That's Just The Way It Is (not).
When you gonna wake up, and strengthen the things that remain?
Every day I arise and every day I lay my head down and nothing changes. It makes me wonder what the hell is going on. It reminds me of the old lady in the cattle car heading to Birkenau and screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and everyone just dreaming about the peace that their destination will give.
I wrote last week about the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 England. I asked, who today will be our Wat Tyler? There needs to be something more than random Twitter posts of outrage. There has to be something more than just FB quotes about us destroying the planet. When will we all get off our asses and do something that will strengthen the things we’ve got, that remain?
I wrote yesterday about Martin Luther King Jr. He certainly wouldn’t be sitting on the couch watching video after Youtube video of outrage. He’d be out banging on doors and standing at the gates of the powerful. His daughter posted this video clip of the reverend - showing a side of him that we often don’t admit. He would have picked up an axe if he’d had to. When we are we gonna wake up and go get our check?
The reset is coming. It’s the world of VR where you’ll visit Disney Land and walk through a grocery store buying essentials without leaving your house. You’ll own nothing and be happy! The few at the top will own everything and be happier! No overhead, big, big profits. That’s the jig. Amusing ourselves to death while the planet dies and life becomes a blip on a screen.
I don’t need to school anyone about how the vast wealth of the few is gobbling up control of the world. It’s feudalism 2.0 coming to a realm near you. What I do need to school you in is this - it doesn’t have to be like this.
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” ― Emma Goldman
We need to defend our precious civil liberties and rights. We need to fight again for the worth of our labor and time. We need to say “No more” - “I’m not going to take your lies any longer. I’m not going to let you empty the public treasuries and have a laugh pitting all us common folk against each other. Enough.”
Too often I’m told, “That’s just the way it is.” And people put their head down and look after their own self-interest. But that only lasts so long until the whole thing collapses and we succumb to the tragedy of the commons. Let’s wake up before it is too late.
I think about where I come from - a small, rough farm in N. Ontario etched out from the bush and bedrock. Now, just a few decades later, all the family farms are gone. Owned by corporations. One man now farms what it took 10 men to. And for miles and miles, it is just treeless wasteland. People have sold their trees for pennies, a couple trips to the sun of Aruba.
When we gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?
Last night I watched a documentary about Bob Dylan on Netflix - The Rolling Thunder Revue. I wondered where that time, 1975, had gone? A time when there was a madness of hope, people pushing back against the Tricky Dickies and financial fools and kingdumbs of the time. I thought of the man, Dylan. I wish he’d have won 10 Nobels. I thought of this song (and a few others). He is a prophet. And like him - I ask again, WHEN YOU GONNA WAKE UP?
They Know Who THEY are
They’d make love and that’d be it
a cup of coffee
and on to the next piece of tit.
They’d round off bills and borrowing
into but money
words into something only to call your honey
(oops! I forgot – this shouldn’t be funny!)
They’d make grown men, slaves
government ad ministered
the rest well-behaved, ready to wave
the mental patients off
(Heil happiness! Without a sputter or cough!)
They’d make wars but
interventions
strikes and protests but
conventions.
“Want another cuppa?”
They’d make memory but
a few well-timed tears
celebrations celebratory,
the only way to keep the tables clear.
“Drink up – Cheers!”
They’d make being young but
a time before your older
fashion, a follow me
hey, there’s not much to shoulder!
They’d make ignorance a virtue
but call it by another name
they’d make it a law that
there’s always another to blame.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
They’d dam up all the rivers
(only they’d know how it figures.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
They’d clear up all our livers.
They’d give hell a better name,
sprinkle out to all, 15 minutes of fame.
Hey, look at him!
They’d even bring back shame.
They’d make trees grow but straight
in public, unlawful to hate
(but my how the tongues strain, they can’t wait)
They’d nail down logic into its proper place.
Give every mirror a proper face
(my head must be screwed on wrong – what a waste!).
They’d move back the dawn
an hour or two.
Tell you all that’s wrong with you.
They’d outlaw all foul language.
I swear,
but hey! who’d give a f**k (read, care).
Everybody’d have to want to own a house,
have 1.3 children, be quiet as a laboratory mouse
and replace their old doodad with a doohickey
at least once a year (or when bankruptcy is near).
They’d research for endless years
so that onions wouldn’t make your eyes cry
(they’d even give bawling babies a sigh).
They’d always make sure to remind you,
it’s not proper to ask why
(why, is it only me that’s not shy?).
They’d try to make the weather
the same every day
(but then, what would they talk about anyway?).
Even, extract from the seasons
all their seasoning
(but I can follow their reasoning).
They’d make all the answers
come none too soon.
They’ve even succeeded in de-mystifying the moon.
They’d turn water into wine
and turn a profit too.
But they won’t sell you much
fish and bread will have to do,
but don’t ask how it’s done
it might be the end of you.
They’d stuff all hope into
a lottery ball.
Let the world pay just
to watch ’em fall.
They’d make intelligence, just knowing
(my can’t you hear their noses blowing!)
and all comings a going,
nothing left on the table but Spam
and little jars of freckled jam.
They’d take us all for fools
and that’s how they’d rule
(but aren’t we …. stroke that – it’s cruel).
They’d live unleaking, then expire
like a fat firm tire,
unburped by a bump
never roughing the road
just spinning around a point of nothing
to nowhere, god knows I suppose.
They’d move beauty back to center.
Make every unliving thing better
(but our eyes keep getting wetter).
They’d refer over and over to rights
(what you can get away with is right)
and article 249BS.3 (d).
Have the whole world energetically flying kites
thinking they were free
(but having to ask to go and pee).
Yes, it’s done like a deal!
(can’t you hear Orwell and the pigs squeal?).
What we don’t know, we have and they
intend to steal.
And they know who they are
(I can only see them cuz I’m so far….).
In the high branches of the tree
baboons howl,
while below lions saunter about
with a scowl.
The zookeepers are getting paid
cashing in
(they know how to put the knife in).
Cuz, they know who they are
and that
the jail bars are ours.
Thanks for your poems. They really make me think about my own life. Someday, i'd love to write a poem book depicting my life journey (its beautiful sceneries, its pitfalls and challenges, ...).