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Life Arts    H4'ed 5/25/22

21 Dead and Counting

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Message Gary Lindorff
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Our president is an ancient plastic ghost.
Why am I thinking of this now?
Our democracy is a joke, our collective soul is lost.
Maybe it's best that our leader is old Joe.
We need new blood. A new vibe. A new vision.
We know the old ways have to die.
What we need is demolition.
Not tearing buildings down but the lie.
The lie that says we're better than this.
Maybe we really aren't after all.
Were skirting a bottomless abyss
In a dark night of the American soul.
If we do make it through, two things are certain:
1) We're on our own. 2) There is no one behind the curtain.

................

This poem expresses a sense of shock and soul-weariness and world-weariness. This country is on a bad path. We are squandering resources on building a strong military and worrying about what other countries are doing while 45,000 people (an incredible number. . .I hardly believe it even as I type it!) die from gun-violence in America every year! Having an old impotent ghost for a president makes sense in a convoluted way. Because, we don't know who we are. We don't know how to make meaningful change, and we aren't, as a people, doing the deep work, the soul-work, that we need to do, if we are to find ourselves before we let some maniac in Washington instigate the war to end all wars. I'm not writing this poem just to upset anyone. I'm really thrown off by this latest mass shooting. These 19 kids did not deserve to die. Every single one of them deserved to live in a world where they could go to school and feel safe. We do not seem capable of imagining, much less manifesting such a world. All of our problems are old, chronic problems that seem to be hard-wired into who we are. God, I wish we could prove me wrong!!!

(Article changed on May 25, 2022 at 12:08 PM EDT)

(Article changed on May 28, 2022 at 10:50 AM EDT)

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Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of several nonfiction books, a collection of poetry, "Children to the Mountain" and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music" Over the last few years he has begun calling (more...)
 

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