They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

I don't embrace
you yet—I will, so tarry.
Bless us, extend our duration. Delay

another day
and let me bed upon—not
under—the grass and in sunlight's gold trace.

"in 1856 when, barely a year into his reign, Alexander II announced to an assembly of noblemen, “I’ve decided to do it, gentlemen. If we don’t give the peasants freedom from above, they will take it from below...” Northern leaders, on the other hand, pointed with shame to the fact that the world’s greatest democracy and its most infamous autocracy stood alone among major Western powers in retaining slavery."
—ADAM GOODHEART, The New York Times, March 2, 2011, 8:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-other-emancipation-proclamation/

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Serf Bazaar [Today's News Poem, September 13, 2010}

Serf Bazaar [Today's News Poem, September 13, 2010}

Beads of trading glass on hempen vines,
Crystal bowls and servant boys or girls...
Full of choices, everything's expense.

Come beyond the dollar curtain; don
Uniform and sweep the floors—and take
One of many pleasures. Leave the rest.

Nothing here's forbidden; simply ruled.
Even time is costly: waste not, want
Less. If sleep is how you take it, go.

Horde your surplus. Keep your options safe.
Youth departs, but still we fantasize
Everything is possible expense.

“The student loan default rate continued to rise in fiscal year 2008, the latest period for which data is available, with default rates for students at for-profit colleges — already the highest — rising the fastest.”
– TAMAR LEWIN, The New York Times, September 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14colleges.html

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Homing Chicken, Part II [Today's News Poem May 27, 2010]

Homing Chicken, Part II [Today's News Poem May 27, 2010]

Even a chick has to break its own shell.
Hatched in a classroom, the kids call them 'peeps.'
Tending the cages for birdies to dwell,
Students observe that beneath the cute cheep,
Predators lurk. When the black one falls sick,
Siblings both bury the bird in the chips—
Wood for a grave that the yellow ones kick.
Golden like sunlight that's ready to drip
Off of a cloud that evaporates soon
After that instant. The birdlings are burned.
Death by the heater that gave them the boon—
Life and then ashes: the lesson kids learned.

“Powerful governments and political expediency are helping to perpetuate torture, war crimes and other human rights abuses around the world, Amnesty International said Thursday in its annual report.”
– Mark McDonald, The New York Times, May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/28amnesty.html

“The dire impact of the massive Gulf spill was apparent Sunday on oil-soaked islands where pelicans nest as several of the birds splashed in the water and preened themselves, apparently trying to clean crude from their feet and wings.
Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk in the bird colony, with thick globs floating on top of the water. Nests sat precariously close the mess in mangrove trees.”
– GREG BLUESTEIN and MATTHEW BROWN, The Associated Press, Sunday, May 23, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FSN9GO4

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