Best Radicals Poems
One does not stamp out radicalism
any more than one outspends capitalism
or fights successfully against militarism
or overpowers totalitarianism.
We might fade out radicalism,
co-invest capital in cooperative objectives for health,
discern together removing threats of mutually assured violence
and democratize polycultural empowerment
by inviting therapy through all natural-spiritual nondual valuables,
dynamics and animations
within Earth's ecosystemic
universally open spacetime network.
How does it help to invite healing
by calling profound mental unbalance
cowardice?
Why choose the epithet "coward"
to describe terrorizing violent behavior
intent
thoughts against those who intend no active harm
to radicalized perpetrators?
Perhaps this is cowardly behavior
but this is not the first
or most significant
word coming to my mind.
This speaks of fear and anger
and chronically invested misanthropic hatreds,
fueled by competing over-heated environments,
internal and external.
To speak cowardice
to paranoia and ego-distorted sickness
only adds fuel to flames
we would more therapeutically abate
by inviting cultures of deep learning integrity
profoundly sacred ecology
multiculturally and polypathically seen and known
and felt,
inviting mutual embrace of fears
and angers
and lingering learned distrusts.
Chronic stamping on each other,
over each other,
causes further radicalism.
Chronic over-investing in WinLose strategies
caused ravages of capitalism,
dimming richer denser potential
within cooperative ownership and investment
of both capital and equity,
deductive minds and inductive hearts.
Chronic climates of advanced industrial militarism
cause further defaults toward competing
by violent fighting and threat.
Chronic ecopolitical overpowering
of those who feel angry and scared,
left out and behind,
fearful and terrified by violence,
their own and others'
stamping and stomping,
invites further totalitarian plutocracies,
rather than profoundly radical
healthy cooperatives
of growing nutritional democracy
of and for and by and through fair integrity,
cooperative trusting liberty
outshining rights of static freedom.
In the quiet twilight, we gather here today,
To honor my dad, remember him, and pray.
From the promised land, he flew with no regret,
To the fifties U.S., a different mindset.
In the old world, he wore many hats, even a soldier,
Now a young man on a Greyhound bus, bound for Boulder.
"Mariah," the bus played as they rolled along,
He remembered Mount Moriah and mistook it in the song.
He told us the U.S. had been great, yet he was sad,
Perhaps because we didn't know what we once had.
He worked his way through the U of C,
Studying the holistic subject of geography.
Dad became a professor; I watched the applause,
At conferences, everyone knew who he was.
A geographer who explored every field,
Endless books in his study, a vast horizon revealed.
Our summers in New England and the West,
The mile-square farm on Black Hill Road was the best.
Swimming holes, blackberry bushes, mountain hikes,
Exploring dirt roads on three-speed bikes.
But time went by, good came, but so did pain
People seemed so plastic, no anchor kept them sane
The sixties began the process, self-image changed,
A once-great country now became deranged.
Geography was deemed passé, no longer in fashion,
Radical winds swept through college halls, a destructive passion.
A compass spinning wild, the intellectuals sinned,
He wondered if Mariah still named the wind.
In older lands one friend had fought Nazis and Communists too
You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but it was true.
Dad joined with him and others to stem an intolerant tide,
A battle of course doomed, but at least they tried.
While we're still standing here, memories endure,
A young man's arrival, his heart remaining pure.
He's gone now, but he didn't cave, he made his stand,
In the old and then in a new Promised Land.
Zionists have been hunted in High School halls,
Jews huddle in fright as mobs bang on the walls.
What would he have felt, to see democracy’s shame?
Though I know he lost I’m proud he ran the race all the same.
One cup was enough
to curl his toes
as caffeine
the psychoactive chemical
allowed no doze
or more than a mug
no matter how roasted
the polyphenols
affected his free radicals
'til he did feel really quite toasted
and yet with no wish to upset
the happy home
after so many years of married life
he chose to grin and bear it
the 'Harried Hubby' syndrome
for altho' his dear wife
brewed her coffee in a pot
bad-tasting as it was
grounds for divorce
it was not
For all you radicals, there is a time to stand up and shout
Refuse to belong to those that choose the easy way out
For what purpose would he decree, when G-D granted us life
If not to stand firm and avoid all forms of strife
I'm a radical, to this I must admit
Always looked upon differently, as if I'm unfit
But why follow others who think they suffice
To control everyone else with the roll of their dice
Having gone through alot, one begins to discern
There's a time for discipline, and a time for concern
Stand up and be counted, you alone have begun
To realize you can be different, and still be as one
All you radicals, to you alone do I salute
Your ways may be different, but none could refute
Imagine our world, without you, what it would be
A place where individuality could never ever be Free....
In 1970 a U.S. radical named Bernadine Dohrn
For American capitalism felt only scorn
Her underground movement had no time to waste:
and "behind enemy lines" it was "strategically based."
To bring down the U.S. what she called the empire
Was her organization's passionate desire
After all the U.S. was imperialist and unjust
So Marxists had to do what they must.
Ahmed Husain also had a desire
He said "we're in the home of empire."
He lives in the USA, coordinates groups
They disrupt the F35 supply chain, endangering our troops.
He said "We're inside the house, so we fight here:"
Logistics is the "empire pillar", so throw sand in that gear.
Perhaps he sees this as helping Hamas in Palestine
Or is his worldview that our way is a crime?
(chorus)
The faith may differ, the fury’s the same:
To burn the system and curse its name.
Bring down the empire, but what comes later?
A real oppressor, not a liberator.
C. S. Lewis, said Christians are behind enemy lines
Advocated sabotage to thwart evil's designs
Faith, truth and virtue, those arms to him made sense
Not placing bombs or sabotaging national defense.
Of the three, I’d prefer Lewis’s plan.
The others just sabotage their fellow man.
Ideologues do harm, even though they're sure they're right
No guarantees, but I think Lewis was closest to the light.
Even if we'd rather just tend a garden, no desire for war.
We have to choose sides, open the right door.