*Voice Lessons

out of a suitable 

silence, a cave,

perhaps, a mist

you come to

the cave

hiding in  loneliness

out of infinite

attention to nothing

above

or beyond you

you

sound

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

on the horizon

i ask myself

who will see it

who will notice those cries heard in the night

to be complicit in the crimes outside our door?

will ours be a voice trembling 'neath a dimming bulb

warning that the light we see is dark?

totalitarians love war as if  bread for their tables

blood, the red wine coating their throats

when people disappear, they'll help them hide

because crimes against the struggling are cause for more

we'll  shake our heads when the warning sirens wail

longing that the enemy would learn that we are right

who imagines our sincerity to be tainted?

nothing is more natural than knowing God's on our side

when we smell flesh as the dust rains upon our heads

will the silent torture of convictions spew vomit on the streets?

when The Bomb, our bombs sprinkle the lawns of our villages

will then a whimper rise enough to explore the rubble of despair?

when bodies return wrapped in their symbolic flag

will it be too late to redirect the movie

to cancel the show about dandelions on our lawns

and show the faces that horrified the dreams of our parents

now possessive of our lungs as a suffocating theme?

are we to salute or weep the dead murdered at our hands

for they will be our brothers, our children

our neighbors slain upon the carpeted earth?

then the airy transparency of our majesty

will lay crumbling like a yellowed constitution

released finally from its vacuumed tomb

who will see it

who will notice

complicit in the crimes outside our door

as oblong clouds stretch across the azure sky

as if beds awaiting heads to arrive?

We human beings are so intent on proving ourselves to be gods and goddesses that we end up proving ourselves to be devils.

*Everyone carries within him/herself the imperishable Spirit, the inner Observer of all that goes on in the mind and psyche of humankind and in the operations of our organs of sensation and action.  Because of its presence within the innermost heart, and howsoever veiled it might be through the effects of forgetfulness, it nevertheless still communicates to the soul a thirst for transcendence.

-Victor Danner