The Perfect Storm
by Marc D. Goldfinger

No one is jumping from buildings
during this crash because of the
Bush parachute bail-out. The rich

get paid off with our tax dollars
while a poor woman from Boston
is put out on the street. The bank

is foreclosing on her. She will have
to move to one of those new tent
cities; they’ll call them Bushvilles

this time instead of Hoovervilles
like during the last depression.
The last depression. No one bailed

out the fat cats that time; everyone
went down except for a few
carpetbaggers and liquor dealers.

It’s the Perfect Storm this time; even
the weather is telling us we’re on the
wrong track. Hurricane Kristina, Gustave

and the war in Iraq; the greed of the CEO’s,
I’m a friend of George W. is the new
Greed Anonymous greeting. Bush

didn’t have the 7 billion dollars for child
health care but he’s got 700 billion dollars
for the cats on Wall Street; you can hear

them if you try; yowling on the top floors
in the sweet suites while the rest of us
get foreclosed and put out on the street.

“Never tell God you don’t like one of his creations.”—Anonymous

So, they call Sarah Palin the “Barracuda”, or at least they play that song by Heart, against Heart’s will, to describe the potential VP.  Do you know how big the brain of a Barracuda is?  Not very big.  Vicious, not smart.

As we near 911/08, California’s unemployment rate has hit 7.3%.  Last July the unemployment rate in Cal was 5.4%.  Bush’s policies at work.  A war economy.  The Four Horseman, Conquest, War, Famine, & Death are riding high.

Children are having nightmares about Global Warming.  That’s the world they will inherit and they know it.  The children watch TV.

They see tsunamis drown families in Indonesia.  Classrooms fall and bury students in China.  Levees collapse and a major United States city, New Orleans, is staggering on its last legs.  First Hurricane Kristina, then Gustave.  TV news shows roads filled with refugees.  In the U.S.A.

Chaos theory prevails.

Ride your bicycle instead of driving your car.  Bring a cup to Dunkin Donuts instead of taking a new styrofoam cup every time.  Think about it.  How many styrofoam cups does Dunkin Donuts use in a day.  Visualize the pile if they were all stacked together.  Just one day and it’s tough to conceive the size of it.

Visualize a pitbull with lipstick on.  Hey, Palin said it; what do you think it would look like?

I’m going to vote for Barack Obama and hope for the best.  If McCain wins we’ll all have to go out into the streets and cut our throats and watch the blood of America run into the sewers.

Barracuda.

“From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several a the same time.  Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls.  God displays them to us to give us food for thought.”—–Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862.

Sarah Palin.  BARRACUDA! ! !

“. . .O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”— Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel.

Sarah Palin spoke last night. “She creates instant excitement because nobody knows her.”—Joshua Hader, South Dakota. “Hilary is been-there, done-that. Palin is a bright, honest woman who will be going places.”—Vergene Donovan, Iowa.

To be honest, I don’t know who Sarah Palin is. Maybe she’d make a great president. Maybe she shouldn’t even come close to that job. But by being a heart-beat away from the presidency, if John McCain is elected or “selected”, I’d like to really know if she’s up to the job. Because, truth to tell, John McCain is that age where anything can happen.

Hell, I’m 62, and I’m at that age where anything can happen, instantly. Of course, you could say that about anyone, at any age, it’s just that the odds get shorter as the years get longer. Strangely enough, as the years add on, they feel as if they’re getting shorter all the time.

I believe our time sense changes dramatically as we age. Remember, when you were in grade school and were let out for summer vacation? The summer stretched ahead of you like eternity, the going back to school was just soooo far away. And then, one day, you were getting your books ready.

Now, at 62, when summer begins, I celebrate July 4th, wake up the next morning and it is Labor Day. Did you ever wonder why elderly people drive so slowly? Could it be that every other car and truck is whizzing by so fast that it is just overwhelming.

We get older, our time sense just changes. The way we perceive it is altered; each year time (a constant) shifts gear and picks up speed. As a child, one wakes up in the morning and the day stretches out like a lazy dog. So much can happen; the possibilities are endless; night is on its way but why think about it? The minute hand of the clock creeps slowly; the day is long and filled with promise(or horror depending on what kind of childhood you have) and there is so much to be done.

At 62, I wake up, get ready for daytime activities as the minute hand speeds so quickly I can’t see it; the hours fly by like minutes. I make a list of things to do and by the time I finish the list, the day can be half over. The seasons are like days, the years whip by as I hurtle towards my death. I’m happily married but I try to work the same shifts as my wife; I’m too old for a drive-by marriage.

I watched my father and mother. They suffered from a delusion, they thought they had forever together and then WHAM — and my mom was gone, my father crying as he lay on her empty body. Short, so short life is, but by the time we know it we are staring at wrinkles and grey hair in the mirror, wondering how that happened.

Teen-agers take note. Today you are dancing with amphetamine energy, tomorrow you are leaning on a cane — if you are lucky.

Death comes so quickly, like a lover that just can’t wait to get its arms around you.

And what does this have to do with John McCain’s choice, Sarah Palin? The fact is that Sarah Palin may be closer to the presidency than we ever dreamed of. John McCain is older than I and the clock is ticking.

I don’t care what Sarah said about Barack Obama. That’s her job. She’s being paid(in a sense) to paint a picture of Obama that is not flattering.

But Sarah Palin is no Lyndon Johnson. I guess we have that to thank for — or do we? I’m in the middle of watching “Chicago 10″, a new DVD that just came out. It is about the 1968 Democratic Convention and it should be required viewing for all students in Junior High School. It shows a part of history that must be remembered.

Today, or was it yesterday, free-lance journalist Emma Goldman was arrested just for speaking out near the republican convention. “Cuffed and Stuffed” as they say in criminal jargon. Who would have thought that so much damage could be done in just 8 years?

If the Yippee’s(hippies) could see us now, they would wonder why good Americans aren’t filling the streets in protest. George Orwell is crying in his grave. 1984 is a dream come true. “Who’s Watching The Watchmen?”

Tonight, as 911 draws near, John McCain will speak. Drawing demon’s breath, he will breathe fog into the eyes of the American people who don’t want the future to realize itself.

This is not a race to see which party will win the presidency. It is a fight for the survival of the human species(and all the other species except the cockroachs who are rooting for John McCain).

Make some phone calls. Put an Obama sign on your lawn before you lose your property. Take action, wherever you are.

Barack Obama is the man who can change the future of the U.S.A. He is the leader who can take us into the 21st century. If John McCain wins, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, “World War III will become real, and World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

911 is just around the corner. Pay attention or pay the price.

Much to Barack Obama’s regret, the pastor that he grew up with and worshipped with when he was young, his former pastor, has an ego the size of a brontosaurus.  This Rev. Jeremiah Wright does not want to help Obama become President. 

Rev. Wright’s goal is merely to gain as much publicity and cash as he can.  Humility is out the window.  He hopped on this bandwagon of destruction, gained a bit of attention, saw an opportunity, and grabbed hold of it like a Piranha that hasn’t eaten in days.

Rev. Wright, much to the detriment of the country and Obama, has seized the time, his time, and it is the only time he cares about.  Instead of possessing the humility of a true Christian, he has the EGO of a man who thinks he is God.

Give a child who has struggled to get his mother’s attention for his entire life and gotten nowhere, a little press and he reaches, grasping maniacally, for more, more, more.

Wright plays the race card like a top shelf poker player but he doesn’t care who he hurts as long as he, as they say on the streets, “gets paid.”

Barack Obama is, at the expense of his campaign, being polite to this cantankerous old man who pretends to be a “minister of God.”  Don’t believe for a minute that Rev. Wright is, as he says, defending the Black church, or Church of Colour, unless you see through to the truth.

Rev. Wright is defending the COLOUR GREEN, the colour of money, and he sees his opportunity to be in the limelight and “get paid” plenty.  He’s in it for the money, folks, and he doesn’t care if, in the process of getting rich, he helps to destroy his country.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is nothing but an egotist with a big mouth who has found a platform where he appears important.  What Rev. Wright, this  ”pretender to the pulpit” really needs is for someone to stuff a size 10 shoe right down his prattling throat.

You can tell it’s summer.  I’ve neglected my posting; Congress is getting ready to take a month off after stripping us of some more freedoms because Papa George W. thinks we’ll be safer.  They can wiretap at will now, folks.

Also, the new estimate of the cost of World War Iraq is now 1 trillion dollars.  You know, Social Security and Medicare wouldn’t be in trouble if the government could throw money at it like they are doing to kill good men and women in foreign places.

 Do you feel safer now?  Why couldn’t that money rehabilitate bridges so we don’t have another debacle like Mississippi?  Man, that shouldn’t have happened.

George W. ran almost every company he was in charge of into the ground, took his share and then ran.  Now he’s in charge of our money.  There is no such thing as Government money.  It’s our money that they take from hard-working people.

Well, it’s August and Congress and George will take a vacation.  I’ll bet our soldiers in Iraq aren’t on vacation.  Neither is Iraq.

God help us all.  What is the matter with the human species?  Can you hear the fiddles?

“I think for us to get American personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire.  Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do?  Who would we put in power?  What kind of government would we have?”——Dick Cheney, ABC’s This Week, in 1991.

Well, I guess know we see what we’re doing and what we’ve got and it ain’t good.

I’m no fan of Don Imus but I find it ironic that he gets fired for racist comments (they were offensive) but George W. Bush doesn’t get fired for sending good men and women over to Iraq to get them killed because of his shadow agenda.

It’s too bad we just couldn’t pull his advertising and fire him and Dick Cheney.

 In the meantime, Global Warming and climate upset all over the world because of our thoughtless pollution of the ecosphere we live in continues at an unabated pace.

This weekend, on April 14th is Step It Up day and there are individual marches all over to protest what we have become and to make more people aware that we can change our path.  See stepitup2007.org to see what local actions are taking place in your area.

In Boston there will be a One Earth, One Climate Rally from 2pm to 4pm on April 14th.  Marches from all over the area will congregate there, but if you can’t walk or bicycle, take the MBTA.

There are marches beginning at 11am in Jamaica Plain, a conference in Roxbury beginning at 8am at Roxbury Community College, a demonstration in Everett Square from 11am to 2pm, a bicycle tour starting at the Coolidge Corner Library in Brookline at 9am to 11am, and a massive Massachusetts Avenue March starting at 11am in Davis Square culminating at the Rally in Boston later.

This is what’s going on in my area.  Please go to stepitup2007.org to see what is going on where you live.

And if there’s nothing happening, start something.

I’m doing a poetry reading at 12:40pm at the Boston Public Library and I’m going to dedicate it to the Step It Up folks.  There’ll be poetry going on all day there, from 10pm to 5pm on Saturday, and on Sunday from 1pm to 5pm with an open mike sometime Sunday afternoon.

So if you want to start with poetry downtown and then shoot for the Rally on the Boston Common from 2pm to 4pm, you can have it all.

By the way, no matter what kind of weather you’ve been having, the fact is that this has been the warmest winter in the 125 years that we’ve been keeping records.

Step It Up was started by Bill McKibben, who is the author of The End of Nature.  It all began where he teaches at the Middlebury College near Burlington Vermont.

According to the Boston Globe on Thursday, April 12, some of the effects of global warming will be the death of dolphins in the Mediterranean, the extinction of some plants in the Alps and a deluge of heat waves across the European continent.  Do you remember reading about the heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed tens of thousands and did immense crop damage?  Just the beginning if we don’t do something about it.

We need to stop fighting and take a look around us.  While we ravage each other because of whatever, the world we live in is degrading because of us.

I’d like to get to this blog more often and I cry your pardon, I’ll be trying.

Hope to see you folks somewhere on a healthy planet called Earth.  Let’s make it happen.

I. Lewis Scooter Libby has been convicted of outing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.  That leads to Karl Rove, which leads to Dick Cheney, which leads to George W. Bush, which leads back to Dick Cheney which leads to the Iraq War.

In the meantime Bush is trying to cut $26 Billion from Medicaid, $159 million to Substance Abuse Treatment, $143 million to rural health care programs and that’s just the beginning.

And you’ve all heard about the abuse our wounded veterans have been going through at the Walter Reed Hospital due to unsanitary conditions.

 He keeps asking for money for the war but wants to break the back of the American people.

He’s not a uniter; George W. Bush is a crook and a killer and a liar.

I’d tell you more but I have to go right now but you’ll be sure I’ll be back.

George Bush is like a Hagfish inside of a whale to our country.  The Hagfish eats all the internal organs until the whale dies.

Peace, peace, peace now.

Okay, George W., the corrupt idiot who wants to be dictator of our country is asking for another 245 billion dollars for the war while making “moderate” cuts to farm programs (who needs food when you have bullets), Medicare and the Medicaid healthcare program for those who need it. Meanwhile he sends our fine young men to die for a vision he had while snorting lines of coke.

Oh yes, the coke was a while ago but now he’s drunk on his vision of God. Let me clue you in — George W. is not a Christian. Father Daniel Berrigan is a Christian. Dorothy Day was a Christian.

The killing continues. Iraq has been destabilized by a greedy madman’s dream (I’m gonna get the guy who wanted to kill my daddy) and our government is now a debtor nation and sinking fast.

If I did my finances the way George is doing the United States budget, I’d be filing bankruptcy.

By the way, a side tip for those of you who aren’t paying attention. FOOD DOESN’T GROW ON SHELVES!!!

And right now Britain is moving to contain an massive outbreak of H5N1 (bird flu) in a farm close to Lowestoft in eastern England. Over 2,500 turkeys did the final dixie and they are going to have to cull (slaughter and waste) another 159,000 birds.

Something of this order happened in France about a year ago.

There’s global warming, dead zones in the ocean, millions of exhaust pipes blasting crap into the atmosphere (and they cry about second hand cigarette smoke), and our entire agricultural network depends on oil, right down to the fertilizer.

And somewhere, in laboratories unamed, scientists with narrowed grey matter create strains of diseases so they can be used to fight the enemy. Honey, those diseases don’t discriminate.

Then there’s Monsanto with the killer gene built into the plants so they produce infertile seeds. Labs are one thing but when you let something out into the world, it’s impossible to take it back. It’s like trying to stuff words you’ve spoken back into your mouth.

I just wanted to check in and let you know that someone’s paying attention.

Hey, what about that piece of ice that broke off from the mainland somewhere the other day and stranded a bunch of people. Also a lot of polar bears are diving into the water to swim to that ice they remembered being there a while ago and when they find it gone, they go down into the water.

What’s driving the dolphins up onto the beaches in greater and greater numbers? And tuna fish. I love tuna fish and used to eat it every day for lunch sandwiches at work. They tell me I can’t do that anymore because of the mercury levels. Mercury will strangle my brain function.

I can do that well enough on my own, thank you.

Have a good day, folks. I lied. There’s no poetry here on today’s blog.

What I Wanted To Say Was
by Marc D. Goldfinger

6 billion people counting down
while dead zones grow in the oceans
while people wrap Christmas presents
while people plant car bombs
while children learn to be good citizens
while some parents choose which child dies
while Bob Dylan writes ads for Victoria’s Secrets
while Madonna adopts a child from Africa
while HIV spreads like an ink stain on a paper towel
while children play video games shooting gray heads
while bees, hummingbirds, and bat populations decline
while bees, hummingbirds, and bats pollinate plants
while the oceans are fished out by factory ships
while Halloween disappears
while some countries train children to kill
while some countries train children to kill
while some countries train children to kill
while my hair turns gray as I heal
while my refrigerator is humming
while somone is hunting for a scrap of food
while I lay warm in my bed
while my friends die in the shelters
while the president of the United States makes decisions
while the vice-president accidentally shoots his friend
while Donald Rumsfeld sends our soldiers to die in Iraq
while I remember he sent soldiers to die in Viet Nam
while I sit at my computer to write poetry
while my wife is hard at work
while 56% of state prisoners show symptoms of mental illness
while we spend so much more money to kill
while we spend so little to heal
while I wonder why China’s Yellow River turned red
while I notice that so many factories are on river banks
while I go to the bank to get money to buy comic books
while 24% of jail inmates are psychotic
while my motorcycle sits in a shed surrounded by dead leaves
I think about all the plans I had when I was young
they were good plans and I had high hopes
well I am registered to vote and I do that
I read quite a bit and write a little more
I love my wife and say my prayers
sometimes I just sit and think
sometimes I try to sit and not think
why do we always have enough money to kill people
why is there never enough money to feed everyone
as I read this poem there are machines running all over the world
once upon a time there was a man who became a poet
words are powerful things
a bullet or a bomb can only explode one time
it’s true that many will die
but words can be used over and over
maybe one day we will stop killing each other
because of something someone said
I would like to be the person who says the magic words
but if it’s you who have the magic words
that will stop all the killing and the cruelty
I hope you say them soon
words are powerful things
say them already say them say them say them
I’ve got my ear to the ground
and the way the ground is humming
it feels like we’re running out of time.

This poem was written in December of 2006. Welcome to my blog.