Strawberry Fields Forever

I know y'all get tired of me carrying on about organics and genetically engineered crops and Monsanto's herbicides, but a new development is so upsetting I simply have to vent and share it with you. Whole Foods, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farms have all surrendered to Monsanto.

As reported in the Organic Consumer Association's newsletter, "These companies have betrayed their customers and publically stated that they no longer oppose Monsanto's efforts to contaminate our farmland with their genetically engineered alfalfa. Monsanto's GE alfalfa is a perennial crop, guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers . . ."

If you are concerned about our nation's food supply and the decline of the honeybee, which has been directly contributed to the use of GMO's, please read the article and take action. We deserve truth in labeling and I think we all have the right to clean food on the table, if so desired. When asked if they want herbicides and genetically-modified organisms in their dairy products, meat and vegetables, most people say no, but then they don't do anything about it. We need to voice an opinion while there is still time. The only thing that will make a difference is if enough people voice opinion and follow through in the grocery store.

Thank you for reading this through to the end. The only thing more important than what we eat is the air we breathe. Every year we have to put up with Roundup spraying in the field across the road. Every year they come in with their big expensive tractors and tanks of poison and race up and down the field as the toxic brew billows out behind them. The fuckers don't even care which way the wind is blowing. We can be out there picking strawberries and there they are, getting it done.

Thanks for hearing me out. If you care, please pass the word.

A Solution for Overpopulation to Rival Swift’s

Roundup in the corn flakes
Roundup in the bread
Roundup in the pasta
Roundup in our heads.
Endocrine disruptors-
we don’t know who we are,
but we strive to feed the world
at Monsanto’s tireless side.
And in environmental testing,
male frogs like male frogs-
we’re feminizing boys
and they won’t know who they are.


If you can tell a story in 55 words, it's time to participate in the Friday Flash 55 event hosted by the G-Man. Post it then click it to meet the man and some other talented folks as well.

Actually, I cheated. This isn't fiction. I wish it were.

Oratorio

The Christmas tree is back where it belongs and birds rest where ornaments did.
They appear to be fooled by it all
which makes us feel better for it.

The heirloom ornaments,
each with a story,
are tissue-wrapped and boxed up in the back room that has no heat
but it doesn't matter.
The figgy pudding drizzled with brandy failed to light. But it didn't matter.
The cookies were all eaten or given away to family members from afar who are now back in their own quiet homes and private lives, though we pretend
through email and the occasional phone call
to keep up.

Somebody could buy a puppy and I wouldn't know
or find a boyfriend
or a lover
and I wouldn't know.

Better not to let one know
about the lover.

Only the garland remains, strung around
the porch from hooks where ferns hung through October.
The cedar swag is lush in a different way.
And I might be jealous of a lover,
of one mindless for me
and damn the consequences.

To have that.

Not a puppy, though one understands
the need to lower oneself to the level of animals.
and puppy kisses
after the family Christmas
where we all pretend to like each other.

The standing rib roast didn't happen
but we always give ourselves another chance.

The Christmas cards didn't happen . . . where are they?
People don't send cards anymore and the few
we received aren't cards.
They're family photos-
pictures of dressed up children forced into
velvet outfits and smiles
with no note, not even a signature.
Don't send me those.

Or pictures of puppies
though some do the puppies because they don't have children
nor want them or their kisses and expenses.
You can't have children without
considering what they will take from you
over the course of a lifetime,
the arithmetic of it

When the tree is forced through the doorway
in the opposite direction, we sweep up the needles
and rearrange the furniture and think about next year

The Man In The Mirror (flash 55)

Some of the worst mistakes of my life were haircuts. - Jim Morrison

After seeing himself in the video, he ran his hands through his hair.
“My God! I look like General Custer.”
That night he came home smelling of cologne
with a haircut and a new pair of jeans,
a phone number in his wallet, and a new disease.
New stuff to offset the old him.


If it's the end of the week, it's time for flash. If you have a story in 55 words, post it on your blog and then go tell the G-Man.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Matriarch - Flash 55

She drifted off to sleep, wondering—
would the pictures on the stairs again be rearranged in the night?
The first time it was her great-grandmother’s portrait
moved from top to bottom.
Each night another was moved.
The last morning, the wall was empty.
Her ancestors were piled against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.


Try your hand at a story in 55. Then let the G-Man know.

TGIF

Something Nobody Will Want To Read

You have only to look around you and you’ll see
blood being spilled, in the most playful way,
just as if it were champagne.
-Dostoyevsky 1864

We can’t afford to stay warm.
Christmas lights strung around the porch
and across the buffet and above the cupboard
lift the spirit but don’t give off warmth.
The register beside my chair with a wee amount of heat
is all I have
and a feeling like broken glass.

I broke the votive candleholder
into a million pieces
Blood red shards of glass
scatter across the floor
and fly under the piano.
Now they’re embedded in the tongue and grove
of a hand-laid floor
(my father on his knees
when he was young).
A feeling like that.

We’re weighed down in a wasteland of war—
scavenger of commodity.
Libraries languish and roads crumble,
and children go without textbooks
so we can spill blood like champagne
and march in step.
Flags wave grandly from gated communities
and likewise weakly from a doorjamb
in front of the hovel without heat
for heroes in uniforms
with flags sewn on backwards.
A feeling like that.