Saturday, November 14, 2020
Friday, November 13, 2020
grazing the grass
Grazing the grass for breakfast
Eating the kernels of wheat
Ground into flour and cooked
Delicious staff of life
Enjoying sweet fruit as well
Inviting me to partake
A mouthful of ripened ovary
Container of seeds
A seed eater by choice
Favoring the beans and nuts
Along with rice and potatoes
Excellent nutrition
The leafy greens providing
Vitamins for good health
Roughage for good digestion
Farm fresh food
Grain cultivation made possible
All the ancient civilizations
Humans are primarily herbivores
Like all the great apes
I have lost my taste for flesh
The butcher shop smell of death
Though I would consume it
With no other option
A carnivore no more
A different sensibility
A kinship with animals
Feasting on plants
Thursday, November 12, 2020
no going back
There is no going back
To a life of nostalgic innocence
As if that ever existed
No matter how hard this is
The worst part is knowing
The worst is yet to be
Every day more cases than the last
Increasing exponentially
The virus running amok here
Spread most by those denying facts
With ideology running through it
Asserting their individual freedom
There will be a reckoning
That cannot come too soon
The success in China beckoning
Begging for comparison
Why no universal health care
Why only medicine for profit
Who benefits and who suffers
Who holds the strings of power
The changing of the palace guard
Removing that erratic incompetent
In favor of mister diplomatic manners
Does not alter the underpinnings
The military industrial complex
The worldwide imperialist hegemony
The systemic racism and misanthropy
Continue unchecked
Capitalism created global warming
Unabated pollution in all forms
Driven by business logic
Must stop now
Let us go then into the streets
Mobilize in massive demonstrations
Demanding an end to all that
To seize the day
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
good question
That's a good question
My friend Jim asked
What he could possibly say
To change someone's mind
But I don’t actually know
How to turn someone around
Just that emotion prevails
Over reason and logic
Jim has so many questions
It can be a bit much at times
But if you let him go there
He will persist seeking answers
So I turned the question around
To hear what he would say
What it would take to decide
Something he believes isn’t true
Without going into details
About the specific example
He answered his own question
What determines his views
We learn from our sources
First from personal experience
Next from what our people say
Then from the media we choose
So if you are trying persuasion
Respect their learned life lessons
Share observations from your own life
To explain your different conclusions
The rest is argument butting heads
Reminding me of the expression
My mind is made up
Don’t confuse me with the facts
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Monday, November 9, 2020
Sunday, November 8, 2020
happy day
People were especially happy today
At least the ones I saw where we went
Out for a walk in the November sun
To look at the late fall color by the reservoir
The way they said "Good morning"
Greeting everyone with a smile
It was more than delight in the warm air
The day after the election was called
Despite voter suppression and demagoguery
That despicable bully is on the way out
And while we would be glad to see him behind bars
Still it's a relief to see his backside get removed
The threat of a coup now revealed as empty bluster
In the face of our preparations for mass resistance
This electoral defeat of racism and reaction
May prove to be a tipping point in the struggle
Hearing the fellow walkers I encountered this morning
I would like to think included some with progressive views
Who like me belong to a certain minority in this country
Whites who seek to be allies with the oppressed
Even though a large majority of whites support Trump
A significant number of us reject white supremacy
And all the other attacks on human rights that go with it
Targeting women and LGBTQ and people of color
The more white people realize what many youth already know
That this is the way towards liberation for all of us
The closer we get to overturning the ruling power structure
And the long awaited day for the most exuberant celebration
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)