Religion and Politics Don’t Compute
Your infatuation is a blasphemy of sorts.
How could you so revere a leader who consorts
with pedophiles and listens to dictators and Russians?
Are you not aware of the obvious repercussions?
As we commence a new election, there are other people praying
that your misguided leader no longer will be braying.
Prompt words for the day are commence, blasphemy, infatuation and listen.
I’ve been saying for some time that it isn’t enough to rail against the conditions in the concentration camps currently being filled with those seeking asylum in the U.S. We need to propose some solutions. Today I received a communication that offers solutions–or at least ways in which we can support those attempting to institute measures to end the atrocities in these camps. Here is a link to view what is happening in the camps–many of them run by a big-time contributor to Trump and several senators as well as a list of things you can do to help.
Some excerpts from the link above:
But why are these camps any different from the detention centers we’ve been hearing about for the last year? Elizabeth C. McLaughlin explains why:
“These concentration camps (let’s call them what they are) will be under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, but within the Department of Defense. Unlike ICE facilities, which allow site inspectors inside, there will be no inspection of military-run camps.
The military will be able to deny access to anyone it chooses. No media. No oversight. Lawyers will not be allowed in. Human rights monitors will not be allowed in. The camps will also be protected airspace, meaning that no drones can fly over them to take pictures of what’s going on inside. The Trump administration will be able to conduct itself in whatever way it wants to without anyone knowing what’s going on inside.”
Fame
Of what importance do you hold fame?
How many people know your name?
Did you choose the challenge of renown?
Are you well-noted in your town
or in your state or in the world?
How often is your face unfurled
on posters hanging in Time’s Square––
your name broadcasted through the air?
What tradeoff made you vain and truthless,
removed your honor, made you ruthless?
What kind of fortitude is power
turned vain and humorless and dour?
What good these trophies all around you
with no humanity to ground you ?
What good this fame of which you’re fond
If honor’s gone a vagabond?
Words of the day are fame, challenge, fortitude and vagabond. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/rdp-thursday-fame/
https://fivedotoh.com/category/one-word-challenge/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/16/fowc-with-fandango-welcome/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/your-daily-word-prompt-fortitude-may-16-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/vagabond/
I was very affected by this piece by poet/performance artist Ron Stock when he read it at a La Manzanilla reading earlier this year. Today he sent me the video of the piece, in which he rails against those who make use of religion as an excuse for genocide and prejudice. I want to stress again that I have no issue with those who maintain the true tenets of religion: peace, love, charity and attendance to making things better for others in this world., but in light of the recent attack of the synagogue near San Diego, the suicide bombings against churches in Sri Lanka, and the man who, on his way to church, drove his car into a crowd in Sunnyvale, CA, because he thought he saw people who looked like Muslims, I have to support Ron in railing against those who and have instituted and supported the rash of Holy Wars around our planet.
Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham interrupted a house committee hearing with a 120-decibel airhorn after a Trump administration official insisted air-gun testing to locate oil underwater would have no impact on whales, who rely on echolocation to hunt and communicate.
Dumbing Down
I bailed on calculus but I excelled at long division.
Illustrious in wood shop, I flunked nuclear fission.
Knights in suits of armor were never quite my thing.
I never learned to play an instrument. I do not sing.
My illustrious school career came by fits and starts.
Loved auto mechanics. Couldn’t hack the arts.
I admit I’m not well-rounded. I studied what I liked,
and after school was over, I skateboarded and biked.
I never was a bookworm. I had no use for culture.
I had no fear of teachers who hovered like a vulture.
A comic book inside a textbook made for pleasant reading.
I only paid attention to what I would be needing.
The same is true now that I’m grown. I skip over the news.
I have no need of knowing about Arabs, Serbs or Jews.
I fixate on my own needs. I can’t bother with the rest.
I read enough to pay my bills and pass my driver’s test.
What more is necessary? I have TV and my phone.
When I am ensconced in them, the world leaves me alone.
I’m tired of ecology and its boring explaining,
so voted for a president who is more entertaining.
Now that news is comedy, it holds my interest well.
Who believes those scientists who ring the warning bell?
When the air’s too bad to breathe, I’ll simply stay inside
watching news on Stuppid that is more bona fide.
(Click on the Stuppid URL for a list and description of “fake news” news sources and some of the biggest disinformation posts. Chilling. )
Prompt words today were bail, division, illustrious and armor.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/rdp-sunday-bail/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/17/fowc-with-fandango-division/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/illustrious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/your-daily-word-prompt-armor-march-17-2019/
The Spoils
Walking is elemental. We do it night and day,
but if they could, they’d meter it and we’d have to pay.
They charge us for our water, but so far air is free.
Until they find a way to own it, they will let us be.
Every element on earth is one they’d like to own,
but how to possess all of it so far is still unknown.
They find new ways to own us and to control our voting.
They open up our coffers and soon they’re busy toting
all of our resources off to their own coffers
so they can sell it back to us, slaves to their pricey offers.
If there were a tournament for greed and avarice,
it would be one our billionaires wouldn’t want to miss.
Golf might be their game of choice or perhaps chess or tennis.
The rules would be cut-throat, and their game plan full of menace.
But no matter what their plots to gain chess pieces or ball,
no matter what their motivation to possess it all,
no matter what the game or how many players are in it,
all the rules would ensure our president would win it!!!
Prompt words today are walk, meter, tournament and elemental. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/rdp-saturday-walk/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/09/fowc-with-fandango-meter/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/your-daily-word-prompt-tournament-march-9-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/elemental/
Doling out the Punch
If you construct your paradise at the cost of others—
build it on the suffering of children and of mothers—
do you really think that it is worth the cost
of creating your own heaven on what others may have lost?
You may feign indifference as you sally back and forth,
but do you really think that your soul’s increased its worth?
Do you even think of things like this as you amass
your fortune or is the very core of you this crass?
Heaven can’t be heaven, in fact it’s really wrong
if you don’t want to pull the least of us along
on your pilgrim’s progress toward riches and toward fame.
Life’s composed of more than making wealth a game.
It should be so obvious that it does not need telling
that happiness cannot be found in buying and in selling
so long as what you’re selling is the suffering of another.
Every nationality and race is still your brother.
How can you enjoy riches and revel in it all
then seek to keep it for yourself by building up a wall,
hoarding all your plenty behind your man-made ridge?
Instead of building fortresses, we should build a bridge.
I know this has been said before, but still I must relate
all of this just one more time to our dense heads of state.
Some of us cannot believe that you have the nerve
to still be insisting that you are there to serve
as you grab all the pie and say there’s not enough
to share with the others because times are so tough.
What’s more, you try to get us to build your wall for you
so you can keep on doing all those shell games that you do,
insisting that we’ll profit by tax cuts for billionaires,
assisting all the bloodsuckers to become zillionaires.
Making up the deficits by cutting our security
and calling it entitlement? We question your maturity!
Are you simply spoiled boys playing with our nation?
Have you made a private playground of your God’s creation?
Do you get to pour the punch, determining the ration?
One percent is what you dole out for our satiation.
While you “one percent” gulp down all the ninety-nine
portions of the elixir that you find mighty fine,
children thirst and suffer. The homeless face the cold.
Have no doubt. It’s our security that’s being sold!!!!
!
The prompt words today were lost, paradise, indifference and worth.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/rdp-saturday-lost/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/16/fowc-with-fandango-paradise/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/your-daily-word-prompt-indifference-february-16-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/worth/
photo from Rolling Stone
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 