Tuesday Evening (forever remembering/hoping)

Tuesday Evening (forever remembering/hoping)

A sentinel dolphin slaps the surface
of the windswept, grey lagoon.
A lone Osprey eyes a dinner smorgasbord
near Paul’s Island.

We sit, slightly nervous,
In the television’s ghostly flicker,
awaiting final tabulations.

We survived the barrage of campaign ads,
long lines at polling stations,
patiently mulling candidates, parties, pet issues,
and the rest of the propaganda
our electoral process has become.

Democrats are Liberals (read communists);
Republicans are Conservatives (read fascists);
usually, neither is true,
but we want so much to believe something…

The entrenched want us to be afraid (give us your vote),
they want us to feel safe (we will protect you),
but one cannot burn both sides of THAT candle
without enduring the scorch of the flame.
But when innocent blood is shed,
anger will necessarily be the response,
and throwing money at it won’t fix anything,
unless money is one’s primary allegiance.

Living together requires sharing,
living together requires loving.
Symbiosis requires both, and nothing less.
Dying for a cause seems noble,
and killing for a cause?
depends on the cause, to my jaded eyes.
Killing innocents? That may raise
the red flag of revenge to another level,
one we may NEVER be prepared for
in our white picket fenced isolation.

How about killing religious fanatics?
Is what is good for you,
also good for me?
What about eliminating the Falwells
Robertsons, Reeds, and their brethren?
Of course we wouldn’t, but how different
is the level of fanaticism in their beliefs
to the Taliban or other religious extremists?

Is it so significantly less potent and righteous
that they could not attract fanatical adherents?
Hasn’t that already happened in burnt cross
executions across the southland. Lives extinguished
only because of real or perceived difference.
When one is spiritually right
and everyone else is wrong,
we plant doomsday seeds of superiority,
hatred, and reckless vengeance
for something we don’t even
have the patience, or will, to understand.

At what point is killing justified
when it is patently not self defense;
our courts would not have any qualms
about delivering a guilty verdict.
By our complacency and refusal to stand up,
are we not unwitting accomplices?
Do we not really know why these people
want to kill us? Maybe a little history lesson is
in order, but wait, I digress. Our children are so
busy preparing for an FCAT test measuring
their school, that history is relegated to that
back burner of trivialities like geography and science.

Because someone is ethnically or culturally different
should not condemn them to subservience or death
from the richer and more powerful.
Narrow thinking in leadership is the enemy,
replacing objectivity with dogma,
creating a polarized society where political discourse
is based on hype, ridicule and hyperbole.

Our memory is short, perhaps even shorter
than the fuse of oblivion burning beneath our feet.
A future based solely on what we need today,
Is no future at all for our civilization.

We have become a country of pettiness,
our bank accounts, cars and houses
are more important than our friends
and infinitely more important than others
finding shelter under alien colors.
We can’t even take care of millions
rotting under our OWN colors.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy once made the bold statement
“ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country”.
It seems that since 1980 we have lost our
sense of community, replaced with
terminal poison of corporate consumption
and painfully rationalized righteousness.

Yes, I sometimes call myself a writer,
though Stephen King is probably not feeling too
threatened. Sometimes my words are strong,
sometimes not, really depends on how
heavy my heart is that day, moment.
I see the raw beauty around us, the dolphin, the Osprey,
the rolling waves of the majestic Atlantic,
yet never too far is the pain of not quite fitting in.

It may be because I have never been a gazillionaire,
tasted the fruits of unlimited bank accounts,
had a boat that drinks fuel like lemonade
on a hot summer day to
motivate between my jet-set parties.
I’ve never had that trophy wife,
but I did get a few trophies for bowling!
Somehow, I don’t think that is on the same level.

But here I am again, watching the ticker on the bottom
of CNN, New Jersey Senate, Florida Governor, etc.,
the idealist in me hoping, praying for a change
that really means something. Is there anyone else
out there who can see that our current leadership
is sadly lacking in objectivity, that their God thrives
in dollars and lessons in CYA?

Somehow I can’t believe that Patrick Henry’s
patriotism was all founded on protecting the status quo.

So still, redundantly, I sit in front of the tv, watching numbers rise
and states change from red to blue, blue to red,
ridiculously hoping for a world without righteousness and greed…

Wishing silently through a stubborn veil of tears,
that I was poling my canoe in the lagoon,
watching the acrobatics of silver mullet jumping
and the successful crash of diving brown pelicans,
while knowing, knowing that my grandchildren,
and their grandchildren, will be able to experience
God’s perfect symmetry of nature in balance without threat
of toxic waste, uncontrolled birth rates,
slash and burn development,
or the unscrupulous killing of misguided wars.

The hungry pelican really doesn’t get it,
she can’t possibly comprehend the whole picture…
but her precious life is absolutely dependent…
on OUR getting it.