IDEOLOGY TIME

Were we lost at the beginning

With our lawyers courts and parties?

Washington saw it come
Lincoln suffered for it
The Roosevelts mastered it

Today’s ideas die
Un-nurtured by discussion
Suffocated by side picking

Invention’s technologies rules this day
Fed by lawyer’s patents

Bulled by giant green votes
Held by corporate mega-persons
With world sized megaphones

Company owned government
Populated with “three fifth”- persons
Voiceless voter-consumers
Slaved to speaking skulls

Moral courage to hear both sides
Nay three or four or multitudinous
Now nothing but old theory for old times

There is no time for speaking ideas
There is no time for hearing ideas
There is no time for reading ideas
We pass our time

Watching
Mouths wag polemics

Then watching
Mouths wag advertisements

Then we die

DOWN TO THE SALISH SEA

Down To The Salish Sea
(For Connie 10-24-2010)
(Regarding this day in 1998)

When
Gravity and centrifugal forces
Finally balanced

I met her by plan
By chance
In the old river town

Where Salish speakers once
Polled past standing
In their canoes up and then down
The river

This night
Candles in cups sailed down with them and

Women prayed
In thanks not requests
Knowing answers come
In whatever happens and

One man will imagine
Himself mastering
The art of polling canoes
And speaking languages
Unknown to him

Just to impress

She appeared on the bridge
With all the equipment
Knowing how to say NO then
Walking and talking and thinking
In grace

Then I stopped imagining and said:
I am ready now
I am ready now
I am ready now

For grace