Alien Nation and When Akhenaten Died

Alien Nation

We abandoned our tents
Down in the occupied zone
When the blue and shielded
Storm troopers came with fire

Hoses in their hands to wash
Our stain off the lands that we
Had taken from the patriarchs
That had forsaken the rest of us

Arrested all the rest of us
Who could not run away in time
Or travel wormholes to another bench
Or mark another sign against our oppressors

A photo drone flew out between the pillars
Of the walled fortress we had besieged
Sent to identify the leaders
Of the leaderless milling crowd

Our android and idevices flash mobbed
Marching orders, gathering points
Confrontation locations to counter demonstrate
The Tea baggers in Uncle Sam suits

Chanting get a job you slackers, give us back
Our park our fantasies our oppressors
For we cannot live without them
Feeding us the meaning of our lives

Black helicopters with blue lights
Lit the clouds, the tear gas skies
Rubber bullets shattered skulls
Among the peaceful souls assembled

To face down the parasites
Of money and power and greed
Of haunted politicians afraid to
Let us be the land of the free

WHEN AKHENATEN DIED

In ancient Egypt there were many Gods
of light of grain of moon of fertility
of resurrection wrath rising tides

Ra the hawk of two horizons, the Sun
at midday, father of Pharaohs and all
that grew in the warmth and flood of time

Bes the ugly, God of Marriage
watched over babes and women
his twisted body repelling evil

Tawaret his wife, part lioness
part pregnant hippopotamus
was more popular and more beautiful

Thoth the God of writing and wisdom
was manifest as Ibis, most sacred bird
giving himself enemas with his beak

Life was sweet and God was many
Life was sweet and all gods
were aspects of the one, the creation

Life was sweet for the Pharaoh
Life was sweet for the court and courtesans
for artisans, scribes, suck ups and sycophants

Temples were built on the backs of lackeys
Pyramids built of flayed skin and bone
boils and pestilence the life of the land

Oh history is a list of monuments
Oh people are dust
Oh God deliver us from God

Akhenaten had a vision
that God was one
that God was exclusive

That God was not the master of Gods
That God was alone the creation and creator
That One and only One reality was true

Ra and Thoth and all the others languished
in the gardens of Amun the self created
banished from the two kingdoms

When Akhenaten died, so did the One God
His city was abandoned
the old gods returned

Akhenaten’s statues were defaced
All reference to him chiseled from the stones
grave diggers spat on his tomb

And would not rob it

—

Early in his career, Charles had an underground play (“Visigoths”) produced in Los Angeles, which led to script writing contracts for several TV series. He hated the work, fled Hollywood, got an MFA in poetry, and went to Iran to teach literature at several Universities. For five years, he edited Seizure, a magazine of poetry and fiction. He has also been a cab driver, Skid Row social worker, refugee officer in camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Costa Rica, and owner of a tour company. Recent published work includes stories and poems .in Liebamour, Writers Bloc, Commonline Journal, The Bactrian Room, Scythe, and Blueline, and articles in Adirondack Life.