A Woman’s World

 

To fight alone Is not brave
It’s suicidal, the Calvary is a family
Success is empty when not shared
The heart is not a solitary thing
The kingdom needs a female ruler

A smile suffused with creation
A bliss larger than heaven
A womb whose content is hope

No, to live alone is not healthy
To hide in the virtual worlds
We all require the skin on skin
Of happiness, the fruit of labor
The ripeness of summer

Success is not devoid of love or grace
It is for relationships that we conquer
The value is always in giving

I have a missing friend in my heart
Who taught me the joy of service
Fighting is for the tribe, not the individual
A harmony of identity diffused
In a higher aim, in a greater glory

Accessible like an inherited thrill
Or a gene that shines for everything
The dopamine of a better world.

Prep Dreams

When I awake to the pawnbroker that you are
I will not criticize you for being a scavenger
Cheapskate, penny pincher, for
I will remember poverty, like sleep

I’ve placed it against my lips and
Cried its tears against my stained pillow-cases
I know the feel of a bed that turns
From hard to soft, until it is no longer a bed

I know loneliness like the back of my hand
Through broken fingernails and chipped dreams
And the lucid reminder of how class is destiny
And birth-lottery is the current state of things

And the black-eyed bruise of opportunity
When I awake to the people climber that you are
I will not criticize you for being a shark

For people hurry in their sleep to dream faster
Lay me down then and I’ll close my eyes
And I’ll pretend too that capitalism is real

That consuming and owning is important
Even if I know you are a wanna-be, I’ll play along
For tomorrow’s promises might find you

Hoarding wisdom and bottling simplicity
For the revelation that even skittish dreamers
Make mistakes and even monkeys wake.

Open Invitation

Like Air & Water

Hello, I wish we would have connected earlier
We should meet in another life
We should meet in air

Me and you, with a new world between us
In loving people too much, or not enough
I felt the scenes of my life

Anonymously, my consuming interests
Were psycho-social
If not, to talk to everybody

As deeply as I could
We would sleep in open fields
And travel west in our hearts

To walk freely into the night
Maybe in, another time and place
I wouldn’t be so terrified of

The malignity of the mechanics
Of how separated our lives are now
A schizophrenic individualism

Where profit counts more than people;
Goodbye, I wish we would have known each other
We should meet in another life

We could meet in water
Me and you, without the deluded sense
Of desperate egoism of this culture

I will leave our unity for then
Until then, I will take a deep breath
To listen for the shore, that’s the heart
At the other end of time.

Titled In Bold Below

Stay Tough Champ

There are algorithms that can predict
If you are a follower, or an innovator
They take your entire life and break it down
Into the analytics of your free-will

Urbanization is like an experiment
Where people are compressed
Into smaller places, trained
Where everyone is trying to be like

Everyone else, the same as being no one
We are taught to search for stability
Our parents remind us to start saving young
But what if, the entire system is unsustainable?

Economics like so many things, are the domain
Of dead white men from Europe
Old elite families who like to believe
They pull the puppets of the world

Social psychology can’t keep up with change
Neither can art, it just has its lucky super stars
Like some kid the New York times calls a prophet
Who appears to be some kind of junkie

There are algorithms that are trained on your data
What you buy, what you view on the internet
What kinds of people you are social with
What keywords you search, what kind of porn you watch

And it’s a disenchanting process to be reduced
To a trend, but experience is so inauthentic these days
There are these same internet sites everyone goes to
And we are raised to be strong, independent, alone

It’s elusive to be happy when we are disconnected
In our essential connectedness, like being
Surrounded by social media without true intimacy
So much for being a catalyst that turns misery into art.

Theories of Goodness

Theories of Goodness

After years of research
I can safely guarantee
That people try to be good
Leaving youth for comfort

And revolution for family
I see it every generation
Sleepy and ready to bury
Into the warmth of
The path of least resistance

People care, to the degree
It influences them personally
We don’t have the energy
For God’s sake, to do much more

You have to pace yourself
To live one hundred and ten years
You’re so good at being you,
Did it take you a bit of practice?
To figure out whom you wanted to be

After years of research
They tell me we only know
How little we know
And how wonderful it is

To still want to do, know and create
More, so jump, jump like your
Life depended upon it
What are you waiting for

Go do some good, we do not stop
We have no theory of failure
Only this philosophy of growth.

On learning to Dream Big

On learning to Dream Big

You will say unbelievable things
Dreaming big, early in the morning
And some part of you will
Always remember, taking heart

To the extraordinary limbs
Of courage and destiny
That resides in you

Brave enough to bury ghosts
And cut ties with dysfunctional
Experiments, rising to maturity

Will you be able to
Open closed doors and close
Opened doors that impoverish

Your mind, your body of purity
Your motivation to achieve?
And they will say unbelievable things

And you won’t falter, because
You will be prepared, having
Goals at the root of your actions
What will be able to sway you?
It is a short walk anyways

From adulthood to maturity
The years won’t seem so slow
And you wrote all the things
You dreamed about and
Like music, your goals walked with you

You loved what you wanted to be
And as you abandoned things
For that which you most loved
You found the sacrifice was sacred
You came to believe in
Hard work, as an end to itself.

Wrinkles on our dreams

Wrinkles on our dreams

I woke with marble in my hands
What does it mean?
I am descendent of centuries
Not independent, not autonomous

I am a falling into dreams
Of generations and pupils of elders
It would be very difficult
To think of myself as separate

I inherit euro-centric bias
And I take part unwittingly in patriarchy
I live in an economic simulation
What does this mean?

It means reality is not culture
Social conditions is only a layer
Of existence, my hands disappear
In my dreams, for I know my ancestors

Committed murder, waged false wars
So a few could profit
And the many would remain slaves
Feudalism never died, it only

Masked itself in a homogenous
Globalization of pretend liberties
I wake up with dreams of my own
That I’ve likely been programmed for

My desires are the software
And I am the obedient application
I labour, I do what I am told
How can I innovate in a world

In a world where strangers
Are competitors and scarcity
Is a growing concern of failing economies
I haven’t seen myself in the mirror
Where has my soul gone to visit?

That thing you call the hearth

the day is not our own
it belongs to our hearth
our family, our society, our nation

nature made our hearts
public calendars, followers
of tribe, so when you lust

know that you service this
your honest thoughts may linger
but individuality is a myth

you are a part of history
you came from a mother
you owe your livelihood

to the city, to the nurturance
of friends, to the generosity
of employers, to the wealth
you scavenged how to speak
to the stars, but it only

brought you closer to others
not to God, not to any beauty
no, that left you long ago.

Psalm 9 – The Violence

O Lord, how forgiveness
Frees us from the past
And acceptance, empties us of
Traumatic memories, it is ordained

That our fate should have
Highs and lows, though there is
Always somehow the feeling
Of something like the presence of God

Or the potential for angels
And the proximity of nature
Or the caress of silence
And the quantum dominion of

Powers we cannot fully understand
The prophecy of secrets
And the workings of the invisible
But the beasts in the field play

Just as Man does his part to acquire
To mate, to make war and steal the
Lot of his neighbor, to overcome
His own fears and insecurities

And profit, in the trials of others
Let it not be said we are better
Than animals, for I have seen
Man in all his glory and vanity

And even the most intelligent men
Were better villains than in the stories
And Man killed exceptionally well
Even in his more mature wisdom.

Elegie to the Spirit’s Freedom

We are bound to nature
Not bound to any one man or woman
Truly, we are free in the

Will and whim and wit of change
Likeness glues love but how
We art all similar, all shaped
By the wild roguery of the age
We are bound to nature

And to her we rebel
Not bound by the custom of our day
But free to resist and gloat and panic

Against the conformity of the times
We are not even bound to love
Some live in a pure state of individualism
Managing their wealth and health
Just so, and finding new paths to happiness

If I have caught a bird, let him fly
For in flight have I witnessed
The Soul of the Earth

In heights, in speed, in liberty
Women are like the Arts
Forc’d unto none, open to all who search
The liberal arts thus never go out of style
Nor the women who read

Those sort of books, the seas
Receive their contemplation of nature.

Photo Courtesy:

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Place-for-dreaming-489692545

The Flat Land

(a play on words based on T.S Eliot’s the Waste Land)

November is the cruelest month, destroying
What once was for what will be
The snow will stalk our dreams, hoping
To fill the emptiness of another summer’s end
Earth will forget the dead
As I forget what it was to be a student

Labour fuels my hours, surviving
One year to the next, a broken man
Where is the Spring I once knew so well?
Where is my heart in this cruel world?
Where is time but in these broken images?
Memory is insufficient to be my food

The wind howls and I am the trees
Who have endured so much, again and again
The famous shadows on the ground mean nothing
They are what they were, darkness spreading
These unreal cities are all the same
With their cosmopolitan jargon and anonymity

Each trying to out duel the next, competition
In the workplace, in the dating market
One must be so careful these days
Friends depart without a trace, elders die
Families get divided, partners divorce
The winter dawn has its own beauty

A short and infrequent storm, the bloom
Of white to carpet our weary feet
On roads of fate, sometimes without shelters
Without kindred souls who know us deeply
The synthetic atmospheres of urban life
A society of white walkers, whose truth

Only mimics the fallen empires of liberty
The false figures of unemployment rates
Which do not count those who have given up
Indebted states, welfare states, police states
And the persistent rumour that democracy is dead.

Photo Courtesy:

1. http://www.deviantart.com/art/November-102099308

2. http://www.deviantart.com/art/november-273637092

The Power of Wealth

Gratitude, is lost in this world
Of possession, accumulation, hoarding
You seek security, and end up losing choice?
And you want prosperity, trading it for freedom?

Learn then from God’s few messengers
This alchemy, be satisfied with what you are given
For greed takes away from some other person?
And having is meaningless in a temporary world

Be grateful for the food you eat
For the friends who listen to you
And when grief comes to teach you
Pay attention, do not fret as if it’s the end of the world

Gratitude, is lost in this selfish community
Where individuals are promoted for
A lonely self-absorbed heroics at the marketplace…
Be grateful for your health, and use this power

Responsibly, for wealth is not the praise of competition
It is a power to be given, a licence to help others.

LANDSCAPE WITHOUT ANGELS

Bravely in a land of dust
As pilgrims we make our way
To some far country we believe is good
But the truth is, we are all immigrants

Nomads and priestesses of our faith
Sojourning in foreign countries
In heart-broken cities that endure
An agony to submit

To the volatile finger of God
Or to thrust our lives
In the climate or our Self-Will
Our solid body craving so much

In the muted landscapes of our youth
Bravely in a land of dust
As pilgrims we make our way
In forever-turning seasons

That bend in the breeze with rust
Beneath implied-expectations where
Our worth is judged, every day.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/the-city-lights-152148064

Perfection of Neuromarketed Solitude

It’s so simple/
To wake up a lonely man enough
Until it becomes the only possibility
I’ll work hard all day

A new leader of destiny/
With the concise grief
Of weeping men, I’ll take it
Sow a dynasty, cheat fate

In the freedom of my pilgrimage/
Hardened, I’ll build a lonely country
Where I am both, President and Serf
I’ll break from love &

I’ll scorn fraternity/
Float my soul in my own cherry wine
It’s so simple
That’s what this world is coming to

I’ll polish my own tongue/
With kisses for melodious memories
That’s I’ll invent
Like a virtual network

Of my own imagination/
There will be brown petals of fire
Around my acts, circling my poems
My cattle will be the milk of muses

Like layers of autumn leaves/
Of all the beauty I shall witness
Something forgets in me, to count on others
It’s so simple

To wake up a lonely man/
And accept it all, perfectly.

Lament of Individual Freedom

Love walked alone
With a companion of the Self
That wore a heart of pain
In a name, a vacant horizon

Without a descendant line
Love walked alone
Accosted by harsh individualism
Autonomy became an exaggeration

Of running strong without limitation
Love walked alone
With no common goods
Of things to trade from the heart

Life became an anonymous journey
With a lonely middle without reward.