Bill
I love your show. Big fan of it. I have been writing poems and stories for decades. I am a retired Foreign Service officer originally from Berkeley, California. I hope that you will like these poems and I give you permission to use them if you like and would love to appear on your show.
thanks
Jake Aller
My poem, Strong Wine has been published in 45 magazine!
check it out at
https://45magazineiwa.com45 magazine publishes Strong Wine2019/11/14/strong-wine/
cosmic Haiku and other short poems
Strong Wine
One night I was starring
In my wine glass
Deep in thought
When I saw
Something in my wine
That haunts me still
I saw in the bottom of the glass
Evil dooers abandon evil
And became saints
I saw rich men give up
Their awesome greed
And poor people
Awarded dignity
And all men
Became brothers
All women
Became sisters
And war ended once and for all
And peace broke out
And hatred disappear
And I stared
Into my glass wine
I drink the wine
Hoping the vision
Would infect me
And change the world
But alas the world
Remained the same
The evil doers came back
The rich continued to conspire
And the poor still remained poor
And the war continued on and on
So I drank my wine
And went to sleep
Written by Jake Cosmos Aller – Incheon, South Korea
Tiger Shark Published my poem, A Poet’s Trial based on a recent nightmare
I find myself in a trial
Accused of harboring anti-state opinions
Of writing scurrilous seditious treasonous ‘poems’
Of encouraging disrespect for religious sensitivity
Of mocking God, Christianity and Christian values
The lead prosecutor in the case
Has decided to make me the poster boy
Thousands more have been arrested
Blogs have been taken over
Under the Protect American Freedom Act
Enacted by executive order
After Congress was suspended
The law the prosecutor reminds us
Is pretty clear
It is illegal to publish
Or to say in public
Obscene, seditious, anti-state
anti-American, anti-Christian
material of any type
Illegal to mock political
and business leaders,
And church leaders
Illegal to question
the motives of those in power
Illegal to print
publish classified material
Illegal to access such materials
online Or in print
The internet has been cleaned up
Access to such sites banned
And most of my work
has been banned
As well as the work
of all the other bloggers
Arrested during
‘Operation Restoring American Freedom’
And illegal to praise
the enemies of the United States
in the GWT – global war against terror
All of these provisions were enacted
under valid emergency provisions
and were enacted to preserve
and protect the freedom of Americans
to be free from such seditious trash
no one should be allowed
to publish such material
it is anti-American
to the core
the prosecutor announces
they will prove
I am guilty of all of these crimes
My private journals
my blog musings
my face book postings
as are my dream journals
And after hours of entering
this into the records
the prosecutor rest
Saying I am the most dangerous man
In America
My defense attorney quotes
hundreds of years of supreme court
and other legal precedents
Saying that writers can publish
whatever they want to publish
with a few exceptions.
The national security exceptions
do not apply because
I did not reveal classified information
and because it was clear
that my publications were intended
as either satire or dark political humor
or horror stories and poems.
If you read or saw sites online
my work was actually pretty tame
What was at stake
was whether Americans
had a right to mock their leaders
whether we had a right to express our opinion
and whether we had any freedom left.
It used to be that one
had a certain expectation of privacy
when writing in one’s personal journals
or diaries
If I am found guilty
then no American
will ever be free to think,
or write or express anything
other than the official party line
and America will become
Just another right wing
authoritarian fascist state.
The judge rules that those issues
are irrelevant.
All that is relevant is
did I knowingly write material
that violates the current law?
My defense attorney
noted that everything
I wrote was legal
under prevailing laws
at the time I wrote them
Since my arrest
under the new law
I have not been allowed
near a computer
nor allowed to write in a journal,
nor allowed reading material
other than a bible
and I am not a Christian.
I have been kept in solidarity confinement
for demanding what until
now was allowed to prisoners
in pre-trial confinement,
access to the internet,
phone calls
visits from friends and family
and exercise
All denied
and in fact
for the first four months of detention
I was lost in the system
My wife and family members
never told
Where I was
I was disappeared
No record was made
Where I was
I was a cypher
a ghost in the machine
i did not exist
In fact,
when my wife
hired a lawyer
And demanded to know where I was
The government’s position was
that was classified
And she had no need to know
And I have been tortured
during interrogations
where lawyers were not permitted
despite my asking for them
The prosecutor objected
saying that everything was done
under the provisions
of the Protect American Freedom Act
enacted while the Congress
was suspended
due to the national emergency
And the Protect American Freedom Act provisions
explicitly state that the act
and its implementation are beyond judicial review
I ask the court
to let me speak
I make an impassioned plea
to let me and my fellow bloggers go
and to rule that the Protect American Freedom Act
is unconstitutional
and while Congress has been illegally suspended
the constitution is still the law of the land
and the Supreme Court has not been outlawed yet.
All the actions of the government
Including suspending the congress
Ruling by emergency decree
are illegal and against the constitution
The Preserve American Freedom Act
Which is a mockery of the constitution
And bill of rights
All Are the hallmarks
of a fascist dictatorship
The type of government
That we fought world war 11 against
And just for the record
Thank you so much for calling me
The most dangerous man in America
That will be the title
of my next book
I guarantee that someday soon
I will write it
I turn to the Prosecutor
and said
Sir I think
our dear leader
made a mistake on that
Might want to arrest the Supreme Court,
and all the other judges as well
And declare that the Constitution
has been suspended for good
as it is no longer relevant
and our dear leader
is the greatest
most intelligent leader
we have ever had
I apologize for my writing
If it offended his sensitivities
So be it
And calling him a fascist
It used to be that stating
a factual statement
Was a legal defense
Look it up
He is a fascist dictator
It is not just me saying that
And while you are it
if you can find the time
after you finish kissing the president’s ass
that is
You should tell the dear leader
to not stop there
He should declare
the Democratic party illegal
and arrest all democratic elected official
Why not?
Send them all to prison.
That’s what I advise the Dear leader to do
The Judge laughs
and the Prosecutor fumes
The jury rules
unanimously that I am not guilty.
The judge asks
for an emergency supreme court review
of the constitutional provisions we cite
I am ordered released from prison
The next day
I am rearrested on new charges pending the appeal.
The Supreme Court rules in my favor
and I am ordered free again
I return home a hero
As the constitution has been restored
And the President removed from office
After the people’s revolt
Drove him from office
Lost and Found By John (Jake) Cosmos Aller
Published in issue 13<
tiger shark
I was lost
you found me
You walked
out of my dreams
And into my life
And that made
all the difference In the world
Hot Coffee
I like my coffee
Like women
hot as hell
But sweet as heaven
Published in Eskimo Pie December 2016
Published in Coffee with Underhill January 2017
111 The Universe has published my cat poems
“The Cosmic Cat from Berkeley”
I next encountered the divine
Many years later in Berkeley, California
I had gone home
to be with my Mother
While taking leave
from my job in the Foreign Service
I had two weeks there by myself
My wife came later
near the end of the trip
Every morning I woke up
had coffee
Did yoga
Spoke to my mother
Who was sliding into dementia
Day by day
Then I would go out
And explore the city
Go to a museum
Go to one neighborhood
And just be there
Rediscovering the Bay area
After years of being away
Having dinner
with old friends
Seeing movies etc
Every morning
A black cat came to visit
The cat was friendly
and waited for me
And then would join me
in my morning rambles
Following me to the bus stop
I stated talking to the black cat
He looked at me
with the spark of divinity
In his dark eyes
I called him the cosmic cat
He seemed to like that
He would look at me
And I opened up to him
Told the cat
all my dark secrets
As I walked the streets
Of the old neighborhood
Every morning
and every evening
the cat
Would be there to greet me
And to carry out our endless conversation
Then I had to leave
And in our final conversation
I asked the cosmic cat
Say, Cosmic Cat
are you just a cat
Or are you a demonic cat
Are you possessed by God
Or by Satan ?
The cat looked at me
And I realized that God
Was indeed residing in the cat
But that god was residing everywhere
All I had to do was open my mind
And the rest would follow
So I said Good bye
to the cosmic cat
And he purred
and came up to me
And I felt the comforting
presence of the divine
As I said goodbye to the cosmic cat
And said goodbye to my mother
As this was the last time
That we would be able to really talk
I told my mother
about the cosmic cat
She smiled
and said that the cat was there for me
and her to comfort us both
in our hour of need
and that the cat
was indeed a cosmic cat
Buddha Cat of Edsall Road
I had another encounter
With the divine recently
Another Cosmic cat perhaps
Perhaps not
who knows
or what cats are
are they aliens from another dimension?
or was he channeling God
I called him the Buddha cat
For the cat loves
Sitting in a meditative pose
Not moving<span
Just starting at me
With his soulful deep eyes
Boring into my soul
exploring all my secret thoughts
the buddha cat
does not move does not
react as he isso deep
into his interior mediation
truly in tune
with the cat universe
and the cosmos as well
the buddha cat
seems to be one
with God
one with Buddha
One with Allah
And all the other
Billion names of God
Known and unknown
The buddha cat
can teach us all
About the art of meditation
As he zones inward
And loses his soul
Joining the cosmos
And becoming The buddha cat
The buddha cat
Lives in a modest Town house
In a modest suburb
Proving yet again
The divine spirit of God
Is everywhere all around us
The buddha cat
Reminds us all
To look for god
In the everyday
All around us
If we but have eyes
to see
To see God