Sputterpub's Blog

Bemoaning all the folks who fail to vote,
as if the chads and checkmarks were a choice,
perhaps it’s time to look around and note
how weak and unregarded is our voice.
The jerk who (maybe) won had one appeal –
he promised change – to drain the swamp and more –
and though we know he’ll never do that deal,
excreting words and actions we deplore,
still no one wants the old guard back again.
We’d sooner sink the ship of state than that.
The nation limps, the arctic melts, and men
attempt to keep the scepter and the fat.
It’s far too late to seal the boundaries;
our vision must include antipodes.

We never wondered how we’d get more food.
We always had a roof over our heads.
We didn’t act with privileged attitude
although we all had clothes and our own beds.
Our parenting was adequate. Abuse
was rare compared to what we hear about.
We mostly never had a good excuse
for violence, depression, acting out.

And yet we each experienced real pain
we half-submerged, because we suffered guilt
for our good fortune. How could we complain
while harvesting the precious from the silt
invasion loosed, in cataclysm’s dirt?
We’re First World lucky but we feel our hurt.

The world was watery when life emerged.
We know this, though it’s not what all believe.
Life reproduced evolving and diverged,
and some of its creations grew to leave
the oceans. Dolphins stayed though breathing air,
while landed mammals lived by thumb and word.
It may be dolphins opted to be there,
foreseeing life on land become absurd.

A scientist once postulated such,
but he was disregarded – he allowed
he used some acid. His ideas were much
abused, but no one since has better plowed
that furrow. Like a dolphin, I am reckoning
the present beats the future that is beckoning.