Rene Martin
Word Soldier
With his M16 or AK47 he sprays a pattern
of words that can pulverize
old dogmas and fossilized ideas.
The wounds he inflicts are impervious
to the ministrations of surgeons.
His ballistic missiles lodge in the brain,
set the imagination on fire, and set
the heart racing towards solutions.
His depth charges jolt the soul awake
to truths often terrible to behold.When all seems shrouded in fog,
when the tempest rages,
when we confront despair, his well-aimed
flares, bursting overhead, far above
our fields of battle, provide for us
celestial markers by which to steer
our lives.
Night
When Night stretches forth its hand
at first tentatively
to touch the troubled face of Day
to calm its fears
to still its agitated heart
to salve its wounds
to shield from its gaze
that which it can no longer bear
and Day sobbing
leans its head upon Night’s shoulder
emboldened
Night clutches Day to its bosom
with reverence
and absorbs it into darkness.
Dear Emily Dickinson
What slant telling of truth would you bestow
on us today, Emily? What character
would you muster to restrain yourself from
frontal assault on those who dress their own
contrivances in comely guise they deem
appropriate and render to the world
as truth?
What language would you summon forth
to wield adroitly as did Perseus
Athena’s gleaming bronze so that we might
with safety scan the false terrain, discern
Medusa’s all petrifying visage,
gauge the timing and placement of blow,
and liberate ourselves from deception?
Lesson II
A life of slavery is not without
its attraction.
It should be no surprise, then,
that some develop an addiction.
The slave is assured of liberation
from the most taxing
responsibilities of personhood—
decision-making and self-direction.
No onerous task of creating structure
for one’s life,
no need to formulate a plan
for life’s contingencies.
All effort is subsumed into obedience—
acceptance of authority
that is absolute in its power
to control.
Happiness is equated with degree
of compliance—
Pain with degree of resistance.
Just fill in the interstices of the proffered
matrix and all is well.
Co-create the wonder of a happy Hell.
Disneywood
Workers in wood do not function in a
cultural vacuum;
Their creations express the soul of a people.
Today, furniture crafted by the old master wood-workers
is rightly sought out and regarded with a reverence
worthy of religious artifacts. Why is that?
Is it not that we recognize how much we have lost
and seek a remembrance of what used to be: the
fusion of functionality, beauty and quality –
emblems of a time when our civilization still
had the confidence to strive for that which lasts?
Today, we are presented with (and all too often settle for)
the verisimilitude, the facade, the disneyesque – objects
of wood mass-produced for quick profit, soon to fall apart
and be replaced – the grand illusion of fake wood,
vinyl cladding, and cheap veneers: the expression
and reflection of our state of affairs.
