High society has always been
High above the rest
High in their castle and oasis
High in the penthouse and palace
High in the big house and gated suburb.
While the rest wander the hills and fields
Streets and alleys, making a living
Or scraping a living.
Seeking greener lands of the free
Ever westward;
Pilgrims and pioneers, trappers and traders
Roughnecks and rednecks
Seeking their own jackpot
From the Klondike to Vegas.
High and low have always existed side by side
One above, one below
It’s no different today
Just more of both
With the gap between wider than ever.
But what really is high and low?
Are those at the top better as well as richer,
And those at the bottom really less than?
One man’s wealth is another’s poverty
The loss of freedom within a gilded cage.
What is richness, or beauty, for that matter
If it is only measured against another
And not a natural quality of just being alive?
The gap between have and have nots
Is material, but that gap is easier to cross
Than the inner gap that doesn’t know
And cannot see what real wealth, beauty
Freedom and exalted being really means.
(9/22/26)
We are out in the ocean where the spray is rough
Old Medley Meanie decides to get meaner and tough
We take Captain Smithe and we throw him overboard.
We are a crew of roughnecks with our hatchet and sword!
Cap’n is gone, we are cheering our rebel!
The ocean has taken him, he’s head’d for hell.
We are fighting to be Captain, in charge now.
Fighting for the crown on the ship’s bloody bow!
There are ten of us left. We know there is only food for six.
I am hoping to get the one steak, but I am in quite a fix.
The other pirates are as mean as I have ever tried to be.
I am in trouble now in this dangerous Caribbean Sea.
Cap’n is gone, we are cheering our rebel!
The ocean has taken him, he’s head’d for hell.
We are fighting to be Captain, in charge now.
Fighting for the crown on the ship’s bloody bow!
There are six of us left, we are the toughest of all.
I am scared of only one, shipmate Morey, he is seven foot tall.
He comes at me with a hatchet, and I plunge into the sea.
I guess fear will now be the death of me.
Elections yield
idiosyncratic bloodthirsty gods, demons, lemons, liars, and fleas
full of prayers
that most are just tricks in twists and turns
of emptiness
that only endeavor to veil the roughness of these roughnecks
full of vagueness and vanities;
The real vampires,
plunged, swimming and sinking in stinking Politics swarmed with fanatics, irks
and licks, and deceits, and idioms, and schisms, and dreams, and victims
and
Isms
said from wide wild mouths
of crooks of looks and books, but of deaf ears,
buoyed by
self-seeking self-seekers and bootlickers, and
the rest, as they trample down
on the colors of truth, and play down
–anxious and teasing times
the
sudden overnight gods
Fossil powered gas coal and crude
Got miners and some roughnecks screwed
With solar and wind
Their fate could be pinned
On working with fuel that's renewed
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