. It’s a chance to develop the critical skills that you will use to make sense of the world. It’s a chance to understand what it means to be a human being.

But I think higher education is failing at this. Major sports have been pushed forward in fundraising and student recruitment. The public face of the university is sport. Graduates celebrate getting the diploma and expect the big paycheck to follow. Many don’t ask for more than that.

Descartes, Oppenheimer, Hawking, Hildegard von Bingen, Harriet Tubman, Schostakovitch, Lewis Thomas are all names that are less important that the names of basketball and football players. Coaches make more money than university presidents. 

Visual art

One of the least understood professions is that of visual artist. Media gives us some insight—though sometimes twisted—about what medical professionals, police, FBI agents, soldiers, teachers, social workers, firemen, mechanics, even pimps do.

But visual artists are often portrayed as simply strange. Visual art is a backdrop of decoration in stories, the actors not even looking at the art. Late night talk show hosts invite authors to discuss books we haven’t read when they could invite visual artists with their work right there.

Visual artists follow their own truth, tackle social issues, search out beauty, and help us understand what it means to be human.

If this short discourse doesn’t encourage you to take visual artists more seriously, they try this. Imagine the world with all visual art gone. Does that help at all? 

Cloud haikus

Cloud haikus

The clouds tell stories
White and floating, shifting shape
What are their secrets

Laying in the grass
Wishing I could sleep in them
My cottony bed

Billowy and white
Clouds are home to my daydreams
The sky is heaven

Black and threatening
Heavy as stone, rain pounding
It’s what we need

The clouds are painted
By the sun, cotton candy
Butter, tangerine

Chilly nighttime clouds
Mystery against the moon

They bring quiet sleep 

Conscience

 When we are born, we are only potential human beings. The task to become a human being is a lifelong effort, and some—like Trump, Putin, Xi, Kim, Maduro and the many other brutal dictators--never get there.

I’ve often asked myself how it is that denying humanity and choosing evil and brutality can seem so easy. It’s the seductiveness of power, wealth and control and the false belief that these can fill the gnawing emptiness of a person.
Don’t we all have a conscience? It may be evidenced through religion or spirit or soul or may simply come out of an observant life. But we each have one, and we have the choice to acknowledge and live by it or not.
Living by your conscience is not easy. Look at the current state of American politics. Power hungry people know well how to seduce and control the masses. People with consciences are not as good at this. Often the conscience is a single voice—Malala, Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, Mandela, Tutu, MLK.
Conscience can love. Conscience can rage. Conscience is compassionate. Conscience inspires. Conscience endures. It’s a mystery how some are called to profound acts of conscience and others are seduced by evil.