I’m in recovery.
I sat down to write a poem about the injuries I’ve sustained,
Both the physical and the mental,
How they slow me down and hamper me,
From being what I once was.
But halfway through I wrote it anew,
For the aches and pains I carry,
Are the marks of a life well-lived.
I wanted to give my scars special meaning,
But I’m not sure that much is true.
My limp and my aches are constant reminders,
Of the miles I’ve covered,
And the victories and losses,
But mostly they are ghostlike memories,
Now etched forever into my being.
Election Jazz: The Reds and the Blues
Who is to blame for the mess we are in?
Hatred, Strife, Economics, Spin.
Maybe we ourselves hold blame!
Closed-mindedness, zero-sum games.
Perhaps the issue should instead be,
“What does it take to set us free
From fear and doubt and dishonesty?”
Once again America Plebiscites-
In folksy language, we fuss and fight.
Back and forth the political tug-of-war,
No one really wins when everyone is sore.
For “election have consequences” still holds true-
Though political spoils of war make us raw and bruised,
And to our chagrin no election is ever through!
The loser gets ready for shifting political winds,
And the strategy for the next election already begins.
Though the winner seems happy, on closer inspection,
They are already fundraising for their re-election.
The electorate only has itself to blame,
Selecting the same old people for the same old game,
This outcome has become the object of shame.
With empty promises that we continue to buy,
Politicians are incentivized to lie.
We the people keep stuffing the box
For the candidate promising us the fattest ox
With voters on the take, bad fiscal policy begins
As democracy’s life approaches its ends
Didn’t we ramble, with the Saints Marching in?
In Praise of Coffee
A gift from the Gods
Seeds not pods
Red Ethiopian berry
Stone fruit like a cherry
Maybe Yemen grown
Mountainside or Mocha port as home
Washed and dried then fire roasted
Tumbled round and perfectly toasted
Ground and boiled and placed in urn
Or percolated so it doesn’t burn
Maybe Keurig, or maybe drip
Doesn’t matter, I’ll have a sip
Might be black or soft brown with cream
Almost better than a dream
Slightly sweetened to me is the best
But I don’t turn up my nose at the rest
In a porcelain cup warming my hand
It warms my soul as well, Oh Man!
A baser admission (I don’t mean to stoop)
Coffee also helps me poop
Brings new life to every day
A few moments of calm to sip and pray
Energizing, Antioxidizing,
A little too much and my blood pressure is rising
A warm cup of Java is hard to beat
Now my praise of coffee is complete
Don Quixote and the American Dream
When lords of realms owned the land and people served as serfs
Landed knights practiced warfare while people worked the earth.
The Church and all its mystery held the hearts and fears of men,
While towns held guilds and craftsmen where prosperity would begin.
When people’s fates were much more locked by the tyranny of birth,
There was little change of standing and little measure of human worth.
When knight-errants roamed from land to land seeking wealth and station,
There was little more than patron lord with almost no concept of nation.
Plague and famine and dissolution concentrated wealth,
And suddenly added value to a worker in good health.
Concentrated capital allowed the wealth of nations to rise,
While families of Kings and Queens held their eyes upon the prize.
As economic vibrancy led to ostentation,
Patronage to the arts led to cultural maturation.
From Italy came the Renascence and with it logic’s whip-
The birth of science and its challenge of the Church’s grip.
From Renascence to Reformation, history starts to churn,
People challenged Miter and Crown and all of Europe burned.
For the average man a wonderful gift came from this conflagration,
The Enlightenment and philosophy gave us the social contract nation.
A model for living first espoused at the Grecian birth of philosophy,
Found at last the time and place to reach maturity.
The glorious social contract between the state and the people,
Allowed the common to become their best without fear of Crown or Steeple.
Then in the West there arose across the mighty sea,
The pinnacle and perfection of this humanist polity.
Formed from a classical ideal of citizenship and the value of the average man,
Limited governance with check and balance were the heart of the master plan.
Through a double generation of sacrifice, compromise, and sometimes error,
The roots of the Liberty Tree grew along with national power and terror.
For in our founding compromise was a crack that all could see,
In a land built on the freedom of men there was an acceptance of slavery.
Then came the four long years of war- a divided nation’s strife;
The sin of bondage paid in blood and massive loss of life.
Though Father Abraham had planned to gently heal the broken nation,
The future course was complicated by his brutal assassination.
So half the land faced Reconstruction- a military occupation,
And then as violent political response- the Klan had its formation.
For a century there existed a paradox based solely on color of skin,
As freedmen found themselves trapped still as second class citizen.
The wounds of racism continued on as Freedom’s awful hemorrhage,
Another bleeding wound was found in the lack of women’s suffrage.
The Twentieth Century marked the rise of the US to its pinnacle of might.
Ironically, by freeing other nations, our politically wounded found the will to fight.
First the woman’s right to vote came after World War I,
A century of Suffragettes had found the race was won.
Old Jim Crow was finally killed a decade after World War II
Separate but Equal was struck down and Civil Rights were coming too.
Equality for all at longest last was legally enshrined,
Yet sexism and racism lived on- though socially it declined.
The problem is in the heart of all- ourselves, our sisters, and brothers,
For in our willful ignorance we fear the different and the others.
A half-century later the nation still finds itself in strife and discontent,
As economic malaise, and fractious politics have citizens rent.
Unending war has stretch the wealth of the nation out of joint,
Political populism and reactionism have us at the breaking point.
There is another problem that cycles through history,
A subtle weaving spider with poison as strong as racist misogyny.
In the spider’s web is found a danger to a free nation’s health,
The sticky fiber of this web is accumulated wealth.
The issue is not the wealth itself but how the wealth is used,
For the wealthy tend to rewrite the rules and through that wealth is abused.
The free market ability for people to rise through intellect and effort is a virtuous thing,
But when wealthy elites and politicians conspire “free market” has a hollow ring.
While profit and prosperity can be drivers of change and progress,
When consolidated with the few, they are drivers of social unrest.
Through historical review, there is a response to oligarchism,
And we are witnessing it now- the rise of populism.
The terrible truth is that our founders knew this as a fact.
The checks and balances that they established where their balancing act.
Though flawed with political compromise, their documents clearly state,
Their ever present purpose to protect the people from the state.
In doing this they also hoped to save the state from the mob,
But maintaining this balance requires that we the people do our job.
We must educate ourselves for informed citizens are not sheep,
And the pursuit of happiness doesn’t guarantee a catch or keep.
With legalistic scalpels we parse our founder’s words and intended purpose,
In doing so our illiteracy is coming home to curse us.
In our quest for excellence in science, technology, engineering and math,
We completely miss that philosophy is what set us on this path.
This brings us back full circle to the problems we face now,
In a much divided nation, we need to unify somehow.
The problem is that never before has so much information,
Been both available and unused- a pity for this nation.
In our quest for self-actualization we’ve allowed our aim and purpose,
To become so much about the “I” that we’ve lost the “us”.
The only way back from the path that takes this nation to its grave,
Is to realize we’re all prisoners, trapped in Plato’s Cave.
The images we think we know are merely shadows on the wall,
We must break free and leave the cave so our false notions fall.
And though the burning blinding sun may feel to us abuse,
It is only in its brilliant light, we see the complete truths.
Community
There will always be a civil-military divide, or gap, or chasm–if we are always standing on one side of a bridge. We–military, veterans, servicemembers–are HERE. You–everyone else–are THERE.
Then we ask the question, “But how do we bridge the gap?”
The answer to that question is whatever particular hammer we happen to be carrying at the moment.
But what if we–the ones who served–started to think of ourselves as a neighborhood. Or a family. Or a gathering. Or a home.
Here in the center of our family are those who give it definition–the human being in uniform, no matter what job they do, or how long they served. At least once in their lives, they signed on the dotted line and stepped up to the service of their country.
Standing around them, though, who are they? The support system. First, we find those who have deployed with us, even if they did not wear a uniform. Here’s the person working the food line at the chow hall in Kuwait. Here’s the contractor working on an innovation in robotics to save lives. Or the civilian medical professional taking care of servicemembers for everything from a routine appointment to emergency medicine.
The edges of our community grow blurrier as the neighborhood continues. Here are our families–spouses, parents, siblings, children. They often wear our service as a badge, or with pride, because careers, even four-year enlistments, are “needs of the Army,” not “needs of our loved ones.” And they get it.
Keep traveling, all roads connect us. Here’s the difficult part of town. Here is the block of those whose service–or whose loved one’s service–has burned them. The divorcee, the underemployed spouse, the failure to adapt. The ex-servicemember who suffered from assault or abuse. These lives have been touched by, and have touched, uniformed service. They’re part of the community, even if we don’t drive by that part of town very often.
Just stopping by for a visit, these are the friends whose only touchpoint with the military might be that person from back home they knew in high school, and connected with later on social media, who give a “like” to pictures of their old friend in uniform, but don’t really get the jokes in the DuffelBlog articles they share. Maybe it’s the people who “support the troops,” but haven’t taken the time to really drive around town and get to know everyone.
To stretch this metaphor to the point of killing the elastic, there is one more point. When we think of ourselves as a neighborhood, or a community, it becomes easier to envision traveling outside that community. Maybe that is literal travel, perhaps it’s the ability to share stories about life in the neighborhood. In any case, we are no longer faced with a deep chasm, gaping between our side of the road and “their” side of the road.
Instead, we are much larger than we think, and those we include can help us connect–and stay connected–to the other communities we touch.