why I’m a Buddhist and socialist –

a socialist because wealth needs to be redistributed to the needy – health care, education, food, housing and employment… and a  Buddhist because I believe in the sanctity of life; and to keep from being ground down and numbed into passivity, the way I see economics affecting people – scarcity ideation

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Men of power, their vassals keep

o’er the air, a foggy sleep

at infernal days end, we mewl as sheep

the fiery furnace, ‘fore to keep.

– A fog of gloom and helplessness

depression, grief – it’s just business

The status quo and its deceit

has sprung its trap on our conceit

For those who dare to dream so free

for immigrants – just misery

*

In Palestine, just look and see

the shattered lives – land, sky and sea!

locked down for life, “They must be freed!”

we mutter vaguely, in our safety

*

These wars I would not subsidize

homeland insecurity institutionalized

blaming the raped,

the victimized

In the name of democracy

and justice

we know what’s best

– what’s best for us!

*

the recent past, COINTELPRO

shot down the leaders here below:

farm workers, Panthers,

anti-war, Chicano,

Native Americans,

feminists and queers,

socialists –

anything that threatened their status quo

*

What present COINTELPRO will the future reveal?

The original, so damnably effective!

at creating divisions and scaring

away the righteous

*

Lady ‘Day, Lenny Bruce

squeeeeze them for their bitter juice

the drugs, the jails, the brothers still

in slavery’s continu-ation

the cops on the corner, clubs all drawn

hunger for the bloody dawn

*

Locked down ourselves,  our ruin looms

as millionaires through empty rooms

wander aimless, in laughing fits –

they piss themselves as here we sit!