As man expired His last Once agin Mother Nature breathed in A parent excrement Concrete and steel Leaving not Even a scratch In geologic time Merely having caught a cold Cold virus Feverish bout Something to sneeze about Un-till returning To natural appetites Where awe is better than knew In the tree of knowledge With wisdom of what can and cannot be forest Upon Mother Nature
Ultimately, this poem is a testament to the sustaining and healing power of Mother Nature. So many times I am struck by the unsustainable practices of so-called civilization. While I am not confident that humankind (unkind?) will be able to avert a monumental collapse of civilization as we know it today, I suspect that humans will survive in some form. Similarly, I strongly suspect than nature will survive. I suspect that humans are not smart enough, nor stupid enough, to end life on this planet. I suspect that humans are not strong enough, nor weak enough, to end life on this planet. While our blind greed is frighteningly persistent, this poem is one vision of Mother Nature, quite naturally, recovering from a virus and fever, and returning to health. Mother Nature is awesome and powerful. In this envisioned scenario, humans don’t make it, at least not in any form resembling our current civilization. In the first line of the poem, I reference the word “man” as expiring, that is, lowercase man, not humankind. I snuck this in as an opening to survive, if in fact, in the yin and yang of life, the patriarchal male force is brought into balance with the nurturing/healing female force. I don’t think that it is any accident that nature, Mother Nature, is typically viewed as female across many human cultures. If we don’t respect females, then we are doomed to an existence far short of our awesome potential, or, perhaps, simply doomed to extinction. May we as a species, one among many, find a balance befitting the awesome benevolence of Mother Nature.
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo Just for the Health of It is my weekly half-hour public health show on WAKT, 106.1 FM Toledo. You can listen at 9:00 AM Tuesdays and Thursdays (after Democracy NOW) on-air or on-line ToledoRadio.org. To listen anytime you want online, […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Mother Earth Has her cycles Look out! Respect her cycles Don’t be a fossil fool Ride that bike! Powered by living humans Not dead relics Exorcise those fossils, fool! Ride that bike! Get that warm feeling And cool breeze The perfect combo Of vigor and refreshment Ride that bike! It’s in your nature And even if it don’t make cents It’s in your interest Do it! Just cause Your Momma Has tolled you too
I wrote this poem at the beginning of bicycling season this year. I get great joy and satisfaction from biking around, human powered, in sync with Mother Nature. I find biking in the city a natural for practicing mindfulness, simply by virtue of the attention required to stay alive and un-maimed from motor vehicles operated by licensed zombies. I appreciate the exercise that biking affords. As I am in my fourth year without a car, my instinct that my car getting totaled was a gift has proven true. I am grateful that I can live well with the sometimes inconvenience of not having a car. I feel some solidarity with the majority of humankind that doesn’t have a motor vehicle. My love affair with Mother Earth grows deeper…
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
As Houston endures that largest rainfall in American history, climate change deniers have a chance to get their feet wet in reality. Please feel free to share this free poster: “Mother Earth – Houston, We Have a Problem – Can You Hear Me Now?”
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Sow culpable Too due nothing President Trump pulls out What little hand He had in Mother Earth’s Safe guarding His oily and gassy mates Coal for everyone! It’s like Christmas!! And stocks sore In the after math Of this unbelievable savior As he Really nailed this won Portending every faux In ascension into heavin’ His big short His wee altitude toward clime Single digit approval Or not As what gives Chump change In loo of climate change
This poem is in response to President (sic) Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris climate change accord. For badder or worse, this clear signal of climate insanity may provide the best united front yet for international resistance to American hegemony; plus, American abdication of global leadership offers opportunities to forge more sane efforts at worldwide solidarity.
“To the dismay of our allies, the White House could any day announce the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But as a patriot and climate activist, I’m not dismayed. I actually want to pull out.
The value of the Paris Agreement is in its aspirational goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, not in its implementation mechanisms, which are voluntary, insufficient, and impossible to monitor. But that modest goal will be breached shortly, which makes the agreement a kind of fig leaf, offering political cover to those who would soft-pedal the runaway climate crisis a while longer.
The U.N. Conference of the Parties is certainly not the organization to constrain powerful, retrenched fossil fuel interests and other bad climate actors and rogue climate states. The Paris agreement affords oil, gas and coal companies a globally visible platform through which to peddle influence and appear engaged on climate change while lobbying for business as usual. That won’t save the climate. At what point do we give up wishful, incremental thinking — that reason will prevail, the free market will adjust, the president’s daughter and son-in-law will dissuade him from the worst climaticide, the Democratic Party will do something, or prior policies which tinker on the margins like the Clean Power Plan won’t be totally obliterated?
I’d argue we’ve reached that point. If Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement, at least we will have clarity instead of false hope.
Who wanted to keep the U.S. in the Paris agreement anyway? People around the world, a majority of Americans, environmentalists and other coastal elites — constituencies for which Trump has shown indifference and/or contempt. Staying in was also favored by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Peabody coal, eBay, HP, General Mills, Kellogg, Tesla and other multinationals the Trump administration would have preferred to keep happy. But let’s face it, they won’t be all that mad the U.S. is pulling out, and the political impact won’t be all that great.
Neither will the environmental impact. In fact, since the agreement lacks teeth, breaking it won’t have any effect on the climate in the short term. But in the longer term, the shock and rethinking it will cause in some circles just might precipitate political and cultural changes we need to stave off climate cataclysm.
Pulling out of Paris will also give the president a political boost. It gives Breitbart and Fox something to crow about and The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN something that’s not Russia-gate to fret over.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to justify or abet Trump and his supporters in climate denial, and I’m not thinking climate activists and the Trump administration will end up in some the kind of strange-bedfellows embrace. Personally, I loathe this administration and find the president’s actions mean, maleficent, and mendacious, though it’s nothing personal. On my very best days I can eke out a couple minutes of meta loving-kindness meditation for the president as a person, but it’s a struggle.
I welcome pulling out of the Paris agreement because it will disrupt our complacency and strengthen the most vigorous avenues of climate action left to us, which are through the courts and direct citizen action. It lends much more credence to the Our Children’s Trust legal argument that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to consider the long-term impact of carbon emissions. It advances the arguments of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in their federal lawsuit for the right to a livable climate. And it strengthens the case for climate activists attempting to raise the “necessity defense” as a justification for citizen climate action, as I and my fellow “valve turners” are doing as we face criminal charges for shutting off emergency valves on oil sands pipelines.
It’s also true that withdrawal from Paris deprives mainstream environmental organizations and the foundations and funders that guide them of a key deliverable, and that could risk eroding support for them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Many of them have pursued an utterly bankrupt strategy of understating the climate problem, negotiating with the fossil fuel industry, and cherry-picking small victories to showcase organizational accomplishments at the expense of a functional movement strategy.
Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement. So as committed climate activist who knows we’re running out of time, I say, let’s get on with it.”
The false propriety of incremental change is being smashed. Let’s join together as one planet, one humanity, to build a lasting consensus that Mother Earth deserves our love and undying respect.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
As things went south South goes north Truly Global warning is real There is an arising From the fires in bellies And home fires burning In efface of doors closed Windows open Those crazy few Committed Those sober many Just sane Mete the seventh generation Au natural As a sentry Before being Borne Heir conditioning The owed Fashion way
This poem goes out to global warming activists and awe those in people’s movements growing in solidarity and size. This poem was triggered this mourning from Predator-in-Chief Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to restart the Dakota Access Pipeline in a direct challenge to native american treaty rights, clean water, and a sane energy policy. Donald Trump, Brexit, and the latest rise in right-wing, authoritarianism will likely spur the uniting of growing global movements and local direct actions to counter such regressive policies and social conditions. Native peoples are, and have for thousands of years, been on the forefront of protecting Mother Earth. Such formidable force and wisdom will confront the frightful farce and foolishness of authoritarianism, oligarchy, patriarchy, capitalism, racism, yoda, yoda, yoda — there is no try, only due. In the missed of this generation, we will find our true north, hearts warming to the seventh generation. We will find a weigh that cannot put down the arising of peoples everywhere there is injustice and anywhere there is injustice. Just US first will be met with justice first. The reckoning is arose, know madder what you call it!
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Round Mid night Countless drops Fall free In to the loving alms Of Mother Earth Making a mud pact With trees, meadow, and flower To dew wet sow ever They thirst for
Life has an incredible capacity for renewal. As the snows begin falling in this winter season, this poem can serve as a reminder that we are one day closer to spring. Even spring in awe of its glory is not my favorite season, due primarily to its muckiness. I, as most humans, have an incredible capacity to see what I don’t like about something. As winners of discontent, it is easy to see the parent flaws in creation, weather it be subzero temps or mucky life springing forth. Nonetheless, in life’s absences or parent death, summer in due course rounds the coroner transcending hour brutal figurings. Even fall has a frolicsome way of upstaging the looming death weave awe faced. Still, the con founding cycles of loss and renewal, life and death, seem to fallow us through life. After witnessing countless of these cycles, how many more must we witness to deem them reliable, trustworthy?
I am a fan of the simple comic genius of the movie, Being There, a more spare forerunner to Forrest Gump. This movie is a conflagration of innocent naivete and mighty inanity. In Being There, starring peter Sellers, as “a simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider.” A signature dialogue in the movie juxtaposes the simple experience of a gardener, naive in the ways of the world, with the dinnertime musings of Washington power brokers:
President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives? [Long pause] Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. President “Bobby”: In the garden. Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again. President “Bobby”: Spring and summer. Chance the Gardener: Yes. President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter. Chance the Gardener: Yes. Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy. Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring! Benjamin Rand: Hmm! Chance the Gardener: Hmm! President “Bobby”: Hmm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time. [Benjamin Rand applauds] President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.
God reigns on…the just and the unjust. It is hours to thirst for righteousness and feed the dewy dreams of one another: To dew wet sow ever/They thirst for.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
IF you want a progressive presidential candidate that you can get excited about voting FOR, then Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate is worth serious consideration. Jill Stein has selected her Green Party running mate, Vice President choice, Ajamu Baraka. Mr. Baraka is an internationally recognized human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst with a deeply progressive resume. Here is their platform:
Enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change, revive the economy and make wars for oil obsolete. Initiate a WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change, the greatest threat to humanity in our history. Create 20 million jobs by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, conservation and restoration of critical infrastructure, including ecosystems.
Implement a Just Transition that empowers those communities and workers most impacted by climate change and the transition to a green economy. Ensure that any worker displaced by the shift away from fossil fuels will receive full income and benefits as they transition to alternative work.
Enact energy democracy based on public, community and worker ownership of our energy system. Treat energy as a human right.
Redirect research funds from fossil fuels into renewable energy and conservation. Build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, energy.
End destructive energy extraction and associated infrastructure: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, natural gas pipelines, and uranium mines. Halt any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, and phase out all fossil fuel power plants. Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies. End all subsidies for fossil fuels and impose a greenhouse gas fee / tax to charge polluters for the damage they have created.
Protect our public lands, water supplies, biological diversity, parks, and pollinators. Ban neonicotinoids and other pesticides that threaten the survival of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
Support a strong enforceable global climate treaty that limits global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and provides just financial compensation to developing countries.
Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe.
Support organic and regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
Protect the rights of future generations. Adopt the Precautionary Principle. When an activity poses threats of harm to human health or the environment, in the absence of objective scientific consensus that it is safe, precautionary measures should be taken. The proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.
Invest in clean air, water, food and soil for everyone. Clean up America.
Enact stronger environmental justice laws and measures to ensure that low-income and communities of color are not disproportionately impacted by harmful pollution and other negative environmental and health effects.
Support conversion to sustainable, nontoxic materials and the use of closed-loop, zero waste processes.
Create living-wage jobs for every American who needs work, replacing unemployment offices with employment offices. Government would be the employer of last resort, and the unemployed would have an enforceable right to make government provide work. Create direct public employment, as the Works Progress Administration did, in public services and public works for those who can’t find private employment.
Advance workers’ rights to form unions, achieve workplace democracy, and keep a fair share of the wealth they create.
Enact the Green Deal full employment program to create 20 million green jobs in sustainable energy, mass transit, sustainable organic agriculture, clean manufacturing and improved infrastructure, as well as social work, teaching, health care, after school and home care, drug rehabilitation and other service jobs.
Provide grants and low-interest loans to green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community, rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
Replace NAFTA and other corporate free trade agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy and political choices. Enact fair trade laws that benefits local workers and communities.
Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act which banned secondary boycotts and permitted state “right-to-work” laws. Enact a federal just cause law (to prohibit firing without just cause,) and outlaw scabbing on striking workers.
End Poverty:
Guarantee economic human rights, including access to food, water, housing, and utilities, with effective anti-poverty programs to ensure every American a life of dignity.
Establish a guaranteed minimum income.
Reform public assistance to be a true safety net that empowers participants and provides a decent standard of living.
Free universal child care.
Health Care as a Right:
Establish an improved “Medicare for All” single-payer public health program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings by eliminating the $400 billion annually spent on the paperwork and bureaucracy of health insurance. No co-pays, premiums or deductibles. Access to all health care services, including mental health, dental, and vision. Include everyone, period. No restrictions based on pre-existing illness, employment, immigration status, age, or any other category.
Eliminate the cancer of health insurance, which adds costs while reducing access to health care.
End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
Eliminate health disparities in communities of color and low-income communities. Ensure easy access to health care in communities of color, including community health centers.
Allow full access to contraceptive and reproductive care.
Expand women’s access to “morning after” contraception by lifting the Obama Administration’s ban.
Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.
Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, and fair trade practices.
Prioritize preventive health care, including physical activity, healthy nutrition and pollution prevention.
Education as a Right:
Guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university.
Abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude.
Protect our public school systems from privatization.
Use restorative justice to address conflicts before they occur, and involve students in the process.
Evaluate teacher performance through assessment by fellow professionals. Do not rely on high stakes tests that reflect economic status of the community, and punish teachers working in low income communities of color.
Replace Common Core with curriculum developed by educators, not corporations, with input from parents and communities.
Stop denying students diplomas based on high stakes tests.
Stop using merit pay to punish teachers who work with the most challenging student populations.
Restore arts, music and recreation to school curriculums.
Ensure racially inclusive, sensitive and relevant curriculums.
Use Department of Education powers to offer grants and funding to encourage metropolitan desegregation plans based on socioeconomically balanced schools.
Recognize poverty as the key obstacle to learning. Ensure that kids come to school ready to learn: healthy, nourished, secure and free from violence.
Increase federal funding of public schools to equalize public school funding.
Set a $15/hour federal minimum wage, with indexing.
Break up “too-big-to-fail” banks and democratize the Federal Reserve.
Support development of worker and community cooperatives and small businesses.
Make Wall Street, big corporations, and the rich pay their fair share of taxes.
Create democratically-run public banks and utilities.
Provide full protection for workplace rights, including the right to a safe workplace and the right to organize a union without fear of firing or reprisal by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Ensure equal pay for equal work, ending discrimination based on race, gender, or generation.
Enact paid sick leave and family leave, strong overtime protections.
Take action against wage theft.
Oppose two-tier wage systems (e.g., for young people and individuals with disabilities).
Freedom and Equality:
Expand women’s rights, including equal pay and reproductive freedom. Pass the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).
Support immigrants’ rights. Create a welcoming path to citizenship for immigrants.
Halt deportations and detentions of law-abiding undocumented immigrants, including the shameful practice of night raids being used to terrorize refugee families.
Improve economic and social conditions abroad to reduce the flow of immigrant refugees, in part by repealing NAFTA, ending the failed drug wars, and halting CIA and military interventions against democratically elected governments.
Demilitarize border crossings throughout North America.
Protect the free Internet. Oppose the Online Piracy Act and all other legislation that would undermine freedom and equality on the Internet.
Criminal Justice Reforms
End the failed war on drugs. Replace drug prohibition with harm reduction. Legalize marijuana/hemp. Treat substance abuse as a health problem, not a criminal offense.
Release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, removing such offenses from their records, and provide them with both pre- and post-release support.
End police brutality, mass incarceration and institutional racism within our justice system. Support the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Demilitarize police. End use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids for drugs and serving papers.
Repair our communities rather than dump resources into the prison-industrial complex.
Establish police review boards so that communities control their police, and not the other way around. Appoint dedicated investigators to investigate every death or serious injury at the hands of police.
Enact laws to require independent outside legal representatives to investigate and prosecute any killing or brutality by the police rather than prosecutors involved in the local criminal justice system.
Eliminate harsh mandatory sentencing requirements which often result in unjustified sentences.
Enforce the Bill of Rights by protecting the right to free speech and protest, to be secure from unwarranted search and seizure and invasion of privacy, as well as our other Constitutional rights.
Terminate unconstitutional surveillance and unwarranted spying, close Guantanamo, and repeal indefinite detention without charge or trial. Repeal the unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that give the president the power to indefinitely imprison and even assassinate American citizens without due process.
America’s youth should not be put in jail for offenses they commit.
End discrimination against former offenders who have paid for their crimes and should get a fresh start.
Abolish the death penalty.
End persecution of government, corporate and media whistleblowers.
Issue an Executive Order prohibiting Federal agencies from conspiring with local police to infringe upon right of assembly and peaceful protest.
Repeal the Patriot Act that violates our constitutional right to privacy and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Peace and Human Rights:
Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and nonviolent support for democratic movements around the world.
Cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases. Ensure a just transition that replaces reductions in military jobs with jobs in renewable energy, transportation and green infrastructure development.
Stop U.S. financial and military support to human rights abusers. Barring substantial changes in their policies, this would include Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
End the US’ role as the world’s arm supplier.
End use of assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, including collaborative assassination through intermediaries.
End the destructive US economic and military intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations. Such intervention serve the interests of multinational corporations and global capitalism over the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of those nations.
Freeze the bank accounts of countries that are funding terrorism, including the Saudi royal family.
US policy regarding Israel and Palestine must be revised to prioritize international law, peace and human rights for all people, no matter their religion or nationality. End US policies that have supported the worst tendencies of the Israeli government in its treatment of the people of Palestine.
Restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense.
Ban use of drone aircraft for assassination, bombing, and other offensive purposes.
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, withdrawing troops and military contractors.
Join 159 other nations in signing the Ottawa treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines.
Lead on global nuclear disarmament:
Rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the US dropped out of in 2002 when it installed missiles and missile bases in Turkey, Romania, and Poland.
Agree to Russia’s proposal to jointly reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,000 nuclear weapons each. Also call for all countries to the table to negotiate a treaty for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
Remove US nuclear weapons in Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands.
Support Russia and China’s joint effort to open negotiations on a treaty to ban weapons in space.
Pledge to end any further laboratory or sub-critical nuclear tests at the Nevada and Novaya Zemlya test sites, and end all nuclear weapons research, design, and modernization at the weapons laboratories.
The US must take the lead in nuclear disarmament by itself starting to disarm. We should create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in the area to join.
Empower the People: Fix our Broken Elections with Real Democracy
Eliminate the doctrine of corporate personhood that among other things has been used to justify unlimited corporate spending in elections with a constitutional amendment to clarify that only human beings have constitutional rights.
Enact electoral reforms that break the big money stranglehold and create truly representative democracy: full public election financing, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, and open debates.
Protect voters’ rights by enforcing and expanding the constitutional right to vote (including a new amendment if necessary). Enact the full Voter’s Bill of Rights guaranteeing each person’s right to vote, the right to have our votes counted on hand-marked paper ballots, and the right to vote within systems that give each vote meaning. Make voter registration the responsibility of government, not a voluntary opt-in for citizens.
Restore Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, requiring preclearance by the Attorney General or federal district court of DC to election law changes in areas previously found to limit voting rights.
Abolish the Electoral College and directly elect the President using a national popular vote with ranked-choice voting..
Restore the right to run for office and eliminate unopposed races by removing ballot access barriers.
Guarantee equal access to the debates to all ballot-qualified candidates.
Provide equal and free access to the airways for all ballot-qualified candidates, not just those with big campaign war chests.
Eliminate “winner take all / first past the post” elections in which the “winner” may not have the support of most of the voters. Replace that system with ranked choice voting and proportional representation.
Enact statehood for the District of Columbia to ensure the region has full representation in Congress, and full powers of democratic self-rule.
Restore voting rights to offenders, including while in prison.
Replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions.
Reduce barriers to voting by making Election Day a national holiday.
Enact simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls.
Protect local democracy by making clear that acts of Congress establish a floor, and not a ceiling, on laws relating to economic regulation, workers’ rights, human rights, and the environment.
Increase government revenues for social needs by restoring full employment, cutting the bloated, dangerous military budget, and cutting private health insurance waste.
Require full disclosure of corporate subsidies in the budget and stop hiding subsidies in complicated tax code.
Rewrite the entire tax code to be truly progressive with tax cuts for working families, the poor and middle class, and higher taxes for the richest Americans.
Strengthen rather than cut Medicare and Social Security. Remove the cap on social security taxes above a certain level of income.
Maintain and upgrade our nation’s essential public infrastructure, including highways, railways, electrical grids, water systems, schools, libraries, and the Internet, resisting privatization or policy manipulation by for-profit interests.
Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves.
Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department. Prohibit private banks from creating money, thus restoring government’s Constitutional authority.
Manage pension funds by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
Housing
Impose an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
Offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
Create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages, and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants.
Expand rental and home ownership assistance and increase funding for public housing.
Use Department of Housing and Urban Development authority to grant or withhold funds in order to encourage state and local governments to take positive steps to desegregate housing, including ending zoning laws that effectively prohibit multi-family housing, prohibiting landlords from refusing to accept Section 8 vouchers, increasing Section 8 voucher amounts so that poor people can move into middle income neighborhoods, prohibiting the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits to increase low income housing in already segregated neighborhoods, and building new public housing in middle income communities that is high quality and mixed income.
We can build a better future together.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
This Comedian Jesus political cartoon highlights the shallow liberalism and false choices of Pax Romana, the metaphorical stand-in for Pax Americana, peace through so-called enlightened domination.
This Comedian Jesus cartoon also ties the all-too-convenient collaboration of political and religious elites in the less-than-enlightened shared interest of self-preservation and the status quo. Prophets, making radical calls for accountability, and modeling self-sacrifice, make the powers that be grate agin and agin. Many American Christians oddly reframe Jesus execution as simply some sort of metaphysical accounting adjustment, minimizing his direct challenge to political and religious elites. Jesus was a threat to Roman political rule, brutally enforced by military rule in its extended territories, the colonies of the age. Racism, xenophobia, and straightforward domination was part and parcel to the Roman order, cynically referred to as Pax Romana. Jesus’ creative nonviolence suited the oppressed Jews (and others) with amor of hope, and provided bold tools to disarm Roman rule. Jesus was a threat to religious elites due to his profound challenges to the authority and legitimacy of religious elites and his surging popularity. Also, Jesus was seen as indirectly stoking the possibilities of a violent insurrection (Judas, from the Zealots who believed in violent insurrection, may have betrayed Jesus in hopes that his martyrdom would trigger revolutionary actions among the populace). The religious elites had much to lose as their collaboration with the occupying Roman powers had bought them special privileges, a classic technique of dominating powers to buy so-called peace, in this case the brutal-for-most Pax Romana. Pilate, in questioning Jesus employs another classic technique of ultimately evading accountability with his infamous “What is truth?” interrogative. This now infamous questioning, would eventually become an iconic emblem of what is now central to postmodern thought: the relativity of truth. For the worse, such an easy liberalism provides great smokescreens for the powers that be to evade accountability with feigned intellectual and ideological credence. The modern day Roman empire of Western civilization has assured full employment of this shallow liberalism. This Comedian Jesus political cartoon parodies this with the brutal liberality of getting to choose your method of death, the too-close-too-home reality for millions under Pax Americana.
To bring all of this home in contemporary fashion, the choice of Roman/American citizens choosing which shade of empire they want to enrich its citizenry, casts a long shadow, and essentially false choice from the perspective of those not benefiting from Roman/American citizenship. While the votes of citizens are bought with many denominations, and presented in contrasting shades of liberality, the church of American privilege is built on a foundation of military might and awe that money can buy. For those whose world is colonized by America, or who live and die as nominal citizens relegated to apartheid-like ghettos, the so-called choice of their brand of ruler remains of profoundly grate consequence. Planetary citizens are hoping for prophets over profits. Mother Earth is quiet udderly sweating this election. I witness the desperate fighting for our own scraps of privilege as sadly pathetic in the light of America’s finest ideals. May we rise up in another American revolution, this time for the benefit all God’s children and beauteous creation.
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Things are heating up in America As round the earth Flatlanders are in a whirled Of applausable deniability As their scholar ship sales Off any known atlas Of shrugging turtles And histrionic elephants Lording over mice and men In the name of Republic and mulishness unleashing Wretched blaming Artless prey And blame ideologies In quakes of human faults Indifferent in effect To reason Snatched In a phallus logic As in is capable With mother earth getting hotter every day Only asking for it Her plea to cool it Only be lying A girl tempting To think too hard Effacing such a boner fide off her
This poem is about macho braggadocio and an abiding disrespect for nature and human kind. When such hubris enters politics, both Mother Earth and the body politic get screwed. Scientific illiteracy in general, and climate change denial specifically, are arenas where greedy ideologies are conveniently engorged on fact-free rations. Patriarchy and hyper-masculinity give a big hand to victim blaming, outwardly their natural outgrowth. Such masturbatory ideologies lead to blindness of natural consequences. That power is as power does masquerades as scientific acumen, as fore juggernaut of perverse cause-and-effect. In such phallus logic, the invisible hand magnanimously despoils the hole fecund planet. Meet market, free market, proving worth wile in every victim it volunteers. Such virulent virility vivisects Mother Earth and her children. And what remains, who could resist?
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Oh no No no A nation divided And so so partial to the whirled As who elect Who to rule Over US The select select Culled before we can even vote In the worst OKs scenario Effaced with know choice Picking our no’s Only too feel shamed a bout What fore Positively maddening Even abashed buy partisan fauxs In their first for winning at all accosts A media large for won size fits all In choiring mines knot aloud Who might ax candidates For the least of these Such modest dreams Bargain aweigh As all ways done Know madder what you due Until red or blue in efface Look past The elephant in the room Or the for most ass Both too big for their breaches Two big to flail Sow uninviting Some third party When we don’t even have a second to lose Meting that urgent call of nature Which we halve in common Breeds identical The same stinking results In the long runs And there will be no platform shoos Lofty enough too overstep Such inspiring stench Triangulating hope Beyond any worthy err Dissembled buy a con vocation Enacts of commission lacking As holey plan it A cross the globe Lock stock and barrel For if there is anything worth wile Wee will suck it Living in a vacuum Flagging as the whole damn nation As grieve US consolation price Paid by the wrest of the world Conscripted to buy Such wore torn democracy In reckless abandon Let them eat ballads Dedicated to just US And deem a little dream for me As if Mother Earth And her oft spring Got won vote And awe America Was not full of sheep Scarred of losing their position Excepting a world of hurt Sow backwards and screwy Pathetic vassals Under sway of loan some shepherds
This poem is an ode to the two-party duopoly of dysfunction as the current state of unfairs in the United States of America. The American electorate gets their breaches all in a bunch over the all-too-obvious lack of choice in the so-called leaders of the free world. The prestidigitation of political elites leaves US somehow settling for the best we can do as picking our no’s in the voting booth — pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Wile awe of this may seem quite mourn worthy for sheepish Americans, the wrest of the world has long paid the accost, underwriting the much lauded “free” world. Our tried and true means of dividing and conquering, that has won US our unfair share of colonial/imperial rule and the world’s resources, quite inescapably comes home to roost. The political elites who run US run the world. The domestic squabbles between Republicrats are decidedly effective means to distract short-sighted and privileged Americans from the fight for our planet and the ability to secure freedom and justice anywhere on our globe. Wile we prey for well-adjusted imperialists to secure our wealth of nations, we outsource the prize we have taken our eye off to other planetary citizens. The curse of the world may simply be the blind first-world privilege of the whole damn nation. Unity in imperialism is no victory for humanity or the planet. While the frenzied, megalomaniacal reign of a Donald Trump may appear frightening to our privileged penchant for predictability, there is meager-to-pleas comfort for global citizenry in a Hillary Clinton proven track record of loyal imperial rule, running roughshod atop nameless hoards, an X’ing more than have of the world’s fortune. In the belly of the beast of imperialism, with its won-sided wealth and power, there should be indigestion, with its unquenchable appetites and parochial fears. Deep national division may be precisely that which is re-choired to vomit out our inglorious privilege, liberate the retched of the world, and sing in harmony as won humanity. The world is underwater in debt and we don’t even no who holds our note. May the only debt we owe to our fellow planetary citizens is shared gratitude for the courage to act justly wherever wee might find ourselves, on the short end of imperialism, or in the belly of the beast.
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
First class was all Most sold out Withal more empty than seeming Wanting even Titanic eves To match their daze Equally unenlightened Missing that sinking feeling Drinking in their moonshine Wrecklessly straight With nary an ice cube Their glasses deluging them Halving left More than half fool Long a go At the no room inn Taking Parting shots Through the looking glass With mirrorlike lust-er Not even a wave Lapping up The hem And haw In the face of global swarming With frozen tears Of mother earth As if Monumentally frigid Proffering Worthless rocks Comprised of a billion carrots Flawless in their mine And blinding still Un-be-knownst to them In a twinkling of the I Awe that they will no Is mostly underwater And in the scheme of things A tiny cap size In the sink
This titanic poem confronts the monumental hubris of mankind (sick) ignoring the rising tide of climate change and increasing climate instability. The metaphor of the Titanic, over a century later, still, at the bottom of the see, epitomizes the lethal consequences of underestimating nature’s ability to cull out suicidal weighs of life. Wile the rich in penguin suits toast the destruction of icebergs, their karma wades for them in what is as qualm as can be. Yep, as global warming fires up, be the toast! I am rather fond of humanity, but in the scheme of things, whatever undying infection Mother Earth may have of us, she heels to the largesse faucets of life. As clear as night, we don’t know ship when it comes to our titanic undertakings. And the see lies in weight. In a slight paraphrase of dialogue from the movie Titanic: “But this shit can’t sink! She’s made of irony, sir! I assure you, she can… and she will. It is a mathematical certainty.” May we wise up sooner rather than later to avoid any more first class disasters.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
They lived in an ethic Spacious enough To ford seven generations Rooted in time immemorial And in awe of the presents Their will yielding To a vision enduring beyond death True sojourners of life Not a cataclysm of transients Who dis honor from wince they come Going long with scalping the future As less than face value In efface of repulsing toupees And inescapable reservations Of ever elusive promise From ambitious suit her Utterly redressed for success Immutably miss led From all that is goaled In the alchemy of madders of state Tres passers for bid Native peoples beset Buy this great-great-great-great grand chide As a ballot too ahead That fatal ran some From exhorting pros and cons
This poem is rooted, and rooting, in the ancient wisdom of the indigenous peoples of this land now named America. That ancient wisdom is an ethic whereby decisions are made based on the impact they will have seven generations from now, on our great-great-great-great grand children. This is practically the opposite of decision-making in modern America. The short-term, do-anything-for-the-next-quarter American attitude has many folks wondering if they should even bring children into such a whirled. The native peoples’ long-haul love for humanity and Mother Earth looks like it may be on the wrong genocide of history. As the chattel of fear, we have been bought and sold down what is left of the river.
The present context for this poem is the latest, perpetually disappointing, decidedly un-presidential, election season up on US. Specifically, today is the last set of Democratic primaries billed to US buy the presumptuous nominee, Hillary Clinton. The ass-dragging backdrop for this particular episode is the ever portending catastrophe of the un-Christian named Donald, that trumps all other incantations of evil. As ponder US as could be, few seriously consider what is lost in the frayed. Today, it may be the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a candidate of hope. Running on fear to rule this sphere, it looks like despair of candidates, with the megalomania of Donald trump and statist realism of Hillary Clinton, will captivate US with the two so-called choices possessing the highest negative ratings. The U.S. electorate, left only with the leaser of two evils, will buy evil on the lay away plan, where we will be either liberally or economically screwed, or unthinkably both.
The title of this poem, Never Agin, alludes to leading a life which is unabashedly for, not merely agin. The means determine the ends. If we make key decisions, over and over again, based on what we are against, we will be doomed to a perpetually reactionary existence. True freedom will repeatedly elude US. Just US will be divided and conquered. My only appeal in this election season is to vote for someone who your really would be delighted to be President. Consider how your great-great-great-great grand children would have you vote. Can we brave a path that doesn’t leave a legacy of fear? For me, I will, without reservation, be voting for Jill Stein for President. May we all be fearless citizens, and when need be, vote.
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Mother earth bids us What rend must we pay For such fear in dwelling In apprehending tenets In discriminating borne Giving no quarter To mother and child And presumed fodder Taking the place Of wear every won re-sides Drawing lyin’s in the sand And hiking up shields of water In a tsunami of divine just us As fences of steal Wherever we land Keeping out nothing worth wile As per sever demeanor From our guarded kind As all is wall In the confines of what is ours a loan Yet in efface of The largesse attract of common ground Enjoining to gather What is the lease we can do Inter or gate Only wanton to ax How to occupy that territory sow dear Between haves and halves not As humanity cleaves To that intrepid hope Of a world without boarders In habit awe As kin to won sky Our only limit
This poem addresses the theme of borders and the human propensity to divide us up into cliques, clans, classes, and territories. Such divisions are often to the detriment of the common good. While often under the guise of security, such social stratifications unjust as often reinforce lazy conveniences and guarded advantages. In this great nation of immigrants — and conquistadors to indigenous peoples — there has been much political rhetoric about building walls. Xenophobia and scapegoating seem to have found more openly vulgar expressions in contemporary politics. The peeling back of the veneer of civilization may simply be a necessary process to move from unconsciousness to consciousness of institutionalized racism, first-worldism, the seeming necessity of permanent war, and xenophobic fears of all sorts. As our ways of life reveal themselves as ways of death, the choice for life becomes more clear — perhaps not any easier, but clearer. This poem begins with the context of Mother Earth and human mother and child. We are all children of Mother Earth, who only considers walls and borders as scars on her beauty. Each of us is a child, daughter or son. We are all brothers and sisters, cousins and kin. We are one humanity. We either realize that blood is thicker than water or our water will be thickened with blood. We are all boarders on planet earth. No human being is illegal. Nation states only deserve to exist inasmuch as they serve humanity and Mother Earth. Without such stewardship, we just might find out the hard weigh what a world without boarders looks like. May we rekindle a deep affection and connection to awe of our sisters and brothers near and far, for the healing of the world.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Winter is passed And still What is dung is dung Yet in concert with nature Sow becoming A sublime movement From the bowels of Mother Earth And her thirst borne sun Spring has sprung From her fertile eyes Perfectly teeming With body and soul
This is a poem for the first day of Spring. This poem celebrates both the cyclic revitalization of nature through the seasons and the inevitable arisings of social movements from the What is dung is dung of politics. I frequently harken back to the theme of hope springing eternal. If you are discouraged about the apparent lack of change in the world, just wait, change happens. Even better yet, just wade, into such a fertile — even overripe — environment for change. Both Mother Earth and the collective souls of humanity beckon your participation. What is that I see breaking through the once cold, hard dirt…
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Know madder What The body politic wants Wee are A given Political climate change Fueled agin Buy dollareds Hot air And cheep solutions Trapped in a net worth A slew of zeroes Proffering barren fruit Taking Their cut Wile the snare drum beats US like lemmings Lurid over A bluff leading know where With the last feather in their icy cap Plunging a head At breakneck pace Their ultimate un-doing In won weigh or the other Hung by a tight rope For good Snappy necks ‘n dashing suits In their bald Sisyphean crowing As gods joke Boulder for brains
This is another in my unrelenting series of global climate change poems. I mock cowardly politicians beholden to earth-destroying corporate interests, offering only half-ass solutions to what is likely the greatest threat to humanity and the planet this century. I mix several metaphors simultaneously, but the prime metaphor is of Sisyphus as the symbol of grandiose futility. Of coarse, the climax of the poem offers Phoenix-like hope as these Sisyphean politicians bash their brains out on the rocks of the reality they so persistently deny and discount. And for good measure, and a backup plan, they also hung themselves with their own rope, in a tip of the hat to the old Marxist joke that capitalists will sell the rope to the executioner for their own hanging. And for a triumvirate of metaphors to seal their destiny, a bird metaphor (“cheep solutions, “last feather in icy cap,” and “bald Sisyphean crowing”) assures that the brains dashed against the rocks are bird brains as well as boulder for brains. Be on notice chicken-hearted and bird-brained politicians, there is no escaping the carnage of my poetry! Of course, I hope to embolden planetary citizens to take bolder action to relieve such politicians of any authority or power over the fate of our Mother Earth. May the people of planet earth rise up and create a sustainable destiny for humanity that fully respects the deep harmonies of nature.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Kneeling before Mother Earth Shattering Knews Buy sum mirror mortals That scant except abundance Farced too Under stand That wholly lessen Taut As awe for one And won for all And what too due To be apprehended Those borne too big for their breaches Both yearning their keep And wanting to cry like a baby As partially dread King Solomon’s wisdom Discerning a real mom From a ‘mother’ in name only In every crook and nanny Of awe that might be Haunted by possessions Those who cull out For halve of everything As if Like some indivisible man In a crowd Stealing a weigh Amidst a pound of flash As a parent As won Divided buy too Is not twice one peace However disposed Won is to give Forbear Meaning less labor For priceless heir And each arrival Comes a bout In his stork visit That universal root Digs ever deeper Beyond belief Yet sum people Proffer a Roamin’ umpire A tempting A scuff-law-less Caesarean delivery To buy pass The belly of the best Dilatorily a void Mete cleave her Where even moderation can be excessive Only too grasp After brooding over In a so-so pregnant pause And sow ill-conceived Being a touch bankrupt Morally in half-way hows That irresistible fix Working for you And know won ails Halve the weigh homme Leaping twice across the chasm Returning To Mother Earth Won way or the other Making a hole world Of deference
Here is yet another poem about the ongoing crisis of Mother Earth’s destruction. To portray the half-ass response by so-called developed nations and industrial powers that be, I employ the metaphors of King Solomon’s infamous wisdom in dealing with dispute over motherhood and that of crossing a chasm in two leaps. To add another metaphor regarding our relationship with Mother Earth, we want to have our cake and eat it too! In the case of the King Solomon judgment, two mothers living in the same household claimed a baby as their own. After one of the mothers accidentally smothered her own child while they were sleeping in her bed (by the way, an ancient public health problem that persists today), she claimed the other mother’s baby was her own. Without enough evidence to make a reasonable determination, King Solomon wisely and shrewdly ordered the baby cut in half, so each mother could have their “fair” share, to determine their reaction. The true mother insisted the baby be given to the false mother to spare the baby’s life. The false and jealous mother said go to it. Of course, this revealed the true mother to which King Solomon ordered the whole baby as hers. Our greed and jealous protection of our own unjust interests would rather halve the world we live in than deal with a whole new world. As greed and envy continue unabated, we naively and vainly assume that things will “naturally” work themselves out. As if the day after we can reassemble two halves of a baby and have a whole baby. This is akin to jumping a chasm in two leaps. It don’t work that way! Our fundamental disrespect for motherhood is a parent to anyone who possesses the wisdom to differentiate between motherhood and smother-hood. Of course, in the real world, there is no second baby to even attempt to appropriate. And the chasm is too wide for even a long series of half-ass measures. I’ll take a flying leap here: we either return to mothering Mother Earth or we will return to Mother Earth, as a specious not suited to evolve any further.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
The economy was Humming Having change Their tune Given The overabundance Of hot water And cell a-steam Showering down Hour earthly reign In the scheme of things In a call amity Of biblical portions They had everything Save the earth And after Having one Wore on the environment Mother earth’s Pursed lips At the outpouring cache A river bed Tried to the bone Of no use Pointing fingers As more than Putting up With money where mouth is Re: tardily sane As never too be Ever food agin Mouthing a mint In perpetual bad taste Sow un-full Filling a void That wee only have Won planet Wont of reign
Yet another poem mourning the way we treat our beloved Mother Earth. As global warning wrings out more lost species, extinct forever in the wake of our mindless consumption and heartless capitalism, I am reminded wince again of the Cree Indian prophecy: “Only when the last tree has been felled, the last river poisoned and the last fish caught, man will know, that he cannot eat money.” Can you help but ask weather when we put our money where our mouth is if it will be too late. If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. If mankind can’t let go of the crappy job he’s doing, mama will get unrule he Let us not temp our mother.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
An ocean of salty water rises
From the cries unheard
Submerging from the wounds of the body politic
Stupefied in the face of enduring smarts
Delugings egressing from a tsunami of 100% proof
And in the offing
Will we sea
A plan it unreckoned
A monumental reporting for doody
And an epic title wave
As if
Ridden in code
Our winter of dis content
Enough
Too roil Dicks
And a voiding watery epitaphs
How long for remediation
Four sea hoarse men
Of the epoch lips
A further fresh water solution in a pickle
Thirsting for sustainable heirs a bout them
In short order to be like fish out of water
As mo’ be whaling S.O.B.’s
As fat cats wading for their last supper
And blubbering like some baby
Seal their fete with country clubs swinging
As sow many leagues under the see
As polar bares
Their paws just warming up
As care free
As just having
A terrestrial bawl
Spurned on buy
Another species argument
And another round of desert
A butting such dry humor
As the dead panned
Hitherto buy too
Into the arc of just us
So bent
And unto awe reins
Those divining the rapturous
Belles wringing
Wet
Until sonar us
In due coarse
Anchor age becomes Atlantis
Unless Abel to question
For whom does the bell troll
Weight for it
It trolls for you
Ah yes, yet another poem about climate change and climate change deniers. It seems that more and more reports of ongoing and impending climate disasters impel me to puke up another poem in awe of Mother earth and disdain for climate change deniers and other such fools. The image of a deluge of tears flooding Mother Earth struck me as a poetic metaphor for the actual flooding due to climate change. Of course, the tears are an unenviable result of our all-too-casual destruction of Mother Earth and all of the concomitant suicidal implications. Weather these are human tears or Mother Earth’s tears, the S.O.B.s are real. May we embrace the threats and challenges of climate instability with bold stewardship of our only planet and lucid actions to hold humanity accountable for any disrespecting of our Momma.
One moment I have a car The next moment I don’t The universe conspires To nourish my feral body and sole Not with the twisted steal of civilization But as a carrot In a field of vision Meting its purpose at crunch time And the growing realization Consummated by that instant in sight That know one was hurt A mist the scarred land marks Mother Earth will breathe a little easier now As I will Walk and bike her paved surface In treating me to go deeper Ever-seeking serendipitous lifts In tangling with the care less And the car less I am Feted to join The bus people in the world
This poem is an ode to my car being totaled in a wreck yesterday when a woman turned her car in front of me as I was going through an intersection. Gracefully, no one was hurt. To make a long story short, my beloved car will unlikely be resurrected, and I am not really in a position to buy and maintain another car (even if I get some modest settlement for my beater car in this instance). Over the last couple of years, I have contemplated the notion of living without owning a car. I figured that this would become a reality at some point in the coming years. Due to two seconds yesterday, this reality has manifest much sooner, without warning. Like they say: if you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans! Of course, I want to make God laugh. Fortunately, God persistently has better plans for me than I can implement through my well-planned connivings. I find these junctures in life as fascinating paradoxes of the worst possible timing and perfect timing. As a die-hard metaphysical optimist, I am going to go with the perfect timing. Yep, that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it!
So, I took the bus today. This was the first time in a long time. Most assuredly, this bus ride will be the first of many. I asked the bus driver if he had a schedule for the 20/24 line and he said, with a seasoned blend of acceptance and resignation,”We haven’t had those schedules for months.” I fully expect my busing experiences to be rife with poetic inspiration. Look out, folks, my feral trajectory is coming to fruition, fraught with unworn deliciousness…
Bee The change That you wish In the whirled Too see O Mother Earth Undertaking Men o’ pause In-fertility rite As nature fecund wanes A roil buzzkill Soon with death teeming Wear is thy sting Extincting that human race Soully certifiable reproductions Unfit as a specious Forerunners to know end Yet today, this solitary caged bird sings Like a canary In a cold mine With its deadly presents Colorless and odious executioner The lynch pin of anonymous hoods Haunting all That which is called “natural” Sow fumes miasma Till hour last breath
This poem is another mournful environmental poem, with the steady decline of bees as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the deathly threat to the ecology of the earth. Of course, the stoic denial and fatalism of human-induced climate change through fossil fuel consumption reaps a Mother Earth whose only defense may be to open a Pandora’s box capable of “naturally” selecting the human race from an internal combustion race to a mere foot race, where humans are no longer large enough scale to crash the entire planet’s ecological system. If we don’t change course and evolve into an ecologically-sustainable species, we will be devolved into a much less dominant species. Whether this would represent an evolution or devolution would have to be reflected upon by many fewer homo sapiens.
While we as a species are still living high on the fumes of burning fossil fuels, the buzzkill of bee genocide may lead the way to the end of agriculture as we know it, and the end of human culture as we know it. Our unchecked industrialism, fueled by the burning of carbon-based energy forms, may very well lead to our checking out as the predominant species on earth. Could this bee the end of the world? as so aptly asked in an article of the same title (with a now extinct link!):
Albert Einstein once said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
Einstein wasn’t an insect expert but he had a point. The humble honeybee is an integral part of the global ecosystem. Honey is just one aspect of what this entomological wonder does. As a pollinator it ensures crops reproduce, so although a world without honey would be a poorer place, man would survive. But without plants, we’d become extinct.
…On a global scale, it is estimated a third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees…
…The introduction to the 2010 UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] report into global bee colony disorders puts the insects’ plight in context. It states, “Current evidence demonstrates that a sixth major extinction of biological diversity event is under way. The Earth is losing between 1 and 10 per cent of biodiversity per decade, mostly due to habitat loss, pest invasion, pollution, over-harvesting and disease.” It asked, “Has a ‘pollinator crisis’ really been occurring during recent decades, or are these concerns just another sign of global biodiversity decline?”
Unchecked domination is not the nature of nature. Either homo sapiens will learn to live in harmony with nature as a whole, or our ability to dominate will be cut down to scale. As throughout countless generations, we are faced with choosing harmony or destruction. Nature has patiently endured our penchant for destruction. Nature cannot be violated forever. Nature’s feedback is gentle and generous. Only fools destroy the hand that feeds them. Will we be fools in the largesse weigh?
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