The Birth of Continents

Subduction zones, where up and down's the same,
Where land thrusts up, earthquakes leveling homes,
Where lava rises from volcanic domes,
Are where the Earth prefers to kill and maim.

Here forests can be flattened, burned, destroyed,
And people killed as houses crumble, crack,
Collapse -- a pyroclastic flow attack
Cannot be fought whatever you've employed.

One would not blame the genius who could stop
Destruction of this kind, the lives he'd save,
Eliminating the tsunami wave --
We'd celebrate as human deaths would drop.

But unless land is always being built,
The Earth would be all ocean, full of silt.

The Black Hole

Darkling light, the deep black hole,
Darker than the blackest coal,
Bends to singularity
Space and time with density,
Spinning galaxies, so bright,
Holding all the stars in sight.

Emotional Energy

I think I want to join the flow of you,
The Mississippi brings together land
And streams across America, the true
Of science helping us to understand.

I think I want to join the flow, I should
Join with the Nile, white and blue to one,
To drain east Africa, and thus the good
Of virtue, bright as the Sahara sun.

 I think I want to join the flow, my duty
Is with the Amazon which wider grows
Though South America and bringing beauty
Throughout the world as every rhythm shows.

I think I want to join the flow that made
The Yangtze from its wondrous gorges live
In China, bring prosperity in trade,
And understand the wealth that it can give.

I think I want to join the flow of joy
The Danube brings as its blue waters shine
Across east Europe. I want to employ
The sacrifice that brings us the divine.

I know I want to join these flows, but each
Is not enough for me. I must be free
To bring all flows within my ocean reach
And view the world in its complexity.

Against the Tribe

The darkling water vortexed down
To drag me to the sea’s abyssal plain –
I fear, so certain I will drown,
That every person is my family’s bane.

No sparkling stars leaven the night
Engulfing me as others’ problems fill
My vision, obfuscate my sight
And sap my warmth, enwrap me with a chill.

A life of pressure, bringing stress
That crushes, pulverizes every joy –
A nightmare, I can feel it press
My chest – I’m certain it will soon destroy

With strife my crafted healthy flows.
I only want a simple life where I
Enjoy my family as it grows
Strong feathered wings so each of us can fly.

A Day With You

I want to spend a day with you
Without our kids without our worries
I simply to sit and hold
You in my arm all of our hurries

Spread to the sky to dissipate
Away to carry all our cares
Into the dark where they belong
So we can join the joyful pairs

That fill the poems of all time
That celebrate our kind of love
That fit together and will fly
Like lovely diamond Inca doves

I want to spend a day with you
A life of days that intermesh
Our love expressed as lovers and
Unconsummated naked flesh

A Teaser from "President Faust" (Which I am working on)

Faust:

My Lord, have mercy on my soul! Dear God!

Mephistopheles:

You have the mercy that you meted out.
Too bad, for mercy is the grease of justice.
Her gears have ground down to a halt with you.

Faust:

I do not understand what’s happening.
How is it justice can give rise to pure
Injustice as I managed to unleash?

Mephistopheles:

You foolish man, why do you think we chose
To lift you up? Look at the justice you
Embrace: pure, simplifying order. Don’t
You know the universe’s tendency
Is toward much more complexity? The chaos
Becomes the atoms, then the molecules
Emerge, then life and mind and consciousness
In social man. And then in man we move
From tribe to heroes like Achilles, then
To Christ-like pieties and on to men
Who make the world in commerce, then to those
Like you who wish to flatten everything.
You should have grown beyond all that to see
The world as more complex and unified –
But, no. instead, you chose to take the path
Of simplifying Satan. Yes! My master,
The Prince of Darkness, known as Lucifer,
He loves to simplify, to bring men down,
To make men animals if possible.
In you I saw potential and I brought
Your case before my master, who then asked
Of God if we could make our offer. I
Am proud I found you, Faust. I found the man
Who’d simplify the greatest country in
The world to nothingness. You did our deed.

Faust:

Can such injustices emerge from justice?

Mephistopheles:

You do not think that out of good we can
Still find a means of evil? Yes, we can
Discover in the best intentions ways
To bring a man – yes, every man – to grief.
The best thing that we ever did was make
Mere man believe himself the source of justice,
Denying God, and in his justice kill
True justice, citing freedom destroy freedom,
And think to be a libertine to have
True liberty. No judge, no advocate,
Just me, the prosecutor, as the law.
I do believe in justice – merciless
And terrible. You’ll pay for all your sins –
And I shall punish you. Yes, you will pay.

Why We're Where We Are

It all began with Archduke Ferdinand.
The war that caused the Germans to send Lenin
To Russia, hoping revolution would
Take Russia from the war. It did. The cost
Was millions dead from his and Stalin's rule.
For Germany the outcome was the same:
Defeat and retribution that would make
The Germans into Nazis and for one,
John Maynard Keynes, a reputation for
His warning Germany would rise again
In vengeance for its punishment. The deaths
Of millions, holocaust. The fascists gone,
Identical twin communism rose.
The West enjoyed a false prosperity
From Keynes' plans as Russian went to take
Afghanistan. American supported
The rebels so the Soviets would fall.
The Soviets would fall to leave the rebels
In charge in rough Afghanistan, to grow
Their hatred for America as it
Expanded power to Arabia
In an Iraqi war. The towers fell.
America replaced the Soviets
In hard Afghanistan, which we paid for
With an expanding housing bubble made
To order from John Maynard's script. It burst,
And Keynes was called to cure what he had caused.
And now you know why we are where we are.