Category: poetry

Cliffs

Imagine a railroad track that ends where the bridge is out,
over a
steep
cliff
that
no one
would
ever
want to
fall off
to his
death.

People on a train
are going on that railroad track, right to the end of it.
They
don’t
seem
aware
of the
danger
that
they’re
heading
toward.

Marxists, liberals, and right-wingers
are all on that train, racing toward certain doom.
These
last
of the
three
are all
running
to the
front,
as if
wanting
to die.

The liberals are just sitting in their seats,
with a strange faith that the track will go
all
the
way
to
the
other
side
of
the
abyss.

Only the Marxists, the Leninists in particular,
are going to the back, running to jump off,
before
they
go
over
with
all of
those
fools
who
think
the
track
is safe.

Dripping

We can sweat the small stuff, enduring those tiny drops
that don’t upset too much, being so small. Yet, them being
so cold, irregular, and incessant, the irritation slowly builds

’til

you

can

not

take it anymore.

It’s like Chinese water torture: sweat will drip off your chin
as the cold drops slowly fall, tapping on your scalp. Knowing
when they are coming, you’re prepared, and they’d be bearable,

but

you

do

not

know when they will hit, so the anticipation is crazy-making.

Gold was supposed to trickle down decades ago, but it
was pyrite. The decades went by, the trickling was icy cold,
& now we’re mad, getting cut off from reality more and more,

and

no

one

is

helping us, or organizing, or showing us a way out of this mess. Each drip
may just be one drop of water, but these all add up to a lake of fire over time.
Someone, please, turn off the tap, so we can all have peace.

Funnels

There have always been
a concentrated group
of people who
will know
how
one
may
see

the wise way to go, but
how do we get all
the others out
there to
see
the
way
out

of our current trap?
There are those
to the right,
they who
can
not
see
one

thing amiss about
class conflict,
but believe
markets
to be
the
one
way
out.

Then, there are those
on the ultra-left
who are not
satisfied
unless
all
is
set
up

without any faults.
how can one
funnel
such
men
in
so

thin a space to get
us all out of
this mess
that
we
are
in?

Horns

The
loud,
brass bluster of horns that accompanies pomp is foul,
obnoxious noise one should not have to endure in our
world
now.

No
one’s
better than all others, by birth, colour, or sex. Why,
why must we hear fanfares that damage our fragile
ears
so?

To
blow
one’s own horns is a blow to our eardrums, a
rupture, a goring, a piercing of a bull’s horns.
Stop
it!

Towers

Some
people
tower
above
others
because
of innate
greatness
and effort.
They have
earned their
godlike glory.

Many
others
lord
them-
selves
above
all of us
because
they are
egotistical
seekers of an
unearned glory.

Their
Babel-
esque
boasts
sound
to us as
if they were
unintelligible
gibberish from
distant, foreign
lands. To listen to
them is to be deaf.

These
Simon
Stylites
would
attain
heaven,
but they’d
best beware
of falling from
so far a height as
to crash on the land,
bore a hole into it, and
end up in the lowest hell.


Atropos

When will the third of the Fates
snip the cord of my life?
How will she do it,
and where?
Will I go gently, or
will I scream in a panic?
Will it be quick, or drawn out?

Will the
snipping cut me up,
leaving my blood in a splash,
staining my clothes and surroundings,
or will it be painless, me not
knowing it happened
at all?

And what of the fate of the world?
will it end with a bang,
or a whimper?
Will the
scissors snip
with a piercing clack,
or with an unnoticed smoothness?

All I know
is that her scissors
are right by the thin string.
The blades surround it, and they
are ready to close and cut.
The string trembles
in terror.

Roads

The
road
to hell
might be
paved with
noble intents,

but
such a
way may
have tar as
black as evil,
leading to worse.

To
go on
the ‘left’
lane or to
go along the
right won’t make

too
big a
change
of where
we’ll go, on
the same road.

I
am
going
toward
a dead end,
off a high cliff.

The
ones
at the
top are
taking us
to our doom.

We
must
course
down an
alternative,
while we can.