Friday, September 30, 2011

Autumn

When freedom is lost in the land of the free
Where will we all go who still wish to be free?
This was the last stop for the ships of the free
Who do not believe that their lunch should be free.

The wannabe rulers are taking this land –
They take all your money and take all your land
And hand it all over to cronies with land
To spare and whose money makes sure where they land.

They feed us the worst of ourselves back to us
And promise with lies that they’re really for us.
They fill us with envy and make all of us
To covet so they can then steal from all us.

Why won’t they all just let us be so that we
Can prosper and live in the world just as we
See fit? What is left in the world so that we
Who want to be free can embrace? Who are we?

Stand up! It is time that we fight the elite
Who don’t know a thing but believe an elite
Like them should control all our lives. This elite
Convince everyone just because they’re elite.

The farmer who plows, the inventor who makes
Our lives so much better with things that he makes,
And owners of stores whose prosperity makes
Us richer. We should just embrace he who makes.

This was the last stop for the ships of the free
Who do not believe that their lunch should be free.
When freedom is lost in the land of the free
Where will we all go who still wish to be free?

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Blaze

How can we know we need a guide
When we do not know we are even lost?
We disregard the signs that would direct
Us back to the place we know and own,
A home set in among a handful of trees,
An open space we manipulate to look
Like our home of ancient memory.
A straight road stretches home, directing us
Through the deserts we thought were beautiful,
But whose beauty becomes lost in rocks
And cliffs made the same by dry winds
Which stripped scattered skeletons of their
Individuality. The desert’s drought endangers us.
We strayed into the desert, off the road
That will direct us home where rains
Replenish grass and trees. The beauty of growth
Renews us in its rejuvenating repetitions
Even as it calls us home from our nomadic wanderings.
The familiar melody of the larksong guides us home.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

If

If we teach our children math by asking
Them what color they think that it should be,
If we graduate our high school students
Functional illiterates unable
Stringing words to made grammatically,
If we do not teach our students classics,
If we do not teach our students logic,
If we do not teach our students music,
If we do not teach them how to reason,
If we do not teach them good and bad and
How to tell the difference between them,
If we do not do away with envy
Taught as ethical belief by teachers
Who believe the best and brightest do not
Count and say that they will just have to be
Bored so we can reach the dumb and lazy,
If we think to hit the target that we
Must aim low as possible, to our feet,
If we do not hold ourselves and others
To a higher standard than we do now,
If we keep on denigrating all that's
Excellent and good, just and beautiful,
If we keep on going as we're going

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Emergence or, This Is That Something

And then something arose in the space
That is time and the one became two
And the two became three and the three
Became multitudes speaking the one
To another so something'd arise
In chemical complexity ground
To the rising of life in the space
That it made and the space that it made
In between the chemically made
Paradox paradox of all life
Is resolved in the mind of humans
In which something arose in the space
Of the brain and the one became two
and the two became three and the three
Became multitudes speaking as one
Who can speak to each other to form
And inform a new form from inform
So that something arose in the space
So that something arose into time

Monday, September 26, 2011

Ingratitude

Why must I be made to fail
Because I fought for your success?
Why should I be made to lose
Because I wanted you to win?
I brought you gifts more precious
Than silver, gold, and rubies
And your response has been to throw
Them in the mud and piss on them.
The ignorant now rule the wise,
The foolish run the show.
Why buy the real when a mirage
Will satisfy the average man
Who’s willing to buy every ruse?
And don’t we know when everything
Is up for sale it’s value that we lose?
Our up is down, our down is up,
And when we miss the mark
All we have to do is yell that it’s not fair –
We’ll expand the bull’s eye too.
We forget that to miss the mark
Is what we once called “sin.”
But don’t you worry – we’ll hold your hand –
You won’t have to learn a thing –
And you’ll be happy not knowing how
You came to shout aloud, “Sieg heil!”

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Western Australia

It’s on the other side of Earth
And, though I hear there is a dearth
Of neighbors, I would fly its girth
And give my country a wide berth.
And though this is in partial mirth,
I’m sure that I would find rebirth –
I think that I would gain in worth –
If I could only move to Perth.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Social Justice

I weep in pity at your constant strife –
Your body broken by the burning sun.
You should not have to sweat away your life –
You ought to know I see our lives as one.
Your labor should be valued by far more.
The profit you create should be for you.
Instead, you sell your body like a whore,
And you are never given what you’re due.
Yet here, you have your champion in me,
The one who will bring justice to you all –
The champion of all society,
I’ll place exploiters up against the wall.
I’ll take and mold you, make sure that you fit.
I know what’s best for you – you will submit.

Friday, September 23, 2011

In the Multiverse

If there are really many universes,
As many physicists now claim, if there
Are infinite universes out there –
Then I exist an infinite number
Of times and places, and so do my wife
And baby daughter. In some, sadly, I
Do not exist; in some, my wife and I,
We never met. And that’s the tragedy.
But out there too my mother also lives
And, living, knows and loves my daughter who,
In my own universe, she’s never seen --
And, knowing that, I think on it with joy.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Telemachus' Lament

The wind that whips across the shining sea
Brings tales of loss and love back home to me.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Time and Space, Rhyme and Place

I wander in search of a time after time,
Refusing to fall from this dangerous climb
Into a thick space of deep complexity --
The towers unfold in a city where we
Have a place with our spirit. Well, what about me?
Is mine more complex than a towering tree?
The Spirit arises with great density
Of space and of time. What propensity
For love of all music's attraction-love's chime
Has led me, unfolding this  branching new rhyme?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

An Astrology

I stand, stare at the Cantor dust of stars,
Stand alone in the open field of grass
That glows in the silver of the moon brass
And dark emerald under a rising Mars.
I wage a silent war within my mind
As I wait in vain for a happiness
These stars cannot bring me. My loneliness
Soaks into the ground to be left behind.
I turn away from Mars and search the sky –
The false-star Venus must be out among
The stars and darkness, a beacon for me
To connect my life to, so I can fly
And leave this lonely-soaked ground a far-flung
Memory. I want to love and to be.

Monday, September 19, 2011

A Medical Consultation

My true concern is for your health
In asking you to share my bed –
I only wish to share the wealth
Of benefits that have been wed
By all the doctors of the day
To the one thing you’ve kept at bay.
Why would you miss this exercise,
So pleasant, easy when you’re prone?
How can you say that it is wise
To miss out on the firm and tone
Muscles that can make you sure,
With head held high through good posture?
Your lovely skin and thick, dark hair
Will turn much shiner and smooth –
Your loveliness will be more fair;
And it is said that this can sooth
Your headaches and your every stress –
And all you have to say is "Yes."
No better drug could lift you up
Than those you’ll brew up in this bed;
No pharmacist could yet brew up
A medicine to clear your head,
So every flower smells more sweet –
Just climb in here under the sheet.
Relaxed, you’ll get much better sleep
Than any that you’ve ever had –
With brighter light this tiny leap
Will open you and make you glad
You changed your mind and joined me here
So that same mind becomes more clear.
A longer life is here for you,
And much more slowly you will age;
You’ll be less sick – yes, it is true –
What arguments must I still wage?
My proof, at least, you must agree,
Is stronger proof than is a flea.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Aesthetics – Beauty

When the sun dapples through the trees’ leaves
And the world becomes a familiar stranger
In the wild and growing tapestry it weaves,
We’ll be in danger
Of finding flowers in reds and indigos
Sprouting up to fill the new open spaces
Once filled by the brush we’ve cleared with our woes,
Lost love’s embraces.
Pain breaks the chains we had while down in the cave,
Its deadly fires purify our perceptions,
Cleans them for the very few who can be brave –
Be gone, deceptions!
Be gone and let us see the world in color,
In resolution sharper than quarks can give us,
Sharper than old photos with their tin color
Most still use to truss
Up the prejudices and preconceptions
They hold, too terrified to question a thing
That they believe. Can we know what receptions
Deep knowledge could bring?

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Sources

My Muses are the offspring of my memory
And God. The Greeks were right. I sing my memory.

Can poets then be ignorant? Can poets fail to love?
The poets sing the songs of God from memory.

And thus I must sing songs of love and celebrate
All life, my wife, and all the joys of memory.

My joy’s the joy of one who lives in Paradise
Because my trip through Hell remains in memory.

I had the shroud around my eyes burned off
So I could see the gold of my deep memory –

The human, tribes expanding into everyone
To make a network building social memory

The mammal, touch, emotion, and the lobe-finned drives
Of ritual and property in memory

Perhaps we also touch the stars in which we’re born,
And back before there’s time, the naught of memory.

The terror that is there will fling you back to earth
To see creation’s beauty as God’s memory,

And thus I live in joy because I’ve seen the truth,
True virtue and deep beauty through my memory.

I hope this love of life, of God, of man, my wife
Will help keep me, Troy Camplin, in your memory.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Etre Sartre

In France was an atheist, superb
At finding new ways to disturb –
A communist brand,
A Nazi’s friend, and
Philosophy based on a linking verb.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Introduction

In the unbelievable and unknown –
In the unrefined and those without thought –
In the unremarkable and unwise –
We find our leaders
We find our heroes
We find our artists
I see it – there is a sun on the horizon –
The rosy fingers of an ancient dawn –
A rebirth of everything from everything we have torn apart –
A world in fragments – no longer a world –
Fragments gathered up –
A world reborn from the fragments –
A world reborn from the past, the ancients –
Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Africans, Arabs, Indians, and aborigines –
Yet –
I am not a postmodernist
And I am not a classicist
And I am not a romantic
And I am not a modernist
And I am not a naturalist
No –
I am each of these – and none
I am the moon and the sun
I am the earth and the sea
I am woman and man
Seriousness and fun
Fragments and unity
Plurality and one