The Blackout

Darkness descended,
But instead of Gotham,
Toronto, New York, Chicago,
50 million people or more,
showed clearly,
the power of positive energy,
the typical frantic behavior,
of we,
THE ENERGY SLUTS,
Turned to a quiet hush,
Our fragmented communities,
Come together,
In a time of need,
The true human spirit,
One normally suppressed,
By neon lights and subways,
Revealed,
True grace,
This was the eastern seaboard,
On August 14, 2003,
Triumphant.

SDM

Capitalisms Orphans

Capitalism is like Darwin’s answer to economics.

Only the strong survive –
Usually by chewing off someone’s head,
only figuratively of course.

Please don’t misconstrue this statement as the ringing of the bell inviting World War III – Nor for that matter as the start of the trading day.
Yet, doesn’t anyone else feel there might be a better way –
Not mired or anchored in some ages old text book ideology.
I think partly people in the industrialized world have adopted capitalism as a de facto part of life –
Which I can assure you is much easier to do while sitting in a subway car coming home from work where we can open our fridge and find abundance –
Run our taps and find abundance, turn on the lights, the heat, the air conditioning and find,
You guessed it –
Abundance!

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the reason those outside our comfy confines are resistant too or in fact outright despise us and our capitalist ways is because they are treated like capitalisms orphans –
Fully able to see our excesses while they are left off the subway,
have no job, no fridge, no water, no education, no food and no clothing.

Perhaps, if the values that we preach of equality of life and an adequate standard of living were actually practices world wide there would not be such a violent and oppressive resistance to our ways of excess.

Until then I can only imagine and consider capitalism many orphans.

SDM

The March...

Do you hear the drum beating loudly on the screen of our TV’s?
Just as they have before, well, sort of, and as they surely will again.
The pervasive beat of one mans cadence, in a two man stand off.
To be sure, more is at stake than just the lives of Bush and Saddam,
they are not facing off in a boxing ring, no matter how much we’d prefer it.

Stand up and be counted, though both sides will discount it –
This beat getting stronger needs the healing power of peace
before this becomes something longer.
Can you hear the beat as sure as that of your heart?
Place your hand there, feel it, I assure you, an Iraqi’s beats the same,
he bleeds too, blood, not oil,
though sometimes our leaders make it seem that way.
Behind the scorching rhetoric of this economic war machine –
How many will die?
How many will die?

The beat goes on, as the expression states,
I can hear it, feel it at the very core of my being,
my retinas permanently damaged by the rape of the planet,
of each and every one of us by mad men –
Smoke billowing into the sky like skid marks, devastating,
carried away to return as God’s tears,
what goes up must and will come down.
Where do we go from here?
Where does this beat take us,
Where will we all be?
Will we again see the night sky lit up? –
Stars drowned out by mans fire flies,
trying to take down the screaming eagles, an ominous sight –
Day at night –
Who really wins?
Who has nothing to lose?
How do you know what to believe when greed so often dictates,
unopposed,
what truth is?

How many times,
how many must we plot this course?
How long before we realize the road less traveled while difficult
has a lot less dead bodies strewn across it.
That road,
a path to peace through dialogue.

SDM

CNN (State Department)

I’m scared that if I go for coffee I might miss that gong,
by implication Dan Rather saying that the prospect for peace is dim,
war is on the horizon,
brought to us by Larry King, Live,
just like this war,
live,
as assuredly the ammunition will be –
How many will die?
Iraqi?
American –
Men, plural,
women, plural,
children, plural?
One thing for certain –
ALL DEAD
and for who –
Saddam,
Damn is right for what,
oil and economies of scale.
Sport Utilities, trickle down economics and television,
ah, Ding, Ding, Ding,
N, B, C –
Home of the NBA,
Olympics and
Saturday night!

SDM

Babylon Falling

Babylon will fall,
History does not betray this fact,
Fallen once, so it will again,
Not the curse of history or time,
But of our disobedience
Flagrant towards God,
Our own design –
Free will –
The nations of the world and all their constituents will feel the earthquake when it falls again. The effects of which will be felt at the four corners of the earth.
We all, falling victim,
to our own greed,
pride,
envy
and lust,
it seems so easy to reverse our pattern,
yet we don’t.
Modern Babylon,
like histories,
will fall –
DRAMATICALLY!

SDM