Tuesday, February 28, 2006
KVETCH!
Kvetch!*
Poems of Political Satire
And Reflection
By Evan Pritchard
All poems copyright c 2002
By Evan Pritchard
Print version available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 (212)714-7151
• with apologies to Alan Ginsberg
Kvetch!
First Whitman gave his mighty “Youp!”
To urge us towards the shimmering light of freedom,
To face the dark of human suffering
And yet through that broken brandy glass
See eternity.
Then Tennyson cried: “Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, oh sea!”
A note to landlocked humans
As to how they ought to be,
Especially when pressed and processed
By monolithic cities, laws and ideologies.
Then “Rage, rage, rage”
Against the dying of the light!”
so Dylan Thomas penned,
Written not with politics in mind
But to battle bitter fate
When near life’s end;
Can the force that through the green fuse
Drove his poetic power
Now rise up to save us in our fateful hour?
Then we were taught to “HOWL!”
By Ginsberg and his generation’s wild men
“Howl, howl, howl,”
with all the wild power locked within
to rage against the invisible machine
to beat our chests and drum and scream
and howl like beasts to win back human dignity
perchance to dream!
Then Lennon picked up the Beat a little bit
And sang “Cry baby cry!
His anti-lullaby
“Make your mother country sigh!”
And some were called “crybabies” then
Who took up guitar or pen
Looked into the future
And figured out where it all was going, and when
And asked the Big Three questions:
”Who am I?”
“Why am I here?”
and “Where am I going in this handbasket?”
Perhaps the howling, raging Lennon knew back then
How secret coalitions were bent on subjugation
And thought to make a musical complaint
And now we look back
And wonder what and how he knew
And who was Chapman really?
And who buried Paul?
Now I say, and not just to be witty—
“Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch,
against thy cold grey stones, O City!”
Brake, brake, brake
Against the hard right turn of corporate might
Rage! Kvetch! Against the rising
Of the Machiavellian Right!
Kvetch, baby, kvetch, into that dark ethical night
Save your “Youps!” of celebration
For another time and another verse
Right now its time to howl and whine, and rage…
And kvetch, kvetch, kvetch
Against the dying of the light
Do not go gentle
Into that hard right!
Ice Age
In the age of ice
There were no men
Creatures of dark
Hid all their lives
And mindless beasts
That reproduced
Taught their children
To survive.
Cash Is King
Remember when we had democracy?
Remember when we put an end to monarchy?
Well you can forget about your democracy because….
Uh huh, Cash is King!
You may have thought there was a Revolution
In ‘76, then a Constitution,
Well that was just a temporary solution
‘cause Cash is king.
We still have a lot of bombs burstin’ in air,
But where they burst now, we don’t care
Its just a new form of “Laissez-faire” which means
“Cash is King!”
Yes cash is king and it was not elected,
By divine right it was selected
Your little vote was not detected
By our big machine…..cash is king!
Remember when civilian presidents
Won us all over with common sense?
Well now there’s a new form of intelligence…..it’s called….
Cash is King!
We shoulda seen it comin’ long ago
The way that Standard Oil stole the show?
We cut that Hydra’s head off, but…whaddayaknow?
We turn around and cash is King!
Yon Cash has got a hungry look
Lookin’ at you an’ wondrin’ how you’ll cook
With a dab of Arab oil that he took
From Kazahkstan—cash is King!
Remember when we thought that Global-I-zation
Meant brothers coming together as one nation?
Something sure needed further meditation, and that is…
Cash is King!
They say it isn’t over til the fat girl sings
But in fact it isn’t over til the register rings
Now it rings for thee, and for the crowning of kings
Cha-ching! Cash is King!
The tricks that were played upon the Lenapee
And the Sioux and the Ojibway and the Cherokee
Now they’re “doin’ it” to you and me
Because….Cash is King!
Well we’ve squandered everything the Investor gave us
We’ve now been spent, nothing can save us
And if there are alien bankers who are tryin’ to enslave us
They’re laughing, “Cash is King!”
If we don’t stop doing things this way
Sooner or later there will come a day
Where instead of voting, we’ll just pay
In the voting booth, cash is king.
Yes, cash is King, I said Cash is king
You have to admit that it has a ring
Heads will roll if you say anything except
Cash is King!
America In The Morning
America in the morning,
Were you there?
To smell the air
To breathe on rested land
Or to stand and observe.
If I awoke before the sun
Had first rimmed the horizon
If I’d opened my eyes again
To see the earth alone
Thriving nicely on her own,
I don’t remember.
For what purpose I awoke
A cause that was willed
A goal unfulfilled
I’ll never know I fell back so deep
It was just an illusion when I shook off sleep
I have this feeling
And I’m sure I was there.
It was all there this morning, did you see?
I can give it no expression
I just have faint impressions
Of silence and moonlight
That joyed at the sight of
America in the Morning
Were you there to smell the air
To breathe on rested land
Or to stand and observe?
There was a lot more to see
Before the day
Of traffic jams and crowded streets
The dragging of a million feet
The day of cities like human dumps
That pile people like the metal junk
That came with the sun.
The Sun Rose
The sun rose in the East
And with it came fire
And with the fire came great flaming lives
Who died their flaming deaths
And became darkness.
The sun set in the west
And with it went the morning
And with the morning, down went the East
That died a great flaming death
And became West.
1970
Extra Innings of the Gods
A Baseball Fan’s Observations on the Presidential Election,
November 2000 copyright c 2000 by Evan Pritchard
dedicated to Al Leiter and Al Gore, in that order
This is the crossroads of history, the Hopi Prophets say,
and “These are the times that try men’s souls!”
which is what Abe Lincoln cried,
gazing at the field at Gettysburgh,
after everybody who was anybody died,
and “a fool’s born every minute,” someone else observed
and “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!”
Yogi Berra sighed while gazing out onto a different field
Forbes Field, as Mazeroski rounded bases in his joy....
Yes we’re speaking to you from beautiful Crossroads field
at the cornerstone of history and Main
in downtown West Palm Beach
baseball fans, and not an empty seat to be found...
we are all at the crossroads now, my friends
with this election that won’t end.
The Athenians and Trojans both are tied
Romeo and Juliet both died,
Is this election not the rock of Sisyphus
teetering on the mountaintop, the fulcrum of the world
the earth, our cross of gold, is in the balance?
let it fall upon us like the mountains of Bablylon, and all is lost
all is lost, O Sisyphus! O Absolom!
Is this weird election not the crossroads
prophecized by the Hopi
elders long ago?
and Florida the Devil’s playground?
Where all the cars are hot, where all the dice are loaded
and all the cards are marked “defective”
and all the fates are sealed like secret ballots
known to none but God and Jeb Bush,
who sits at the right hand of the candidate all mighty.
“It could go either way” the Hopi prophets say,
and so we watch and wait to see
which way the earth will turn today
will it suddenly go counterclockwise? Or go straight?
Will love reveal its power, or will hate?
A Subway Series of the Gods,
a rollercoaster classic lasting seven games
the last one going on twenty innings, with no relief in sight
two tired starting pitchers still standing on the hill,
still hurling bull with all their might
both bedeviled by their fate, their infernal stalemate
both stymied by the curse of the zeros,
both of them would be heroes,
spitting legal jargon on the ball,
their souls both sweating, damned by contracts signed
in blood
lying upon the sand
of West Palm Beach,
victory just out of reach.
I too once thought that both were acceptable alternatives
(or as Nader might say both unacceptable to him)
like having to vote for either Plato or Aristotle
different strokes for different votes,
the Academy versus the Lyceum,
Who is right? What is the good?
Both inclined to want their way,
but such is the path of power these days.
The fight of the century, the pitcher’s duel of death
In this corner, the Texas Tax Blaster, the Aristotle of Austin,
The Big W, with a 3 point O ERA and 31 state victories
and in this corner the Plato of Possibility,
Big Al, the Wooden Wonder,
with only 18 state victories, 3 point one,
but what a deceptive move.
The sadfaced son of the Socrates of the South
Big Bill Clinton, who smoked the cigar
of political suicide and blew blue smoke
into the face of the tobacco industry,
and now must pay the price,
and the sins of the father are reaped
upon the next generation tenfold.
I too thought at first that it was politics as usual,
same old same old
that a bird in the Bush was just as good as any bird
by any other yellow bellied sap-sucking Republican name
but.... now I don’t feel quite the same
now that the contract with America is finally signed
the devil now removes his rubber human halloween mask,
and so we see
In Florida, justice is not blind,
but knows the color of money just fine,
and now we know--we were decieved, and now we grieve.
The party that stumped on character turns out to be
the very heir to the throne of corruption and hypocricy,
the Prince of Ethical Darkness
laughing at the loss of the electorate
chuckling at their catastrophe
In case the troops have not yet been alerted,
The will of We The People has been subverted!
Does anybody think
that if it were a level playing field down there
that if all of “Shoeless” Jesse Jackson’s Blacksox batters
were allowed to play
if all the lines were not contrived to be too long
in Democratic precincts,
so that Al’s fans weren’t turned away at the ticket windows,
if the All Star ballot cards were not so rigged
as to deliver unto Ceasar’s brother what is Ceasars,
with 19,000 quote unquote “defective” votes
in one Democratic county,
do you think in your heart of hearts
that if a fair election were recast in Florida today
with fair and impartial umpires
that Al Gore would not win?
Of course he would.
So what does that say about the Democratic system?
What was the lesson of Watergate?
So now to save our souls and save the world as well
from the black road the Hopi warned us about,
we must not give up the fight. The people know what’s right,
but now it won’t be easy.
The pressure of the crucible of fire
reveals the true identities of both these men
now up for hire
and now we see with truer eyes what we’re voting for.
We’ll take this right to the Supreme,
not the State of Kangaroo court,
not the state of John Rocker’s Georgia court,
the Supreme Court of the land and try our hand
The law of the land protects each man
and every woman, not to the right to rig another’s vote
so that if falls down through the trap door in the floor
of the Electoral College
but a right to vote their own conscience
to the best of their knowledge,
regardless of the blow that it delivers
to the shivered timbers of the status quo.
I should have known this would happen
They scheduled those debates on dates
that pitted them against my Mets and Yanks
Gee thanks, that’s great
pitted them against our strongest man, Al Leiter.
Yes, the better team may have won that night,
but maybe not, at least not in a fair fight
For Al, the OTHER Al, Al Leiter
slipped that third swift strike on past Posada
then and there, to clear the air and end the inning
to complete a valiant nine against the Yanks,
and go on into extra frames, and maybe winning,
but the umpire Bill McClennan,
now there’s a villainous name
said “BALL” and no one said a word
or lifted up a voice in protest
Al never got another strike, and so he walked Posada,
and the game was gone, the series lost,
the season of our contentment
in New York yada yada...was over.
It was a warning sign from God.
“Don’t let it end this way,” I sadly said, and yet it did.
Yes the other Al, Al Gore, won only 18 out of 50 states
17, 18, 19, depending on who you ask.
“You can’t expect to win ballgames with those kind of stats...”
any announcer would say
and yet Al came to play,
he was the Ace upon the mound,
the popular choice of baseball fans across the land
No MVP, no Cy Young, no Gold Glove
just a handshake from the pitching coach,
“At least you tried,” and onto showers
and restless haunted sleep,
perchance to dream, perchance to die.
But this is different, this is no night baseball game
this is no time to fall asleep before your old TV
the earth is in the balance, says the Veep,
and though the spin doctors are going insane
this is a time for justice.
And when Al Leiter goes to Florida for spring training
will he meet the other Al still down there
looking for his called third strike in the dirt
of Florida politics?
Or will he have gone to the shower stalls of history?
Maybe if we raise our voices
we can summon winged Victory.
And when the first spring day arrives back in New York City
and Leiter opens up the season
will America be safe for democracy once again?
Or will it be too late to turn the tide?
Turn back the clock, undo the mistake?
Will we all have taken too far a stroll
down the wrong turn at the end
of Crossroads shopping mall
to find our way back to the information desk of life
to recieve our instructions?
The day Al Leiter won my admiration
by the way he lost the series
was the day I wrote my first fan letter.
It made me feel better,
for justice is not always served, unless we serve it,
unless we love, serve, and remember it all our days.
And by the way, the day that Al Gore won my admiration
by the way that he refused to lose the stacked-deck election
was the day that I became a baseball activist.
Earth: Her Last Words
Trapped in the mold-scented clutches
of the hymn-singing vulture’s right claw
The Exhumed Tiger laughs through his teeth
at the corpse of Shakti
Dangling from his jaw
Jaws that wait for blood, black in the moon’s haze
Jaws that wait for us all,
Like the hole in the throat of a corporate Lilith
Waiting for me to fall.
Stiff, sprawled in the shadows of Plato’s slippery green cave
I am the heart of the Earth-Moon Goddess
You once failed to save.
My pale moonlight thoughts
stretch out to show you where I’m held
But my body is imprisoned, in the vicinity of hell.
My light now pierces the tiny medium
of a crack now left unblocked
But the usurers closed the deal for my soul,
And the final price is locked.
You were among the ones who left me here
as the rituals were done
They went home and have forgotten me,
now I’ve forgotten everyone
And where are those who say they care for me,
the ones who cry
A final drop of wine
for the one who’s left to die?
There are no more echoing hymns for me, save rainwater
Collecting in pools,
Which I wishfully mistake sometimes
For the prayers of a few devoted fools.
I could almost die in peace, knowing there was one of them
It doesn’t matter if they all have left
It’s just that you’re among them.
It’s just that you’re not with me here,
To gather icy streams of rain
To wake me, refusing to think
That we can never speak again
I am mother to you all,
I am she who gave you birth
When I die so shall you all, my name is buried in the earth
You turn your back on me,
And now I know the hour of your last breath
It is the last word of your eulogy for me
the final kiss of death.
Bus Stop!
Copyright c 1970 by Evan Pritchard
There was this bus stop by our house
And the bus stopped in it every fifteen minutes
And it shuttled all the people to the other part of town
And the man in front’d look at you and grunted
If you didn’t put your money in and sit right down.
We paid our money and we sat rat dayown.
We sat we waited as we all meditated
On the groaning that the motor made when it was shiftin’ gears
And I watched them rockin’ but they were not talkin’
They were finding their reflections in the rear view mears (mirrors).
I only saw the floorboards in the mears.
The bus driver tol’ us that he dint (didn’t) wanna to scold us
But the sign had said NO SMOKING and we all had to comply
So we opened up the winders and it blew out all the cinders
And he said that was illegal too but cou’n’t tell us wha.
And we drove on in silence and we dint ask “wha?”
The window’s ‘ere lowered and we mo’ed straight fo’rd
And de injuns roared with author’ty
But I wished t’unboard, so I pult on the cord
And it all but horror’d the major’ty.
Well I knew they’d say there is just one way
And it does not pay to run astray f’um us
I said, “I cannot stay and if it takes all day
I’d sooner walk alla way before I take a bus!”
Protest
Bright is the source
Dark the reflection
Darker still,
light in the eyes of men
Mirrors are empty
Photographs flat
Newspapers silent
TV sets motionless
Paintings are lifeless
Books are all speechless
Green paper worthless
Only love is alive.
And I have once more
been deceived
By death’s pale imagery.
From a Dream
We look through keyholes in the doors
Which lead to rooms which have no floors
And let our wishes go astray
Like Peter letting his fish away.
Beautitudes For the Earth
Blessed is the man who takes care of the Earth;
He is like the good shepherd.
Fortunate are those that love the Earth;
Their lover will always be constant.
Lucky the man who confides in the Earth;
It will never betray him.
Wise is the man who can listen to life;
He will be filled with great knowledge.
Happy the man who can feel the pulse of the planet;
His ears will be filled with God’s singing.
Joyful the man who can move with the wind;
His body a harp for Aeolian events
That play on his life with unseen fingers;
To him, all life is a dance.
Blessed the man who can step quietly and unseen
Through the wilderness,
Without breaking a blade of grass,
To him the secrets of heaven shall be
As loud as birds shouting to greet the dawn.
The birds in the field, the wren in her nest,
They are unaware of their grace
And know only God.
For what they receive,
They feel no need for gratitude,
Until they have shared man’s cages.
And when they have shared his cage
Received his rage,
Or seen the starles darkness of his plaster skies,
And lost their sense of Home,
They they are filled with longings for God
And gratitude for what was lost;
The lost grace that once filled them.
Tears for the fish who are hooked and not eaten,
Tears for the bird on the golden swing,
Tears for the beast on the leash or harness,
They were enlisted by force as were we.
For the chickens in factories,
And the steelworkers too
Seagulls with oil spilled slick on their wings,
Seals in the arctic, sailors lost at sea,
For dolphins in nets
The innocent prisoners, soldiers in wartime
Whales in Japan,
And commercial musicians and artists and writers
Who twist God’s gift for a dime;
Love to them in their sorrow.
You who claim God as your henchman or friend—
Don’t you sometimes wonder at
Your compassionless ways—
Cold to all but parishioners and clients?
Compassion is the strand that pulls the net together.
Compassion the grease in the wheel,
Compassion is the secret doorway
It is the keystone in the arch above the door
That holds the clashing stones apart—
The stone that makes the doorway possible
Between the warring walls
That divide the in from out.
Without that part, the tower falls on the selfish
Builder of walls.
There is no secret door,
Nor path to God without compassion.
You cannot have the one without the other.
If you have no compassion it’s not because
You suffered too much
But suffered too little.
Even the Jnana, the Vairag,
The Impersonal Beings,
Have this caring—
Even the poorest Sannyasins
Have this precious jewel.
There is no path to God without compassion.
If you must catch a fish, catch it
With a great compassion.
If you must eat flesh, dine with gratitude.
Take care of the earth around you.
You don’t have to sail on a tuna boat at sea.
You don’t have to fly to Japan or walk to Alaska
But listen to the grass growing near your home,
It is telling you something.
For lucky is the man
Who takes care of his home,
Loves the earth, listens to her singing,
And confides in her…..
Until she dies at unseen hands.
And then he is the unluckiest of all,
For no man can comfort him.
Blessed too, is such sadness!
Riddles
Alone a tree stands in the middle of a field
With the sky to itself, but no fruit will it yield
The scarecrow hangs there and looks for a brain
But not enough questions come with the rain.
A fence divides what it cannot see
Believes in what it was meant to be
The scarecrow guards a field of grain
And not enough questions come with the rain.
Body Politic
Send me your tired, your poor, she would speak
To be maid to wash my white marble feet
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
To dig all my ditches without decency.
And to those whom I will soon blindly deplore
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
I would promise a shelter, offer a home
But my book is unread and my light is unshone
Now beneath her white feet the multitudes stand
Who were once promised a helping hand
By the ones who’s sons she would use as tools
And harness them up to be driven like mules
“But you already have your mules” is the cry
She has now grown too tall, and doesn’t reply.
“A beast does not work because it has no gold,
its because it is witless, and painless, and cold!”
They are angry and helpless when it is seen how
The ass tells the farmer to carry the plow.
12/30/70
The Blind Man’s Song
Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch an young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Pity me for my infliction took my sight
When I didn’t care
I’m caring now,
But my concern won’t shake the night
That now forever follows me.
Speak to me of blossoms and the flowers of spring
Speak to me of anything
That might awaken
Dark and lifeless remnants of my memory.
Bring to me, from the world of my forgotten past
The sounds and smells of things that live
And change and grow
That I at last
Might learn what their small secret is.
Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch a young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Carry me away from this dry and airless room
And leave me all alone upon
A mountainside
Where I will either learn to see
Or learn to die.
The House of Being
What is this muddled mass of me?
Is it the boat or the sea?
Directed by lines of chalk
Exact, but still no place to walk.
And in the halls, the posted signs
Define everything but my mind
Made for my profit, at my expense,
The handprints almost make more sense.
Do I pace on unwalked floors
Or have these steps been traced before?
By one in this same hapless daze
And wandered lost in a hopeless maze
Climbing up the winding stairs
Steps missing for lack of care
Passing windows no sun’s yet lit
And doors in which no key quite fits.
Each closed room is like a word
Of a song that I’ve never heard
With secret meanings yet untold
Each too big for me to hold.
So after stumbling like the blind
To your highest floor to find
That after that last turn or bend
One small mirror at the end.
My Loneliness
I was told of my loneliness when I was small,
With borrowed mind
But my mind has changed hands several times since then
Time reveals more alternatives than the growing mind knows at birth
And at my waking hour I saw I was mistaken
Futile, mass loneliness is not my own
I don’t have to feel loneliness sadly
I think, therefore I exist between hellos.
Different Rivers
Different rivers flow throughout
Hidden by tall grass, tall trees
Crawling ‘round cathedral mountains
Down upon their knees.
Looking for some larger one
Using not their eyes
But using faith to find a stream
Which will reflect the skies.
They travel many endless miles
Discussing mildly
The rivers they are bound for
To slip in silently.
Life
My thoughts fought Time
Like a mindless rhyme
There were rhythms which couldn’t be followed
And shallow words took over the theater of the absurd
On page nine of the human drama.
I was the sick who relied on fitness
And the soul surviving witness
To a crime to time,
The fall of freedom
Noticed by myself, no one else.
The tide has turned
The court’s adjourned
And the hanging supreme court judges
Grant no forgiveness
The jury now chooses
The universe loses
And the light of reason
Thrown into jail
Where it fails.
But the unpunished criminal has no where to turn
Just to burn in uncertainty
Unforgiven, unaccused, unjudged, uncondemned,
He mends his strife
As he ends his
Falling Through The Cracks
The time that he and I were hiking—It was near Mt. Peter,
Near his mother’s house—
That’s the last time I saw him
As a child.
He had always been so agile on rocks
But then it happened
He fell through the cracks
Dropped like a stone
Down a crevace that had opened up
In the New York State legal system.
I grabbed his hand and held on
It was hard to get a grip
A couple of fingers at most.
I held on for four seconds;
We called them “September, October, November,
December,” and then he was gone.
Down, down he went
A thousand miles down
To a place known in mythology as
“Florida,
The Land of Flowers.”
He was brave and didn’t cry
As he looked into my eyes
Those last four seconds of the game;
One long touchdown pass
Over the shoulder catch
He ran
Touchdown!
Roll on the ground!
And it was all over.
A thousand fantasy victories
Then one lifelong loss to reverse the outcome
Of the game.
The fans wept in the stands
Sad to see the title changing hands
Our dream team
Our ten year dynasty broken up at last.
We’d just been talking….
I’d seen a sign, “For Sale.”
“Was that on your lawn?” I asked,
or on your neighbor’s lawn?”
I was surprised when he said, “Mine,” and made a sour face.
“Oh, and where are you going to,
Randall my son?
England, Wales?” I joked.
“Florida…didn’t anybody tell you?”
“It might be soon.”
That’s when the ground gave way
That’s when the music in my head
No longer played
That’s when the earth stopped turning
That’s the interception I’ll remember
The rest of my career.
I went to my Jewish guru
And laid my offering at his feet,
And sat with him and asked for his good council
And advice
He told me how these large and powerful wheels of ice
Had turned against me just this year
And all was lost.
Actually, he said, “You’re screwed,”
Or something along that line.
And I was crushed
A firefly splashed across the windshield
Of a 727 bound for Florida.
Like an anxious father
In a maternity ward of ten years past
I stood helpless with my mom and dad
Gazing forward
Through the airport window glass at dawn
“Which one is him?”
“Which stork is he on?”
As his golden plane taxied to the east,
And disappeared into the heart of the sun—
The huge red ball of fire burning on the horizon.
Then I knew the Creator would take care of him.
He’s safe in God’s hands.
It’s part of some plan
And I am just a tired pony
He is now too big to ride.
I understand about the plans but cry inside
I weep for all the fathers yet to die
Who lost their sons to war, to love,
To age, to rage, to death,
But most of all I cry and ask for vision
For dads who lose their sons
To someone else’s business decision.
(In 1997, New York State passed a law allowing divorced spouses with custody to leave the state for reasons of financial gain.)
In the Balance
Know then that heaven exists on this earth
Somewhere between excess and scarcity
Between fatness and thin,
Between too hot and too cold
Too big and too small
Perfection rests as always
In Libra’s tired hands.
Some are loved without need
Others need without love
The inspired artist longing for an audience
The artistic audience longing for an inspired song
I open myself to secret desires which aren’t to be fulfilled
While I’m filled with secrets which desire can no longer open
Some eyes are whole and are placed in the center of emptiness
While some eyes are empty shadows
Yet are placed in the center of the whole
Surrounded by abundance.
Utopia is seen only in fragments
Perfection rationed out in medicine spoons
Among the joy-starved populations of the world.
The Day is For Dancing
The day is for dancing your separate step
For flying above all the guilt-cluttered floors
And clearing away thick confusions of time
Whose ticker-tape tangles from nights long before.
Break all the threads now that lassoed you down
For they unwind behind you in time, into more
I’ve seen the weight gather and cling to my thoughts
Gripped, ‘til they’re stopped from the burden they bore.
But this day I’m weightless, and flying and free
I’ve found the mind’s off switch,
And stopped fighting its war.
Kvetch!*
Poems of Political Satire
And Reflection
By Evan Pritchard
All poems copyright c 2002
By Evan Pritchard
• with apologies to Alan Ginsberg
Resonance Communications
P.O. Box 1028
Woodsctock, NY 12498
Poems of Political Satire
And Reflection
By Evan Pritchard
All poems copyright c 2002
By Evan Pritchard
Print version available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 (212)714-7151
• with apologies to Alan Ginsberg
Kvetch!
First Whitman gave his mighty “Youp!”
To urge us towards the shimmering light of freedom,
To face the dark of human suffering
And yet through that broken brandy glass
See eternity.
Then Tennyson cried: “Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, oh sea!”
A note to landlocked humans
As to how they ought to be,
Especially when pressed and processed
By monolithic cities, laws and ideologies.
Then “Rage, rage, rage”
Against the dying of the light!”
so Dylan Thomas penned,
Written not with politics in mind
But to battle bitter fate
When near life’s end;
Can the force that through the green fuse
Drove his poetic power
Now rise up to save us in our fateful hour?
Then we were taught to “HOWL!”
By Ginsberg and his generation’s wild men
“Howl, howl, howl,”
with all the wild power locked within
to rage against the invisible machine
to beat our chests and drum and scream
and howl like beasts to win back human dignity
perchance to dream!
Then Lennon picked up the Beat a little bit
And sang “Cry baby cry!
His anti-lullaby
“Make your mother country sigh!”
And some were called “crybabies” then
Who took up guitar or pen
Looked into the future
And figured out where it all was going, and when
And asked the Big Three questions:
”Who am I?”
“Why am I here?”
and “Where am I going in this handbasket?”
Perhaps the howling, raging Lennon knew back then
How secret coalitions were bent on subjugation
And thought to make a musical complaint
And now we look back
And wonder what and how he knew
And who was Chapman really?
And who buried Paul?
Now I say, and not just to be witty—
“Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch,
against thy cold grey stones, O City!”
Brake, brake, brake
Against the hard right turn of corporate might
Rage! Kvetch! Against the rising
Of the Machiavellian Right!
Kvetch, baby, kvetch, into that dark ethical night
Save your “Youps!” of celebration
For another time and another verse
Right now its time to howl and whine, and rage…
And kvetch, kvetch, kvetch
Against the dying of the light
Do not go gentle
Into that hard right!
Ice Age
In the age of ice
There were no men
Creatures of dark
Hid all their lives
And mindless beasts
That reproduced
Taught their children
To survive.
Cash Is King
Remember when we had democracy?
Remember when we put an end to monarchy?
Well you can forget about your democracy because….
Uh huh, Cash is King!
You may have thought there was a Revolution
In ‘76, then a Constitution,
Well that was just a temporary solution
‘cause Cash is king.
We still have a lot of bombs burstin’ in air,
But where they burst now, we don’t care
Its just a new form of “Laissez-faire” which means
“Cash is King!”
Yes cash is king and it was not elected,
By divine right it was selected
Your little vote was not detected
By our big machine…..cash is king!
Remember when civilian presidents
Won us all over with common sense?
Well now there’s a new form of intelligence…..it’s called….
Cash is King!
We shoulda seen it comin’ long ago
The way that Standard Oil stole the show?
We cut that Hydra’s head off, but…whaddayaknow?
We turn around and cash is King!
Yon Cash has got a hungry look
Lookin’ at you an’ wondrin’ how you’ll cook
With a dab of Arab oil that he took
From Kazahkstan—cash is King!
Remember when we thought that Global-I-zation
Meant brothers coming together as one nation?
Something sure needed further meditation, and that is…
Cash is King!
They say it isn’t over til the fat girl sings
But in fact it isn’t over til the register rings
Now it rings for thee, and for the crowning of kings
Cha-ching! Cash is King!
The tricks that were played upon the Lenapee
And the Sioux and the Ojibway and the Cherokee
Now they’re “doin’ it” to you and me
Because….Cash is King!
Well we’ve squandered everything the Investor gave us
We’ve now been spent, nothing can save us
And if there are alien bankers who are tryin’ to enslave us
They’re laughing, “Cash is King!”
If we don’t stop doing things this way
Sooner or later there will come a day
Where instead of voting, we’ll just pay
In the voting booth, cash is king.
Yes, cash is King, I said Cash is king
You have to admit that it has a ring
Heads will roll if you say anything except
Cash is King!
America In The Morning
America in the morning,
Were you there?
To smell the air
To breathe on rested land
Or to stand and observe.
If I awoke before the sun
Had first rimmed the horizon
If I’d opened my eyes again
To see the earth alone
Thriving nicely on her own,
I don’t remember.
For what purpose I awoke
A cause that was willed
A goal unfulfilled
I’ll never know I fell back so deep
It was just an illusion when I shook off sleep
I have this feeling
And I’m sure I was there.
It was all there this morning, did you see?
I can give it no expression
I just have faint impressions
Of silence and moonlight
That joyed at the sight of
America in the Morning
Were you there to smell the air
To breathe on rested land
Or to stand and observe?
There was a lot more to see
Before the day
Of traffic jams and crowded streets
The dragging of a million feet
The day of cities like human dumps
That pile people like the metal junk
That came with the sun.
The Sun Rose
The sun rose in the East
And with it came fire
And with the fire came great flaming lives
Who died their flaming deaths
And became darkness.
The sun set in the west
And with it went the morning
And with the morning, down went the East
That died a great flaming death
And became West.
1970
Extra Innings of the Gods
A Baseball Fan’s Observations on the Presidential Election,
November 2000 copyright c 2000 by Evan Pritchard
dedicated to Al Leiter and Al Gore, in that order
This is the crossroads of history, the Hopi Prophets say,
and “These are the times that try men’s souls!”
which is what Abe Lincoln cried,
gazing at the field at Gettysburgh,
after everybody who was anybody died,
and “a fool’s born every minute,” someone else observed
and “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!”
Yogi Berra sighed while gazing out onto a different field
Forbes Field, as Mazeroski rounded bases in his joy....
Yes we’re speaking to you from beautiful Crossroads field
at the cornerstone of history and Main
in downtown West Palm Beach
baseball fans, and not an empty seat to be found...
we are all at the crossroads now, my friends
with this election that won’t end.
The Athenians and Trojans both are tied
Romeo and Juliet both died,
Is this election not the rock of Sisyphus
teetering on the mountaintop, the fulcrum of the world
the earth, our cross of gold, is in the balance?
let it fall upon us like the mountains of Bablylon, and all is lost
all is lost, O Sisyphus! O Absolom!
Is this weird election not the crossroads
prophecized by the Hopi
elders long ago?
and Florida the Devil’s playground?
Where all the cars are hot, where all the dice are loaded
and all the cards are marked “defective”
and all the fates are sealed like secret ballots
known to none but God and Jeb Bush,
who sits at the right hand of the candidate all mighty.
“It could go either way” the Hopi prophets say,
and so we watch and wait to see
which way the earth will turn today
will it suddenly go counterclockwise? Or go straight?
Will love reveal its power, or will hate?
A Subway Series of the Gods,
a rollercoaster classic lasting seven games
the last one going on twenty innings, with no relief in sight
two tired starting pitchers still standing on the hill,
still hurling bull with all their might
both bedeviled by their fate, their infernal stalemate
both stymied by the curse of the zeros,
both of them would be heroes,
spitting legal jargon on the ball,
their souls both sweating, damned by contracts signed
in blood
lying upon the sand
of West Palm Beach,
victory just out of reach.
I too once thought that both were acceptable alternatives
(or as Nader might say both unacceptable to him)
like having to vote for either Plato or Aristotle
different strokes for different votes,
the Academy versus the Lyceum,
Who is right? What is the good?
Both inclined to want their way,
but such is the path of power these days.
The fight of the century, the pitcher’s duel of death
In this corner, the Texas Tax Blaster, the Aristotle of Austin,
The Big W, with a 3 point O ERA and 31 state victories
and in this corner the Plato of Possibility,
Big Al, the Wooden Wonder,
with only 18 state victories, 3 point one,
but what a deceptive move.
The sadfaced son of the Socrates of the South
Big Bill Clinton, who smoked the cigar
of political suicide and blew blue smoke
into the face of the tobacco industry,
and now must pay the price,
and the sins of the father are reaped
upon the next generation tenfold.
I too thought at first that it was politics as usual,
same old same old
that a bird in the Bush was just as good as any bird
by any other yellow bellied sap-sucking Republican name
but.... now I don’t feel quite the same
now that the contract with America is finally signed
the devil now removes his rubber human halloween mask,
and so we see
In Florida, justice is not blind,
but knows the color of money just fine,
and now we know--we were decieved, and now we grieve.
The party that stumped on character turns out to be
the very heir to the throne of corruption and hypocricy,
the Prince of Ethical Darkness
laughing at the loss of the electorate
chuckling at their catastrophe
In case the troops have not yet been alerted,
The will of We The People has been subverted!
Does anybody think
that if it were a level playing field down there
that if all of “Shoeless” Jesse Jackson’s Blacksox batters
were allowed to play
if all the lines were not contrived to be too long
in Democratic precincts,
so that Al’s fans weren’t turned away at the ticket windows,
if the All Star ballot cards were not so rigged
as to deliver unto Ceasar’s brother what is Ceasars,
with 19,000 quote unquote “defective” votes
in one Democratic county,
do you think in your heart of hearts
that if a fair election were recast in Florida today
with fair and impartial umpires
that Al Gore would not win?
Of course he would.
So what does that say about the Democratic system?
What was the lesson of Watergate?
So now to save our souls and save the world as well
from the black road the Hopi warned us about,
we must not give up the fight. The people know what’s right,
but now it won’t be easy.
The pressure of the crucible of fire
reveals the true identities of both these men
now up for hire
and now we see with truer eyes what we’re voting for.
We’ll take this right to the Supreme,
not the State of Kangaroo court,
not the state of John Rocker’s Georgia court,
the Supreme Court of the land and try our hand
The law of the land protects each man
and every woman, not to the right to rig another’s vote
so that if falls down through the trap door in the floor
of the Electoral College
but a right to vote their own conscience
to the best of their knowledge,
regardless of the blow that it delivers
to the shivered timbers of the status quo.
I should have known this would happen
They scheduled those debates on dates
that pitted them against my Mets and Yanks
Gee thanks, that’s great
pitted them against our strongest man, Al Leiter.
Yes, the better team may have won that night,
but maybe not, at least not in a fair fight
For Al, the OTHER Al, Al Leiter
slipped that third swift strike on past Posada
then and there, to clear the air and end the inning
to complete a valiant nine against the Yanks,
and go on into extra frames, and maybe winning,
but the umpire Bill McClennan,
now there’s a villainous name
said “BALL” and no one said a word
or lifted up a voice in protest
Al never got another strike, and so he walked Posada,
and the game was gone, the series lost,
the season of our contentment
in New York yada yada...was over.
It was a warning sign from God.
“Don’t let it end this way,” I sadly said, and yet it did.
Yes the other Al, Al Gore, won only 18 out of 50 states
17, 18, 19, depending on who you ask.
“You can’t expect to win ballgames with those kind of stats...”
any announcer would say
and yet Al came to play,
he was the Ace upon the mound,
the popular choice of baseball fans across the land
No MVP, no Cy Young, no Gold Glove
just a handshake from the pitching coach,
“At least you tried,” and onto showers
and restless haunted sleep,
perchance to dream, perchance to die.
But this is different, this is no night baseball game
this is no time to fall asleep before your old TV
the earth is in the balance, says the Veep,
and though the spin doctors are going insane
this is a time for justice.
And when Al Leiter goes to Florida for spring training
will he meet the other Al still down there
looking for his called third strike in the dirt
of Florida politics?
Or will he have gone to the shower stalls of history?
Maybe if we raise our voices
we can summon winged Victory.
And when the first spring day arrives back in New York City
and Leiter opens up the season
will America be safe for democracy once again?
Or will it be too late to turn the tide?
Turn back the clock, undo the mistake?
Will we all have taken too far a stroll
down the wrong turn at the end
of Crossroads shopping mall
to find our way back to the information desk of life
to recieve our instructions?
The day Al Leiter won my admiration
by the way he lost the series
was the day I wrote my first fan letter.
It made me feel better,
for justice is not always served, unless we serve it,
unless we love, serve, and remember it all our days.
And by the way, the day that Al Gore won my admiration
by the way that he refused to lose the stacked-deck election
was the day that I became a baseball activist.
Earth: Her Last Words
Trapped in the mold-scented clutches
of the hymn-singing vulture’s right claw
The Exhumed Tiger laughs through his teeth
at the corpse of Shakti
Dangling from his jaw
Jaws that wait for blood, black in the moon’s haze
Jaws that wait for us all,
Like the hole in the throat of a corporate Lilith
Waiting for me to fall.
Stiff, sprawled in the shadows of Plato’s slippery green cave
I am the heart of the Earth-Moon Goddess
You once failed to save.
My pale moonlight thoughts
stretch out to show you where I’m held
But my body is imprisoned, in the vicinity of hell.
My light now pierces the tiny medium
of a crack now left unblocked
But the usurers closed the deal for my soul,
And the final price is locked.
You were among the ones who left me here
as the rituals were done
They went home and have forgotten me,
now I’ve forgotten everyone
And where are those who say they care for me,
the ones who cry
A final drop of wine
for the one who’s left to die?
There are no more echoing hymns for me, save rainwater
Collecting in pools,
Which I wishfully mistake sometimes
For the prayers of a few devoted fools.
I could almost die in peace, knowing there was one of them
It doesn’t matter if they all have left
It’s just that you’re among them.
It’s just that you’re not with me here,
To gather icy streams of rain
To wake me, refusing to think
That we can never speak again
I am mother to you all,
I am she who gave you birth
When I die so shall you all, my name is buried in the earth
You turn your back on me,
And now I know the hour of your last breath
It is the last word of your eulogy for me
the final kiss of death.
Bus Stop!
Copyright c 1970 by Evan Pritchard
There was this bus stop by our house
And the bus stopped in it every fifteen minutes
And it shuttled all the people to the other part of town
And the man in front’d look at you and grunted
If you didn’t put your money in and sit right down.
We paid our money and we sat rat dayown.
We sat we waited as we all meditated
On the groaning that the motor made when it was shiftin’ gears
And I watched them rockin’ but they were not talkin’
They were finding their reflections in the rear view mears (mirrors).
I only saw the floorboards in the mears.
The bus driver tol’ us that he dint (didn’t) wanna to scold us
But the sign had said NO SMOKING and we all had to comply
So we opened up the winders and it blew out all the cinders
And he said that was illegal too but cou’n’t tell us wha.
And we drove on in silence and we dint ask “wha?”
The window’s ‘ere lowered and we mo’ed straight fo’rd
And de injuns roared with author’ty
But I wished t’unboard, so I pult on the cord
And it all but horror’d the major’ty.
Well I knew they’d say there is just one way
And it does not pay to run astray f’um us
I said, “I cannot stay and if it takes all day
I’d sooner walk alla way before I take a bus!”
Protest
Bright is the source
Dark the reflection
Darker still,
light in the eyes of men
Mirrors are empty
Photographs flat
Newspapers silent
TV sets motionless
Paintings are lifeless
Books are all speechless
Green paper worthless
Only love is alive.
And I have once more
been deceived
By death’s pale imagery.
From a Dream
We look through keyholes in the doors
Which lead to rooms which have no floors
And let our wishes go astray
Like Peter letting his fish away.
Beautitudes For the Earth
Blessed is the man who takes care of the Earth;
He is like the good shepherd.
Fortunate are those that love the Earth;
Their lover will always be constant.
Lucky the man who confides in the Earth;
It will never betray him.
Wise is the man who can listen to life;
He will be filled with great knowledge.
Happy the man who can feel the pulse of the planet;
His ears will be filled with God’s singing.
Joyful the man who can move with the wind;
His body a harp for Aeolian events
That play on his life with unseen fingers;
To him, all life is a dance.
Blessed the man who can step quietly and unseen
Through the wilderness,
Without breaking a blade of grass,
To him the secrets of heaven shall be
As loud as birds shouting to greet the dawn.
The birds in the field, the wren in her nest,
They are unaware of their grace
And know only God.
For what they receive,
They feel no need for gratitude,
Until they have shared man’s cages.
And when they have shared his cage
Received his rage,
Or seen the starles darkness of his plaster skies,
And lost their sense of Home,
They they are filled with longings for God
And gratitude for what was lost;
The lost grace that once filled them.
Tears for the fish who are hooked and not eaten,
Tears for the bird on the golden swing,
Tears for the beast on the leash or harness,
They were enlisted by force as were we.
For the chickens in factories,
And the steelworkers too
Seagulls with oil spilled slick on their wings,
Seals in the arctic, sailors lost at sea,
For dolphins in nets
The innocent prisoners, soldiers in wartime
Whales in Japan,
And commercial musicians and artists and writers
Who twist God’s gift for a dime;
Love to them in their sorrow.
You who claim God as your henchman or friend—
Don’t you sometimes wonder at
Your compassionless ways—
Cold to all but parishioners and clients?
Compassion is the strand that pulls the net together.
Compassion the grease in the wheel,
Compassion is the secret doorway
It is the keystone in the arch above the door
That holds the clashing stones apart—
The stone that makes the doorway possible
Between the warring walls
That divide the in from out.
Without that part, the tower falls on the selfish
Builder of walls.
There is no secret door,
Nor path to God without compassion.
You cannot have the one without the other.
If you have no compassion it’s not because
You suffered too much
But suffered too little.
Even the Jnana, the Vairag,
The Impersonal Beings,
Have this caring—
Even the poorest Sannyasins
Have this precious jewel.
There is no path to God without compassion.
If you must catch a fish, catch it
With a great compassion.
If you must eat flesh, dine with gratitude.
Take care of the earth around you.
You don’t have to sail on a tuna boat at sea.
You don’t have to fly to Japan or walk to Alaska
But listen to the grass growing near your home,
It is telling you something.
For lucky is the man
Who takes care of his home,
Loves the earth, listens to her singing,
And confides in her…..
Until she dies at unseen hands.
And then he is the unluckiest of all,
For no man can comfort him.
Blessed too, is such sadness!
Riddles
Alone a tree stands in the middle of a field
With the sky to itself, but no fruit will it yield
The scarecrow hangs there and looks for a brain
But not enough questions come with the rain.
A fence divides what it cannot see
Believes in what it was meant to be
The scarecrow guards a field of grain
And not enough questions come with the rain.
Body Politic
Send me your tired, your poor, she would speak
To be maid to wash my white marble feet
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
To dig all my ditches without decency.
And to those whom I will soon blindly deplore
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
I would promise a shelter, offer a home
But my book is unread and my light is unshone
Now beneath her white feet the multitudes stand
Who were once promised a helping hand
By the ones who’s sons she would use as tools
And harness them up to be driven like mules
“But you already have your mules” is the cry
She has now grown too tall, and doesn’t reply.
“A beast does not work because it has no gold,
its because it is witless, and painless, and cold!”
They are angry and helpless when it is seen how
The ass tells the farmer to carry the plow.
12/30/70
The Blind Man’s Song
Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch an young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Pity me for my infliction took my sight
When I didn’t care
I’m caring now,
But my concern won’t shake the night
That now forever follows me.
Speak to me of blossoms and the flowers of spring
Speak to me of anything
That might awaken
Dark and lifeless remnants of my memory.
Bring to me, from the world of my forgotten past
The sounds and smells of things that live
And change and grow
That I at last
Might learn what their small secret is.
Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch a young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Carry me away from this dry and airless room
And leave me all alone upon
A mountainside
Where I will either learn to see
Or learn to die.
The House of Being
What is this muddled mass of me?
Is it the boat or the sea?
Directed by lines of chalk
Exact, but still no place to walk.
And in the halls, the posted signs
Define everything but my mind
Made for my profit, at my expense,
The handprints almost make more sense.
Do I pace on unwalked floors
Or have these steps been traced before?
By one in this same hapless daze
And wandered lost in a hopeless maze
Climbing up the winding stairs
Steps missing for lack of care
Passing windows no sun’s yet lit
And doors in which no key quite fits.
Each closed room is like a word
Of a song that I’ve never heard
With secret meanings yet untold
Each too big for me to hold.
So after stumbling like the blind
To your highest floor to find
That after that last turn or bend
One small mirror at the end.
My Loneliness
I was told of my loneliness when I was small,
With borrowed mind
But my mind has changed hands several times since then
Time reveals more alternatives than the growing mind knows at birth
And at my waking hour I saw I was mistaken
Futile, mass loneliness is not my own
I don’t have to feel loneliness sadly
I think, therefore I exist between hellos.
Different Rivers
Different rivers flow throughout
Hidden by tall grass, tall trees
Crawling ‘round cathedral mountains
Down upon their knees.
Looking for some larger one
Using not their eyes
But using faith to find a stream
Which will reflect the skies.
They travel many endless miles
Discussing mildly
The rivers they are bound for
To slip in silently.
Life
My thoughts fought Time
Like a mindless rhyme
There were rhythms which couldn’t be followed
And shallow words took over the theater of the absurd
On page nine of the human drama.
I was the sick who relied on fitness
And the soul surviving witness
To a crime to time,
The fall of freedom
Noticed by myself, no one else.
The tide has turned
The court’s adjourned
And the hanging supreme court judges
Grant no forgiveness
The jury now chooses
The universe loses
And the light of reason
Thrown into jail
Where it fails.
But the unpunished criminal has no where to turn
Just to burn in uncertainty
Unforgiven, unaccused, unjudged, uncondemned,
He mends his strife
As he ends his
Falling Through The Cracks
The time that he and I were hiking—It was near Mt. Peter,
Near his mother’s house—
That’s the last time I saw him
As a child.
He had always been so agile on rocks
But then it happened
He fell through the cracks
Dropped like a stone
Down a crevace that had opened up
In the New York State legal system.
I grabbed his hand and held on
It was hard to get a grip
A couple of fingers at most.
I held on for four seconds;
We called them “September, October, November,
December,” and then he was gone.
Down, down he went
A thousand miles down
To a place known in mythology as
“Florida,
The Land of Flowers.”
He was brave and didn’t cry
As he looked into my eyes
Those last four seconds of the game;
One long touchdown pass
Over the shoulder catch
He ran
Touchdown!
Roll on the ground!
And it was all over.
A thousand fantasy victories
Then one lifelong loss to reverse the outcome
Of the game.
The fans wept in the stands
Sad to see the title changing hands
Our dream team
Our ten year dynasty broken up at last.
We’d just been talking….
I’d seen a sign, “For Sale.”
“Was that on your lawn?” I asked,
or on your neighbor’s lawn?”
I was surprised when he said, “Mine,” and made a sour face.
“Oh, and where are you going to,
Randall my son?
England, Wales?” I joked.
“Florida…didn’t anybody tell you?”
“It might be soon.”
That’s when the ground gave way
That’s when the music in my head
No longer played
That’s when the earth stopped turning
That’s the interception I’ll remember
The rest of my career.
I went to my Jewish guru
And laid my offering at his feet,
And sat with him and asked for his good council
And advice
He told me how these large and powerful wheels of ice
Had turned against me just this year
And all was lost.
Actually, he said, “You’re screwed,”
Or something along that line.
And I was crushed
A firefly splashed across the windshield
Of a 727 bound for Florida.
Like an anxious father
In a maternity ward of ten years past
I stood helpless with my mom and dad
Gazing forward
Through the airport window glass at dawn
“Which one is him?”
“Which stork is he on?”
As his golden plane taxied to the east,
And disappeared into the heart of the sun—
The huge red ball of fire burning on the horizon.
Then I knew the Creator would take care of him.
He’s safe in God’s hands.
It’s part of some plan
And I am just a tired pony
He is now too big to ride.
I understand about the plans but cry inside
I weep for all the fathers yet to die
Who lost their sons to war, to love,
To age, to rage, to death,
But most of all I cry and ask for vision
For dads who lose their sons
To someone else’s business decision.
(In 1997, New York State passed a law allowing divorced spouses with custody to leave the state for reasons of financial gain.)
In the Balance
Know then that heaven exists on this earth
Somewhere between excess and scarcity
Between fatness and thin,
Between too hot and too cold
Too big and too small
Perfection rests as always
In Libra’s tired hands.
Some are loved without need
Others need without love
The inspired artist longing for an audience
The artistic audience longing for an inspired song
I open myself to secret desires which aren’t to be fulfilled
While I’m filled with secrets which desire can no longer open
Some eyes are whole and are placed in the center of emptiness
While some eyes are empty shadows
Yet are placed in the center of the whole
Surrounded by abundance.
Utopia is seen only in fragments
Perfection rationed out in medicine spoons
Among the joy-starved populations of the world.
The Day is For Dancing
The day is for dancing your separate step
For flying above all the guilt-cluttered floors
And clearing away thick confusions of time
Whose ticker-tape tangles from nights long before.
Break all the threads now that lassoed you down
For they unwind behind you in time, into more
I’ve seen the weight gather and cling to my thoughts
Gripped, ‘til they’re stopped from the burden they bore.
But this day I’m weightless, and flying and free
I’ve found the mind’s off switch,
And stopped fighting its war.
Kvetch!*
Poems of Political Satire
And Reflection
By Evan Pritchard
All poems copyright c 2002
By Evan Pritchard
• with apologies to Alan Ginsberg
Resonance Communications
P.O. Box 1028
Woodsctock, NY 12498
