What's Left?

For those who pay any attention to this minuscule blog with its on and off postings, I am doing much better, having recovered from the toxic effects of what passes for medicine in the U.S.
This of course leads to the question of what happened to "health care reform" and where does it stand? We had all hoped that the US would join the rest of the planet in having a civilized health care system that provided access to all. It is not to be -- at least not anytime soon. Our country is too owned by corporate interests to even allow for the most basic of human needs. The cruel sham emerging from Congress sans any public option must be defeated. Period. That said, we must crank up the heat for a Single Payer system. The life and death struggle for national health care must continue.

From health care to peace to who gets bailed out, Obama repeatedly proves himself to be part of the elite corporatocracy in spite of his high flung rhetoric. This is not to say that he isn't still a big improvement over Cheney & Bush but then Nero was far better than Caligula. Big deal. As the mask falls from the beast, few are left with any illusion about this administration or, for that matter, anything the Dims or the corrupt corporatocracy can offer.
What do we have left? Nothing. Nothing but each other, but then that is all we ever really had and that is where real hope lies -- our only salvation is ourselves, united in real community for our common good. The good news is that we ARE the vast majority and without us nothing can happen. We make the world and we can remake it and we have no choice but to do so.

In speaking to the psychic and structural deflation of the moment, here is one of my new poems soon to appear in the Blue Collar Review along with many other strong poems.


Dissolution

The Ford assembly line a painful memory
of better times and now
the I.P. paper mill in Franklin closing --
slamming like a door on
so many lives
"Layoffs" the dreaded headline too often repeated
as industrial areas turn to ghost towns
shopping centers empty
dark windows
like missing teeth and
jobs harder to find than
Saddam's fabled weapons
Change even scarcer and
Hope deflating like a bad tire


On TV Warren Buffet voices optimism --
the recession is all but over!
On the streets, only
the homeless sector is growing
now officially 17% here in Norfolk
and no one is feeling
optimistic


Only the War Business is booming
as the President
his once hopeful visage becoming
a skull breathing death
promising jobs
30,000 more soldiers
to the endless front