Soapbox

 

"It's the story of America" the president said.
"We do big things."
So send us your money, so we can do more big things.
I’m a little confused: is this politics, or advertizing?
Is he reaching out or re-branding?
Is this just New Coke, only Big Coke?
GE: We bring big things to light. 
Mountain Dew – Puttin' the BIG on that thing you do!

Chevrolet- like a really big rock.
 

You know, that could work for the United States. 
Perhaps we should make it our new corporate- er, national slogan:
We do big things.

Let's get busy then- we've got some re-branding to do.
New Deal. New Frontier. Great Society…

Big Deal. Big Frontier. Great Big Society, cause we do big things, damnit.
God Bless America and our big things.
Oh say, can you see the big things we do?

After all, what is America but a big country full of big people
with big mouths and big dreams, waving our big guns, doing big things.
From fomenting revolution to denying evolution, from consumption to pollution,
it’s all big big big here!
We don’t just build churches, we build mega-churches!
We don’t just have malls-
we build malls so big you need a shuttle bus to get you from the parking lot to the front door.
Get a bigger storage unit to hold the bigger pile of stuff you bought
cause there's only 342 more shopping days until the big day!
We've got all the really big name stars
up there on the big screen, the ultra-screen, the extreme screen!
America is the land of bigger breasts and bigger hearts,
We seek the biggest thrills and take the biggest pills,
serve the biggest burgers and sport  the biggest waistlines in the world-
because you deserve big things today. 

And who else is as big as America? 
Canada is pretty big, but most of that is ice, so it doesn’t count.
And China- their country is big, but a lot of the people are pretty short,
and don’t even speak English.
In America we call our cities the Big Apple, the Big Easy
and the city of the Big Shoulders.
We are the land of the big sky country,
and we carve our heroes out of freakin mountains, baby!
We reached out and touched the moon…
Blown apart mountains and built new ones out of garbage
and fought wars, and started wars,
built dams and dug canals that have changed the earth forever.
 

Oh yeah,  I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I"m big…

our land, our appetite,
and our leaders don't just lead America,

they lead "the free world" and it doesn't get much bigger than that1
Ask not what your country can do for you- it can do big things!

Speak softly and do big things.
Are you now, or have you ever been a small thing?
And when the president does a big thing, it’s not illegal.
I did not do a big thing with that woman. 
A house divided cannot do big things.
We are the big thing we have been waiting for.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the big things that we do.

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, we do big things.
You want big? You can't handle big!
When the going gets big, the big do things.
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and big things

'cause it’s a big fucking deal, America!

Four score and several small things ago, America did a really big thing!
We the People of the United States formed a more perfect union
in order to do really big things,
And if you're gonna crash and burn, do it big!
So when in the course of human events it becomes necessary to do big things… we have nothing to fear but small stuff.

 

It's a new year at last, 2011,

ushered in with both a bang and a whimper

as black birds fell dead from the sky

first by the hundreds, then the thousands.

People said the birds were simply frightened by the New Year’s fireworks
and  flew into buildings… out in the middle of nowhere…

well, flew into each other then, got sucked up into a freak thunderstorm

pelted by hail, blown off course, confused,
perfectly understandable, happens all the time,

blackbirds no longer sing in the dead of night,

because birds can’t see in the dark,

broken wings can never fly, starlings and jackdaws
they probably flew into traffic

collided with something… something besides the ground

with which they certainly collided very hard.

Then fish began washing ashore, surrendering the will to live,

crabs succumbing also to a fear of fireworks…

no, it’s the shift in magnetic north, throwing everything off kilter,

that damn extra zodiac sign has us all going in circles, running into things

it’s Facebook's stupid new profile page-

I mean who could have thought that would work out well?

 

In a coal mine, when the canary ceases to sing,

is found motionless at the bottom of her cage

they do not argue about whether she is just tired

or going on strike for better wages

or even if she has died of a broken heart from missing the sky.

They just run.

Here we are in 2011 and we just run into each other

as children and old ladies fall to the ground at our feet,
frightened by the fireworks from a Glock 9 millimeter
colliding in the dark with bullets,
because people cannot see with their eyes closed,
and the only kind of speech that encourages violence

is saying that there is too much violence in our speech,

and Martin Luther King Jr. would have approved of this war- no really

we know he would, because America is the good guys
no matter how bad we are
it says so here in our contract,
right below where it used to say that all men are created equal,

and in exchange for getting some of us the day off Dr. King agreed, after all,

 to surrender everything he actually said or stood for

and to sponsor a really good electronics sale at Crazy Eddie’s.

 

And it’s a new year now, surely so much better than the old one…

so why are we are so frightened of our children seeing a simple word in a story,

one they probably hear around them every day

that we not only ban books, we decide to ban the history,

make a law that says those uncomfortable truths

which our founding fathers gave us the right to speak

must not be spoken in classrooms, lest they besmirch the good name

of people we would prefer remained
just cardboard cutouts on the classroom wall.

The most important lesson from history

is to rip the tags off the small pox blankets next time before you pass them out

to maintain plausible deniability-
see, if you deny you ever made a mistake, you never have to learn from it.

Slavery still exists, but ignorance has replaced chains

and freedom just dies by degrees

but soon enough it too is lying motionless at our feet,

while government is nothing more than an amusement park ride
where Noah plays with dinosaurs and unicorns on the ark

While the dove searches and searches for a sign of dry land

But the turtledoves are falling from the sky too
and It wasn’t from lack of a decent GPS, or swamp gas or sun spots-
 

I  think  they died of shame.

    The reactions of Sarah Palin and the extreme-right media to last week’s horrible events have been predictable and instructive. They both came out swinging against the true enemy- progressives- and spoke up in brave defense of the real victim, which was not those who were attacked in Tucson, but was, of course, Sarah Palin.
 

   It seems clear from their reactions that Palin and her camp genuinely do not understand the criticism they are getting over this and can only explain it as the left-wing "lame-stream" media being out to get them. That's because for them, the eye of every storm and the subject of every event is Sarah Palin. They live in a  Palin-centric world and can't understand that the rest of us do not. And so, from the land where other things still matter, I offer this explanation for at least my outrage.

 

     Whatever your opinion on whether she should or should not have posted rifle-scope bulls-eyes over the districts she wanted defeated (many of whom subsequently had office windows and doors smashed) what Sarah Palin clearly should not have done was to grab for the spotlight on the very day when America’s hearts and minds should have been turned to those who were hurting in Arizona.  Instead of simply expressing grief and her prayers for healing  the nation, she called for the cameras to express her outrage over her own suffering in the most venal and self-absorbed way imaginable.

 

    “But Sarah was being attacked unfairly” her defenders cry. “People were saying she was responsible for this tragedy!”
     Indeed. While "free speech" does not mean speech that is free of consequences, she was certainly not directly responsible for that shooting, and such a charge, where it was made, was unfair. (Most were not saying that, only that she employs violent rhetoric far too casually) 
 

    Still, it was probably an uncomfortable position she found herself in. Gee, I wonder if maybe President Obama doesn’t feel the same when he gets accused- by Palin herself!-  of planning to let handicapped babies die and setting up “death panels” to kill off old people?  Oh he has walked in Sarah’s victim shoes and then some.  
    He also knows just how it feels to have one of those “cross-hairs” on his back, after Sarah whipped up campaign crowds to such a frenzy of hatred against him that some were shouting “kill him!”… and then winked at the cameras.

 
    But did he step up to the podium in Tucson and talk about his suffering? Did he try to make sure we all felt sorry for him that day,  for having to appear in public with your loved ones, knowing that national figures are getting obscenely rich from calling you Hitler? Or did he do what a true leader does: put aside his own personal situation, focus on the humanity that unites us, rise above differences and try to lead us all- progressives and conservatives and all the folks in between- to a place of healing?
 

    Palin should have at least tried to do the same. If nothing else, she could have kept her mouth shut. It often shows a fine command of the language to know when to say nothing. She could have tried to keep the focus where it belonged- on the families and the community that had been wounded. (Reality check Sarah: a woman whose district you "targeted" has a hole in her head, and grieving parents are about to bury their child.Your own personal angst, while real to you, should have been secondary.)
    Doing that would have demonstrated leadership, which something Sarah can't even fake, because she fundamentally does not understand it. So she went on the attack and whined for national attention over her own small pain, because she thinks a leader is whoever has the biggest mouth and grabs the most attention.
 

    In her defense, being told that you should have toned down your rhetoric IS exactly like being accused of drinking baby’s blood as part of a dark religious ritual… isn’t it? Apparently it is to the extreme right, who defended her mis-appropriation of the term “blood libel” by trying to co-opt yet another huge genocidal horror and shrink it down to fit in their own pathetic little victimized pocket, calling media criticism a “pogrom”.

 

    Perhaps next we’ll hear that white Christian conservatives are being “lynched” and forced to “walk a Trail of Tears” because sorry slaves and Indians, no one can be allowed to have suffered more than they do. They do not count their blessings; rather they magnify their paper-cuts into the wounds of martyrs. See how they bleed, and how their suffering makes them superior!
 

     Hyperbole is all too common in America.  It happens every day through use of simple expressions, like the hungry businessman who says he is “starving” when he has no concept of what actual starvation is like. Certainly by saying it he intends no disrespect to famine victims!
     But I expect that if that same businessman who missed lunch had occasion to visit Africa and to witness true victims of starvation: match-stick thin parents and their listless, bloated babies, he would never use that term casually again.

    And isn’t this all we ask of each one of us in the wake of the Tucson shooting: that we think more before we speak, and consider that our words have meaning? For if they do not, why do we  bother to speak them?
    Either your calls for an “armed and dangerous” citizenry and “second amendment remedies” mean you are actually prepared to see the blood of children in the street… or you know that your words are only hot air!

    In which case, please, just exercise your right to remain silent.

 

I always feel a little sad when I’ve stripped the once-proud Christmas tree bare
and it stands, naked again in my living room
shedding its life-blood all over my carpet,
shorn of it’s glitter and memories.
I feel that I’ve cheated it somehow, that I owe it more
for what it gave us.
But after all, it's a new year now, and the tree is of the past,
once adored and now discarded,
bravely raising now empty arms to the sky.

We chose it with such anticipation,
deemed it more beautiful than all the others,
lauded and admired it, photographed ourselves beside it 
proclaimed it queen for a day.
It bore, uncomplaining, the weight of the honors we bestowed upon it,
shone softly through the lengthening winter nights
sheltered our wishes and dreams,
and now, its fragrant breath exhausted,
I imagine it stands, heartbroken,
trying to recall the peace of the autumn hillside it once knew.
The ornaments and lights it wore are our treasures.
They are packed away with care 
to be brought out and exclaimed over next year
though they are only bits of glass and ceramic and tin.
Yet the tree, once a vibrant, living thing
that cleansed the air and offered shelter to small creatures
is hauled out with the cardboard boxes and empty Coke cans,
it's broken body exposed to the careless regard of passers-by.

But sometimes after Christmas there  is a nice pile of snow at the curb.
Then I  take the tree out and drive it upright into the snow
and let it stand proud once again.
I step back and admire it,  festoon it with a few pine cones and dead leaves
and let it sleep there till the truck comes
to dream of a winter mountain
under the rising moon.