“Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the red sea, and pharaoh in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. This motto: ‘Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.'” – Benjamin Franklin, on being appointed to a committee to draft a seal for the newly formed United States, in July 1776. Clearly, a sign he believed God took an active role in the daily lives of mankind and created miracles out of nowhere. Neither of these beliefs were something Deists believed.
Friends of Mine Like Poetry
by Michael Doyle
Friends of mine like a little poetry
Mixed in with their misguided militancy,
There is something to the spin reeling
Who needs the facts when there are feelings
It's a little less about working things out
And more about vehemently spewing about
The things they've heard and been spoon-fed
The untrue truths they cannot get out of their heads
Like the situation in Palestine in a night of drinking
Where they miss the connecting points of sober thinking
Like how do Christian Arabs feel about militant actions
Made by Islamists dictating life amidst the distractions
That leads the foreign public to see only what they are shown
And then act as if they know all there is to be known.
Death is not a watercooler topic of vapid conversation
Palestinian suffering has multiple layers of devastation
Poems about these subjects can electrify neon surprise
As emotional charges explode from well-placed hashtag lines
Too many of my friends who love poetry don't check the facts
Such as how many of the Palestinian deaths are from Muslim acts
Is it a huge surprise that holding people as human shields
Add to the death tolls and horror of atrocities that yield
More deaths than were ever needed, and the trauma of sorrow
So many children, old people, good people have no tomorrow
Where are poems for those defying the Palestinian Authority?
Where are memorials and words for those who live with dignity?
Where are poems for Israelis struck down in the prime of life?
How can so many believe this is only one-sided strife?
(c) January 12, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon … has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.” – James Madison (1798)
“I’d like to get something together – like a Handel, Bach, Muddy waters, flamenco type of thing. If I could get that sound, I’d be happy.” – Jimi Hendrix
Life So Far
by Michael Doyle
In the righteousness and errors
Life is often smoke and mirrors
We walk in our best composure
And hiding ourselves from exposure
Of being seen for who we are
Hoping our best selves will travel far
We hide ourselves in the shadows
Hoping nobody will ever really know
Never wanting to feel helpless again
We are determined to be our best friends
Do you feel what I'm saying?
It's the truth of this game we're playing
Living each moment slightly in doubt
Uncertain of what this world is about
Just putting off our fall into confusion
As we work our way through our illusions
The only truth in this world is care
For the moments it takes another soul to bare
Behind every bit of our living history
Is both the happiness and the misery
Pierced through the heart of this matter
Is the parts of our lives that shatter
As we fall to pieces on the ground
We find our resiliency in the splinters we've found
These are the remains of our waking days
These things that manage to go away
Still, when we've lost ourselves in charades
What it is that remains of what we've made
All the little losses taken so far
Are enough to make us who we are
When we're busy hiding what we've done
We can become as easily undone
Face-to-face with who it is that we are
We can go low or take it to the stars
But we are still who it is that we are
It has taken us this far...
(c) January 11, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” – Charles Peguy, poet and essayist (7 Jan 1873-1914)
“There is no good government but what is republican.” – John Adams (1776)
Modern Russian Violence
by Michael Doyle
As time moves forward, leaving the 19th century behind
One still needs to understand a measure of the Russian mind
The war crimes in Ukraine will never be the finest hour
The Russian people have experienced as Putin growls and devours
In a frame of expanding backward toward his vision of empire
And no doubt his cronies there are complicit as they conspire
But neither Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky can remotely act to explain
What it is that Platonov's Chevengur makes completely plain
As it makes clear the tragic insights into Soviet history
A nation embracing violence with its fullest capacity
And as it does so, it brings the destruction of the nation's soul
Merciless anger translates into a tragedy of near-endless woe
Life has no value, and absurd ideas are worthy of dying for
As a confounding brutality comes clawing, demanding more
Injustices are stoked into a need for increasing authority
This hatred first breeds open contempt and then loyalty
So-called leaders watch silently as the violence is unleashed
Identity politics comes craving destruction like an unholy beast
This is what becomes of a revolution that turns any nation
Against itself and begetting unending violence as its explanation
Broken promises become broken dreams, and then total despair
As visions of utopia become dystopia languishing into nightmares
This sort of life is the death march that merges all into the same
And in the end, it turns out that life itself is what's to blame
(c) January 10, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.” - Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography
“The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.” –Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (10 Jan 1834-1902)
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