Animated Afternoon November 19, 2017

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privatized medicine

Privatized medicine should be an oxymoron

Because the physician who promises to do no harm

Operates in a system that demands business profits

Delivering mistreatment to even those who can afford to pay.

When the doctors do what makes the most money for them

When the hospitals are managed to maximize return on investment

When the pharmaceuticals market their pills ad nauseum

Woe unto the person who suffers illness, injury or pain.

Sooner or later each of us needing health care must decide

In a kind of pick your poison choice what to do

Whether to take your chances with conventional medicine

Or trust in the regimen of alternative practitioners.

I think everyone has heard or lived a medical horror story

Someone who suffered unnecessarily under a doctor’s hands

Someone who would have been better off untouched

Especially when there’s no known effective treatment.

Your only hope if your condition has no conventional cure

Would be someone who says an alternate remedy exists

But because that provider exists in the capitalist system

Credulous belief in the possibility is all that you have.

My friend finds himself on the horns of this dilemma

Knowing conventional medicine offers nothing long term

Loathing the terrible side effects that impair any quality of life

Preferring to keep the faith with alternative narratives.

Not being in his predicament I remain skeptical

Having no confidence in untested or unverified methods

But my position and his position are so far removed we don’t talk

Avoiding conversation about the progression of his illness.

The distortion of science under capitalism impacts medicine

In ways that reach deep into our interpersonal relationships

Doing harm between us even as it does harm to us

When what we need is double blind experimental truth.

There is a science to testing what works and what doesn’t

Which is what matters most to socialized medicine

The obvious cure that is so desperately needed

Sadly too late for so many afflicted today.

hard frost

Last night the hard frost dropped the mulberry leaves

Leaving a thick dark green carpet underneath

Commingling with the dead oak leaves littering the yard

Seen this morning from inside where I try to keep warm.

The scene fills me with a certain familiar sadness

Knowing it will be five long months before spring leafs out

While the ever present bare limbs stand clenched against the cold

Skeleton outlines etched against the winter sky.

Looking for something to cheer me up

I read a newspaper human interest story

How a young man found his way to be a performance artist

Becoming a living statue in Washington Square this summer.

But the cold has forced him to climb down and bundle up

As the polar vortex bears down upon New York City

As our thoughts fly south anticipating our seasonal migration

To where a body can move about with warm bones.

These days we have the choice where to reside

Leaving for months on end to follow the sun

Setting up camp in this house or that

Discovering the wildlife in the natural areas nearby.

When I was a boy I looked forward to winter

Bringing the magical ice to skate upon the pond

With lights and ornaments decorating the night

And random holidays imposed by blizzards.

I remember enjoying the camaraderie of my friend

We two who trudged about seeking who would hire us

Money earned snow shoveling soon spent

Indulging in chocolates and soda fountain excess.

Back then I did not know how everything changes

How life is a series of temporary places and people

Each one surrounding us as if in a permanent state

Making it possible to exist happily in this moment.

back and forward

If you think you missed out on the chance think again

For the courage to confront the white supremacists

Or to put your body in defense of a woman’s right to choose

Or to mobilize to face down the flag wavers supporting the wars.

As for the rainbow of sexual orientation coming out proud

And the freedom to express gender identity openly

These rights and respect won only through long hard struggle

Threatened with new repressive laws and hateful acts.

As the old order attempts to tighten its grip

As if the clock could be turned back fifty years

The struggle against white male privilege continues

Against a backdrop of imperialist aggression.

Back then the grandiose triumphalism celebrated

America the great victor of the Second World War

Flouting dominant military industrial production

That precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The rulers exulting not so much now that China is ascendant

When every military adventure is a lingering disaster

When denial and backwards reaction represent policy

When gilded age decadence bankrupts everything good.

Knowing that the youth will make the revolution

The keepers of the flame are eager to pass the torch

To the next generation of activists seeking guidance

On how to negate the repression and seize the day.