World Order

Financiers feel superior to farmers

and pundits have it over poets.

All to the good because if you think America's

doing just fine, don't skip to the poetry reviews.

Our enemies are barbarous, our allies duplicitous

but our smart bombs are smart" -- that's how they found you.

Dad said all wars are resource wars. Follow

the money. The world needs more order, nothing

less than Nazis, never may the anarchic man's thoughts

be my thoughts, each shove sends a ping,

shields urge on shields, helmets helmets, we can be

the reigning kings between the last empire and the next

or implement a vision of collective deliberation

and binding agreements. Can China's navy

be harnessed to ensure free passage through

the South China Sea? We'll see how

things work out in the next generation.

In the meantime should I read Henry Kissinger's meditations?

He who thinks poetry's effete

probably considers Darwin a geek and Einstein

a postal clerk. Containment means leaving space

for the passionate and zealous to face themselves

and giving them missiles that don't work.

Slowing everyone down until one thing's done well" --

governance or sustenance or brotherhood.

When violence comes to the neighborhood

the hierarchy will hold or fold, it is then the peace work proves relevant.

Failing to achieve understanding, we're searching outer space

for an entity to unite us as humanity.

That person, or city, is consciousness.

By that what is meant. Sitting still and thinking deeply

on the relation of anger to coercion,

systems for correcting the decisions of earlier presidents.

We're required to report incidents of depression

to a doctor because you're a valued member of of our community

or so insignificant no one notices or cares.

How necessary the interface of war and poetry!

Author's Note

"If you think America is doing just fine, then skip ahead to the poetry reviews. If, however, you worry about a globe spinning out of control, then 'World Order' is for you."

--Friedman, Thomas L., "What's Their Plan? Obama's Strategy for Fighting ISIS Isn't All About Us", New York Times, September 14, 2014
--Homer, "As when the winds, ascending by degrees", The Iliad, Book IV, trans. Alexander Pope, Penguin Books, 1996.
--Micklethwait, John, "As the World Turns: Henry Kissinger's 'World Order'", NY Times Book Review, September 14, 2014
--Ray, David, "To a Child of Baghdad", Music of Time: Selected & New Poems, The Backwaters Press, 2006.