Cyber Unlearned (+3)

Manipulating reality,

 the moment concealed

 

Manipulating reality,

 what’s virtual ‘real’

 

Manipulating reality,

 the keys push and drain

 

Manipulating reality,

 technology reigns

 

Manipulating reality,

 fantasy schools

 

Manipulating reality,

 apostasy rules

 

Manipulating reality

 all cursors and screens

 

Manipulating reality,

 lost memory undreamed

 

Manipulating reality,

 electrons control

 

Manipulating reality

 a hard driven soul

 

Manipulating reality,

 love crashes and burns

 

Manipulating reality

  —truth cyber unlearned

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2018)

 

 

Changed Into Song

 

Will the pieces of the life you’ve lived

  come together at the end?

 

Will the times that you reflected

  straighten your path out, free of bends?

 

Are the places that you visited

  more than way stops that you chose?

 

Are the feelings that you left with

  still inside you—heaven knows?

 

Are your children still in contact,

  do they ask you what you think?

 

Are your parents long forgotten

  as you pour yourself a drink?

 

Are the days recounted backwards

  with the best all left behind?

 

Does the silence serve to haunt you

  with those things you cannot find?

 

Does the laughter fall on deafness,

  do the smiles pass you by?

 

Are your friends left off your guest list

  with no time for them to find?

 

Are the pieces of your puzzle

  pointed sharp, and ill to fit?

 

Does your conscience wear a muzzle

  with the blame an endless pit?

 

Is it what you said you wanted

  when you started down this path?

 

Or are you now among the hunted

  in a bad choice aftermath?

 

If before you’re gone, one chance flew by

  a difference then to make

 

Would you hang on tight to all the lies,

  or embrace this change of fate?

 

And if you do, the words will say,

  you almost got it wrong…

 

Before you called those choices back

  —and changed them into song

 

(Grantham New Hampshire: March, 2015)

 

 

 

Hard Won

 

We can all think

  differently

 

While instantaneously feeling

  the same

 

We can politically straddle the

  great divide

 

While below loving the canyons

  and plains

 

We can put all prejudice and

  opinion aside

 

When the outcome is cast

  zero-sum

 

And in those moments our greatness

  calls loudest and true

 

With the blood of a freedom

  —hard won

 

(Grantham New Hampshire: March, 2015)

 

 

Forgotten Lord

 

Deep into the night of the harrowing dawn,

  old voices went astray

 

And fast on the morning of no return,

  final judgment came to stay

 

Crashing like a wave was the prophet’s voice,

  this time not to be ignored

 

Washing away all excuse and false remorse

  with damnation—forgotten Lord

 

(Grantham New Hampshire: March, 2015)