Python Liberation Front

A jpg of an old painting that inspired a poem....

30+ some years ago, I saw a picture of a painting that inspired me to write a poem. The poem has been modified a few times down through the years, but the existential angst that inspired it certainly came from my reaction to that pictue. I could not find the picture in recent years; I didn't recall who painted the painting, nor what book I saw the picture in. Now, thanks to some imaginative googling, I have found it, and here it is...




Please click to play mp3 audio file of me reading the poem

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of feeble mind and self-deceiving face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

Yet still a pity should we lose our hope,
Questing, ever questing, time always our foe...

Before the solemn eyes of aged Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

Transition Folk; an Ode to the Baby Boomers

Mourning for a legacy of fortune unreceived,
Mourning for an elegy of destiny deceived;
Like Mozart, too early felled by fickle hand of fate,
Mourning for what they could not comprehend nor consummate;

Stitched in  between the times, a momentary suture,
Out of touch with the past, yet still not a part of the future;

Like vampires, not still alive, but merely yet undead,
Their mountains still unclimbed, their stories left unsaid;
Forever on the cusp of expectations unachieved;
Forever on the cusp of what they never could achieve.

Lights in line down lane

Lights in line down lane
Stretching to infinity
With endless stories manifold
Caressing single homes.

Looking over lines of light
In night-time revery
Jealous of the over-ripe
Splendour of storied sleep.

Lights in line down lane
Patterened in a hopeless maze
Singly scattered helter-skelter
In exact displaced design.

Nothing New Under the Sun...

There is no memory of a moment
Only chains of connections in the mind
No revolutionary foment
Creating ideas of a novel kind.

A recollection of a recollection
Is about all that we can muster
Reality has no resurrection
No matter how much we may fuss and bluster.

Last Rites and Requiem...

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of feeble mind and self-deceiving face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

Yet still a pity should we lose our hope,
Questing, ever questing, time always our foe...

Before the solemn eyes of aged Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

the Sun Also Rises...

Baha'u'llah, the clouds are clearing
I can see the sun arising
And the mountain peaks appearing
As a brand new day is dawning.

A babe is born to blessed Magdala
As foretold by sacred kabbala
Looking to a future transfiguration
Earth's soul reborn, reconsecration.

Fron the deep heart of spiritus mundi
Comes the return of long sought Mahdi
From Mt. Moriah's sacred chakra
Fullfillment of our ancient karma.

The wanderer has finally found a home
In Carmel's majestic golden dome.

New Orleans, The Big Easy, Before and After the Flood...

I've never been to New Orleans
I still don't know just what that means
She has never left the town
She wears its mask and frighted frown.
Our fathers had blood on their hands
As they came from distant lands
Our mothers had the moon in their hair
As they entered Eden fair.

Our past was blank and paperwhite
As we set forth that fateful night
We were their children, slave, and king
What would the unknown future bring?

Down on the levee there I heard a cry
Deep in the city where the crowd stood nigh
Out in heart of darkness land
Near where Custer made his stand.
Out where Denver's mountains start
On high desert plains we fell apart
It's there we'll make a brand new start
At Wounded Knee you'll find my heart.

It was in the afternoon of our delight
There was no one left we had to fight
Except the ghosts of ancient ancestors
Piled high in whited sepulchres.
Cities of the Damned piled high
Life is wet but Death is dry
Untill the flood comes racing in
And mixes silt and bones and sin.

On Bourbon Street we faced our fear
Down by the darkened river near
Where on Canal Street we felt her breath;
Life smells strongest nearest Death.
The one eyed Gypsy blew her futile horn
The undertaker listened, showing her his scorn
Somewhere in the distance, a little babe was born
Listen to the whistle blow, futile and forlorn.

I've never been to New Orleans
I still don't know just what that means
I'll always see her from afar,
With all her rainbows and her scars...

the Jazz Combo

I listened to a jazz combo the other night
Led by a piano player who was out of sight,
He controlled the band with his eyes and he had a mustache
He was cool calm collected and playin' for cash.

The piano player was sober and so was the bass
Who was tall and slender with emotionless face.
The drummer was older, drinking 151
You could tell he didn't believe anything new under the sun.

They'll tell you it's sex, drugs, & rock and roll
As if all you had to do was play from your soul,
They say it's the imperfections that make the song
But try it very long and you'll find they're wrong.

They weren't no quintet with two saxophones
Just a trio of losers and total unknowns.

Fallujah, Mosul, Beslan, Chechen, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Ramadi, Moqtada Sadr, Tikrit, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

Small loss, perhaps, to lose a worn-out race
With feeble mind and self-deceiving face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

Yet still a pity should we lose our hope,
Questing, ever questing, time always our foe...

Before the solemn eyes of aged Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

hello doggeral

I do not know you
my words flow out like languid liquid
Liqour of my soul

Why do you come here
Why do I stay

Safe inviting
dust in hiding
vita something

green flowers poseys all in a row

essential evocations
go with the flow

Identity

there is something beyond
the borders of my ego
it is not mystical, it is not natural
it is what it will be and always was

if my fathers bore the weight of karma
and my brethren the weight of sin
then my children shall fly as eagles
some glad morning

The Last Syllable

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of mighty mind and self assur'ed face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

But what a pity should we lose our hope,
As we quest through end times filled with sorrow.

Before the solemn eyes of ag'ed Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

Before the Flood...and After the Apocalypse

Before the Flood...
and
After the Apocalypse...

A Postmodern Tale...

Looking out on the flatland all around, I see that the apocalypse has already happened, even though we still await the flood of events to come.

We don’t need to wait for the tribulation, for all around us we are living in the wasteland of our own times, a time shorn of dignity and bereft of soul.

No one has time at all; we rush madly onward each and every moment, clutching at goals and grasping at nettles; we must win! We must succeed. We need money, love, esteem, fun, safety, security, excitement and the future supply of money to ensure all of these things. We don’t have time; we don’t have meaning; and most of all, we don’t have eternity, since our flat world will disappear at our death, which is all too soon; we don’t have time.

No need to wait for disaster, annihilation, end times woes; we are already living in the post-apocalyptic world, and have been for some time now.

But our post apocalyptic world doesn’t have endearing characters like mad Max; deep meanings like Christian Revelations; high tech features like 2001, A Space Odyssey. We are in a post apocalyptic Hell that won’t go away and we don’t even realize it!

This world around us is the aftermath, the Desolation of Abomination; a world in which we have life but no love; health but no soul; money but no satisfaction.

So bring on the future! By God, we are ready! What else can you show me, what else have you got? We’ve been bloody since long before the flood, and we are tired of modern day Noah's singing post-modern blues which we can’t understand without a computer program!

We are out of control, and the time is late. But let us face the future with positive minds, expectant outlooks, and most of all, a sense of destiny.

By the Waters of Babylon...

I remembered, and I wept.

Full Moon rising tonight, I feel like a werewolf, lost in space...

Please! STOP! Listen, hear me out! I’ll be brief and to the point.
I remember Bob Dylan when he was young, singing beneath the starlight. I remember the Beatles, when they were young, I even remember the Rolling Stones. I remember when we all listened to the same songs, watched the same TV shows, dreamed the same dreams.

I remember running through the grass and trees on a summer night, laughing, playing, cousins all around. I remember green apples, I remember Grandma’s warnings, late night stories, crickets croaking. I remember picnic summers, softball outings, Friday night drive-ins.

I remember Willie Mays, center field grace, mothers’ faces, school kids knowing; the future was all before us. Men on the moon, the 60’s swoon.

I recall being alive, so much to strive for.

I remember Abraham Lincoln. Honor, honesty, destiny. Hard work, loyalty, failure, success, blood, guts, civil war. I remember his dilemma, his courage, but mostly I remember his long, lanky humor on backwoods lawyer trips, old Abe could make a day go by, and never miss a lick. He was ugly and homely and humble, and I miss old Abe.

For God’s sake, where did it all go, where did we go wrong? I’m going crazy here in the dark moonlight, screaming my brains out beneath the stars of fate. What in the hell is going on around here, anyway? When did we let the financial planners take over America, the stock selling shills on TV bombard our brains? When did money become the only savior, greed the only rule?

When did we decide to hate each other? Competition, hell, we got killing, you kill me or I’ll kill you, it’s not the law of the jungle, it’s worse than that, we got high tech tigers that kill for fun, or fear, or lust.

Where did our present generation of politician's come from? Where are we going?

Are we going to just rot away as if nothing matters?

I want to build something; something that lasts, something we all build, and grow , and sweat, and paint, and mend, and care for, and make, and stake our blood in the soil of America for future generations.

We got people dying all over the world, we got people hopeless, poor, powerless, children lost and hungry. Poisoned air and water, ruined lives.

Excuse me, but we got souls exploding in thin air; blood is flowing, and nobody gives a damn.

I want Abe Lincoln back. I want our future back. If we don’t have any money left after the crash, at least give us a future, a mission, a care, a matter , a soul to live for and die for. Give us back our heart and our country and our values and our spirit.

I remember how it was, the taste of life on our tongues. I want it back.

How does it feel, America, how does it feel?

I’m falling down into a long well, the deeper I go, the more I lose orientation. After awhile, I look up, and I can no longer tell if I’m falling or rising up a long dark shaft.

Pulling me down is a reality that I know I can’t avoid or fight: Gravity always wins. Pushing me up is the realization that I must awake from this dream sometime.

All around me, or deep inside me, I hear a voice and see a light. But the light is not just from within my brain; its not just shone from up above by someone else; it’s not just the sun breaking through the walls of the shaft, which now seem not so thick nor opaque.

Rather, the voice is within my mind, but you hear it too. It’s part of our culture, but it’s busy being born. The voice wails as the light of day melds the whole experience into one New Day.

How to interpret this? If we keep falling the way we are, with lots happening, but with no meaning, the center won’t hold, our society will explode and regress to anarchic chaos. If we try to rise to the heights of the spiritual meaning we intuit and hope for, but lose our grounding in the solid ground of real science, then we will awake into a robotic, zombie-like state unworthy of human existence.

We must break through the artificial barriers which our minds have erected around us for protection; but, using our minds as tools, we must meld the solid ground of science with the meaning we construct with our own minds, as guided by the light of day.

Going beyond our nostalgic dream of a blissful Planet of the Apes, where all meaning is pre-made for us; we must enter into the evolutionary process of the future, joining our voices in harmony with the Voice we heard in the dark shaft, and , using our minds as a mirror, reflecting the Light we see from another world into the full reality of science.

This is an Omen of Millennium.

Impending Apocalypse

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of mighty mind and self assur-ed face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

But what a pity should we lose our hope!
Little time, questing, so much sorrow;
Before the solemn eyes of ag-ed Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

Spiritus Mundi

From the deep shadows I come to the Magdala
From the sacred corridors of the Kabbala,

I feel communion with the grass, trees, and all animals
As pulsing energy flows from life's inner core
Aware of sacred oil that pours, my cup brimmeth o'er
Partaking of a common living metaphor
I feel that this is what life and living's worth is for
A common destiny, a true blood imaginal.

There is also a transformation algebra
Leading to the habitat of Mount Moriah,

Our next way-station as we tread the path of love
Where communion is of a different order
And there is an underlying number
Approached without the need of slumber
As our senses we unencumber
This is the pervasive matrix from above.

Then on to alpha, beta, gamma and omega
This journey takes us on to the next chakra,

Listen: Intelligence of action at the gates
We form the future of communication
Written to and from our final destination
Looking to the future of a transfiguration
In the hopes of a scripted resurrection
Alchemy between our life's blood and the fates.

This is the lesson of the sacred Kabbala
Taught me from the lips of the blessed Magdala.

Ode to the Baby Boomer Generation

Mourning for an elegy of fortune unreceived,
Mourning for a legacy of destiny deceived;
Like Mozart, too early felled by fickle hand of fate,
Mourning for what they could not comprehend nor consummate;
Forever on the cusp of what they never could achieve.
Like vampires, not still alive, but merely yet undead,
Their mountains still unclimbed, their stories left unsaid;
Forever on the cusp of expectations unachieved.

Rough Draft of a Poem Fragment: "The Boomers"

Mourning for an elegy of fortune unreceived,
Mourning for a legacy of destiny deceived;
Like Mozart, too early felled by fickle hand of fate,
Mourning for what they could not comprehend nor consummate;
Forever on the cusp of what they never could achieve.

Red Black of Night

I went down to the ship
where my family was stripped
and I knew that the air was all wrong.
Sumer and Tyre
they hung like a wire
and at night the red star was full strong.
Gone halfway from home
from Egypt and Rome
and the ground was infirm where I stepped.
Looked back to the East
Where lay the dead beast
and I knew why my mother had wept.

The baby was nigh
but no shepherds on high
and no Place I could call all my own.
Deep down in the ice
we all tossed the dice
to see what our futures had shown.
My nerves they were shot
By her breath so damn hot
and down by the river it flowed
Wet black and ripe
it felt so damned right
but by blood was the baby enthroned.

The battle is waged
With sulfer and rage
in the place where the future is found.
The eagle does soar
The green grass grows o'er
The blood of my dad in the ground.
I've been there so long
In river and song
that I don't recognize my own ghost.
I've been up on high
and in valleys so nigh
that I don't understand why I'm chaste.

Red like the Nile
Dry with denial
like Jason I sailed in the night.
Spread sheepskin to fate
Two days I did wait
With stars it is useless to fight.
Was here I was born
and here I still mourn
Three days was the babe out of sight.
The brew I did sip
Cursed be the ship
Engulfed me in red black of night.

Glory

Living life in hope of seeing justice done
It has been my sad opinion not true
But words God-spoken men heed not
As prizes such as justice flee hands
Of strong men not weak. But the world

Abides by law, God and men
In times, there, here abide and keep
Law, token, real in full Glory-
And God holds in hand so tight
Men see not, neither understand.

Mind Meld: Recursion of the Centaur