Vivre (a few poems)

 

Law Enforcement

(shootings on all sides)

 

Shootings on all

Sides

 

Why must there

Be sides?—too

Easily, one side

Becomes a bullseye

To the other

 

Many more

Become shooting

Angles in small

Wars that grow

 

Finally consuming

Everyone the way

Wanton wildfire

Ravages Earth

 

Must we choose

One group of

Combatants

 

Better to choose

No side at all

 

So that all

Sides might be

Accessible

 

The law of liberty

Applies here

Deciding, like

Asking, aright

 

Ordained and

Established if

Anew

 

For those who

Mourn today and

Yet live

Tomorrow

 

 

Children’s Hour

 

We poison them in Flint

Kill them in Paris

Sell them in Africa

 

And everywhere

 

We destroy the planet

Of their legacy

And treat them as if

They are

 

Of no matter now

 

The value of children

Traded like commodities

On the moving digital

Board

 

Without them we

Have no worth

 

A couple of minutes

On the doomsday

Clock

 

We’ve given them

We’ve given you

Only seconds

 

 

Mĕn-tzó

 

A Buddhist salutation

To a heart-troubled

People of the

Nanosecond in the

World

 

Transliterated, the

Better message is

 

Go slowly