I Am Pleased That Spelling Standards Have Been Maintained

Even when so many other marks of civilisation
and empathy towards others have fallen
by the wayside on the decades since she left office.

 

No Bids

What if the US Government held an auction
for oil rights on land it historically held in trust? 

But no bids were entered?

Because, it is suspected, that extracting
the energy and delivering it to customers
in cities far away would cost companies more
then the present oil market says the energy is worth?

Native Alaskan communities like the Tyonek,
Dena'ina, the Suqpaig(Alutiq) and the Seldovia
who make up the diaspora of the 400,000 folk,
who live off the land, and along the coast,
of the Cook Inlet might well be glad
of the land being left intact at present.

But what will happen when the first bid is accepted....

Not Since.....

   ....the days of the slave trade being legal,
and more profitable than the dreams of Croesus
has so much recent American wealth,
and once-prized scientific resources,
been laid waste to so casually by so few,
and all to such devastating world effect.

The Video Game For One

The story goes that in 1925 Sigmund Freud, sent his book
'The Interpreation of Dreams' to America to be translated
from German to English by his nephew, Edward Bernays.
Whilst he was translating it, Bernays had his Eureka! Idea.

As he rewrote what his uncle had sent from German
into American Englsih, to explain how the dreams
of individuals could be coded, and commonly understood,
so an individual's dreams were seen as less than unique.
Bernays thought about how to recode mass communications,  
to make people live in dream-like states, beyond their means,
acting on signals only he controlled, that they misunderstood.    

The century that followed has been led by consumption levels
more conspicuous than could be dreamed by wealthy America,
for whom recrational drugs used to be part of the journey.
And it has been quite a journey, led by more changes
in technology than anyone could dare to imagine.

From the silent films of the 1920s thru the earliest television,
to the modern day mushy fantasies common to AI animation
is quite some set of changes in presentation for anyone to process. 

Now America has a president, who when he is beset
by unwelcome economic realities makes them go away,
through a media only he controls, thru which the public
can find the full measure of how much he is the ultimate
in being a controlling fantasist. The images he puts there 
exist to obliterate reality, as if American life is a video game
that he sets the rules for, where he is the only player.

Where we can read the results, in our news feeds.

'Remember Your Dreams'

the sign above my head said,
where by my bed I was also left
the means of writing them down,
before the day's thoughts erased them.

Music filled so many of those dreams,
most of it I'd shared with friends but some
fresh from my head, tunes I'd heard nowhere else.
Other times what came back was news reports
I'd read, on line or in the papers, when they were
the main way for me to learn about the world.

The best dreams would feature my truest lost love,
my one time dog Oscar, who in the short years 
I and my buddy cared for him we were the happiest 
three people could imagine being together. 
We made each other complete and content.

Now my days seem less engaged,
in a daze I do what must be done,
amiably but with less exitement. 

In This Age Of Overstatement

Where does truth have to go,
to be found, away from the shadows
of exaggeration, open evasion, cliches
that so easily block listeners ears,
and the wholely centralised media ownership
where the buck used to stop has disappeared?

I don't know, but seeking that place
starts with believing the place exists,
both in my times and in other peoples,
along with accepting, as we have to,
all days of wading through all that is not
the place seek, and slowly letting it pass,
leaving our search for rest in acceptance
intact. Whilst we seek the same for others.

The Poor Man's Work Ethic

When I was young the values I lived out
were the poor mans' work ethic of working hard 
to stay poor, and when work failed completely
doing government paid for displacement activities,
including further education, to remain active.
Whilst making my acquired cheapness work for me.

There the main purpose of my activities
was to keep me reaching towards the horisons
I could see, that retreated, the nearer I got to them.

I found my way out of this grown up version
of smothercare when I going nowhere slowly
by my being accepted by a world with no family
behind me, where my main experience of work
was the catch 22 logic of not getting jobs
from a market that was set to refuse me.

Nowadays I don't scrabble after money with any effort.
I live within my means and my greatest sense of reward
comes from having survived long term unemployment,
and the poor man's work ethic, with my mind intact.