HOT FOR PINK (friday flash 55)

The bees have diarrhea,
the honey pot's kaput.
Masses grow in lab rats
lodged in mammary.
Studies are debunked and mocked,
patents are enforced.
There's Roundup in your doughnut
and in your white corn syrup.
But we crave our fast food feedlots,
so GMO it all,
then wear pink for consolation
and embrace Monsanto's thrall.


It's Friday and time for the Flash Fiction 55 game. It's Halloween so give us your scary stuff.  I didn't entirely play by the rules, G-Man,  but it's a story (if not fiction), and 55 words on the nose!

If you can write a story in 55 words, please tell the G-Man and play along. Happy Halloween.

What's Under Your Sink

I would like to share a post from Zev, an activist farmer that could enhance your life and your health, maybe even save it. As Zev shows us, everyone can be an activist. If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been bitten by a mosquito.

Hey....I just realized this is my 200th post!

Fitting it should be about something so important, something I would climb on the soapbox for.

Am I supposed to have a contest or a cyber cocktail party or something? No, I think I'll save that for when I reach 200 followers or nail an agent.

Like next year for sure!

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.

Character Flaw

I was stopped at a traffic light on the airport-access road when I noticed her sitting on the curb with her head in her hands. She was dressed in jeans and a baby blue sweatshirt. She didn't bother to stick out a thumb. Nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore. I looked for a stranded car. Nothing. A companion walking the berm. No one. What was her story? Was she running away? Miss a flight? Did she need a ride? If not, why was she sitting on the curb? And if so, why didn’t she act like it? She carried nothing, not even a purse.

She was as out of place as the wheelbarrow I once spotted in the middle of a wintering field with snow on the horizon and the crops in the barn. Nothing except in things. Left in the center of a fifty-acre field, a quarter of a mile from a house or an outbuilding. What happened to call the owner out of the field with such urgency he left his conveyance behind? Why can't I get that image out of my mind?

The light turned green and I accelerated with the rest of the traffic, behaving as expected, like a good citizen. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw her stand and stretch. Hands in pockets, going nowhere.

Inside at the checkpoint I was checking IDs. The man standing in front of me was shaking so badly he couldn't get his wallet out of his pocket. I waited. He was thin with long blonde hair and an angular face. Shaking. He pulled it free and I checked his license. I let him leave it inside the clear sleeve of his wallet. I could see what I needed to see. He wasn't expired. I followed him down the line and watched him try to take his shoes off. Painful. I pointed him to a chair. He declined. The cops would think him under the influence, or an addict. What's an addict but a person in pain? Maybe his blood sugar was low. That was it. He was hypoglycemic (the disorder of the hour), hair lank and hands shaking, a mess, but he had a plane to catch.

The airport is a bad place to be sick in. Strangers watch, afraid to extend a hand. Everyone's afraid they'll catch something. A cold, an addiction, bad luck, sudden hair loss. I talked to a man at the MSU Organic Conference who fed his chickens a bad batch of Purina chicken feed full of GMO corn and they all lost their feathers. Every last chicken lost every last feather.

Sometimes I want to lock myself in the women's bathroom and stay there until The World leaves.

But back to my traveler. Was there a connection between him and Baby Blue? Only in the interlocking circles of my mind. I didn't stop to help her because to do so would've made me late. (Like the circles of Dante’s Inferno, this was bad. This was probably number four or five.) But what's more important than getting to work on time? Nothing in the beaten-down soul of the American worker. We're all energizer wind-ups.

I didn't help her, but I could help him. I picked up his shoes and set them on the x-ray belt. From a co-worker’s reaction, you would've thought I'd picked up a cow patty and threw it at her like a Frisbee. What? Oh, I'd forgotten to don my smurf gloves. I despise those nasty blue gloves made in some slum factory in Asia we have to wear. You ever notice all those bottles of hand sanitizer sitting around airport checkpoints? Yeah, everyone is obsessed with GERMS. Squirt squirt squirt. Hand sanitizer does not take the place of washing with soap and water and I don't think I'll come down with Rocky Mountain Fever or some other exotic disease because I picked up a man's shoes.

I ate dirt when I was five and probably a little cow patty too. I would've helped him take those shoes off and put them back on if he'd wanted me to. People don't always want help. Is it easier to extend a hand than to take it? I never do enough. But I swear I’ll do better the next time I see someone sitting on the side of the road.

God Move Over

In between editing my novel and reading my latest issue of Poets and Writers and exploring online literary magazines and soaking up content (this week's favorites are Scarab , the world's only mobile literary magazine created just for the iPhone and iPod touch, Pure Francis, a little gem out of Chicago, and Bloody Bridge Review, a shameless plug, I know,) I've been paying frequent visits to my greenhouse to check on my fledgling attempts at growing spinach and arugula in February. Oh...but now it's March and the sun is higher and the snow is melting and we have to open the doors when the sun is shining because it otherwise gets too hot. And while writing is my first love, everybody needs to eat (even writers) and people deserve access to safe food free of GMO contamination.


I attended the Michigan Organic Conference at MSU this past weekend which elevated my blood pressure along with my resolve to do more to spread information on the rampant contamination of our food systems. Genetically modified organisms (God Move Over, some call it) have been brought to us by Monsanto, the same company who brought us DDT and Agent Orange and then lied about their safety. Those involved in seed production say Monsanto is buying up seed companies with the intent of owning all of them. If you control seed, you control food, and if you control food you control people.

High fructose corn syrup, which is in everything from cereal to ketchup, is 100% derived from genetically modified corn. GMO foods have been proven by scientific study to accelerate aging, affect fertility, cause immune system problems and allergies, and a 50% increase in breast cancer. Oh, and if that weren't enough? They can turn our intestinal tracks into little pesticide factories, yet these studies have been swept under the carpet by the strong arm of Monsanto political influence. They have a lot of money and they don't care about your intestines.

Now you might not want to think about such things because your head is full of your WIP. You’re more absorbed in keeping a handle on your wayward protagonist than what you’re about to put in your mouth but I know I want to live long enough to add more accomplishments to my literary arsenal (it took me six years to write one novel!). I don’t need any of the aforementioned health problems to add to the other obstacles we writers experience.

So what's this all about? Can we get GMO foods out of our grocery stores the way the Europeans and the Japanease did? I believe we can through activism. We can’t wait for our govt. to act, because they won't. But all we need is 5% of the population to denounce GMO to make it financially burdensome for the likes of Kraft, Nestle, Kellogg, etc. to continue to use it in their products. If you can't buy organic try to at least avoid GMO foods, processed foods and fast food. Make your voice heard. Ask questions. Be diligent. That 5% is you.

So here's to good eating and writing well.