Bad News
Life puts a bookmark on our pain
so we can visit it again.
Read its memory and absorb
the angst of our whole spinning orb.
Day after day, the pain is writ
in newspapers that carry it
to every mountaintop and shore.
As time advances, there’s always more.
Everywhere we share the pain.
Love is born, then lost again.
Countries advance but at the cost
of what another country’s lost.
The riches that the rich accrue
are for working man to rue.
One needs an exoskeleton
to protect him from the ill they’ve done.
War and pestilence and greed
are given growth to by the need
of mankind to accrue still more
through exploitation and through war.
There’s no escaping behind a door,
for daily, News just brings us more.
Prompt words today are exoskeleton, absorb, working, advance, lover, bookmark. Images from Unsplash.
Oops. Looks like the exoskeleton link didn’t work yesterday, so here it is again today: https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/03/02/rdp-wednesday-exoskeleton/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Thanks Judy for this poem and thought. It brought back memories of the days when Bad News was really BAD to a kid like me. On top of that, last night I watched a movie on Netflix called: “The Railway Man”, which reinforced my memories of those times. They were much worse than people of today really know. The movie comes very close to what really happened, but is also a beautiful movie to remember (thanks to the acting of Nicole Kidman~!)
You can see my drivel here:
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Yep. Yesterday I had to shop inside the grocery store for the first time since March 2020. It was less freaky than THAT trip was but it was freaky enough. I find today I’m somehow heart-sore and tired.
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Where do you shop if not the grocery store, Martha?
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I’ve been ordering groceries online and driving to the store and picking them up. 🙂
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Ah the modern world…
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Yes. Rhymingly cogent and painfully accurate.
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Do you regularly read the news, Marillyn?
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I like “Countries advance but at a cost / of what another country’s lost.” So sadly true.
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Us, too.
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Perfectly placed comma in the last line of this splendidly rhyming truth
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You would notice, Derrick. Thanks.
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Slight mix up with the prompt, Judy. I particularly liked your line on the spinning orb. It is unrelenting.
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