The Zero-Sum Game

This is something I wrote while waiting in the free lot at the airport for my buddy's flight yesterday...the first line is a line out of a song that was playing on the radio as I drove from my office to the airport - the rest came from, well, life...

Lose the beat, lose the rhythm
Lose the beat, find the rhythm
Find the rhythm, find your path

Skip the counting, just do the math
One and one can equal one, two, three or none
You are your own sum of life's equation

The possibilities are infinite
You are the one who limits
Opportunities and potential
Parallel and sequential

You choose the size of your box
Big or small
One size does indeed truly fit all

It's all equal in the end
For life is a zero-sum game, my friend

Oh Look - New Stuff!

It has been even longer since I posted on this blog than my usual one...I haven't stopped writing poetry though. I even wrote some for a particular event that happened yesterday in 95 countries around the world - 100 Thousand Poets for Change!

Here is the poem I read at the open mic opportunity during this event - it is as yet untitled:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

FDR said that on the day last century

That will live in infamy

In turn, we dropped the bomb

That ushered in the nuclear age

And have been living in fear ever since

I remember, even in the 1970s,

Air raid sirens, crouching under desks

In darkened classrooms with curtains drawn

Then the Iron Curtain fell,

And the Berlin Wall came down

Then Iran took 52 of our people

Hostage for 444 days

Then Pan Am 103 went down

Over the skies of Lockerbie, Scotland

Then the first failed attempt to take

Down the World Trade Center

From its garage

Then the Oklahoma City bombing

Brought on by one of our own

Then the sarin gas attack in

A Japanese subway

Then this century’s day that will live in infamy

September 11^th, 2001

The day the planes flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon

Both icons of our military-industrial complex

The one Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about 40 years earlier

That day was also my youngest son’s ninth birthday,

And the day my then 15 year-old daughter made me

Realize that by huddling in fear, we miss the joy in life

That day and every September 11^th since,

We focus on life, the life of my youngest son,

And the lives of all human beings who share this big blue ball

Called Earth as our home

23 Apr 11 - Bird Courtship

Today was the monthly birdwalk at Heritage Oak Winery. It's is nesting season, and watching the various species go through their courtship rituals. The pictures above are of Brewer's blackbirds, a male and a female. The poem below shares what we watched unfold...


Bird Courtship

The drab female Brewer's blackbird shows
her interest in finding a mate
by gathering nesting material in her beak
and settling back to wait

Two shiny black males vie for her attention
they plumb and preen and pose and strut

Which one will she chose?

Choosing the Abyss

This came to me as I was pondering the state of affairs across our nation and across the world these days, and my eyes landed on a sticky note with the following saying on it in my office:

If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. - Nietzche

Choosing the Abyss

How many abysses
must we look into
during our lifetime?

The abyss of war
The abyss of poverty
The abyss of struggle
The abyss of division

These are the abysses chosen by Man

There are, however, other abysses

The abyss of love
The abyss of enough
The abyss of concord
The abyss of unity

These are the abysses chosen by our Creator

So why then does Man turn away from those which the Creator has chosen?

Why does Man choose

The abyss of want
over
The abyss of enough

The abyss of destruction
over
The abyss of creation

The abyss of division
over
The abyss of unity

The abyss of loneliness
over
The abyss of comfort

Why?