Dim Prospects
(A Hyperbolic Modest Proposal)
We’re blotting the sun out and dimming the stars
with furnaces, factories, wildfires, cars.
With overproduction causing glut after glut,
it seems our improvements are anything but.
Man’s once-shiny future is now looking dim,
and he’s pulling the whole planet under with him.
Fires and hurricanes, tsunamis and quakes,
rampaging hillsides and drying-up lakes
are messages sent that the earth’s fighting back—
giving us warnings of things out of whack.
When fat cats in limos and thousand buck suits
have usurped all the seeds and kept all the fruits,
and all of their products are made by machines,
three dimensional copiers making our jeans,
our autos, appliances, organs and cars,
our TVs and glasses, our bikes and guitars,
we’ll all need welfare—mere motionless blobs
once they have “teched” away all of our jobs.
And since welfare is something that they’ve soundly booed,
what will the masses do for their food?
Where will we sleep once all of the money
all of the milk and all of the honey
is in the pockets of those gazillionaires
cushioned away in their billion-buck lairs?
Keeping a few of us here on the scene
to garden and cook for them, to serve and clean,
they’ll let unwashed masses starve in their cots
and buy from each other their trillion dollar yachts
And perhaps they’ll be happy with what they’ve created:
machines making products ’til their needs are sated.
Now that they’ve purchased our ship of state
and made it their own, it seems that the fate
of unlucky millions who’ve gone overboard
for lack of the medicine they can’t afford
is nothing to them, for not one of them cares
how any common citizen fares.
Lest we riot against them out of our need
for money for food they’ve usurped in their greed,
issue guns to the populace. Let us dispense
of these unneeded masses. To them, it makes sense!
The prompt word today is dim.
Wow, you said it, …the USA is fast becomming a ‘sick’ country.
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Sad but true.
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Sad but true – I never know whether to use the sad or mad emoji these days, as I feel both emotions over the current state of affairs
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You illustrate the dangers of imbalance very well.
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Awesome! Rage on, Judy!
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ha
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Yes, true, but ultimately — maybe not in our lifetime — it will backfire. Because people who haven’t the means are not consumers and their wealth is based on our consumption. If and when we stop buying, they sink into the mud. Where they belong.
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Yes… that’s the great irony they seem not to see. Gotta keep priming the pump.
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Reblogged this on aroused and commented:
Have got to repost this poem and it says it all so skilfully, thanks Judy!
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What a world we live in. And you painted the visual so eloquently here Judy. A wake up call perhaps. Amazing poem.
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Thanks, Miriam. Hard not to dwell on it, but we have to be aware and then live on…
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So very true
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So well written. Absolutely right.
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Thanks, Sadje…
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A pleasure
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So true. Amazing write.
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A very well written rhyming commentary of the current sad state of affairs especially in the USA. Your observations are spot on…too bad the people who need to see it/read it won’t…
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Yes..I know. We seem to have reached that state where everyone is only reading what they want to believe.
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