The price of decency in today’s world
Is the same as it has always been:
Your liberty or your life.
If you give a moose a muffin
After all
Next you’ll have to invite them in
For a glass of milk.
And we all know how difficult it is
To get a moose to leave your kitchen.
And so it goes for the illegals
Flooding the open borders
Or the squatters trespassing
Into empty homes
Or the homeless and hapless
Stealing and vandalizing with impunity.
If you’re a decent person today
The lawless will walk all over you.
And those who enable and encourage
Such lawlessness, remain protected
Whilst whistleblowers of all stripes,
From Julian Assange to Seth Rich,
End up in exile or simply dead.
There you have it.
Exile and death.
The future of human decency.
(3/22/24)
I ride to the store on horseback and saddle,
I Leave him outside its distasteful to ride indoors,
My horse stays there it waits it needs no shackle,
I wonder inside my eyes beholden,
This world I have found,
It shines bright it glows with electricity,
I wander I’m lost this place a city,
I don’t know where to exist in this modern World,
I leave the store now with this plastic holding,
My horse I return to,
He looks at me with a sight of scolding,
I shudder sadly knowing our time has nearly past,
We wonder back to the prairie,
The horizon crept upon by cities leaving us teary.
Being bigger, better, faster, stronger
These modern times, a far cry from
Being saner, kinder, gentler, wiser,
Are a cancerous race to satisfy the insatiable.
With our advance into abundance
We have lost touch
With the old world
Of tradition, balance, moderation, restraint.
Instead we now have all that we dream,
Each of us a Midas
Able to grasp
If not ever hold.
Able to spoil and pervert
All that we touch, taste, and feel
The everyday and mundane
With the rare and exceptional.
Now we each deserve it all
To have our cake and eat it too
With all the lust and greed, envy and resentment
That comes with limitless expectation.
No longer tempered in desire
By limits
Self or other imposed
We grasp for the highest fruit.
Confident as in a dream
We will fly
When we lose our grip
And fall.
(11/23/23)
("Pandora's Box", 2014, original pen and ink and oil)
Exposed for All to See
In the world turned upside down,
bad is good.
And inside out,
corruption long shielded is celebrated.
For now at least
exposed for all to see.
It’s called the fall of civilization
as what once held us all together,
by holding us each back,
collapses into narcissistic pleasure
breaking tainted hearts and distorted minds
into the common well, now poisoned.
The weight of humanity’s collective mutational load
too much to bear, spews what can’t be held, from
the gaping wounds and oozing sores of Pandora’s Box,
perverted pleasures, twisted identities, confused genders,
senseless violence of relative values,
through the broken gates of order and control.
In the world turned upside down
what was bad is good, and good is bad;
the wicked held high, and righteous in chains
everywhere sheep led to slaughter
civilization on its knees, helpless
for now at least,
exposed for all to see.
(9/8/23)
When my working week is full yet my bank balance stays barren.
I’ve got a secret
I’ll tell you that it’s true
It’s not something I regret
But it will be a surprise too
The papers will want to hear
A raise of your TV ratings it will bring
It will be something they will fear
I will say the nasty thing
The more likes I get on Facebook
Will make me smile even more
I’ll make them look a bunch of sooks
This will be my best score.
© Paul Warren Poetry
arrows of summer breezes
midnight streams galore
bubbling brooks
in me you got your hooks
i thank God for you daily
in peace with you astounds me
the excitement within the warmth of you surrounds me
hearing the water flow
i spring into rejuvenation
i thank God for you daily
the ocean breeze is meant to blow through your hair
the sun that follows is meant to accentuate your natural beauty
the coolness of the water is meant to inspire your smile of upliftment
if a happy day was a blue sky, then you would be the puffy cloud nucleus
i thank God for you daily
Living a life so utterly blind
In deep recesses of the mind
Male or female who's to say
So fluid in this day and age
One's assimilation is what they claim
No identity is one to shame
So many choices in modern time
Like a new born kitten don't be blind
LGBTQI exists today
Now non-binary comes into play
Birth assigned gender, matters not
Echoes in eternity the given lot
There was a Jewish man from Andorra
Who singed his rear end on a menorah
Sparks flew to his feet
Providing this treat
He sure danced one mean Chanukah hora
__________________________________________________
Notes:
A menorah is the special Chanukah lamp lit for eight nights
The hora is a traditional Jewish/Israeli celebratory circle dance
A generation seeks to build and create metal machinery electricity krytrons to make this globe go round expanding like a virus that knows no cure stupid boxes couch potatoes
Clickers information out of context
Drama at a pretext style to mock
What's cool and what is not
What use to simmer is now a crock pot
Past and Modern Times
Once over Capital Confederate Flag was flown,
And over the years my curiosity has grown;
Center of attention was war fought long ago;
What about all of this by us should we know.
Questions went over and over in my mind;
Answers to them always hope I can find;
What if with Poet Laureate were to consult,
In an effort of mine to find the final result.
An answer in my mind did last and last
We can longer have to live in the past;
When I heard bell with all their chimes;
Said we should start living in modern times.
James Serious Mysterious Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet
In this new world, the reality of insanity
Elicits frail morality, losing deep values
To cuthroat urbanity. We thirst for quick fixes
And dismiss gentle formality although life
Grants humanity its spirit’s wholeness—
How can greed and power allow us to ignore
Kindness, simple vitality borne from Hope,
Our birthright amid mundanity? Is man’s dream
Caged in temporal inanity where success
Is appraised by materialism or arrogant fame?
Such brutality! We forget the path of compassion
As time forges on in despotic volcanity, while
Children grow imbibing a mentality that existence
Lies in crude profanity based on self-interest…
Where is love in this equation?A doomed fatality
Of modern times , perhaps. I wonder.
Contest: Word Challenge for Silent One
1/27/2017
By the soul, and That which shaped it and inspired it
[with the capacity to distinguish between] lewdness and God-fearing,
prosperous is he who purifies it, and failed has he who seduces it.
(The Holy Quran 91:7-10)
Brothers love their sisters and remember
As the leaves of a tree called life are falling,
At one time apart and at another together,
There will sooner or later come a voice calling:
Injuries will heal and hence be forgotten
Lies will stumble, be found out and go down
Dreams will dovetail with good deeds and come true
Weapons invented and used against life will end
Birds and flowers will be set free of cages and fences
Innocence and Beauty will spring back and prosper
Tears in our sacred soil will be wiped out forever
Every scoffing built upon our falling is nothing
This tree of life is fruitful and has wonder and wonder.
Chokri Omri
Kein Klagen hilft mehr
Kultur erleidet Schiffbruch
Moderne Zeiten
Leer die einst vollen Kinos
Und Stille im Theater
No laments will help
Culture suffers depression
In these modern times
Empty once fully occupied cinemas
And only silence in the theater
No clamor ayudará
La cultura sufre la depresión
En tiempos modernos
Vacío una vez llenos cines
Y sólo silencio en el teatro
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