Ron Stock Poems

Hit Title Date Added
1.
You Don't Gotta Go To No God-Damn School To Be A Poet

My best friend of forty-five years died not too long ago
and like the fool I used to be I reacted with machismo.
I was building a home on a mesa of wild rabbits and sage,
thinking about my pal I was depressed, angry, in a rage.
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2.
A Love Poem For Endangered Species

These friends need our help who are swimming in the water.
The Nile crocodile and the Congo clawless otter.
The American alligator and the Ganges River dolphin.
The Loggerhead sea turtle and the Utah Lake sculpin.
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3.
For A Few Hours We Were All The Same

of Hurricane Patricia slamming into the little fishing village of La Manzanilla del Mar, Mexico, on October 23,2015, in the late afternoon, early evening light, until darkness
of palm trees that swished and swayed like pulsating jellyfish in the violent turbulence
of water-drenched green leaves pasted in elaborate patterns across colorful adobe walls
of a baby chick, in a nest, in a weak tree, of how it survived 165 mph winds, or not
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4.
Do Not Become Attached Nor Afraid

The last week of 1968. In an old white house called The Ghetto West in Kalamazoo. A friend and I are in a basement room of barn wood walls and carpeting green and blue. A groovy space with a universe of stars painted on a flat black ceiling, candles galore, incense burning, and the mellow sounds from a stereo on the edge of a sunken floor.
I'm on my back, eyes closed, on the rim, head propped against a pillow. Mort, my guide, has asked me to swallow a 550-microgram tab of LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide.
Mort reads from The Psychedelic Experience; Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book based upon The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I feel woozy, but I am able to listen. 'O Ron, the time has come for you to seek new levels of reality. Your ego and the Ron game are about to cease. You are about to be set face to face with the clear light. Do not become attached nor afraid.' Sometime later, musical notes become raw vibrant colors that merge and explode into dazzling molecular waves of energy. I sit up, open my eyes. The walls are vibrating, side to side, dancing, up and down, shimmying, to and fro, just before they pulsate into an intense red hot flame and melt away. Faaaaar out! I
think. But I did think. The point is not to think. To let go. To blow out, the flame of thought. To find the clear light. I lie down, relax, try to keep my, Ego Death, in sight. Eyes closed, kaleidoscopic images cascade over a spring of liquid inside my glistening arteries. Red, orange, and yellow psychedelic spinning childhood memories swirl, mingle, fuse with a retinal circus of floating amoebic forms. Darwinian insights carry my mind's eye back down the flow of time until the drumbeat of my heart, beats, with
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5.
Exploring The Dark Side Of The Garden Of Eden

Roger,35, is a tall, blond, thickset, redneck handyman, and as strong as a buffalo. He's dressed in a green-checkered shirt, brown safari hat, tattered jeans. His son, Denny,9, is small, thin-skinned, sweet. He collects stamps, listens to rap, and today wears tan pants, a teal coat, black tennis shoes, a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. It's cool in the Northwest. A mist hangs, below soft gray clouds and narrow bands of pale-blue violet sky. Rolling swells blanket nervous seas. A slight breeze whisks away the tips of dancing waves.
Roger and Denny are in a 15-foot aluminum boat. Roger is fishing for Sockeye Salmon in Puget Sound, near a gentle rip tide racing through a whitewater channel. The outboard motor churns, as Roger points his boat into the flow of the tide, and remains stationary. Next, he stands, steadies the throttle arm with one knee, casts his lure into a small pool, and almost immediately hooks a big, strong, fighting fish. Salmon like to run away from the tug so Roger gives out line. When his prey tires he tries to reel it back in, but before he can, this determined fish pulls his boat into a spinning vortex measuring over 50 feet wide. As the craft circles around just inside the perimeter of the vortex, Roger, Booming Yahoos, holds his pole over his head, while he, the terrified boy, and boat, are pirouetting around and around under his stationary rod and reel. All laughing stops when Roger's line tangles on the propeller blade and snaps. The beast, swims free. The engine sputters, dies.
A loud whine as Denny, dizzy, ashen-faced, slumps to the floor of the boat now spinning around in ever smaller and faster circles. With no oars on board to pull out of the vortex, Roger tilts the engine up, reaches down to untangle his line from the prop with a knife, finishes, lowers the motor, stands again, and pulls on the starting cord. The engine does not turn over. Roger pulls until the engine ignites, but the throttle with the over-sensitive spring is open too far, so while standing, when the motor sparks to life, the boat slings
Roger over a gunnel into the swirling sea. So now boy, in boat, with churning outboard motor jerked aside, and man, in water, are being sucked down into the funneling hole.
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6.
The Unforgivable Sins Of Sodom And Gomorrah

A clanging bell in the steeple of a small, white clapboard Southern church invited folks to worship for an hour or so. The knell resonated in the cool air over a parking lot with older cars, around the well-maintained lawn and shrubbery, and through an orchard of old apple trees before dissolving into a lush green landscape, of rolling hills.
Three narrow, arched, stained-glass windows high off the ground, were framed into the east and west walls. A utility door opened to the back, the south. And a large, arched, bright red door, up three steps, under an elevated, covered front porch between two more stained-glass windows, welcomed the black congregation at the entrance.
Today's sermon, delivered by robust Reverend Baker, was a message on the sins of homosexuality. Sodomy. His words, he believed, delivered directly from God, focused on passages from the Bible: One: Jude 6-7. 'Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, in like manner, giving themselves to fornication and going after
strange flesh, are set forth as an example and will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire.' Two, Leviticus 18: 13: 'If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall be put to death.'
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7.
An Old Rosewood Cane

1947. The sky was blue, the sun hot, the clouds white, the water cool.

Short, squat, Dr. Chicky,71, was sitting on a beach of fine white sand, on the shoreline of Lake Huron, in Michigan, his body lightly tanned, as he sipped mint tea, read exotic passages from a D. H. Lawrence book, and occasionally thought of the accident, and the driver who almost took his life, and left, in fact, both legs, from ankles to thighs, in solid plaster casts. Now, he hobbled around with two old rosewood canes; obviously, not very fast.
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8.
Bullies Of A Feather Fly Together

This is the story of two young bullies. One big, strong. The other, bigger, stronger. The location, a small Mexican seaside pueblo. Our first bully is shaped like a big ox, but somewhat better looking, and not as dark. He's carmel-skinned, with a broad head, wide engaging eyes, traditional black hair, huge hands, and shoulders like Muhammed Ali. He was a bully even as a little boy, taught by his padre to use his size to take whatever he wanted. A hand-me-down bully law, as his padre was taught by his padre. The women of la casa, both grandmothers, the mother, and several sisters, were large as well. I have no personal reason to believe they were bullies except in the capacity of enablers. Such is the complex nature of the Hispanic culture. Family oriented. Macho dominated.
This first young bully, Jose, worked for me as a peon one morning shoveling fill dirt inside the foundation of my current house. I'd been warned about Jose's family, but was desperate to finish the prep work before the steel and concrete hombres arrived the next day. Jose didn't work very hard, in fact, Jose didn't work at all. For some reason, he brought along a compañero, and the two men chatted all morning as Jose leaned over the wooden handle of his steel rake. I paid him at noon and let him go, wondering, if at some point I might endure his wrath. When Jose left, he said, "No hay problema, Señor."
The "no hay problema" part didn't turn out to be quite true. One week later, at a festival on the square, I bumped into Jose and two of his amigoes. I stuck out my open right hand as a gesture of continued friendship. Jose took my hand in his right hand. Squeezed tightly. He wrapped his left hand around my wrist, then removed his right hand from my handshake, grabbed my four fingers tightly, and pressed them back on my wrist at a 90 degree angle. Jose then said in perfect English, "I could break your hand right now and you would remember me for the rest of your life." Terrified. I was terrified, at the prospect of living with four mangled fingers and a broken, deformed wrist. I laughed.
"Jose, why would you want to do that? I thought we were friends? " Jose looked me in the eye. We both knew this could be a decision that would severely change my life. And possibly his. He smiled, let go of my hand, and walked away. I remember that moment.
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9.
Grampa Made A Boo Boo

In July I discovered seven rattlesnakes in my flower garden. The seventh serpent, had inadvertently threaded and trapped itself inside two adjacent holes of a chicken wire fence. And because it had eaten a rodent or bird, could not twist, squirm, or pull the bulge in it's body forward. Nor, could it squiggle out in reverse, so trapped itself to extinction.
I recently learned that Big Oil executives and corrupt Congressmen do not ring true. The Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, is on a witch hunt. Mr. Smith, has issued more subpoenas in his 3 years as Chairman, than the Committee has issued in 60 years. Mr. Smith, is demanding emails from organizations, like the Union of Concerned Scientists, who are investigating the possibility that Exxon/Mobil and other oil companies, have intentionally, distorted the American public's understanding of climate science. Mr. Smith, has received $600,000 from the oil industry. Fraudulent, lying, climate change deniers like Mr. Smith, and fraudulent, lying, Exxon/Mobile executives, are leading our species to it's own extinction.
I've known from childhood that the Bible does not ring true. Too many false prophets making too much money selling the idea of resurrection, when Jesus will give you a new body, not your old body as a wildlife creature, but a new body, to be united with your born-again spirit. Wrong. Your wildlife body is the only body you will ever have. Your energy may mingle in the universe, but cognizant, eternal life in heaven, is total hogwash.
Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, is Chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee. Mr. Inhofe, is a climate change denier who, coincidentally, has received 1.8 million dollars from the oil industry. Mr. Inhofe, wrote a book declaring climate change to be the "greatest hoax" perpetrated on humanity. Mr. Inhofe, recently brought a snowball onto the floor of the Senate and declared; this is persuasive evidence that climate change is a hoax. I assume his declaration was based entirely on faith, because Mr. Inhofe, is a devout Christian who believes in the prophesy of the Bible. God, has assured Mr. Inhofe, that there is absolutely nothing to fear regarding global warming or climate change. I quote Mr. Inhofe, "The arrogance of people, to think we human beings would be able to change what He, is doing in the climate, is to me, outrageous."
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10.
A Silly Little Rhyming Love Poem (For Melody)

When a man has spent his worth,
lying six feet under the earth.
Body stiff below the ground,
looking up towards a mound.
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