Progress Concerns Me Thus...

Progress concerns me at this moment.
Or, rather,
the well crafted, professionally developed and sold notion of progress
that we in the industrialized world buy in single serving packages
of Duracell batteries, coca cola, Sony and cigarettes.
We buy, hook, line and sinker
like bottom feeders most things and ideas
that our champions of politics and industry sell us
paying little mind to the consequences of our actions.
Or to those adversely affected by our conspicuous assumption.
McDonalds doesn’t tell us when we order our Big Mac that someone,
somewhere is starving because of our need or desire to have a couple of beef patties
or some crispy chicken.
We’re oblivious while sipping on our coke,
water with some syrup in it that elsewhere people would fight to the death for water.
Madison Avenue,
Bay and Fleet streets don’t want us to live in reality,
they’d prefer us to buy, and we do, the picture book life,
THEY sell us.
What is progress?
It is often said that a team is only as strong as its weakest member.
So, we then are exceptionally weak.
What good is progress if we are leaving so many behind?
What good is progress if it is blind?
Will it change?
Will we change?
Only if You and I demand it –
But we don’t because we are too busy watching quote, reality TV.
Our progress is just as real as the reality shows we watch –
crafted to stupefy and placate.

SDM

Oceans

Sometimes,
When considering the world in which we live,
I shed a tear,
One lone drop works its way down my cheek,
Ever so slowly,
Collecting on the floor,
In a pool of sadness,
A pool of disgust and shame,
At the decisions we’ve made,
Political maneuvering,
By leaders we’ve elected,
Leaders we’ve entrusted,
With the most powerful of duties,
The last 100 years,
The best for our species,
The worst for our species,
With all our fear and hate,
Millions dead;
In some perverse struggle,
Both sides shamed,
Through equally action and inaction,
Progress,
True progress,
Is not marked by technological advance,
It is not our ability to make a more powerful computer chip,
Or to put our species into space,
TRUE PROGRESS,
Perhaps we should call it,
Ultimate progress,
Can only begin,
When we undo the countless errors of our ways,
We can not applaud ourselves,
For our so called advances,
While the planet is still rife with poverty, starvation, illiteracy, greed and aggression,
Our ultimate progress,
The true betterment of our species,
Can only begin when our collective spirit begins to move away from those human plagues,
Ultimate progress can only begin when we strictly call our government and corporations to eradicate these cancers on our psyche.

Ultimate progress means that none get left behind,
And unfortunately,
We’re not even close,
Until that day,
My tears,
Collect in that pool,
Which I pray,
For all our sakes,
Need not become an OCEAN!

SDM

Do you think...?

Do you think when Einstein discovered his atomic secret he dropped to his knees, raised his eyes to the heavens above and asked why me?

Do you think he sat there for hours on end praying for absolution?

Perhaps that he picked up the dice at that moment and realized that God wasn’t playing with the universe?

Do you think he toiled with the idea of destroying his theory, his proofs and all his notes?

Do you think he looked at his books and wondered what colour smoke the fire would be if he just threw his books in and erased from this earth the horror he must have known he’d just unmasked?

Do you think that in the joy of discovery he shed a tear that stained like blood?

Do you think he even knew what he had done?

Do you think he was torn between the progress of humanity and the death of a planet?

Do you think his shooting star was more like an intellectual Hiroshima because he knew the vulgarity of the human mind?

I don’t know either.

SDM