An Era – A Poem by JP

If ever there was an era
to inspire a revival in poetry
and scare us out of our anxiety
then this horrid decade’s
sense of impending doom should do,

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We’ve Run Out of Some Paints – A Poem by JP

I’d paint the page with sunflowers and marigolds,
But Wordsworth’s nature is long in its grave.

We have forgotten the cold mountain stream,
The little birds in the blueberry bush,
The worms wiggling beneath their hungry beaks,
And the sound of the forest is deafening for us
As the chainsaw’s roar over heavy machinery.
For us nature is a conversation,
A metaphor for human care and change,
and a political questioning of the trees
in search for meaning when we bludgeon a rose
and all the beauty that it has stood for.

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Politics – A Poem by JP

lend me your ears
I doubt that you would hear,
So lend me your wallet
And watch as the toilet

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The Shut-in’s Regrets – A Poem by JP

Go now and build your grave
against your life’s pitiful cries,
and when the end is drawing near

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New Beasts – A Poem by JP

Unlike all the beasts we have known,
murders, thieves, and miscreants
there now arises a wickedness
that cannot be measured in neat units
or fit into convenient little molds.

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Laborers – A Poem by JP

Where did they go
when the capstone was finally fitted
and the labor contracts were off in the garbage?

Where did they go
when the Taj Mahal had absorbed its last marble
and the laborers were without their paychecks?

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The Quality of Being Afraid

When I think of the old providence,
the land where gods were megaliths
and human wants were always gone
the moment the chief called for blood,
I think that our ancestors had known
that beating hearts were a pestilence
to be separated from the chest
before the plague had taken hold
of more than just their overlords.

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Blood as Wine

The king still sits on golden throne
drinking our blood as wine;
he needn’t skippers to sail the ocean’s tides,
he needs our hearts and minds.

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I Wanted the World

I wanted the world, and I found it,
I poked and I prodded with certain glee.

What I had found was youthful and free,
A boyish desire for wild
And wildernesses within me,
But the world was wicked and cheap
And myself so dumb and naïve
That I had found pills and gold drink.

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Tolerance

We are now so tolerant,
so willing, that intelligent people
are unable to speak freely

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We all Fall Down

Around we go again,
around this ancient dance with plague,
and though we have no rose
blotches to mark our perfect skin

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Calliope

Now rise to life again, sweet poetry!
She is chief among my muses this art.

Let Calliope go and sign her song
Her old wisdom knows not a passive note.

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I sink

You won’t write me down in books
or read my words with a rose
colored gloss over, or toss paint
as white as I on picket fences

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America’s Suffering

I see beggars suffering silently
uncounted out in the streets,
these old rags slumped over plead
but only each to each

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Simply to Dance

You are not an arrow,
nor is your path
flowing like time itself
from birth to death.

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Tibetan Sky Burial

I am foreign and do not understand.
I burn my dead
or lower them into the pit.
How is it that these people

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If All the Stars Should Go

I will predict that all could end.
That time should slip
and suns should burn

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For Some

For some
razor wire fences ascend
as phoenixes from the ashes
of division;

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Today’s Wounds

Even as newborns
we are defeated
by our very own nerves

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Symbols of Love

There is a language dead
that grips the heart
from deep within its crypt.

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