This is what happens when people stop voting.

The door to the old cabin’s musty garage
creaks open and in the early light,
a faded twin hull Bayliner perched

on concrete blocks and
enmeshed with silky webs
sighs a stranded note in a minor key

about waves and water skis, Grandpa
Holm’s fishing pole, Adolph’s tackle box,
Fourth of July, excited children

and blue vinyl seats
cracked wide open, exposing
a dusty refrain of yellow foam rubber.

The last light of the day drapes over the hills in ochre-colored robes,
One can almost hear the prayer-wheels spinning
As the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean,
A few birds scatter,

The old farm road lined with cypress grows bright in the shadows of evening,

The sky burns down like campfire cinders,
The pines, determined, holding hands together
Peacefully demonstrating their grievances,
Standing strong with the students of Berkeley,
The College of Humanities.

But this is the season of outrage, the age of violence,
When police use their batons as weapons of mass destruction
On Poet Laureates and their students
Who learned about civil disobedience as an event for change,
But when they exercise their rights
In our Constitution—they’re confronted with the harsh
Reality that Martin Luther King and his people faced,
A whack in the arm and a whack in the chest and a whack in the leg,
For sitting quietly, protesting that which is clearly wrong,
Tuition fees that only the rich can afford,
And the irony is had they been sitting in a circle,
Studying, debating, nothing would have happened,
But the minute they protest government abuse and corporate greed,
Even teachers are severely thrashed.

Moral of the story: you can read about your rights but you can’t exercise them.

After all, this is a government that mutilates and poisons and mercilessly slaughters
All in the name of corporate profits.

The students keep shouting at the cops Shame on You! Shame on You! Shame on You!

Indeed. Can you hear them, Mr. Obama,
Or are you off playing another round of golf?
While you and your advisors plan another massive attack, Iraq, Iran, Libya,…

In a military state, Bob, Brenda—they beat up on teachers and students,
And they throw them in isolated cells for as long as they want,
Compliments of the Patriot Act…

But this too will fail, as P.B. Shelley said: We are Many, they are Few.

Near the clearing for the railroad track,
few leaves still cling,
and pieces of coal—
shaken from loaded hoppers—
rest on ballast in front of decaying
Wooden box cars with balloon-letter graffiti.

Each chunk of coal waits near six
rusted oil drums, under the Full Snow Moon.
Poor, gleaning children
come just before dawn
to harvest, to gather for winter warmth.
children guard rocks like diamonds.

Then on, past first-light shadows,
where fire charred tree limbs,
a house—burned-out and abandoned—
slid downhill toward the stream.
A man escaped but later died,
body badly burned, lungs filled

with thick, black smoke.
Was the woman inside—
pregnant and seeking her way out—
the one who struck a match?
Accident or crime? We walked all night
through wooded remnants
of purposeful existence. But without

the authority of history,
how much can we actually know
of the back story?  Did the gov’t once
give reason to follow?  Is it now
past its prime?  Are citizens victims
of the American Dream?

As an independent contractor
He’s got to start somewhere, if eventually
He wants to turn water into wine
And to divide the fish and the loaves
Among the hungry. Then there’s the matter
Of the building permit. The city inspector.
The other guy who walks on water.

The long animal throat
In muscular spiral—
But no way will the mare

Quiet her hoof
On the grass and rock
Turning beneath the element

Of her leg. Better
To wrap her mane
In your fingers’ web,

Become breath and cloud,
Water and earth where
Your body meets the velvet hide—

Become a field of poppies,
The running over granite
And leap over rushing creek—

Become the vertigo sky
Streaming through your own hair—
Be horse.