Ignorance needs no excuse; 
a precondition for knowledge, 
said Socrates, wisdom's fueling juice.

The brick-heads among us 
often sing in the choir, 
grace the aristocratic salon, 
share chicken parts around the fire.

Ignorance dwells ubiquitous as sin 
behind universal masks, 
always able to blend in; 

Welcome among the rich 
as well as working people 
who have nothing to do with crime, 

And cozy, too, with serial killers, 
especially the political and military kind;
 
And whoremongers, literal and metaphorical, 
pimping every con, sacred or profane 
to any passing john.

Folks send kids to school 
to learn and earn degrees, 
yet the Ivy League rewards 
world champions of bone-head sleaze.

Religious fundamentalists 
have their own universities, 
and just to give my point some grease, 
Sweden once awarded Kissinger 
a Nobel Prize for peace.

No need to feel dismay
it's just the way things be; 
the precondition for every 
stripe of truth is, well, 
you know the homily:

If the bull weren't hungry 
he wouldn't walk a country mile 
to snuffle through the hay,
add his contribution to the pile.

just let me fly

whenever you can
Old World
just let me fly
around your belly
your behind
genitals, armpits

but someplace 
where there's
no war
please
where children aren't
being prostituted
not dying of
hunger and aids

and keep me away
from middle class
tourist traps
Old World
you know how
they piss me off

just put me
out there
Old Darling
not as a bomber pilot
but to float like a
Buddhist astronaut

to contemplate
earthly serenity
from space
out of time
hang me like a
stoned fool in full
view of the moon

to sing of love
and bliss
migrating like a
gliding bird
between the poles

just let me
drift
Old World
in the invisible 
space of
souls

to join the chorus
of spirits who 
pray
of angels who
pass the days
relaxed as 
summer clouds

take me there
Old World
crowd me in
among the 
stratospheric
ancestors
who have survived
life and death

have learned at last
to love you as
ourselves
rear ends, armpits
innards, genitals

don't send us
to Heaven
Old World
please keep us
here
around you

part of the water cycle
the fire and smoke 
energy and
love
cycle

let us hang out
with you
in your orbit
where we were born
and must die 

until you die
yourself and fly
off to Planet Heaven

by then
out of time
we hope to have 
learned enough
to go along
with you.

Pink tipped carnations
far softer than my anger which has faded
at the end of another week 

since you arrived at this table, full
bloomed and wrapped in some delicate
green vine of the market place to comfort me

until your stems, now graying at the temples
crowded into water no longer fresh, have
begun to cloud with an excess of time’s detritus

and the vine leaves are showing signs of wilt
bidding farewell
in the language of last week’s best intentions.

Aging, you have borne the weight of your 
botanical existence
as I bear the zoological, until 

fatigue gathers behind the eyes
and at the edges of fragile petals.

 Here, let me change the water
trim your stems
clear away a bit of that wilted greenery

so we can have a few more days together
admiring the view from this window.

These are said to be the times
of catastrophic economies
of apocalyptic crimes
when history has lost its reflection
when the infinite is reaching blindfolded
into an inky spiral
guided by misery's din
to extend the grip of enterprise
to emperors on the rise.

The rhyming times of ideologies, of
schemes to elevate messianic dreams to
pinnacles of vapid poetry and inhumane
technology, when only babies abandoned
to dumpsters are wise enough to mourn
their mothers fallen by the road, dry breasted.

Said to be the times of blinding Buddha light
when, "all dharma is marked with emptiness,"
when only the ignorant claim to see
where we are going.

People who berate their own kids
Need to exercise their bodies instead of 
Their months, to use their brains
Instead of their resentments, and

Take aerobic walks or swim in the bay
Leaving their angry tongue muscles
At rest behind their teeth, jaws clamped
Breathing through their noses.

Then their children won't get backed up
Against themselves, their guts flapping
In the wind like dirty shirts abandoned
On cyclone fences, and

Entire families won't wind up feeling
Like lunatic puppets pirouetting at the ends
Of twisted strings, wishing for scissors to
Cut themselves loose or an earthquake to
Bring down the house.

And the kids will have a better chance of
Making it through their teens without getting
Strung out.
 

First Sight

on a promising day
the way fog swirled through rocks
on the point, gulls seemed to
be conversing in flight
discussing the sun’s
chances of breaking through
with something close to 
laughter

she removed her bonnet
and the pins
from her hair, so that the man
moored close by in the bay,
watching from the deck of his
ship would be
distracted, even troubled,

for the rest of the day, and
could only be described
as stunned when he 
saw her again that evening,
hair in a tidy 
shining bun, skin clear as
the sun rising across from him
at the supper table
of her father’s house.

Years later, staring from 
the window of her 
convent cell,
failing to distract herself
by prayer from the
memory, the old 
news from Spain
of his death,

She thought she caught a 
glimpse of that same
stunned look in his
eyes passing through
the California stars.

DOWN AT THE DEMONSTRATION 
by Don Brennan

We can't wait for 
the civilized world to deteriorate

Watch for us dark-eyed 
at every demonstration
striding on strong legs 
forcing our chairs ahead

Feeling faith in our arms 
our legs, a redemptive power
that will bear our weight
We can't wait

We will no longer sacrifice 
the children risen from our blood 
to camouflage madness, 

Sacrifice our greatest gifts 
to the hopeless prattle 
of war against the poor

We will not drive our young from
our sides into the arms of recruiters
to be sold by the ounce like dope
to be sold by the pound like fresh meat

Flown home from battle disguised as souls 
on jagged needle wings and
broken bottle wings, to become tangled 
limb by limb in shopping cart ravines
glockin' bullets into one another's brains.

We are marching out again
mothers and fathers of revolution 
will meet you with our children
down at the demonstration.

We can't wait. 

To you, I speak, to all
who have followed
the sun-throated wren
perched upon a backyard wire

Balanced as a sequined acrobat
about to spin into air
to migrate,

to dance so high on swift wings
as to seem invisible

 Calling out your name
for the last time as a
faint disturbance in the coldest
part of the sky…

To become,
before you can answer,
inaudible,
finally invisible.

For you who have exchanged
compassion for rude interruptions,
disruptions of time by the
cries of telephones, by
intrusions of vapid conversation
into your butterfly paths

Looping like fear
like envy
ornamenting your despair

For you who are infinite, enclosed
now in finitude, for whom the
infinite has been lost in your dramatic
cycle of suffering,

To you who have lost
your compassion

 I offer my own.

Feeling nothing
Being nowhere
That is always the impossible beginning
Of her artistry, when time is all there is
Hanging in the window like a knotted curtain

Beyond that threshold, only the soft
The barely perceptible movement of loquat leaves
Reveal to her eyes some animistic drama

An excitable thrush, foraging in nesting season
Watched from the ground by a house cat

A drama of furry ears twitching, ruffling feathers
And bits of fruit tumbling from a tree

But all she can think of are the years in France
The moments of feeling nothing there, the meaning
Of being nowhere, and the hunters in autumn
Trying to lure the thrushes into their gun-sights

She understood, so soon after adolescence, that
The limelight of youth had tied her into knots,
Left her suspended, resistant to the billowing cold 
Of the Mistral

Resistant to the Herald Of Winter driving leaves 
From vineyards and orchards
Carrying the thrush to safety

So today she cannot feel safe from
The anxieties of animals and fruited trees
And that is the impossible beginning
Of her art

That she can perceive the barely perceptible,
The movement of the curtain, the scatter of fruit
From a bird’s beak, and is able trace the lines
Of nothing and nowhere onto her page.