Independence?

I haven't been making any comments here recently as I've been too busy with other things like getting out the Blue Collar Review and trying to survive four months of unemployment. I have taken training to do what I like (that might pay) and if I can find a job with it (bartending) I might make it. Just as likely, given the economy of a failed system, I won't.

As Today is the fouth of July, I'll repost a still relevant piece I wrote a few years ago:

Undeclaration

It was a good idea      once
inalienable rights and the abolition
of tyranny      but
we've mucked it up,   this great
American Experiment
our own inbred aristocracy madder
that noon-baked Englishmen with
crimes and usurpations running amok,
torn bodies and new hatreds in every
casbah      tentacles
in every pocket and a
knife at every throat
and we wage slave
descendants of the free
sinking in the refuse of yesterday's bargains
punch clocked and jackbooting our way
to the fossil record at the speed of credit
with no payments 'till January --
a toxic spoor of ruined
places, broken lives and gulags.

We had a bad run but it's time
to come clean,
to admit our failure    to
examine the bloody Manifest
of our imagined Destiny.

Time to Repent
for mass graves and wars of false premise,
for all those dictators, our murky turkeys lurking
in every hot satrapy with trained goons keeping
bloody order and a quota of disappeared.



Time to admit
it was all a mistake
made in the bravado of our youth and
rejoin the Commonwealth
Stop seeing stars and turn in our
bloody stripes
be British again
take tea and healthcare   claim
our place      lordless
in the house of commons where
Empire is only a memory
best forgotten.

On another note, if we are to celebrate the fourth of July, "Independence Day" as a day of nationalism -- a variety of separatism, then let the Fifth of July be known as Interdependence Day -- a celebration of our mutual dependence on each other globally and across species lines. Let's pause to appreciate the entire web of life and the many hands, backs and minds that make our lives possible.