Tag Archives: crooked politicians

When is Enough, Enough?

4 Replies

 

  When Is Enough Enough?

To want all or to want nothing are both dangerous. Those who want all are the conquerors and exploiters and power lords who have brought the world to the state it is in today. They will exploit the poor and the weak but get their feelings of the most power from exploiting those equal to them in power. The world is a game to these people and we are all pawns.

But to want nothing may lead to despair. True, in a few holy men, it has been the path to enlightenment; but for those living within the world and not to the side of it, to want nothing can lead to apathy and powerlessness.

I think the true enlightenment lies in wanting enough and then wanting enough for others as well. This doesn’t have to be done by charity. It can be done by the way we vote, the way we treat our neighbors, the way we invest our money and the way we conduct our own businesses. It can be done by the way we bargain for a trinket on the beach or handle wrong change.

Sylvia Plath was probably correct in her statement, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” When the richest woman in the world commits suicide or the richest men in the world exploit those living hand-to-mouth, one has to wonder what great lack they are trying to fill and whether in fact they have ever discovered the secret of what the world is really about.

 

This is a rewrite of an essay written three years ago. The prompt today was enlighten. 

 

 

Correcting a Wrong

5 Replies

I made a misstatement in my last “Odd Ball” post for Cee’s prompt.  I mistakenly said it was a photo I’d altered with my photo editing program (Photos, by Apple) when in fact it was a detail from a collage I did while at forgottenman’s house in Missouri a few years ago.

In response to the photo I posted, I got this query from anglogermantranslations:

anglogermantranslations

2 hoursÜbersetzen und Literatur, doch nicht nur

I just made out ‘party politics’ in the newspaper clipping. Is it something political then? Do we see Trump’s hair ruffled by the wind in the left bottom corner? And feathers of a big bird? Is it a rebus? Are we looking for a particular word?
Which sent me on a quest for a photo of the entire piece.  An hour or so later, I have discovered this photo in my archives, along with a few other detail shots of the collage:
dsc06888

dsc06894dsc06899dsc06893

And yes, anglogermantranslations, it is a political piece, although Mr. Trump had not yet come upon the scene in a political sense when I created it. He is a product of the theme, however, that dealt with the vanished innocence of our society and how the natural order of things has been taken over by big business and the profit motive. Was I right or was I right?

NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 7: Filthy Lucre–Dropped Bills, Three Vignettes

3 Replies

Dropped Bill

It falls so easily from open purse or pocket,
unnoticed as you walk away;
and yet to the one who finds it,
such a gift.
A mere surprise, perhaps, baksheesh,
or a next meal they otherwise may have gone without.
Such a small joy for whomever finds it,
whether they pass it on or spend it soon.
Well worth letting a fiver drop by accident,
now and then, like a beneficent God
waiting to see what will happen.


Dropped Bill II

What passes more quickly or more often from hand to hand,
or has more life in it: oil from the fish and chips it purchased,
dirt from the field, lost signs of love?
Everything in life is pressed into the bills we pay
for most of what sustains us.
Yet we call it filthy lucre
as though these signs of life are bad.
Perhaps Shakespeare coined the term, regarding Shylock’s usury.
We’ll look it up after—both you and me.
But even if I’m right, now that I’ve written this verse and you have read it,
Bill Shakespeare may no longer have complete dominion
over our connotation of the term.


Dropped Bill III

King James version of The Bible (Titus 1:10-11), For there are many unruly and vain talkers and     deceivers . . . Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which  they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.

Who knew there was a book in the Bible called Titus?
Not me, though I won the prize, week after week,
for learning the most verses in Sunday School.
True, I’ve forgotten much of what I once knew;
but I was a child who loved money,
hoarding my quarter allowance
in a large blue piggy bank,
and so I doubt an allusion to filthy lucre
would have passed me by,
even without Google to look up the word.
Surely some motivated teacher would have defined the word.
Then I would have known that the term “filthy lucre” was Biblical,
and let Shylock off the hook ever after–
applying it, ironically, to those like politicians
who, for the sake of filthy lucre,
do not pass bills.


The Prompt: Write about money! It could be about not having enough, having too much (a nice kind of problem to have), the smell, or feel, or sensory aspects of money. It could also just be a poem about how we decide what has value or worth.

To find out more about NaPoWriMo, go here:  http://www.napowrimo.net/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/