Just cause,
I could write about international cataclysm
Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan,
Kashmir, India, Afghanistan,
Jerusalem, Gaza,  Phillipines, Sudan
Twin Towers, Al Queda,  Iran
Suicide bombers, holy war, decapitating a man
Just cause
The objective – to remove demon logic
From cataract view
Obliterate essential evil
Reflected in camouflaged eyes
Beneath burka, kaffia, red white& blue stripped tie
Crusade of lasers, missiles, patriots, tanks roll by
From front line, 24 hours live
I could write about another distant or urban war
I could write about the memory of last century
Only a decade old
I could write about the possibility of a total just cause.

But I choose to write about sex and cigarettes
Football and chicken
A man and a woman
Just cause
There is real mystery
In the way we eat
The way we listen to beauty
The way we take things into out bodies
The way we exhale the pleasure into someone else’s mouth
Round and wet and open
There’s little mystery to me in how
We kill each other
Lose out minds
Kill time

Listen to an Adagio stroke each stroke slow
Relax and feel each finger stroke each note
While fire burns someone else’s home
Heads decapitated, set on sticks held high
Beaten marginalized tortured defiled
Stations local to national report
Of international rape oil spill poison smoke
The drive by battlefield next door
Another just cause
Just another just cause
That challenges our humanity
Just cause “staying sane is amazing in an insane society”
Which is what Eric Fromm said
Sortta about the choice
We all have to make
On how we’re going to live

So I choose to write
About sex and cigarettes
Football and chicken
A man and a woman
Just cause
In all ways
Everything I want to know
Is in the mystery of these exchanges
And the ball is high
Outside there is a warm breeze
And the boats hardly shift
While I drift
Between the smooth water and the kitchen
Want to eat chicken
Go fishin’
Touch down and sleep
Between
Your tongue
You’re warm breeze
Like the smell of home cooking
And there’s the call
And one pass is complete
Watching the smooth water
While smoke curls from your black tobacco
Textures the edge of your fingertips
Touching lip to lip
As the sun slips into the
Final minutes of the game
Rocking to your breath
Hot and heavy caress as you groan
Just cause
Just cause
Just cause
It is so easy to
Just cause.

Eve Brandstein
Los Angeles, Ca.
© March, 2010