eric sundin

Sent to my son Matt on his emergence after a 10 day silent retreat in California’s High Desert:

Deep dark rueful shadows
lit in hued moon light
edge silvery meadows
of metallic bright

Shine unperturbed bright stars
beyond Earth’s cold skies
Way beyond Moon and Mars
hide unanswered ‘whys’

In morning’s early light
shadows turn shallow, skies warmed
Forthwith, wake up, hold tight!
Awe for the Earthly returned:

Fades away night’s perfect stillness
elbowed by day’s messy shrillness

edited 02/02/24 0720

Our quick, impatient words
flapping in ad lib
like flocks of ‘take off’ birds
swift, screeching & glib

Our phrases cheerfully poured
over facts, rationale
‘cleverness points’ to be scored
regardless of morale

‘Rolling off tongue’ phrases
sink without a trace
scattered in odd places
as bystanders brace

While endless subjects of banality
keep splashing amongst the plurality

edited 06/25/24 0650

Show us all we can grab
how to get our way
as we prefer to nab
not give or allay!

Thus abet
rather than care
just forget
what’s like to share

Have now learned to manage
(spurred on by own greed)
taking full advantage
of those in dire need

Indulgent we’re beaming
finest wines we swill
lounged amidst stuff gleaming
huge thick steaks we grill

But aboard in yachting delight
cruising in the starlit night
cradled in self-absorbed birthright
oughtn’t our collars feel bit tight?

+)
-collars feel bit tight = here: feeling a strain of anxiety about whether we’re steering a compassionate course on life’s ocean

Meet Hendrik Schmendrik:
As you can tell
he’s egoschentric
likes himself well

Normal, far from eccentric
clearly self-enamored
his thinking geocentric
so his mundane yammer

He rarely gets anything right
while sounds off as if certain!
Who knows, perhaps he’s even bright
if just pulled up his curtain?

Til then he’s always certain
albeit still rarely right

+)
-geocentric = representing the earth as the center, as in former astronomical systems
-pull up one’s curtain = here: to inform & educate oneself
-schmendrik = (Yiddish) an ineffectual, foolish, or contemptible person

edited 03/11/22 0825

Radiating heater glowing
nearly grilling Joyce’s butt
Internet fun & jolts flowing
lifts her out of morning rut

She’s cozying up in her ‘cave’
Reads emails of rants & raves
Her clients’ situations grave
and she be the one who saves

But not for long in tether
so to stay strong & trim
she’s braving ‘Arctic’ weather
heading soon for the gym

+)
‘Arctic’? = well, er, Seattle natives find their Winters ‘cold’

edited 11/11/21 1020

Money shuffling arcane
all for power & gain:

Even when usurious the result
of their speculations financial
The Rich will find little time to exult
as their entitlement substantial

While you’re not having enough to eat
they are densely hard of hearing
they are just so happily effete
How quaintly sweet & endearing!

Still hoping get things changed?
Aren’t you callow, deranged:

As no One Percenter Nonsuch
does ever stoop to exploit
merely endowed with golden touch
while responsibly adroit!

Petitioning the Power Elite?
How naive & hopelessly odd
as they shall never concede a tweet
They own media, gold & God

Groveling at feet of the greedy
likewise shall never ever work
The Rich are the ones feeling needy
such charming, disarming a quirk!

In plush executive suites
tinny hearts with profits flutter
while you’re walking those mean streets
They got Congress, you got gutter

Of course if you cannot take the heat
get up & off the side walk grate
and sleep instead on the bus backseat
Or get a climate controlled crate

For most of us are at best a statistic
in this world Casino Capitalistic

+)
-God = Goldman Sach’s CEO reminds us they’re “doing God’s work”:
http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfein-says-he-is-doing-gods-work-2009-11
-nonesuch = a model of excellence or perfection

edited 09/28/23 1000

Beltway stuck lascivious
in politics insidious
Flimsy pretexts devious
brings on aggression hideous

Elated by advanced hardware
men in power act like boys
Those ‘warriors of the armchair’
want power, ribbons & toys

Safely back home they adore war
martially heroic lore
Ordering troops to roar & gore
to settle a phantom score:

Merciless U.S. guns
destroyed poor Iraq
Couldn’t even sweep the crumbs
left from this ‘cake walk’

While the U.S. been unable to defeat
‘medieval’ Taliban, al-Qaeda bands
North Koreans, Cubans or Vietnamese
‘enemies’ in the world’s modest back lands

Now foments a new Cold War with the Kremlin
such as in Ukraine by regime change coup
but Donetsk & Crimea, far from crumbling
stands up to Kiev’s neo-Nazi hue

Thus fresh from ’successes’ up next:
Pivoting with mindless ease
supercilious muscles flexed:
Trying bully the Chinese!

Droning on about its ‘finest hour’
while fading fast its sense & power

+)
-the Beltway = the U.S. power elite
-phantom score = Contrary to e.g. John Quincy Adams’ foreign policy aspirations of 1821:
“But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

edited 04/18/22 0820

All this dogged insistence
that we’re so deserving
of a prolonged existence
is getting unnerving

In language
so languid
Why languish
so anguished?

Living until fifty
would likely be nifty

While in the seventies
plenty can go wrong
There accrues penalties
for living that long

Even if nursing vain hope
in starry-eyed sanguinity
ain’t the far likelier scope
to end up in ‘penguinity’?

While what time left just rolls on
until earthly life is gone

+)
-‘penguinity’ = (license) the endearing inclination to believe in a swift take-off – even after in perpetuity having frantically been flapping one’s wings and still found oneself stuck on the ground

edited 02/23/24 0750

Expect a sunburnt smile
with white teeth gleaming
in any market isle
in trendy streaming

Spouting catchy metaphors
in tilting lilting idiom
Driving cool wheeled dinosaurs
in bumper to bumper ‘freedom’

Headed for the erstwhile Golden West
on to land abundantly blessed
in irresistibly upbeat quest
Too late, turned crowded, worn out, stressed

In unrelenting motion
have been pumping most of its oil
polluting air & ocean
depleted the bountiful soil

Time to wake up from faded dreams:
It’s getting ever hotter
fires blaze on hills & in ravines
rivers, lakes drained of water

We’re culprits of reckless squander
stared down by unblinking drought
Wake up from fantasy’s wonder:
Face it. No way, none but out

Days gone when LAid back seemed easy
brimming with optimism breezy

+)
LAid back = laid back as in LA

edited 10/14/23 1345

When young I truly had no inkling
that I was but incipient
My alarm bell was never tinkling
while acted out my idiot

Traits that might disenchant
were so far constrained
My inner sycophant
kept grinning harebrained

Pathetic but hadn’t been in a rush
to question much my attitude
Middle age laid bare with horrid blush
my erstwhile lack of rectitude

Seems still that part of my essence
might consist of channeling
in blabbering omnipresence
my hapless inner changeling

It ain’t what I would like to see
or not who I prefer to be
although afraid it’s somehow me
from whom I’m unable to flee

+)
changeling = (in folklore) an ugly, stupid, or strange child left by fairies in place of a pretty, charming child

edited 10/26/23 1120