Thursday, December 3, 2009

I Want To Know

Yesterdays too easily
stop tomorrows
        and too often
I’ve run out of peace signs
but the world keeps on

Blood drips out of the morning newspaper
into my coffee
until I stir away
the swirling depravities
I’ve grown accustomed to reading about

        Father locks toddlers in trunk while shopping
        Woman’s body washes up near Seawall
        Four family members bludgeoned to death near Ozarkville
        Thirteen soldiers killed by roadside bomb attack

And no one cares enough to protest
        or at least rail against the misery

Because what really has the American public’s attention
Is Kim Kardashian's fat ass

And I want to know:
How long does our species have left?


This poem contributed to
dVersePoets Open Link Night Week #12
Follow them on Twitter @dVersePoets.

10 comments:

  1. damn. hot write...so true...all we want is to be entertained...to pass the time...i doubt we have much before we find a way to kill ourselves...

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  2. Who really knows how long we have left, as we are now. We'll always be around in one form or another for a long time I'd say, but one day soon the **** will hit the fan.

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  3. Rome is burning and all we seem to have is a water pistol to put out the fire..

    we could discuss this for days...excellent poem!!
    thewordbar.wordpress.com

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  4. wow. love the blood dripping from the newspaper into your coffee... such an apt and vivid image. powerful piece.

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  5. wow - awesome point made here. We need more voices like this writing about it. This would make a nice letter to that newspapers editor. great job!

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  6. amazing write and so visual especially the blood dripping into your coffee from the newspaper
    http://gatelesspassage.com/2011/10/04/memories/

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  7. serious wonders.

    message sent with humor in it, smiles.

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  8. True, so much pain and hatred in this world..... and we just gloss over it, as though it's old news....

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  9. Cool! As a retired journalist (among other things), I am thrilled to read that someone is still actually reading a morning newspaper! Bad news on the doorstep, of course...

    Stuff about KK reminds me of an old bumpersticker you used to see on the back of trucks: "Watch my rear end, not HERS!"

    Of course, we ARE in the middle of the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared, so the answer to your final question is probably "not long." Unless we set off enough nukes in the atmosphere to make all electronic/electrical devices inoperable for centuries. Maybe we could start again if we could be forced to. But the suffering will be awful. And what will they remember around the campfires in five thousand years? And has all this happened before? In the “Mahabharata,” the great Hindu epic, an 18-day war kills six million and destroys the paradisiacal Triple City with “an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death” from the sky, a magic arrow, that contains “the power of the universe.” In this prehistoric battle, the weapon explodes with smoke “looking like ten thousand suns, and shrouded by the fire of super-abundant energy, blazes up with splendor.” Hostile warriors fall to the earth like trees burnt down in a raging fire. Among survivors, hair and fingernails soon fall out, birds turn white and their legs become scarlet and blistered.

    Any of this sound familiar yet?

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  10. An excellent write focusing on how we have become accustomed to bad news and only identify with the inane.

    Anna :o]

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