Rooftop Poetry Club - Stephen Zabaldo

Stephen Zabaldo

Bio:
I am a senior, "non-traditional student" (old guy) at Buff State embarking on a second career in the Elementary Education/English Extension program. I am married to a wonderful woman and have a beautiful nine-year-old boy. One lifetime goal I have set for myself is to someday publish a creative work. Poetry is the form of expression I am currently most engaged in, but I would like to write a short story based on personal experiences from a cross-country hitchhiking adventure. Most of my writing expresses my life philosophies or social commentary and allows me to examine my convictions.

Poems:

True Colors

Civility lost pace with civilization
The savage became more deadly
He bore arms and propaganda
Racists preyed on ignorance
Rationalized in the name of God
Heralded the misguided Christian
agenda
Marshaled the brotherhood
The savage bears arms and
propaganda
His bullets thin the masses
He ministers the rhetoric;
My God's better than your God
This is the exclusive new order, and
You!? Are not like me.

White Devil

Gloating demon
I despise you
You abuse me, then
make me love you
Consume me as I consume you.
Rend flesh from my bones
slowly, willfully,
Like maggots in a bloated corpse.
Devour my will
Ravenous, insatiable
Force me to betray myself,
Rationalize,
vomit denial.
Rejoice foul fiend
at my rabid paranoia.
I curse you as I push you
in my veins?
So warm.

Progress

burning rotten-egg rubber staining the sky, insulting the
  senses, creating barren lakes and abnormal growths.
basement ooze, playground sludge?cancer,
  miscarriages, suicides?responsibility; homeless like
  the victims.
we didn't know, how could we know. the mantra
  suffered by the inquisitors; their words as toxic as their
  product. ignorance is bliss?heavenly bliss; joy in the
  maker's domain.
the others endure the agony of knowledge and lament,
  fight, surrender, deny, stay and reclaim, abandon and
  leave.
below mount Wilson a chocolate donut alien invader
  hovers over los angeles, exiling the elderly and
  asthmatic, burning eyes and shutting windows.
bacteria, syringes, petroleum products and byproducts
  surf and sunbathe on the jersey shore storming castles
  made of sand and ignorance; unnatural as immortality