Protection ~ From faces of Kenya ~ Philip Brent Digital Art and Photography ~ Premiering 9/27

To any who have wondered where I’ve been of late online (I hope there will be one or two) perhaps the following verse will explain. I have been working on other writings, though still trying to edit them into my best form. I’ve also spent some time painting digitally, while I wait for a surgically repaired shoulder to heal.

Finally, having been to Kenya only last year to visit friends as close as sisters, I am greatly saddened. We went to the mall recently attacked by the cowardly people who style themselves patriots or rebels, or who knows what. They will always find a way to justify their perfidy, their murder, mayhem and destruction.

I am despondent and despair all of the cowardly acts on innocents around the globe. No matter how just we believe our cause, it has no moral ground to stand upon if it sanctions the kidnap and murder of innocent civilians. If only we all understand we are all the same. We are people who smile, frown, laugh, cry, hope, despair, who try to live a full and satisfying life, and hoping to make a better life for our children and future generations. We are one.

KEEPING UP, CATCHING UP

I can’t keep up. I can’t catch up.
How does anyone do it?
In a modern world so full
Of clash, clamor, clang and boom

Just the simple daily chores
Seem mountainous and daunting
No waiting pass I can forge through
To see the promised land of time

There I could freely share my gifts
Be nourished by the gifts of others
But wait, a shooting, bomb, a horror
Or someone’s having pizza dinner

So do my words, my art, my thought
Impinge upon the time of others?
Well not so much these hectic days
I’m running to retrieve my self, my song

Where quips and likes and voyeur views
Shared with social friends and neighbors
Reflect my contributions to the whole
Am I thought mad to even try to  do better

Is it hubris thinks my views and hopes
Of peace and plenty matter much
My vision wrought of paint, pixels, words
Challenging our current norms: insanity

Though others sashay daily forth
Radiantly garbed in my chosen mediums
Do they ever wonder why we try
Even as the inspire and inundate me

Have all the others found the secret
The world has kept hidden from me
Or are we but blind lunatics together
And some scream more loudly, more often

When then will my world, this world make sense
Where senseless killing seems the norm
Where power-mongers horde their greed
And all weep silently, as we agree to suffer

The bombs and bullets of outrageous fortune
Thrown by mad men and their minions
Though they be 10,000 miles and more away
We cannot but stare and tremble wordless

We are but fodder on the hearth fires
Of those who control and stoke the flames
Flames which distract us from seeing clearly
Only sorry for those burning hotter, faster

Thankful we but feel the heat and not the flame
We warm our hands on other people’s strife
Instead of choosing to douse the flames
And stand together against the match and fuel

Yet I have trouble keeping up with all my days
How can I stand up alone, how can I not
Driven to hope, to create, to share my vision
No matter how far behind I run, I must

I run my race alone, shouting to all and sundry
Believing my victory would be more than mine alone
And who knows what the future may unveil, reveal
I’m running last, though other might catch up with me.