For past hearings after an arrest or traffic citation, I have carefully prepared reasoned ethical statements or legal arguments. Last fall was crazy different. I just woke up in the middle of the night and penned a poetic howl in the style of Allen Ginsburg, then read it to the judge a couple days later.
Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth. (Mathew 5:5)
Stop the machines,
my dear, pathetic, human friends,
before it’s too late
to save our species.
Worse than ants
trapped in a long line
carrying leaves to a dark cave
we sit in our cars
outside Naval Submarine Base Bangor
waiting our turns
to carry nuclear weapons
on our human backs
down to the bottom of the sea.
Scooby is a medical alert, service dog who cares for Ground Zero member Lisa Johnson. All he does is help people. Scooby attended the September 26, 2019 mitigation hearing and proudly wore a sign in front of Bangor for the Mothers’ Day 2020 vigil.
Ready to light a fuse
from a deep ocean source
that sends mushroom clouds across the sky
and destroys us all.
Climb down from your bench
your honor, the judge
join the innocent wisdom
that stops this madness
before nuclear fires destroy our cities
and only insects survive the next morning to climb
from the ashes and give birth to
their mutant, six-leg children, their children not ours,
and insects become the superior, smarter species,
not us the foolish humans.
Sober up, my drunken friends,
that Russian soldier in a different uniform
is not your real enemy
nor is the North Korean.
It’s the warlords who make a profit,
the politicians who find a
path to power stoking our fears,
your fears, our fears, my fears,
the same all across the globe.
Vladimir Putin the same as Kim Jong-Un,
Clintons & Bushes the same as Donald Trump.
They feed our fears and we cheer their words.
Stop that war machine before it is too late.
Insects can adapt, they can
chop off two legs and run on four
in order to live longer,
protecting other ants in the colony.
Can you throw off your military uniform?
Amputate your slavery – at least two legs?
You the humans who claim intelligence,
can you stop marching off this cliff
now on the Eve of Destruction?
Or will it be modified grasshopper children,
seven-legged spider offspring,
who inherit the earth?
Wake up in the
middle of the night
and write a poem.
Don’t listen to your paycheck
nor the war stories
you were told in school,
that textbook history, I also
heard as a child,
justifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki as
saving lives, savings lives, saving American lives,
America the gentle giant, helping, helping, helping.
Wake up in the middle of the
night and listen to
your heartbeat and ask
yourself how gentle are
the 7,000 nuclear weapons we have in our arsenal
and how we now update, modernize, build more
make them smaller, more accurate, easier to use,
those smaller, gentler, nuclear weapons
that can be used to gently, hellishly bake
whole cities in a furnace of 100,000 degrees Celsius,
so gentle, so gentle, always saving lives.
Give me coffee at night
and maybe I will wake up and see.
Don’t give me beer in the morning
to feed my fears.
What will sober us up, clear our minds?
Perhaps only a cold plunge into Puget Sound,
a polar bear dip can
pump the poison from our hearts.
Then on four legs
we will splash out of the icy water,
like loyal service dogs, shaking ourselves,
licking each other’s paws.
Only then will we have
thrown off our hatred, our war machines,
only when we get down on our hands and knees,
four legs and no arms.
No nuclear arms!
Human service dogs, amputating our ambition to be
the smartest, the most powerful, the most destructive,
cutting off the arms race,
humans humbled into puppies,
panting, barking, canine creatures.
Mankind’s most loyal and best friends,
you be our role models!
Only then,
not so proud,
not standing tall
as engineers of new
weapons of mass destruction,
only giving up that conceit,
that lust for supreme power and control,
but rather
wagging our tails in humble friendship,
only down on four legs
and no arms
no nuclear arms
can we outlive the insects.
