What are we gonna do now~?

Everyone says they just want what’s best—
for freedom, for hope, for development and progress—
just support the one who yells it out best.
But what do we mean
when we say words like that?
We never do manage to say where they go—
the people you mean? Oh honey no, the money!

You know, that’s what travels most.
Beyond borders and visas, no need for a check,
it’s money they send and money they get.
“The people!” they cry, “we must make them safe—
for freedom and hope and more commercial space!”

So generously our companies fund
development, factories, and don’t forget guns!
It’s all out of care, we act on principle,
to rescue from fear those dollars we hold so very dear.
For companies, they tell me, are people too!
So don’t forget we owe them their due.

People or profits—the question is skewed,
for profits are people if you take the Friedman view.
Free markets for growth, free markets for progress,
free markets free men from the need for the docket.
Freedom and principle, oh I heard you clear,
but my question remains:
is it freedom for people or money you hold dear?
Jara, Walsh, Letelier, and more,
did these men die on freedom’s door?
Or did misdefined freedom cost their countries more?

Watch out what you’re funding, my countrymen proud,
for the cost of our neglect will not go unfound.
I believe your compassion still can grow,
but wake up now and make it boldly known
before hands moved by greed redefine what it means
to face the world from the American scene.

"Get off the streets!!"

Wanderers and fools. The fabric of my people.
Those who leave their homes
for something they can’t describe.
Following a sense—a glow of footsteps set
In places they knew not before that feel of something more.

Spirits of a like, they say, seek out the same retreat,
And by virtue of their instincts alike inevitably meet.
But if we’ve spirits enduring time
Then we’ve traveled here before—
No reason to think the ones we seek
We haven’t journeyed with before.

Perhaps we parted knowingly
On those before known shores
And whispered “luck” in bracing tones
To face the world alone.

For experience, that human angle,
We leapt back into the flow
To think and weep, reflect and sleep,
To seek for something more.

That’s our flaw, you may well know,
To ache for further meaning:
To pass the time we have here now
With our gaze up past the ceiling

Of the circles in which our lives are set;
It’s also our greatest virtue,
Insofar as Aristotle’s definitions can be kept:
That trait intrinsic to the mind as humanity defined.

What matters then, in such a place,
What values must we keep?
Some think survival its own end,
Others pay it little heed.

They focus on less profitable things:
What matter if we lose?
To live with heart embracing others
Seems to them full worth the cost.

Wanderers and fools they are,
For truth they leave their homes,
And give away what comfort lends
Without concern for what is owned.

Though concern they have, well and plenty,
For shattering the ice
That builds up on the restive mind
And seeing through the shards

To shake off convention’s morphine
And question life’s regard
For thought and work, identity,
what compels the social yard—

Because they were once told it’s so
Is not for them enough
To justify the differences, assumptions, and disregard
That places some on pedestals and leaves others breathing hard.

A question in itself, they say,
Is rebellion in true form,
And to question thought of your own cast
Takes work more oft ignored.

But if it’s so that all we have
Is simply passing time,
Before this turning garden casts us
To some more distant clime,

Then what role would you choose to be,
Connected or self-absorbed?
History books cast war as fate,
But the growing mind must wonder:

Is inevitability really to blame
Or the wants of men knowingly sundered?
The values of before return,
And honesty must ask,

Is it justice that the merchants seek
Or profit from destruction’s path?
Can rights be bombed into the world
Or is that just a mask

For string-pullers in lofty seats
Who count our interests last?
Wanderers and fools, they never mind the odds;
They want the truth regardless and will pay with what they are.

If war is just a pastime,
Chosen by those with greed,
These wanderers will seek the voices of the ones left in need;
The fools will stand for hours to demand transparency

And so the battle continues,
An uneven drama felt by the ages,
A matter of schismic values
Tumbling down across the pages.

It’s taken lives and love and loss;
It’s given current aplenty
To the rivers of humanity
That take so long to cross.

To find your feet in this swift flow
Is your one birth-given job,
To recognize what matters
And be more than you were taught

To see our universal breath
And realize the thought
That trivial identities as divisions
Are naught, but near-sighted distractions,

Dishonest to our worth:
With centuries’ unspoken names
How can one be more than earth?
To give way to self-importance would lend only to celestial mirth.

Make peace with being who you are,
And find it not demotion.
Accepting ordinary life gives room for yet another notion:
That everyone holds some importance, none to be dismissed.

Anyone can turn the wheel
On life’s unfolding pattern,
And were you born a different time
You’d find how little it matters

What you think of your influence
Compared to what you’re given,
So grace demands we open our hands
And share what chance has riven.

Wanderers and fools, they always have a corner
In life’s unchanging threads.
To be one is a privilege
I’d not regret to have.

Tell me now, or ask yourself:
Are you in this life because you chose to be?
Or is this just where you fell?

Did you come to this town
with a reason you couldn’t ignore
Or was it where someone else’s cause dropped you before?

When you think of tomorrow,
Is it what’s already been set?
Or did you measure your life and decide what’s direct,

What’s tied to the heart of what you want to be.
If you don’t ask today - not what others expect
But what you in your hours value -

You’ll never touch anything
Beyond plastic security:
Never realize the rough-hewn world

Is lying at your feet.
But only for a moment,
Breath doesn’t last

Fall back on passive thinking, (and)
The timing’s gone past.
And life, that chance to be, is dust you can’t grasp.
.
It’s not an ideal; it’s today, and it’s gone.
What’re you going to do about it?
What *matters*??

Knowing what you’re capable of losing is a strength. But, it’s the kind of strength that hardens.

There is an ache that resonates
In the breast that has known life—
The will to be where you are not,
The echo of pulse partly forgot...

Still, there is a danger identified
In dreaming long and vivid
Then going out on eager feet
To meet the content presented

As though the realization,
The taste that dashes hope,
Might yet replace that ideal form
With texture less than found before

And leave you not with triumph
But disappointment hollow and sore.
That danger I suppose is real,
The risk of hope bestowed,

But other outcomes too may follow
When feet are placed on stone
To chase after an idea held,
To move from pallid pace

To some more desperate footfall
That comes before the storm
That washes away from dreams
The colors unfaithfully worn

And leaves behind only what was true,
The honest shape beneath
Defined by more than your own will,
By others’ matching pressure

That lets you know your place is real
By matching even resistance
That moves you both ever ahead
Even as it redefines you.

And, if the dream you chose to hold
In carefully sheltering palms
Was placed upon some worthy sight,
Then overcome the danger

And find that what is left behind
When clouds have fled and faded,
Sweeping away the dream itself
And leaving you again untethered,

While once again immaterial,
Has only taken its name and traded,
No longer far ahead but undiscoverable within:
It belongs to you and those you knew

In matching, even weight
Becoming now a memory that you may lift and take
As you seek to find your next direction,
A stone for experience sake.