The Advice Capitalism

photo by the author

This is one of the poems that got me fired from my job at the Greater Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce. The president, who fired me, told Douglas, who also works there, that board members and others were sending her excerpts of things I’d “penned”, claiming I was making fun of them.

If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
Under Fire
Lake
with the hatred that rules society.
I’m on a mountain.
Each new tap on the shoulder crosses worlds
Snoopy rides,
but I’m into the fire
large out on the floor
from all the spiritual dawns.
You hear the spiritual advice at the Roxie?
Knock it off.
I’m a tourist information booth.

Everybody has left the United States.
We are beached on a poem.
There’s nowhere to turn.
I’ve fucked up.
I’ve called poetry in on its job.
I can’t even show you the poem.
You’d fight me for it.
Guaranteed I’d lose my job,
and I’d be homeless again.

What’s these great stakes?
Snowball,
we’d watch it rise downhill,
until my boss heard about it,
our not allow four dogs landlord.
Can I call them on it?
I can describe their preferences
that would reach the limit at this poem.
How much help they’ve given me
would end there.

What I am sayin’?
I’ve got a poem to knock your socks off,
but you don’t want to read it
if you’re a normal American fanfare,
if you reach deep in your pocketbooks
to exploit people,
if you make hell the end of the game
for non-Jesus people.

Can I get away with murder?
I have to be careful what I say.
I can’t open my mouth
in poetry.
I wanna see my dogs,
and I wanna live again.
Can you blame me
for self-censorship?
This isn’t fair.
I suffer.

I do not understand capitalism.
It won’t accept another way of life
that makes sacrifice a way of life,
sacrifice for your brother
and sister in life,
sacrifice to the better in you.
We’re beached on whale,
and even communism beaches there
and our church’s regard.

Come on Sacrifice Capitalism,
the laissez faire don’t believe in,
can we change the world there?
I have a hunch.
Before profits we ask need,
what’s best for the community,
and can we have humanity please
considered too?
Can we grand the whole world
in business decisions
so that animals matter
and the breath of our life trees,
what about for our island
Fort Myers Beach?

Sacrifice Capitalism
ladies and gentlemen.
Work out the details
school children in role play,
every business leader.
The profits take a backseat to need.
Can we get there?

Not even to a poem
I cannot show you
because you would not let me do it,
be a poet on live,
talk about the weather,
and political Christians
control the weather
that bursts apart in our minds,
and money rules the show.

I can’t spit out the juice.
I’m not exactly at fault.
Do you believe in poetry?
It’s just somethin’ to report to your superiors?
Now I need everybody to take a deep breath.
Is this paper weight?
A ninny of a poem,
a filler for time shares.
Wanna see the real thing?
Wanna see it?
You do?
Do you thirst for it?

I’m on a bank of the Lord
deliverin’ the paper.
A big decision,
and I’m not safe.
Ask you another question.
Glory did somethin’?
Whoa my poem just went in the air.
It’s gonna take some doin’
I rush this right through.
I’m 33-years-old,
givin’ out a lot of free material.
They killed him.
Damn,
you got your hands on me.
Do you get me my poetry constituents?

Fire in the yard,
I’m gonna put some poetry someplace else,
a whole nuther anthem from here.
I don’t trust you.
You’ll kick me out for poetry.
You won’t even give me a chance
to bring my dogs to town
my poetry has made you so mad.

This is the price you pay for poetry.
They take from you what you love.
They make you know you must comply
in the bowels of the truth
and keep your poem from the public mind
that would change minds.

“Faiths Are Only a Doubt”,
or whatever title it bears,
the poem I’m waiting for
to set the record straight,
is blowin’ in the wind.
Can you capitalism that?
Can capitalism show that?

Pieces of Truth

Donald Trump official portrait, 2025 (public domain)
Do me a favor,
blind yourself to where you don’t see.
There was an executive order here
that pit man against man,
shot men
and arranged to murder more.
Can we look at the oligarchy?

I’ve seen you in rivers of hate
you just think you put on for show.
Make a wide trench
and make that the border with Mexico
and fill it with orders and snakes,
great big alligators.
Did you say this to your aids?
The orders are to shoot people.
That’s illegal Mr. President.
Then shoot them in the legs.

I don’t think anybody understood that.
A mean joke you say.
It was the reality he thought about,
never mind the children that crossed too,
the grandpas and women with babies,
any ole human being that wants a better life,
and you said he was joking.
Let’s put the death penalty all along this land,
press people to use it.
We’re gonna make them pay
a blood lust so dear
you love the president for it.
I’d reach for the psychopath in the room
and don’t give him arms to kill people.

Can you see the character of a man that wants to kill?
That’s the president,
and you think he’s joking.
Let’s appease Hitler, shall we?
He hasn’t become the meanest man alive,
what we realized
after the fact.

Now ole Trump’s got an agenda.
It’s not to make America safe.
We put our egos where our mouth is.
America first means Trump first.

You don’t know the national politics
that makes your ego identify with its nation
like it’s you.
It’s a constituent landmass.
The ego is made up of such as these,
your gender your identity
or a race and a peoplehood,
sexuality if yours is the odd man out,
and the gas it all of religion.
I can name more.

Let’s put the most powerful nation on Earth
Trump first,
never mind the responsibility
of being your brother’s keeper.
Higher ideals no longer apply.
We are selfish and revel in it.
Fuck the world
you dirty bastards,
is that what this all means?

Is that how a kid sees it?
How many would share their toys?
I don’t think you’re lookin’ at the younger generation
and what this means to their grow up.
Can I kill people momma
if they make me mad?

Sit with yourself a moment.
If Trump could kill his enemies would he?
We’re talking about the character of a man
that lets hate rule his room.
Seething with ill will,
he justifies a nation.
It don’t come out right.

Can we cross this again?
History has put these men in power over and over.
You’re flattered.
He has the character you wear,
mean-mouthed,
hate this person and that individual.
Send them all back to China!
Okay you put the mass in power,
it’s not gonna be a good human being rules yah.
I think even the Bible makes deacons exceptional.
Now tell me again the Bible makes place for him.

I don’t think you’re lookin’ at dictators
that steal the hearts and minds of the mass
and just please your undeveloped, brass nature.
Every nation lives like this,
and that’s why we call it populist today.

Oh what pride the Nazis wore
in their cruelty,
in their disregard for human life
and diversity,
and they all wore the nationalism pin
and wanted you to behave like them.
Can we take a step backwards?
Can we just almost commit suicide
with the power we’ve given one man?

You don’t see it, do yah?
Look into his eyes.
There’s a killer there.
I don’t know what history will unfold,
but this man can’t be right
in the history books of tomorrow.
Revel in him now,
praise his name;
you’re on dangerous ground.
He’s got the end of the world in his eyes.
Can you see it?

No, he won’t stage that.
It’s just what he’s made of,
the world leader of selfishness
and this is mine.
He won’t bring the apocalypse,
nothing close,
but we will be so embarrassed
as Americans
when his power comes to a close.
MAGA hell,
he brought shame.

There is something
ninja.
He can walk around
clothed in a smiling president
and assassinate so many people’s lives
with deportation,
the death penalty,
and bring it on climate change.
Wow,
there is something.
He’s not my most selfish person in the world.
He’s not my most selfish.
To Earth
had this lion king thing,
except maybe I’ll get on the other side.
One caught right here:
definitely not a good person.

You’re not gonna find anyone to build your snowman for yah
that froze all cooperation missed their forgiveness key.
Can you see that children?
He just broke in my house
and stole all my transgender people.
They must evoke the 5th Amendment or die.
You’re gonna stay there
and hope we have policy changes on Earth.
I’m pregnant.
Oh my God the 14th Amendment’s in there,
right at the moment of conception.
I tell yah an embryo’s not a person yet,
even if they have the right to be.
You can’t see what you’re doin’,
takin’ the Constitution as the folly in the room,
what tells lies.

I’m sure you don’t like talkin’ to me,
but I’m the medicine.
It’s not that human
I’m talking about.
You got too much action,
storm as big as he is.
I think you and I see a woman
stand in our shoes.
Take themselves very differently.
That’s not a pedophile.
That’s a lover of children that does not molest children.

Don’t be so wrapped up in pronouns
or who’s speakin’ the poem.
You savvy a woman speak?

In his vital.
You don’t know the breakdown of the human being.
It’s not a mind and body problem.
A vital being fits in there
just as pretty as you please,
mitigating between the two.
If we knew this we’d understand gender discrepancies,
and we’d never discount the body.
I have a mental male,
vital female,
and physical male.
What do you got?
Do you see where it all adds up?
Don’t get mad at it
and cut if off.

Do you see the human being?
We didn’t go to the same place.
We went to the four winds,
and it was diversity made us equal.
Did yah hear me Trump?
Let’s put white Americans on top
by making sure they stay on top
and get rid of every program that don’t
put them there.
I’m callin’ the shots—
systemic racism.

I’ve gotta get off this island
and give the right blues for my speak,
and who do I address now?
The oneness body of the United States.
It’s bigger than the world.

It includes every man, woman, and child
in the world.
Can you see that oneness big?
Not in an amalgamated mass.
We give each person their personhood
and allow them to be Americans or whatever.
They’re just not more important than Nicaraguans
as human as they are,
but we know they can’t all be Americans.
We just differentiate with love not hate,
or at least goodwill.
Do you know the difference?

Inside a nation we see the world.
The nation’s not greater than it.
You’re just not lookin’ at the world right.
You’re lookin’ at it in terms of you,
like your ego’s your nation,
and you can’t even get that right.
No oneness circle there, is there?

Are you the center of the world or what?
It’s so complicated in here.
I’m standin’ right in the center of the world don’t you see?
And that’s the fault of everyone.
A common language like them best,
the same culture,
and we are so wrapped around skin color,
racial features.
Hello you there and me,
fellow white people,
or maybe it's
black people,
or all Native Americans.

Or maybe religion gets your dick?
We all come from the same hole,
and it’s a blessed hole, is it not?
We are oneness speakers,
how we identify with our beloved group.
They’re in the center of the world with us.
Are we just gonna drop oneness in the sand?

If you can identify with a nation you can identify with the world.
We are all there don’t you see,
in the oneness yard,
even Trump,
but not his hate,
no one’s hate.
A poem has made a bill of it,
showin’ the world his,
like it’s what he does the executive office with.
There it is.
Give him the shoes of a savior?
You’ve got to be kidding me.

If we get into the deep roots of the poem,
there’s an imbecile here,
and it’s not Trump.
I can see him so clearly because I’ve failed mine
in great dark rooms.
Shut up my speaker said;
you are so pleasing to your humanity now.
I’ve gotta tell yah
I don’t have room to talk,
but can we still meet at poem’s end
I’ve shown you some truth?
It doesn’t make freeways,
but it lights up a path, you know?
And we’ve got to get hate out of the room.
That’s the item we wear.
Do you hear me Trump?
A self-reflective nightmare,
I voted for this one.

Gardening deep in transition’s ways
a like broadcast.
Its own title
shows its inadequacies.
I don’t know how many people voted for Trump,
but I’ve offended half the nation.
Half the nation,
I haven’t pleased them in liberties.
I’ve just damaged their pride.
I’ve lost my way
they say.
I can’t get Trump right.

There’s a man there that loves his nation
and doesn’t want the government to interfere in people’s lives,
unless you’re a part of the groups he mentions
he thinks have slammed the nation
or committed heinous crimes.
He’s a figure standin’ up to tall water
and not afraid to speak his mouth.
He loves kin and family.
He champions Israel.
This is a good thing in a world that needs Israel,
and he sees the war with China
to make them back down
and be careful with him.
He’s not a filibuster
that excites for war.

He’s tempered there,
and he may bring the cost of livin’ down.

Part of me would vote for him too
if I didn’t have my eyes open on human nature,
studying you.
He’s mean he’s cruel,
and we don’t need that.
We need to be kind to one another
and learn how to get along.
Isn’t that what you teach your children
in Sunday School?

I think you’ve lost your moorings
from the true reason Christ came.
It wasn’t to judge the quick and the dead.
Now you’ve entered him into politics
like Trump represents him,
like you want to take over politics,
not likin’ gender fluidity
and gays teachin’ children
and another host of stuff,
but can you just stop a minute
and study right and wrong,
the fundamentals of it,
be good to one another,
not just your group or clan?

Do you really want a theocracy?
I know that
will destroy our nation.
I’m talkin’ to power.
It would take another three thousand years
to get it back
the way we wanted it,
people themselves have a nature like Christ,
and they get along.
Can you hear my foot school?
We don’t need against the law.
We need love one another
and be good to each other.
Isn’t that the law written on our hearts?

Goodness rises from within
when we open to the best in us,
the highest.
We need the liberty to do that,
because it’s trial and error with each of us.
It’s not a religion we are trying to cement on this planet.
It’s help your brother and love.
It’s be kind to your sister
and hold her up.
I know you want everybody Christians,
but where would that lead us
truthfully, honestly?
It won’t lead us there.
You’ve put Trump in that place
as God’s helper.
Okay is he there?
What attracted you to Christ to begin with?
Is that Trump?

Would you put Trump in God’s shoes
that’s the way God acts in the world?
Is that what you want your children to emulate?
Does Trump’s behavior satisfy some raw nerve,
or is it really the highest in man?
We need high right now not low
from our president.
Do you hear me now?