Sunday, May 29, 2022

At the Abyss

 

At the Abyss

Uvalde, Texas May 25, 2022

 

Nineteen children

barely adolescents

life evident in every step,

filled with

playful enthusiasm,

brimming with possibilities,

drinking in life through

every pour,

engaging every breath with

shimmering resolve,

the world the canvas

on which they painted

with vivid imagination and a

tapestry of color.

 

Suddenly and terribly negated

by the fiery discharge of a

cold metal gun,

bullets riddling through their young bodies

destroying hopes and idle dreams,

exhuberant ideas,

incipient joy and so many aspirations

terminated in an instant,

locked in the grip of absolute terror,

negating their future,

driving their families to the very edge

of corrosive despair,

turning off the light of existence

leaving a blackness steeped

in hollow silence.

 

Nineteen children

slaughtered by a young man

with madness in his brain,

delusional and beset by

the demons of explosive hatred and rage,

nameless passions unhinged and deadly.

 

The scope of this tragedy would not be

conceivable or even imagined

without weapons of such ferocity that

only a few moments intervened between

the living and the dead.

 

There is another madness present,

large, insidious and looming,

a madness resident within a social order

that formulated the idea that all

citizens have the right to be armed,

encouraged to be fearful and ever vigilant

prepared for violence and stoked with hate

for the sake of profit and greed,

for the sake of a

corrupt and deformed ideology.

 

A madness that pretends that

the corpses of children are

the price to be paid for a contrived

and ridiculous idea of freedom

devoid of any sanity,

empty of compassion,

dismissive of the common good.

 

A madness so cold that

it sees no need to

take such random and brutal

termination of young lives

to heart.

 

A madness infused with such stupidity

that it cannot see the

consequences of its own

barren and disastrous conclusions.

 

A madness that if unchecked

will bring only grief and

wreak havoc upon the future

for us all.

 

 

 

Friday, May 13, 2022

Changing Times - an Optomistic Look Towards the Future

 

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the political arena in the United States remains dominated by the male of the species. But like the trend within the demographics of this county that is obviously moving towards a majority of non-whites (projected to happen by 2045), there is another seismic shift that is unfolding in regard to the societal power and influence of women. This change is reflected on many levels by the following statistics.

Currently (2022), 57% of bachelorette degrees are held by women; 54% of law students are women; 50.5% of medical students are women; 50% of current students are women who are earning degrees in the areas of science and engineering. Since the days of my childhood, I have witnessed amazing changes in the area of women’s rights and women’s progress. Currently, there is no profession or livelihood that in not represented by women. This aspect of life that we have taken for granted was certainly not the way it used to be. There was a time when women were only allowed to participate in a limited aspect of the human world other than their expected roles in motherhood and nurture.

Given these statistics, it becomes quite evident that within a generation, the social and political climate will undergo a significant transformation. As women participate more and more fully within the larger culture, the tone and timbre of politics and policy will undergo substantial changes and the heretofore white male-dominated environment would become seriously threatened.

In many states – mostly in the American South – long dominated by white males, there is a stark realization that those in power will face a very different reality. The underlying fear of this eventuality is, of course, shared by many in these backward and repressive states where the development of educated and free-thinking people is discouraged and ignorance and religious intolerance is thoroughly exploited. This explains why in many states, legislation has been speedily crafted and made into law with the transparent aim of suppressing the ability to vote by many of its non-white citizens to the ludicrous degree of making it “illegal” to supply water to those waiting on long-lines to vote even in the hottest of climates. This subliminal fear also explains blatant attempts to control women even by imposing draconian measures to condemn and outlaw abortion.

There are backward areas of this country where Big Lies are freely supported and propagated. One of course is the completely unsubstantiated conviction that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen. Another absurdity that is currently being codified in some states is that human life begins at conception. This purported truth flies in the face of biological reality. Clearly, a fertilized human egg is not a person; is not human. In fact, the human fetus does not become viable outside the womb until after twenty-four weeks of development. To suggest that the termination of pregnancy in the early stages of fetal development is equivalent to murder is preposterous and draconian.

The purpose of this kind of lie is to substantiate an absurd political reality that allows for convicting a woman seeking and abortion or those in the medical profession who could safely abort fetal development as guilty of attempted murder. The defense of democracy or morality is not the foundation of such assertions – they are driven by an exaggerated fear of a changing world in which women are no longer held captive by their gender, and men freely acknowledge and support a true equality of the sexes.

These attempts at changing the course of human history will fail as all fundamentalist and extremist ideas must, for they are ultimately unsustainable. The tragedy lies with the fact that many innocents will suffer unnecessarily due to this level of extreme ignorance and profound stupidity.

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Mother and Child

 

Across the boundaries of

arching time,

mothers have enshrouded their infants

with selfless love.

 

From first beginnings

descended from the ancient trees

forest primeval,

thrust into a world

mysterious and unforgiving

perilous rain storms

stalking resplendent earth

ice-bound cold

covering everything with

savage snowfall

descending.

 

Mothers seeking refuge

their infants clinging

breasts engorged

creating safe places

among the chaos.

 

Through the eons

civilizations taking shape

in the wilderness,

empires born

empires in the midst of

fiery dissolution

mothers prevail

giving birth

without fanfare

without justification

throughout the fitful generations

building the human kind

from bits of matter

into a human presence

across the boundaries of

arching time.