The wilding winds of woven dreams,
Torment the seas of time,
And in the air that no man sees,
There is the scent of crime,
Of sorrow, truths and hidden lies,
The face we all disguise,
The ready masks and old clichés,
That hide among the wise,
Of passions chained and sleeping rage,
They cannot exist,
But watch them burn and brightly flame
Among the freedom kissed,
The night is long, and rarely lit,
By reason or its kin,
And in the cavern dark and dim,
Madness makes its din.
(On the news of the death sentence against Saif Al Islam Gaddafi )
See the Green Flag flying beneath the desert sun,
And see the brave men marching, and the women armed as one,
To fight the plague of locusts which chaos sent from hell,
In fear of all things caring, where profit does not dwell.
See them fiercely fighting the killers and the thugs,
The ones who stand for nothing, or only stand for blood,
Their courage never failed them, no need of NATO drugs,
They fought for all we fought for since the days of Noah’s Flood.
They fought for education, for women and for men,
They fought for social justice, for all they had won then,
A republic of the people, and of a small green book,
In which were found such wond’rous things the very heavens shook,
But then the NATO planes swooped down, like vultures in the sky,
And ripped apart the body with their bombs and with their lie,
They flew and circled every day “til all the blood was bled,
Til they cried, “ we came, we saw- he died,” and laughed to see him dead,
And now their dogs in Tripoli howl and bay for death,
Of those who fought for freedom and will with dying breath,
They called a broken room a court and made some bandits judge,
Like poor Saddam Hussein found out, the Yanks can hold a grudge,
And now they want to kill the rest, with death they’re generous,
For we are all their enemies and Saif is one of us,
So turn your heads and listen, and clench your fists right tight,
For these vultures need some fighting and it’s we who have the might.
We are the invisible,
The unseen, the unheard,
You know us, by our shadows,
Cast in dark rooms,
By a cigarette’s glow,
Or the sound of our steps,
On an empty street,
Reflections in the sun,
Whispers in the wind,
You know us by our sweat,
You know us by our tears,
Pouring like oil,
Glistening like pearls,
By our songs and laments,
By our heads turned away,
You know us by our hopes,
Imprisoned in the cloth,
The plastic, the steel,
All the things, those others use,
By our poverty, bred of riches,
By our unpaid bills,
Our sleepless nights
Our hollow days,
Our worn-out shoes.
They met when the snow had fallen,
They met when the ground was white,
Two youths in search of a lover,
Two youths in the moon’s pale light,
She was as fair as Alhambra,
He was surely a northern prince,
These youths who’d found each other,
These youths e’er one e’er since,
They danced and cried to the music,
They burned with the heat of the wine,
Nothing could part such lovers,
Not God, nor man, nor time,
And still the music moves them,
And still they taste the wine,
This girl from the Moorish castle,
This youth of the northern clime,
Entwined in the still sweet darkness,
Entwined in a love sublime.
Dedicated to Cheyenne Fox,
(One of the many First Nations women of Canada
who are murdered and missing)
One more petal sadly fell,
From the flower of Ojibwe youth,
And all the skies wept warm tears,
When they took her from that place
Where no one cared, and no one asked,
Who this fair girl once was,
For then the world would sink in shame,
To know the bitter truth.
She was of the People,
Who lived when heroes lived,
Before They came from distant seas,
Who came and never left,
She was of the People,
Who none to men were slaves,
The day she died, alone and cold,
In their cold city, by the lake.
Too many fallen petals,
When one will bring a tear,
Too many things unanswered,
When it’s answers that They fear,
For we’re tired of parliamentary lies,
And we’re tired of foreign laws,
So, let us live, and let us be
The People when first you came,
So give us justice, and give us peace,
And the answers that we claim,
For remember, we are warriors,
And warriors of great fame.
The air was hot, and thick to breathe,
The sun was red, and weeping,
The day they fled the burning town,
The stench of death still reeking,
Machines they came,
From cloudless skies,
Then came the sound of thunder,
Then flash of light,
Then blast of flame,
That tore their life asunder,
They ran in fear from NATO’s hate,
To the ocean’s cooling breeze,
And looked across the waters,
To the nations of those seas,
But saw no trace of Christian grace,
No tears, no kind reprieve,
Just jackal smiles and TV cheers,
That hailed a nation’s fate.
Tricked, betrayed, begrimed they slept,
On desert shores, abandoned,
For weeks their hopeless vigil kept,
Despair so deep it maddened,
It almost drove them to the rope,
Until they heard the captain’s words,
“My ship she puts to sea tonight,
But for that there is a price,
For my ship is named and named quite right,
The hopeless ones Last Hope.”
They paid him all their money,
They paid with acts of shame,
And then they prayed to silent gods
For words “We sail” that came.
The captain smelled of drink and death,
And smiled with dark-stained teeth,
He told them, ‘I’ve your money,
Now please descend beneath’,
He gave commands,
The crew obeyed,
And threw them down the hold,
To stench of oil,
And human waste,
The young, the frail, the old.
The engines throbbed, the people moaned,
In darkness deep they crossed the sea,
That led them from old Tripoli,
To the shores of Italy,
The night grew long,
The sea rebelled,
With wind and thunder drumming,
The waves rose high, the captain drank,
The crew climbed ropes taut humming,
They tried their best to save the ship,
To save themselves, and all,
They fought the storm,
They fought the wall
They fought with all they had,
But Neptune wove a ghastly wave,
That broke her back in two,
And down she went,
That good Last Hope,
To the cold and calm below.
The lonely dead soon washed ashore,
In twos and threes and more,
On foreign sands they rolled and lay,
On every bay and shore,
As TV sprouted tragic tales,
And asked, “who is to blame”?
But no answer dared they give,
And so no answer came.
The pleasure of looking at a woman
Is for a man an endless search for the eternal,
His attempt to shed the mortality
Which clings to his shoulders like a heavy cloak.
Fencer’s foil, gauntlet and shoe
Strewn in the corner with bottles of glue,
Bookends and books and magazines due,
Odds and ends, with which we’re through.
Bicycles, wheels, pliers and screws
Particles of memory, old-fashioned news,
But in glazed window
Sweeps orderly light
Turning havoc to haven,
With prismatic might.
I heard not the cries from Baltimore,
The infant’s moan, the beggar’s plea,
Nor saw the face, the open hand,
Nor aged despair, not meant to be.
You tell me we’re not to blame,
Speak words to please the dead,
Words that rise from beds of shame,
No, speak what must be said.
A dark abyss now fills our eyes,
A cave that knows no life,
A wasting soul inside us dies,
Bitter fruit gives birth to strife.
There is no hope with acts unkind,
Corrupted hearts can only fear
The years to come and what they’ll find,
And if it be their final tear.
And what are eyes that beam black light,
That cannot see the common good?
Does blindness ever lead to sight,
Did we dare think it could?
False words fill the phoney news,
Their pictures make the heavens shake,
We gorge on hate and deaths-head views,
And gladly kill for killing’s sake.
We live beyond humanity,
We are life become machine,
Reduced to drugged insanity,
To a Tarantino scene.
Give us not the cops’ death lust,
Justice is our hope,
Not slavery, nor profits’ dust,
Nor prayers they throw as rope.
I heard not the protests of the damned,
‘Til my voice in theirs I heard,
That called out for a rightful land
Where people have the word.
The justice tree from one seed grows,
Yet shelters all within her shade,
And through its leaves a new wind blows
That comrades has us made,
So raise your fists, and raise your voice,
There’s a struggle to be won,
So on the street and on your feet,
‘Til the tyrants’ day is done.
Hot tires humming on a hot black road,
Buzzing with the heat and the speed,
Radio bopping to the sound of the beat,
Of a cool myxolydian mode,
Foot to the pedal, and pushing it down,
Shades on the eyes, and some weed,
Taking me places, and faces to see,
The lawyer, the gangster, the clown.
Truck stop blondes winking bloodshot eyes,
Hoping for love and a dime,
Young girls lost in solitude’s keep,
And too many cruel goodbyes.
Boys on the side, too ready to ride,
Smiling too much with the pain,
These tough love maddened refugees,
Hustling the man for their pride,
Houses flash past in uniform rows,
Drenched in the smell of despair,
Of betrayal, and loss, the death of all hope,
Where nothing but bitterness grows.
Hot tires humming on a hot black road
Spinning out rhythm and time,
Reach for the weed, and lose it all for awhile,
In a cool myxolydian mode.
One Voyce of the World 