The trees

"Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon’s last uncontacted tribes, tied her to a tree and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its' land"

-- The Daily Telegraph

where do i start, with you
rising in the flames, in smoke?
the tree holding you? all
the trees knowing you
knowing your name, first
walking in the forest, laughing
drinking from a leaf, hearing
your voice and listening
evergreen with hope, never
having heard the strained
voices and ugly din as the hope
fell to the ground, all the
hope all around, all the pain
smoke and bodies, all the sneers
the dull thoughts, the rawness

if you rise with awful heat
high above all you know
and see beyond the crowns
beyond rivers and plains
and unimagined seas to
other lands with scenes like
these, forests taken down
en mass, machines grinding
the life out of us, the
careless boys, the men
in suits, senseless shoppers
the shrugging giant and
too many lost children to count
and all the paths not taken
beneath the trees

the trees that know the air
as well, that treat it with
respect, changing needs and
degrees of honor unknown
to any congress, any office
in this bad atmosphere who
will rest in peace?

Not so like Father - The Right-wing Vilification of Occupy

QUESTIONER: Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.

During The Summer of Love in 1967 I was in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where the anarchist Diggers did a free feed for their fellow hippies every afternoon. Given that I was more-or-less homeless and flat-out broke, free food worked for me. It worked for everyone. We were in love remember. Share and share alike. We were also not so much in love with the "establishment" and materialism, but given that flower children weren't big on hatred, we tolerated the occasional straight tourist and lovingly accepted their donations so that we might continue our Occupation of Haight-Ashbury (is this starting to sound like the Occupation of Liberty Park?). On this particular day one of those tourists came with an entourage, though no one seemed to take much notice. I had a passing interest in national politics at that point in my life, so I did notice who the tourist in the tie and sport coat was, the soon to be announced Republican presidential candidate and former Michigan Governor George Romney.

Given that Life Magazine, the Networks and a long list of assorted mainstream media had recently discovered Haight-Ashbury, hippies and The Summer of Love, it was apparent that Romney was there out of curiosity, what we now call a fact finding mission. Running for president of the United States of America surely must require getting a sense of where America's young people are at, right? Romney was only weeks away from coming out against the war in Vietnam after another fact finding mission he was to publicly compare to "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam. I'm sure he was aware of the pervasive anti-war sentiment in the Haight. No one could walk half a block without seeing peace signs. Maybe he was courting the young peace vote? Doubtful. Many of us wouldn't have been able to vote until we were 21 back then, many who could didn't.

George Romney, while a classic waffler like his son, was a descent moderate Republican, something like a vanishing breed today. Romney would later champion affirmative action and housing desegregation as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I've always been of the opinion that George Romney was actually interested in finding out what that new social moment growing across the nation was all about. Bear in mind, we're talking America of the mid-60s. Extremists had assassinated the President, his brother who was running for president, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Public reaction, in most parts of the nation, tended toward shock and dismay. The resulting tenor in Washington and on the campaign trail was, by today's standards, civil and restrained. George Romney seemed, at least to me at the time, to reflect some of that restraint and civility.

Flash forward to 2012. Guess who appears to not care one bit what the growing Occupy Movement is about, who has not even taken the time to visit an Occupation during his presidential run? Guess who hypocritically accuses Occupy and its supporters of class warfare, when his own class has been waging an escalating class war against workers and the poor for decades. Guess who increasingly reflects the extremist punitive, anti-social positions of the far-right to further his political ambitions? That, of course, would be the son of George Romney, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This Romney's "wave of approach" to politics being all the more "entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God", further divides us between the obscenely wealthy and all the rest. All the positions he takes reflect that division. But if you actually want to discuss issues of inequality for instance, Romney says we should only speak of income inequality in "quiet rooms". Why all the secrecy? Is there something Mitt Romney doesn't want discussed on the campaign trial, out in the open, something that was once avoided in polite conversation? Something maybe that gave the lie to the so-called "American Dream" and the "Land of Opportunity"?

Mitt Romney brings "God" into the political conversation (something we could probably do without), but it was the "Son of God" who allegedly said: "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." Does this sound familiar? Don't the positions espoused by Romney and most of his running mates seem to fit the agenda of the "cursed"? Conversely, it was George Romney who said, "We must practice our fundamental principles of mutual self-respect and brotherhood with every citizen enjoying full and equal citizenship". What would Mitt's father say if he could hear his son today?

Back there in Haight-Ashbury I doubt there was much "envy" of the filthy rich. Quite the opposite. Beyond all the drug use and naivete that would eventually prove damaging, our music, the other arts we used to express our thoughts and feelings on a world growing more and more materialistic, spoke about the dream of a better world, one based on mutual aid and respect, on equality. We are seeing that sentiment rise once again in the Occupation Movement. We are not seeing it on the campaign trial or in congress, much less on Wall Street or in the corporate boardrooms. Perhaps a yearning for mutual aid and equality skipped a generation. That might explain what happened to Mitt Romney.

Conservatives who don't conserve

[Time to bring out the classics and dust them off for a new year. I wrote this six years ago during the Bush era, but it applies even more so today. Soooo, a little editing and a little pathos for 2012]

It seems as if nothing is sacred for today’s so-called conservatives. The very root of their philosophy is utterly ignored as rightwing politicians, pundits, and their corporate sponsors hack their way blindly across the political landscape and the planet. Their true conservative predecessors must be rolling in their graves.

“MORE” is the motto, as legions of automatons crank up the thermostat, oblivious to the winter wind howling through the open door. That’s Congressman Bernie Sanders’ North Country metaphor, one he used in the past to blast the Bush administration for its shortsighted energy policy that places little emphasis on energy conservation. It’s an apt metaphor today for people who have lost sight of reality and whose attachment to the planet and their fellow inhabitants seems all but lost.

In a nation that consumes 30% of the world’s resources with only 5% of the world’s population, it’s actually criminal to ignore conservation. And, quite frankly, that is how we are viewed by that other 95%. The United States is the real Evil Empire. The nation where the laws of thermodynamics are ignored. An outlaw nation. Corporate America and their cronies in government squander the gifts of the planet, letting much of it fall to the wayside unused and irretrievable. And these people call themselves conservatives?

They conserve only their own privilege in a world running short on ecological options. Two decades ago the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity stated: "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished." Now those 20 years have passed and conservation remains on the back burner. A true conservative knows the value of conservation. A true conservative practices thrift; using whatever resources they require with care and foresight, keeping future generations in mind. Does that sound like the present occupants of corporate boardrooms or Washington? Is that the mentality guiding proponents of corporate globalism as they seek to undo environmental safeguards, claiming them as restraints against fair trade? Is that the thinking behind an industrial assault upon the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, the proposed Keystone pipeline, hydrofracking or a renewal of the ill-conceived nuclear power industry? And, for that matter, does that sound like your overweight neighbors with the jetski and snowmobiles parked in the driveway next to the giant SUV? We don’t think so!

Actually, some Democrats' energy plans read more like a conservative’s idea of energy policy. This is not surprising, given how far to the right the Democrats have wandered. Why don’t they simply skip the pretense and claim the mantel of conservatism for themselves! That done, the denizens of the far right can be pegged for what they truly are: Enemies of the Earth and its inhabitants; former conservatives who have gone over to the dark side.

Given that scientists around the world have sounded the closing bell, one might hope that sanity would prevail and people across the globe would rise up and demand an end to planetary suicide, but it's a highly flawed species and sanity is not one of our high cards. All recent Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been pretty much dismal failures. With a few exceptions, the numbers on CO2 and other levels of pollutants are rising still, yet far-right Republicans deny the evidence while calling for more of the same.

How do we turn this ship around? Occupy the pilot house? Prayer? Plague? Maybe the Mayans were right, maybe the world does end now. On the other hand, many archeologists say that's a misreading of Mayan Calender. Maybe we'll just go out with a whimper rather than a bang, or maybe, just maybe, we'll come to our senses and get on with some real conservation, but we have to do it NOW.

About that bull

One of the most iconic images of Occupy Wall Street, and perhaps the Occupation Movement in general, may well be those New York City cops guarding the golden-toned statue of the "Charging Bull" in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange. When Occupy Wall Street was initially conceived by AdBusters, often a vital source of iconic images, the Charging Bull was depicted with a ballerina on its back and a mass of protesters and tear gas in the background. During the summer leading up to the September 17 occupation of Liberty Park there was talk of focusing some of the protest on the Bull. This no doubt led the police to finding themselves nursemaids to a statue while actual criminals looked down from boardroom windows far above the street.

A corresponding image of a fully dressed matador on top of an NYPD squad car, taunting the Charging Bull with his cape, along with rodeo clowns by the Bull (the matador escaped), reinforced the symbolism of the statue. All this attention to the Charging Bull, meant perhaps by its creator to represent the bull market and the bullishness of market capitalism, begs the question: what's with the bull? Beyond what we've already described, and in the spirit of New York City's fabled lexicon, one might say there is a wealth of bullshit coming out of Wall Street. But deeper than the obvious exists an iconic symbol that goes back thousands of years, a symbol loaded down with meaning as old as time.

Regardless of whether one happens to be religious, whether one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan or whatever, the Holy Bible contains stories and images that have permeated cultures through the ages. In fact, when this writer was in advertising school in a previous life, the Bible was recommended as a secular source for time honored quotes and concepts. In any case, one of those images and concepts that made its way into our collective psyche over the years was that of Moses coming down from the Mountain to find his people worshiping the Golden Calf. You probably know where this is going now: the Golden Calf grows up to be either a Golden Bull or a cash cow.

The fact that a developed representation of the Golden Calf has made its way to the New York Financial District speaks volumes about the values and priorities of those who ply their trade on or about Wall Street, and by extension, within the capitalistic economy as a whole. The struggle between materialism and ethics, between the worship of gold on the one hand, and the worship of a higher power (whatever it be) or high ideals on the other, is alive and well in the 21st century, in the boardrooms and on the streets. We should not be confounded by the brutal greed and selfishness of the banksters and corporados. The denizens of Wall Street and its environs worshipping the Golden Calf and blowing off concepts like "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbor's" is simply business as usual. What is surprising is the fact that they erected the Golden Calf in plain sight for everyone else to see.

Corporate corpses

autopsies performed in broad daylight
revealed the subjects to be
infested with bad ideas and a
certain degree of sociopathic
irresponsibility and traces of tea
of suspicious origin discovered
in it's lack of stomach for
certain equities and evidence of
various substances associated with
hallucinations, illusions of grandeur
and a psychotic tendency to
loot and pillage every village
with keystrokes and bank notes
the coroner's report was released
to a waiting public on the commons
where the bodies were discovered and
then covered discreetly with
transparent tarp so the hard rain
would not wash away the sins of the
rulers of the fucking universe.

all their charters have been withdrawn
with a patriotic song and a salute
to those who slept out in the rain
and endured all that pain associated
with a revocation in this nation
leaving countless followers & fools
stranded at the station, the train
having left for parts unknown
that could hardly be any worse than
that exclusion zone called home.
no more.

Occupied

There are seven billion people
on Planet Earth today
none of them are corporations
all of them are animals
all of them must eat
corporations consume resources
animals eat food/breath air/
drink water/copulate/occupy space
all the other animals as well
all the same needs.
corporations are fabrications,
they are not animals, not at all,
they are dead, but not dead enough,
they are lifeless, yet they suck
the life out of everything
out of seven billion hosts
out of all the other animals
all the elements, all the needs
with fabricated paper teeth
metal claws and feet of clay
marching on the Earth today
which is already occupied, thank you.
this space is occupied, by life,
already far too occupied and
nearing the end of its' rope
ready to use what's at hand to
execute the lifeless corporations,
recycle the remains, and live on.

In The City of Homes

The City of Homes is a sea of tarps
blue as far as the eye can see
nothing much left above
ten feet, a hundred yard dash
through the heart
a trampled turnpike to the
next victims, eastward
striped and flattened trees
instant endless barrens beyond
the city of homes where
nothing’s for dinner, where
foreclosure takes a whole new meaning
where shattered glass soaked
beds provide no rest, where
damaged toys make no noise
sirens fill still air and flashing lights
consume the sleepless nights
here in the city of homes
a gyre once ground up sound
churning up the river and
everything else on its way
to a news item near you or
down south or in Missouri,
Japan, anywhere really and
more often than you’d think
the weatherman or woman would
care to mention that
science has established beyond
a reasonable doubt, reasonable
being the operative term, limits
being needed by the way, we
live reckless on the planet, in
this city of homes where a
flick of the switch no longer works
and the next special report
like yesterday’s headline is
just like tomorrow’s sad tale
in everyone’s city of homes.

- June, 2011
Springfield, Massachusetts