Best Ravening Poems
You want it all.
The lakes and tar sands
Fresh water and fish
Arctic diamonds
Pipelines that confine
The caribou
And make the hunt ridiculous.
Forests for the churning
Of lusty, gossip press
And row houses
Like card houses
In six figure excess.
You set the price
You peg the share return
You fudge prospectus
Upon contingent prospectus.
You eyeball Brazil’s rubber
Argentina’s beef
And the yen’s stability.
Look for bottom line
In a bombshell.
You feed the college factories
With student debt
And prevarication.
You ruin IT marvels of innovation
With the barbs of bribed analysts.
You forestall needful medicines.
Your food franchises gorge your towns
And starve your staffs.
You stuff the sanctuaries
With hype and lifestyle
And trendy powerless slogans.
And dandle politicians
Like Punch and Judy.
But no one is laughing.
Moving jobs like pawns off-shore.
Buying justice by the pound.
You are the ravening
And the implacable.
You kill this place
In increments.
Chanting with pounded fist
“Business is business”.
And the odd one of us
Builds a cabin in the bush
And marvels at the night music
And lights.
At the end of evening twilight,
into a cool breeze of briny scent,
down the bent weathered wooden steps
Away from the dew kissed grass, next
to a universe of sand,
driftwood, seashells, and seaweeds.
The sea breathes deep
and ebbs into its depth
into an obsidian gold glimmer sheen
With the sounds of breaking waves
breathes out proudly braves ,
crawling on its belly upon the shore.
The horizon meets the sea
as two beating hearts ravening in the night,
as they whisper infinite conversation in the gradient night.
The life of the night radiating romance,
celestial dome empowering dance,
as Heaven mirth gazes upon the earth
6/22/2016
There is greed that guts a forest
And the ocean's briny span
And will lay a sprawling pipeline
Where the cariboo once ran.
It will force big debt on students
And beguile them with the ruse
That the jobs come quick to graduates
In whatever field thy choose.
Workers straining to accomplish
Every pile-on added chore
In the name of competition
Yet they earn not one buck more.
Products made for obsolescence
And sore financed to the hilt
Giving little satisfaction
As we know just how they're built.
Governors will speak of progress
And new programs with a heart
Soon just horse-trades for more power
And the Press will play its part.
There is more in each endeavour
But sad little will improve
As the bottom line of business
Cracks the whip and gives the shove.
Yes free enterprise we call it
Golden brain-child of the West
But I sense value for value
Suits our souls and cities best.
All around me the land suffers too much greening.
The luxuriant froths over into a feverish lush.
Birds cannot consume all the insects.
Snakes cannot eat all the birds.
The ground hogs on the swill of decay.
If this is natures wealth then a little poverty
is needed, a tax on the riotous and too abundant.
Death the reaper must rule his kingdom with more gusto,
both the prey and the predator sparring none,
the sickly succulence of overripe sap
drained and clarified by a cooler sunlight.
I was whelped in more temperate climes,
wolves died of hunger and age not heat stroke.
The rabbit burrows are oven gates
for marauding hordes and an avid pestilence.
The balance is tipped and off kilter,
The climate repaints its face more garishly
each day.
I hear the mandibles of ferocity, their
click and remorseless grind,
and there is no softness in the nibbling jaws
of those who rampage silently,
those, who strip the bloated and obese
to the dark and rancid bone.
I secretly journey now under dawn stars,
trace my way over cooling paths
before another fevered heat
force feeds the land.
The land suffers too much greening;
luxuriance froths to fever and glut,
birds cannot consume all the insects,
nor serpents eat the thronging flocks.
The soil hogs on the swill of decay,
drey and burrow are ovens
for a prowling pestilence.
There is no softness. The sun
bites the bloated and rancid,
a balance is tipped off kilter,
the climate repaints its face
more garish each day.
A little poverty is needed, a tax
on the riotous and abundant,
the sickly succulence of ripe sap
be drained and clarified.
We live now in the eyes of strangers,
hunters are maddened by the gnawing
of long fevered bones.