Lien On It, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Can you afford your vital insulin
Her comes chest pains once again
Now you need a hip replaced
Draining savings breakneck pace

American health care a disgrace
If you cant pay they steal your place
No family to leave your house to
Bill collectors coming after you

Getting ill happens all
Bankruptcy is downfall
Greedy bastards take it all

C.E.O.s drain your blood
Leave you penniless
And call it good

Profits off of desperation
Unsustainable situation
Vultures in boardrooms masturbation

Choosing light bill over medication
You know you need that operation
Everything stolen by a corporation

“Die quickly” if you cant pay
Where is the compassion today?
Nobody should have to live this way.
(END)

Fuck corporate health care. America does not have the best health care, we have the most expensive. And I don’t want to hear shit about our allies having waiting lists.

In many states in America these greedy assholes can put a lien on your property for unpaid medical bills. That means you have nothing to leave your family or friends if you die broke in medical debt. This is basically legalized robbery and it is the oligarchs deliberately creating more poverty so they have a more easily controlled desperate workforce.

I think this could change in very short order if 20 or 30 million Americans suddenly stopped paying their medical bills. It would clog up the system, and the courts. I would never suggest anyone do anything that they are uncomfortable doing or don’t want to do. But I don’t see things changing until people are willing to be uncomfortable and make the government uncomfortable.

NOBODY should go broke for something that happens to all of us eventually.

The Woman Inside, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Innocently at the age of 5
She had not a clue she was a she
In a bath with a girl she wondered why

Why did she have an outie
Why didn’t she have what she had
Having that appendage made her sad

And then there was her macho dad
“Eat this, it will put hair on you chest”
“Boys don’t cry, man up” he did insist

But that Farrah Fawcett hair doll
Wouldn’t relent, he wanted to be her
And not hide in a tent.

And as a teen, when mom went out
She’d lay in bed, and tuck it between
If mom had caught her, she’d surely scream

“What are you doing wearing my cloths”
She never got caught, and nobody knows
Stuck in the wrong body, with all her woes

Expected to conform, she lived a lie
Most of her life being a guy
That was never in her mind’s eye

Under the surface, she always knew
A female she was, was always true
And now she is wrinkled, it’s way past due

Her time is short, but will go through
The butterfly buds, chrysalis bloom
Daisy prints, in October’s room

Don’t let anyone decide for you
What gender you are, love yourself
You’ll be happier by far.

I have some non life threatening health issues that have taken up my attention. And some major positive changes in my life that upon the proper time I will disclose. I am fine. I don’t want anyone to worry. And I am also going through a bit of a writing dry spell.

Shadows Return, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

It is of alarming concern
His voters couldn’t discern
Reality from conspiracy

The man standing tall
In marble stone on the Mall
Heeded the dream’s call

The felon makes a mockery
Of it all. As we stare stunned
Lady Liberty has been shunned

No tired huddled masses
No mountaintop to reach
Office now occupied by a leach

American democracy breached
The clouds are grey and black
Dignity under attack

LGBTQ or black
Hispanics not welcome back
The storm is soon to arrive

Will E-Pluribus Unum survive
Will authoritarianism arise
Office squatter in disguise

The fearful fell for his lies
Lady Justice to deaf ears cry
Shadows darken the sky

Bludgeoned, beleaguered we sigh
Rain torrents drop from up high
Left to ask how and why?

Maybe the clouds will clear
In 4 multiples of a year
We won’t have to live in fear.

The Stillborn’s Offspring, By Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X.

I cannot give birth at this moment
They stare at me as well
I cannot make them move
They are expelled
But they never left
Not with any breath
“Distraction”
Is an understatement
My well is dry
They don’t breath
They don’t cry
The midnight sky
Outside, oblivious
To my folly
Trying to save
The dead spawn
Has sputtered
Nothing uttered
Soon to be dawn
No inspiration
The little ones
Are gone.
(end)

My latest poem about lack of inspiration and an ode to Sylvia Plath’s poem “Stillborn”. I think every writer/poet knows the experience of writer’s block or lack of inspiration.

Subjugation, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

It seems repetitious in our species history
That when one group is the majority
A threat to their status must not be

They are the ones who write history
A pet in their house at best
Is the minority

But when that minority seeks equality
When they seek to be part of the norm
Then their welcome is no longer warm

Worse a manifestation they become abusive
They start to see the minority as intrusive
The audacity to dare become inclusive

Atrocities will follow when dehumanized
The worst in humanity is actualized
The minority is subsequently brutalized

Open we must always keep our eyes
Don’t buy into otherism’s vicious lies
Learn the lessons of history’s cries.
(end)

Autumn, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

The ridged brown fallen leaf
Tumbling from the wind
Skated across the sidewalk
An occasional pirouette

A mini vortex
Gathers it’s fallen comrades
The carousel fills up
Synchronized

Like the circus act
Motorcycles darting
Zooming in circles
In the iron cage ball

The air bites
Fostering rosy cheeks
The mittens
Will follow in weeks

Crepe in texture
Wrinkling my features
I will be that fallen leaf
Ridged and stiff

And my winter
Will be oblivion
Irrelevant to the sun
To the moon

To the universe.

Arbitrary, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on @Twitter)

Flung on this canvas, a Jackson Pollack
Entwined asphalt, suburbs, interstates
Skyscrapers, monuments to our narcissism
Conflated self importance, and what of luck

Am I to think, that since such misfortunes
Have yet to befall me, that I am chosen?
While a doctor tells a couple
Their child will die of cancer?

Am I to think, that on that trip
To Alabama, with my mom driving
Blowing a stop sign, having a semi
Almost t-bone us, that I am special?

Am I to think,
That 3 million children
Who die from malnutrition each year
That I have nothing to fear?

I am no fan of this mad magician
Who claims to have this elixir
Juxtaposed on both sides
By Dismas and Gestas

I cannot buy this absurdity
Knowing that the surface
Of the sun, in the future
Will exceed the orbit of Mars

No, I cannot pretend
On this violent planet
Full of natural disasters
Full of deadly diseases

Full of religious tribalism
Where the war of the gods
Take center stage in politics
Where criminals are heads of state

I cannot pretend all this
Is part of a divine plan
It is, it has been, and always was
The imagination of man

Someday
My neurons
Will cease to fire
I will have a final hour

It could be decades from now
It could be as soon as tomorrow
I will have the same sensations
After my passing, as I did

A thousand years ago
Don’t claim that you know
Who is running this show
Wrapped up in a pretty bow.
(end)

As the myth goes, the Jesus character was crucified with two criminals named Dimas and Gestas.

Buzz & Flicker, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37on Twitter/X)

Somewhere a placenta spills out
An umbilical cord is cut
A first gasp of air and shriek

Somewhere a foundation is poured
Hard hats buzz around tamping
And settling, rebar is set

Somewhere a suit sits at a desk
Foaming at the prospect
Of increasing profits

Somewhere a homeless panhandles
Wondering if she will garner
Enough sympathy to eat

Somewhere a bomb falls
On a city, and limbs
Scatter and heard are screams

Somewhere the child
Dreams a birthday wish
A kitten to snuggle

Somewhere she cowers
In the corner
From a raised fist

Somewhere in a factory
Machines churn and clank
Conveyor belts zoom

Somewhere a priest prays
Elsewhere a Muslim Cleric
And a Rabbi in fear of end days

It is all a temporary toil
With the same outcome
With the same ending

Somewhere is a notion
Far too often ignored
That we are the same species.
(end)

Cats, Hats, And Birds, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Snoopy floats by, but I want to cry
For those who have no thanks to give
Like the females who will die in pregnancy
And the GOP who don’t care if they live

The bird in the oven,
Our goose to be cooked
The nuclear ham, glazed over with sycophants
The elephants lead by the belligerent shiv

The unaware lemmings in the living room
Cheering or screaming at the lone star team
He won’t lower your food or gas prices
In silence I want to scream

Forgotten is the genocide that lead
To this unworthy holiday,
What thanks is there
When greed and bigotry win

His was no big cat’s roar
It is a shiny object to distract us
From the misery he will bring
A bounty of forgotten history

Cranberry sauce for your social security
Stuffing in place of your Medicare
The turkey has loaded you
With tryptophan

Sleep well,
But I won’t sit at that table
My conscience will not be able
To find joy in the suffering of others

It is a parade of fools
Where there are no rules
His cabinet of mules
Dismantle our democracy

I will not thank anyone
If to me it is reported
My innocent migrant neighbors
Get arrested and deported

I will not thank anyone
For the felon walking free
It is a travesty of justice
Obvious for the sane to see

Once you have found
Prices have not gone down
You’ll know then
You were the turkey.
(end)