Happy, Oh Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween,
Trick or Treat,
Nightmare wishes and
candy corn dreams,
there’s a Monster
under your bed,
in your closet,
in your head.

Let the moonlight,
cast creeping shadows on
the crisp autumnal night streets,
while nocturnal creatures rise
from sepulchers and graves,
ravenous for sweet living
flesh and the brains of
the innocent.

Beware the black cat crossing
your path, as you traipse
door to door, collecting candy and
frights,  saccharine delights, stinking
of grease paint and the dampening
leaves strewn about the lawns,
keep vigilant for unfamiliar footfalls
at your back.

Dusky and dark,
twilight settling in,
unnerving and anxious,
cold breezes rush in, blowing
a spiral of leaves o’ re head,
Jack-O-Lanter’s candle flames,
flicker, while something sinister
whispers your name.

Happy All Hallows Eve;
pray the morning comes,
but you’ll never be as sure of
what you saw, as you were,
yesterday.
Was it real, or just a dream,
a sugar rush vision of a
possible Hell.

Happy Halloween!!!

Haunted

 

Halloween Horrors are not
quite what they used to be,
it doesn’t seem like ghosts,
ghouls and monsters are all
that scary anymore,
now it is men and women,
dressed in silly camouflage (which clearly works in urban settings)
stalking the streets,
taking people instead of candy.

It is indeed a trick without
the treat, what witches were
once accused of doing seems
commonplace as people are
scooped up off the streets,
and spirited away to secret
caverns where who knows
what horrors are inflicted.

One pumpkin colored man’s fears,
have amplified through
the vacant heads of zombie
hordes, chanting soulless mantras
of their own fear, reverberating
through the bloody fields of
public decorum in endless news
cycles.

I’m not afraid of fictional nightmares,
I’m terrified of the man-made realities;
where division is candy and hatred is
sugar, for bellies too fat on bigotry
to stomach.

Do monsters fear monsters,
or have the monsters always
just been men. Are we afraid of
our shadows, flickering in the firelight
against Plato’s cave wall?
I’m haunted.  

Another Cup

 

The Golden Rule,
swirling in my coffee cup,
amid clouds of French Vanilla
creamer, as steam gently rises
over the lip of my mug.
Bitter, but eye-opening.

Being good to be good
for the good of others;
sticking, lingering slightly
on my tongue as I sip and
swirl my morning.
A happy shiver of cheer.

A smile for the smilers,
a wave for the wavers,
a nod for the nodders,
as I greet my way through the
start of the day, optimism
twinkling in my mind.

Pondering the mixed in
Golden Rule in my coffee,
lamenting the bittersweetness of
it; just slightly so, yet enjoying it
as one would a warm hug or
hearty hand clasp.

A satisfied swallow of
a morning elixir, a breathy sigh,
and a quick lick of the lips,
a whistle wet, ready to speak with
a smile and a laugh stuck in the
corner of my mouth.

Before long, my coffee will be
empty, my doing unto others will
become crisper and edged, a weapon
to wield against the illogical ravings of
a world gone senile. A world that doesn’t
remember the taste of the Golden Rule.

And I will lament,
I will feel shame,
I will regret,
I will mourn innocence,
I will mill about in horror,
and pour another afternoon cup.

 

 

Not the Lone Ranger

 

In TV & radio lore, The Lone Ranger
wore a mask to conceal his identity
from a violent gang who ambushed
him and his brother.

The Lone Ranger survived the ambush,
but his brother did not. The violent gang,
believed none had survived their attack.
Riding off confident in their evil deeds.

In order to pursue justice, the survivor made
a mask from his dead brother’s vest
and was able to pursue justice
against that violent gang without
revealing who he was and that he lived.

Thus, the Lone Ranger was made;
symbolizing integrity, fortitude and service
to the greater moral good. The mask, a symbol
of his brother’s sacrifice for law and order.
A heavy burden for justice.

Masks, however, were typically frowned upon
in other aspects of law enforcement, i.e. the
Executioner’s Hood, The Spanish Inquisition,
Kangaroo Courts, shadowy tribunals etc., as being an affront
to the truth.

Wearing a mask during the enforcement of
the law leads me to question the morality of
said laws, and whether those wearing the masks
are proud of the work they are doing, or fearful and
ashamed of it. 

Or the masks somehow hides their lack
of honest integrity in the enforcement of
their belief that what action they are taking
is indeed lawful and just.

I have always thought that proud men and women,
engaging in law enforcement they deem right and just, should
not be afraid to show their face.  I don’t think immigration judges
wear masks while adjudicating immigration hearings. I don’t
think attorneys are wearing them either.

Justice is blind,
we are not; and we can see that
if you’re wearing a mask in the United States
while enforcing the “law”,
then there’s something not quite right about
how you’re going about it.

The fictional Lone Ranger wore a mask
in a fictional version of Texas in the year 1869.
A TV and Radio story.
No one is Batman.
No one is the Green Hornet
No one is a masked vigilante in reality.

If you are in real-life U.S. law enforcement
and wearing a mask, maybe it’s time to
start questioning what these laws are you’re
enforcing that are making you hide your face
from the truth.

If you fear reprisal, maybe you’re in the wrong
business. Good people, being just and forthright,
are not afraid to show their faces for the causes
they believe in. For the laws they believe in.
For the Country they believe in.

 

Eulogy for Supermarket Baggers

 

It was a slow transition,
but is has now arrived.
The sweet art of grocery store
bagging has come to a final end.

I was always taught to place items
I’d like to purchase on the supermarket
conveyor belt in the order in which they
should be bagged.

Heaviest items first,
then lighter items,
and finally any loaf of bread
of carton of eggs.

And to keep frozen items
together as best as possible,
so they don’t start to unfreeze and
get other grocery items wet.

This act of organizing is now moot
as the current generation of supermarket
baggers has no apparent concept of the
weight or composition of items to be bagged.

On a recent trip to the store,
the two bags of frozen hashbrown potatoes
was carelessly bagged directly on top of my
fresh loaf of bread.

When confronted with this egregious error,
the bagger, checker or whichever title is appropriate
met my critique with silence and an indifferent shrug,
as if to say that it was clearly a “me” problem.

So now the world crumbles,
as indifference takes root in the cherished
and untarnished realm of supermarket baggers,
now, lost forever.

This is the true loss of innocence.
Not the wars, the hatred, the disinformation,
not the genuine loss of respect for traditions; nay,
we are lost when indifference smushes our bread.

Old Bones

 

She loves my old bones,
for some reason,
the rigid skeleton under
my skin,
fits her eye,
and I’m not complaining.

The dust of my past,
means little to her,
just part of my road weary
charms and meaningless
philosophies to amuse,
and delight.

She is entertained,
enamored and beguiled,
by this sack of blood and bones,
holding up a noggin’ full of
nonsense, history and meandering
stories with a general humor.

This bag of meat, held together by
all the strangest of sinews, is
loved and there’s a strange pumping
beneath my snarling ribcage,
a familiar beat, but a new
rhythm.

So I’ll marry her,
and we’ll dance to
it.

Heady Art

 

A hole in the head,
a head in the sand,
one foot in the past,
one foot in the grave,
hunched over and straddling
the Present.

Abstract oblivion is
exhausting but we’re well-rehearsed,
and ever so familiar with
everyday Apocalypses
and customary dread.
It's old hat.

It's easy for us to remember Cold Wars,
Hot Wars, Star Wars, depressions,
divorces, heroes turned villains,
icons torn down, disappointments,
sell-outs, and deep resentments
for the world inherited.

Passing down this negligent obsolescence,
to new generations, who are weary with activism,
tired of active shooter drills, bored with outrage,
inconvenienced by extreme violence, and generally
no longer have the
capacity to care.

Maybe the era of half-dead old men
trying to leads waves of middle
aged malcontents and young trauma
survivors will end, and a generation less
scarred by history will steer us
to pull our heads out of the sand.
 
To fill the holes in some heads, and put our feet together,
striding towards a future that includes all people,
grounded in the tangible needs of a global
populace, united in humanity, solidarity,
and in colors so bright that the drabness of
mediocrity will be nothing more than old fashioned.

Anyway, that’s what I think about,
when I think about Art.