DEFENSIVE MANEUVER

I keep an agéd finger
on the young pulse
of my old country.
The symptoms are:
a turning-inward
that is "away from"
and not "toward,"
a disconnecting from
the outside world.
Likes and dislikes,
determined by long
habit, may no longer
fit.
There is confusion
and there is fear--
will isolation protect?
While other parts of
the world are
waking up,
my countrymen
have no more
attention to give.

O you, who call
yourself "America,"
are you sleeping,
or are you dying?

9 December 2016.

MACHINES

To work with computers,
one has to think like a computer,
to think like a machine.
It makes for a colder,
more lifeless world,
a world run
by machines.

We are programming
the defenses of dictators,
the logistics of fascists,
and the humor of maniacs.
We are designing the systems
of our surveillance,
and building the platforms
for our own hanging.

Thirty-five years ago
I laughed at a neo-Luddite.
Now I wonder
if it's too late.

8 Dec. 2016

BODY SHAME

It's a different kind
of body shame:
not body-type
(though that came
later), but just
HAVING a body.

Oh yes, we've laughed
about it, my sister
and I: "Traxlers don't
have bodies," we
often say. But where
did it start, and
how? Why, at the
age of ten, did the
very word,
"body,"
make me blush?

What was the shame
in having a body?
Why the secrecy
about certain parts
which must,
at all costs,
be kept hidden?
Why the blushing?

It will not happen
again. Perhaps
my naturism
has gone too
far. But,
you see,
it took me
many years to
get a body,
and now that
I have one,
I won't easily
give it up.

6 Dec. 2016

STANDING ROCK

Is it possible that the world
is changing for the better?
Can unity and solidarity
be hallmarks of the future?
Is it possible that love
really does
conquer all?
Let us live
in this crazy
hope.
Let us become
what we desire.

5 December 2016

I would like to thank everyone for showing support for my poetry. Some say that no one reads poetry anymore, but evidently that is not the case. In the two months since I started my poetry blog, it has had more than three thousand visits. The top ten countries from which the visits have come are the US, Uruguay, Germany, UK, Chile, Spain, Ireland, Argentina, Canada, and India. The blog has also had visits from Poland, Italy, Venezuela, Guatemala, Turkey, Colombia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Sweden, Norway, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Mexico, and other countries. Thanks again, and I hope you will continue to enjoy my poetry blog.

QUATRAINS DE NOSSA SENHORA XCVIII - C

CXVIII.
Quando dominan os últimos,
faltarán os primeros,
poder de espiritistas,
bailadores, y ganaderos.

When the last dominate,
the first will fail.
power of spiritualists,
dancers, and ranchers.

XCIX.
A estos se agreguen
pescadores y putas,
quando serán os poetas
os más astutos.

To these may be added
fishers and whores,
when poets will be
the most astute.

C.
O principio va ser
igual que su fin,
nada que perder
y escasso el win.

The beginning will be
the same as its end,
nothing to lose,
and little to win.

4 de dezembro 2016

I AM HERE - II

As a young, idealistic man
I taught an undocumented
dock-worker to read his
own language, and a Venezuelan
family to speak English.
I shared my language with
wonderful Catalán teenagers.

But I am not here
to teach, though it may happen,
but rather to learn,
to absorb this culture,
keeping the good and
rejecting the harmful,
as I did in the "old
country." I am here
to live, to share,
and to flourish.

29 Nov. 2016