Sunday, August 31, 2008

RePublican make-overs

Deconstruct the ongoing
RePublican make-overs:

They relentlessly make-over
your evident virtues
as your hidden vices:

If you’re inspiring, you’re a ‘media-star’
If you bend, you’re condescending,
If you’re young, you’re inexperienced.
If you’re black, you’re black.

They relentlessly make-over
your opponent’s weaknesses
into his evident strengths.

He’s dull & uninspiring,
so he's definitely deeply real.
He’s almost-admittedly rich.
He’s comfortably white.

He’s just-turned 72.
Get him a token 44-yr old
pro-life gov. of Alaska
w/5 children & a gun.
Make her a woman.

(31 AUG 08, Santa Clara CA)v12

Thursday, August 28, 2008

NeoLedgerdemain

Dealing from the bottom of the deck,
NeoCapitalists con us into believing
they haven’t cut the deck enuf times
to make our old bottom their new top.

NeoLedgerdemain’s impoverishing us,
flushing their hand neo-royally. If
you don’t think it’s us VS them
you aren’t watching their hands

as they deal us their usual globalist
cards: All rising tides...float all boats;
like tsunamis: catastrophically.


(28AUG 08 Santa Clara CA)v8

Monday, August 25, 2008

Digging Labor's Grave

To Karl Kadie, for reading me Alice Winters’
poem “The Displaced of Capital”


Americans can't call a spade a spade;
they criticize the economic crisis now
upon us, without ever indicting vicious
neoCapitalism, still shielded by Cold War

ideological armor, no matter what it does
to whom or where: Red China’s relentless
neo-Capitalism’s sweat-shopping millions,
just like all the other Asian-Pacific 'tigers'

as once-American multi-nationals contract
with them for the world’s cheapest labor,
driving a vicious race to the bottom, digging
labor’s grave with neo-capped spades.


((24-25 AUG 08, Santa Clara CA) v11

Saturday, August 23, 2008

poverty quiz

Wherevever people are poor, some of them are starving;
some aren’t. What does this show us in the 1st-world?

Be careful what you answer, overnourished 1st-worlder:

If you answer that poverty & starvation aren’t the same,
you’re right; if you answer: poverty leads to starvation,
you’re wrong.; it leads to undernourishment. The truth:
if you can’t answer this, you’re nowhere near the truth.

What really matters: wherever you are, you must act.
What're you going to do about poverty? When? How?

(23 AUG 08, 8:49PDT, Santa Clara CA)v8

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

'voluntary' poverty

Wayback in the quick-rising ‘60s
‘voluntary poverty’ arose
within the disaffected 1st-world's
middle-class: suddenly its children
‘went back to the land’ to escape
parents’ plush suburban homes
for a ‘conscious’ anti-consumerist,
‘natural’ pre-'50s lifestyle.

A half-century later, some just
shop at Whole Foods, ignoring
poverty' & starvation, while
neo-consumerism’s waning &
a slow-food movement arises.
Re-awaken them to what's real:
declare ‘adequacy’ universal,
‘enough’ everyone's need.

(15 AUG 08, Santa Clara CA) v14

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Post-op recovery

Well, I'm finally back in my own apt.w/Reggie. Post-op, I spent 2 wks (w/PT & OT) in a nearby skilled-nursing home.

My left total-knee operation appears to be a success (its 25 staples are gone & 8" incision is healing nicely); the recovery, however, is proving to be another multi-phased process (incl. more PT.)

Obviously I'm writing again & can talk some (my only phone is 408-247-1943) but I seem to tire surprisingly easily, so pls.don't expect a lot out of me for some while.

Many people here in Santa Clara (& nearby) have helped me out during this extended process: here at Valley Village - Cherle Stephenson (my surrogate-mother), Lois Overman (master-gardener & dedicated animal protector, who 'airied' Reggie while I was unable to), Ken Contey (who willingly does everything for everyone), & Ivo Adam - about whom you're read a lot here; and St. Mark's parishoners - Barbara Rice (my very necessary patient-advocate), Pastor Rev. Kate Wilson, my close friends poet Karl Kadie & his wife Carol Korzow. Getting me thru all this has truly required a dedicated group's willing effort - for which I'm very grateful.

Competing {vs} Lifting

I don't bother to watch the Olympics because of the inherent nationalism it's still framed in; you may imagine that athletes playing for countries in which they live, but were not born in, demonstrate post-nationalistic free-agentry, but even when olympic athletes play on teams against their own nations of origin (e.g., an Afro-American living in China played on the Chinese basketball team against the USA), they're always still on nationally-sponsored & -identified teams. Nationalism still completely packages & defines the Olympics.

William James wrote an idealistic essay - in 1906, well before WW1 - that competitive sport was a moral equivalent of war, that is, a rational substitute; http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm But the International Olympic Committee (founded in 1894) revival of the Olympics couldn't & didn't prevent WW1 from happening. Or WW2. Or any war. Suspending the Olympics during an international war only concedes it.

As you may expect, my interest in competitive sports is zero. I'm an habitually non-competitive thinker/personality, & prefer cooperation as a mode/model of progress: I've always been interested in what we can do together vs what can we do contra each other; only what we can lift together interests me.

Footnote: From age 13-17, I caddied at a 'restricted' country club in Marblehead MA, getting a fair sense of what golf is & isn't: in its 'inner'-game, you're your own 'opponent.' Putting, requiring serious self-discipline, defeats many golfers. I preferred practicing chip-shots from sand-traps up onto the green (a miniscule form of lifting.)

Ivo's new blog

Ivo Adam now has his own Blogspot blog: "Ivoslife"
Read it at: http://www.ivoslife.blogspot.com

Post-op Lament

A light breeze drifts
in thru the open window
rippling my mind,
filling it with images
of simple comforts
I craved in the hospital
& nursing home:

a warm facecloth,
a soapy shave w/a Mach3-blade,
a queen-sized bed;

I miss bending to buckle my sandals,
climbing onto my 10-speed Shogun
to cruise down the sidewalks
doing my daily errands;

anything immediate & spontaneous
is remote, now that I'm hosting
a knee built of titanium & rubber,
hidden in my stiff, swollen left leg.

What I'd assumed, I can't, again, yet:
what I'd done, I can do only some of.

(15 AUG 08, 12:41 PDT
Santa Clara CA) v9