Race-Power-Discourse Sonnet

Power’s interconnected discourses
Shuffle & are collated through our minds
At one end we demand the resources
At the other end we don’t trust my kind

We are accustomed to a soft system
That leaves most legislation unwritten
It is mostly by melanin driven
With Caucasians perennial victims

This system is a tidy prism
We have victimizers & we’ve victims
They’re designated by racism
Empowering those who make the dictums

So when you get unfair advantages
Concede your place on race’s
Carriages

Time Accretes//Time Erodes Sonnet

Time makes most artifacts irrelevant
For things are tied to specific moments
The jewelry that was once elegant
Will become superfluous in just months

It is funny how things lose relevance
After the sun sets a couple of days
That is a merciful elegance
That with our eternal mind plays

Technology makes these things redundant
Everything can be replicated
Making souls feel they could be replacements
Of anyone else that’s indicated

The accretion or erosion of time
Shows weakness of metaphorical minds

COVID Sonnet 4-27-20

Human indecision is crippling
& the stasis of the quarantine hurts
Even those rays of light that are us stippling
At the bottom of this evil forest

We have all had our quests rendered useless
By the machinery that fulfills dreams
‘Cause it’s built on a model so ruthless
Even the victorious it demeans

The climax is unimaginable
With byzantine horrors revisiting
This world that was once so amenable
The protagonists’ Hell is sizzling

The three act drama of reality
Is collapsing in inhumanity

Eccentric Me Sonnet

I struggle with the realization
That I have always an eccentric
Friends forgive my strange concatenation
That may not fit into normal’s rubric

I look at the landscape out my window
Lands beyond Manhattan’s epicenter
Knowing full well that all this falls below
The land seen where people think things matter

I see the fleeting red-&-blue light-show
The fire department’s ambulances make
As they try to save humans’ bodies so
There is one less tragedy that might break

Another man might just see the city
Not thinking of salvation or pity

COVID19 Distance Learning Sonnet

Truthfully I’m completely overwhelmed
While I sit here trying to teach from my home
I’m caught in distance learning’s special Hell
And my emotions shrink from the unknown

What I do, what you can call praxis
The lessons & instruction’s performance
That achieves a goal through student practice
Is gripping me with fear that’s enormous

The work is more difficult, that is true
‘Cause teaching online is impersonal
Not seeing them, I’m not sure I get through
For me computers are not versatile

But 2020’s pandemic is here
& I’ll do the best I can while not near

Covid Sonnet 3-27-20

I want to take a minute right now
& remind you how fortunate I am
I have a job with a union (for now)

& the paychecks still come (but the work: Damn!)

Teaching in this digital “ur-space”
Lacks the meaningful connectivity

Computer distance learning’s a farce

People lean from their humanity

But let me stop right now & remind you

That we’re learning something fundamental

“The System” will not admit it is true

(But we need leadership governmental)

So fuck white supremacist neocons

Reagan, Bush & them ruined what was strong

Crenellated Consumerism Sonnet

This Elaborate Crenellated Castle
That King Consumerism constructed
Solves millions of problems: there’s no hassle
& it seems great, but lies are deducted

Casino decks have built this house of cards
With impressive engineering, lacquered
To make it look like we’ll escape life hard
But the planet & ev’ryone’s Knackered

We all live in a Rube Goldberg Machine
Built of naïveté’s faith in markets
For centuries “we” came out extra clean
But t’was running on the 3rd World’s sprockets

Now the mendacious reality gives
Us the bill, & Capitalism grieves

Dawn Sonnet 3-16-20

As I patiently wait for disaster
With my aggro black coffee in my hand
I observe this fine world alabaster
Knowing that this is all somehow God’s plan

I wish I believed in a Deity
Who sat in a control room watching us
Observing the acts of the laity
Deciding when each one’s final door shuts

Still I naïvely pray to somebody
Though I have no fucking idea who
It is an act of faith, done clumsily
& by talking to myself, dreams come true

In the dozen lines above, I write of
This temporary place: the world I love

Early Riser

The morning starts in my uneasy mind

Long before I want to get out of bed:

Things to do & problems to solve, I find

(Beginning the march ‘bout my pillowed head)

Social Media Sonnet 3-11-20

I hollar here on media social
Impotent, invisible little screams:
That will have no effect, nothing crucial
But that’s pointless modernity, it seems

The sad compulsion to be recognized
Is a byproduct of society
That has been remade hierarchicllized
It’s clearly a moral infirmity

So when you see some wittiness tweeted
Smile at the pathetic social display
Of someone who wants to be completed
By approval of others in some way

I wish I could accept my life’s beauty
For what it is, without sharing’s duty