6 Poems About Today’s World, Including “After the Tear Gas”

After the Tear Gas

rubber bullets and joyful taunts
of revolution, the fall of every infant
sparrow is evolving as a eulogy
in my heart, producing a vision of peace
through justice. Just because
I know these sons and daughters of Babylon,
their language and history; their spirits
and demons, and grave personal problems;
their dungeons and minor physical ailments,
their decrees and trials, too, on both sides,
how they came from sailors and farmers and
weavers, and the midsts of other Moons.

Biden vs. Trump

We do not need debating
right now. What we need is action.
Collaboration. Think tanks. Brainstorms.
Conferences and conference calls.
Group discussions. Study groups. Pow-wows.
Peace circles. Zoom calls. Meeting of the minds.
Collective intelligence-gathering seances.
Good old fashioned talks on the porch and hikes
in the woods. You name it. Anything but debates.

The Library of the Brain

Spirits and daemons
have had billions of years
of practice.

Deep inside the oldest part
of the skull we call home.

Living in an uneasy truce,
the matter of books is
transformed into consciousness.

Aliveness

is the golden-pink hue
of my 4-year-old’s palms,
when he cusps a powder
grey toad cuddled inside
an ultraviolet cube
of young, chrome-plated
light; a soft and yielding light,
almost floating as the shadows
do under the gondolas of Venice.

Highland Park, Rochester, NY

Before his sister
could budge him
out of the way,

Mendon climbs
up the rabbit hole
to a window in the stars

where everything worth
seeing is hidden inside
a half-devoured pine cone.

Moving With the Great Calendar

No matter what others tell you
To yourself, along the Great Plains
You are a wagon, pulled by the stars

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image: George Payne

Last updated on October 18th, 2020