Adding it Up

never ending

If there’s a deadly sin, it’s power. It’s wanting to be more, by making others less—less than less.  It’s controlling with physical force, psychological terror, subjugation.  And if you don’t possess the genetic make-up to manipulate others directly, you make it up with a knife, a whip, a chain, fear, lies, starvation, locks, poverty, cages, technology, homelessness, isolation, guns, an army, explosives, drugs, religion, words, the law, bombs, lack of medical care, money, corporations, willful ignorance.

There is no end to the expressions of superiority and omnipotence.

Aren’t we rich? Barren
land, rivers of blood flowing–
empty to the core.

As Dylan observed, “all the money you made will never buy back your soul.”

no peace s

 

I’ve posted so many times on gun violence, I’ve stopped counting.  The last time was on June 1 of this year.

 

Placeholder image

Every day 88 people die by gun violence in the United States.

in which endings are both lost and multiplied close up s

Silence weeps
and eyes refuse sight.
No questions
can be posed,
nor answers given. Light is
erased. Dust and blood.

violence close up s

kalamazoo s

What is the color of mourning?
morning
of empty spaces, and Where?
wear
black, but it has no reply.
Why?
just questions and sorrow.
Tomorrow
will remain unfilled,
killed,
killed.  More shots from another gun.
When?
Again.

paris s

war is not healthy haiku s

As Dylan knew, you can’t separate a gun mentality from a war mentality.

Who are we?

It’s haibun Monday on dVerse.  Frank asked us to talk about peace to commemorate Hiroshima.  I’m not feeling it right now.

22 thoughts on “Adding it Up”

  1. I understand. I’ve dueled nefarious folk on facebook that keep insisting “don’t touch my guns” is a reasonable response to two mass shootings in one day, and three in one week. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking. For what it’s worth, the angst and grief shine through the palpable and justified rage of your haibun. Just to clarify, however, the focus of the dVerse Poest is hope, not peace. Not that it’s easy to find either peace or hope right now. In the ashes of Hiroshima or the aftermath of El Paso and Dayton.

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  3. I feel the same despair. In French it’s called la bétise humaine, doing the same stupid thing over and over, deluding ourselves with the same obviously fallacious arguments, blaming this that and the other as long as it’s not us and what we like to do. I don’t have any hope for people. We’ve spent too many thousands of years proving we are irredeemably violent, cruel and heartless. Nature restores and heals. Perhaps when we have gone, the innocent things will come back to their rightful place again.

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  4. Very sad situation with gun violence in your country. I hear there is no will in the government to end it. Only talk. You have expressed the sorrow and challenge well. 😦

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  6. Not feeling it either. Steeped in the history of Apartheid. Unbelievably brutal then an just unreal how we seem to learn so little from the lessons of the past. Absolutely agree on power corrupting utterly. Greed. Horrible, all that tremendous human creative energy wasted on clever ways to torture others.

    I found you on Sue Vincent. Glad I did. Aloha.

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