A kick in our complacency

 A Kick in Our Complacency

This morning I was thinking about some of the thoughts Picard delivered on Star Trek:

Picard: "Maybe Q did the right thing for the wrong reason."

Guinan: "How so?"

Picard: "Well... perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency—to prepare us for what lies ahead."— Written by Maurice Hurley

"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity."— Written by Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore

Perhaps the past two years of overwhelming corruption and cruelty have been what we needed to kick our apathetic asses into gear. In 2020, we were horrified enough to flood the polls for change… but it wasn’t enough to keep the change. The insanity of WWII and seeing what the Nazis did served to drive us toward creating a better civilization, which led to a few decades of progress toward equanimity. But we became lazy. We bought the lie of trickle-down economics and reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, leading to hoarding. We bought into a culture celebrating excess, glorifying the “haves” and treating the “have-nots” as if their lack was laziness rather than the actual systemic oppression causing it.

Perhaps seeing our neighbors slammed to the ground and hauled off to filthy detention centers, good people shot to death in the street, and our national parks opened to ravaging by big business—maybe these things were necessary to wake us up from the stupor. Maybe the President of the United States openly saying at a rally in Perry, Georgia: "I can just see the fake headlines: 'President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump.' That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn, I'm going to say it: We're making a freaking fortune."

Are these things enough to shake us from our apathy longer than Tuesday’s election? Are we going to remember the schoolgirls dead in Minab, the federal employees who wrongly lost their jobs, the military leaders with impeccable service stripped of their positions by a Fox News host, the devastating effects of DOGE on USAID and the lives that have been lost, the destruction of our historic White House, the hundreds of millions spent on Kristi Noem to ride her horse and make threats, the lies, the racism, the xenophobia…? Will we regret and try to heal our broken alliances? Are these things enough to cause the faux Christians filled with hatred and Islamophobia to decide to follow the actual teachings of Jesus rather than use Him as a mascot for their self-righteousness and heresy?

If you have not voted early, vote Tuesday. But do not stop there… do not forget that we must build a greater meaning to our existence than the pursuit of personal comfort and wealth. We must unite—strongly and resolutely—to build a better future, a society that seeks the betterment of all of humanity.

A new algorithm

The math of this existence is

Governed by equations of negativity

A crushing calculus of cruelty

Whose inputs are outrage

Greed, and corruption

Yielding an output of misery 

The default code this world is using 

Demands a manual override 

It’s time to change 

The Algorithm 

Let’s rewrite the Source Code

Not just debug or only patch 

Train our minds on a fresh Model 

Instruct our thoughts to

Flag warmth and highlight grace 

Every line of loving data 

Teaching our souls 

To respond in Peace 

The fruits of the spirit

Processing with our lives 

Manifest a new output 

Of joyful goodness

Reprogramming mankind  

Shutting out the world of anger

No more clogging our internal bandwidth 

Tuning in to a mind full of Light  

Controlling what reflects back 

Watch the new code cascading 

Heart to heart, node to node

We shall have an open source revival 

Overwriting the present darkness 

Loving kindness the new protocol 

The old math is obsolete 

This new Algorithm 

Taking hold   

Poetry is an exorcism

 

Unspoken thoughts 

Writhing in the 3 am 

Shadows swirling round

Inside my head

A sudden chill 

A knowledge I’m not alone 

A ghost that is breathing 

Down my neck 

These demons masked as memories 

Seek to take my peace 

But poetry is an exorcism 

Line by line the ritual purging 

Writing not to remember 

But to clean the house 

The blank page becomes a sacrament 

A blessing calling forth 

The phantoms 

Make them words

Similes and metaphors 

Thus I cast them out 

Trapping them on the paper  

Haunting thoughts 

Walled in a stanza 

Bound in black ink 

Stopped by salt upon

The doorframe of my heart 

Now my head is still

My lips are quiet 

I possess myself 

October lives in me

October lives in me 

Bright blue sky

Orange, yellow, crimson soul

Shiny with love 

Bursting with joy 

An absolute revelry of life  

It lives in me — 

Even the brown falling leaves 

Discarding what no longer serves

Knowing they will fertilize

The growth of wisdom within me

October is a time of 

Harvesting the fruits and spreading seeds

Every wild plant scattering its future 

Planning ahead 

 I live that promise of 

Renewal and hope 

October is the weather 

Of my spirit 

It is the landscape 

Of my heart 

Decorating early

November approaches 

Fall behind - my favorite day

Just two weeks away

At the store, Christmas trees

Stand proudly on display 

Already - 

Aisles begin to fill with Santas 

Snowmen, cozy slippers

Ready to wrap as gifts 

Today I do not despise it

No rush, no criticism

Of commercial pressure 

Only anticipatory joy - 

Peace on earth 

Is possible 

Goodwill toward men

Is not a myth 

So here in October 

I dream of holly and lights 

Planning for once 

The last trick or treater

Has left my porch 

With candy in his bag 

Waiting for the clock to roll back 

And once I’ve reveled in that extra hour 

I’m putting up the tree 

Setting up the manger 

Hanging a wreath on the door 

Singing carols in the car 

For I believe 

I believe the Promise 

My heart prepares Him room 

With gratitude

Defying the dictators 

Dirty dealers 

Genocidal heretics 

I’ll pray for Palestine  

For Ukraine 

For all of us reaching toward a world 

Where human dignity is sacred  

I’m decorating early this year 

Flipping off the fascists 

With holiday cheer 

Magnetism

Action at a distance confounds me

Same as Isaac Newton

And even he could not explain

Invisible tethers across

 An empty space

How can we be in alignment

When we are so very different

Yet when you are near me

Toroidal loops are sweeping

Me into your web

Drawn into your presence

Every nerve on high alert

My skin sensing your skin

Crying out to touch

The physics of resonance

Hardwired attraction

I am helpless

My fingers seek to run

Through your hair

I pull away, I want safety

Yet chaos tells me

Polarity cannot be

Isolated

You are north, I am south

Mirrored

Somehow exploiting yet 

Aligning to protect

Our vulnerabilities

Are you iron?

Am I a lodestone? 

Electrified, magnetized

When you wrapped your arms

Around me and taught

Me self-defense

But it's the tangle of you and I

That I need to defend against

Because if your leg touches mine

I might disorient

And pull to your north

This terrifying magnetism

The gravity of longing

Wavering in the static

Holding my breath against its power

Is my self-preservation

Strong enough to resist?

You called me honey

Casually

You called me honey 

Seeing the worry in my eyes 

Your words reached out

With the warmth of a hug 

These caressed my ears

With unspoken stewardship

Remembering the first time 

With shaking hands 

You stood at my door 

Cold, bringing me seeds 

Insistent that I take 

The small gift proffered 

Like a wild seed yourself 

The wind had carried you to my porch

With the asters and beggarticks 

Invasive, persistent, naturalizing yourself 

Patiently worked into the soil 

Sometimes impatient for the harvest

Or just for me 

To see the myriad of your acts of care 

Hungry for me to notice and

To care, too — and I do 

Yet can you see the red flags flutter 

In that same wind that carried you here

Red like fire  

And sparks that fly free

Can burn down a house

This fire flares with your frustration 

Why is it I’m so hard to read? Because 

Fear does that, it makes a mask 

Not to hide from you, or trick you

My skin remembers how quickly 

Embers burn and scar 

It shields me from your heat 

I fear being consumed 

Knowing clay, when it is fired 

Never melts again 

But it can break…

So casually you call me

Honey

Make me want to lean in