Everything is spilling. Oil blots the Gulf after BP bursts the well of our Delusions. What else is spilling? How do we clean it all up? Can we step on the other side of stupidity caused by greed? Can we rise above all the extreme absurdities of the moment?

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Meditations in a Time of Delusions and Lies

June, 2010

Everything is Spilling

Everything is spilling.

Oil blots the Gulf after BP bursts the well of our Delusions.

Blood splashes the Mediterranean after Israel attacks a flotilla of Compassion and Freedom.

Cash, a different kind of blood, spurts out of open wounds, forecloses all Homes.

Coal floods the coal mines, and the mines disappear into the vast empty Gulf of the Media, forgotten.

Rules gush out of regulators like loose bowels, but nothing seems to stick, just more muck floating in the e-coli mine shaft credit default loan swap crude oil Gulf.

Glaciers dissolve into the Heart, adding ice cubes to the vast Tub

of Oil (formerly known as the Ocean).

Tea-Baggers flow like lava, clogging up the clean rivers of Dreams.

Arizona bursts its borders, sloshing the country with Fear of Brown Faces.

Debt bubbles up, the country totters near ruin, genitals burst with credit cards, and then shrivel up like dried pimples.

And War keeps drilling deep into our guts without pause.

Too many spills! Is this the final Catastrophe, coming in slow motion? When will the oil lick up to the Golden Gate? Drift into Shanghai?

How will we clean this all up? Can we cork the bowels of the Earth? Can we plug up America's Wars? When will Israel defend itself from itself? Can we somehow clean the Ocean? Is it possible to staunch

the bleeding from our Souls?

Or have all of us Damn Fools passed the Point of No Return?

Authors Bio:
Hilton Obenzinger is the author of "American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania" (Princeton), among many other books of criticism, poetry and fiction, and the recipient of the American Book Award. His most recent book is the autobiographical novel "Busy Dying" (Chax). He is a long-time Jewish American advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Hilton Obenzinger teaches writing and American literature at Stanford University.