Peace and Love

by Larry Goodell

Peace and Love –
evolve backwards into the above.
When everything was perfect.
When was that? 
Do you have a balloon under your hat?
Even the super wealthy live in fear of being
deposed.
In fact I am their fear.
“Those poets, why doesn’t someone shut them up?”
Nobody has it easy and it takes guts to get old.
But if you’ve got to have a goal
Peace is pretty good.
Stick those drones up your ass, Mr. Military Fart-face.
Stop warring against your own people, Everybody.
Go against your petty self-serving nature
Mr. Human and stop putting down women &
       screwing over your neighbor.
You don’t need Viagra, you need
Love by the Acre!
Real love that is blushing with compassion.
The ability to touch and hug yourself
            out of this mess.
You need a benevolent group that can
            calm down your ego.
You got your dharma, your teachings, your Wikipedia,
      your books, your intenet, libraries
     of the world – 
You got your Buddhas, your Jesus, your Moses,
     your Black Elks, your swamis
     your gods galore, your teachers –
But you need your Sangha, like Thich Nhat Hanh says
     you need a community, a community of positive 
                                  interests
     to build up the commons, what’s good for everybody
     everybody gives some for the good of all –
Don’t laugh, it’s possible, it’s inevitable, it’s
filling in the blanks, connecting the dots, seeing the vision
     that exists in love, a talking circle of direction
from the drums of the original land, the indigenous
thoughts and prayers, the cycle of the seasons,
the locality of love, and produce, and
cooperation, a locality of friends not
to gouge each other’s eyes out, or
work each other to death for gain
but to get together to build a platform for song,
for music, for performers, and for the art
of governing ourselves.


10/26/2013 for the 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Albuquerque Reading Performance
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

photograph by Carl Michener-Rodin. l to r: Joe Bottone, Olivia, Steve Rodefer, Bill Pearlman, Beverly Buffington, Mel Buffington, Laura Linsley at the door, Gene Frumkin, Kell and Betsy Robertson with baby Amy, Charlie Vermont, and me (1968, Albuquerque, North 4th Street across from the present El Patio)