Our Shoot 'Em Up World

What I thought was a small stuffy nose and light headache on Friday morning turned into a full blown cold this morning, perfect for the weekend when I’d rather be enjoying fall and treating myself to movies or doing the laundry that needs done, even errands that need running. Instead the only thing running today is my raw nose. Not running properly today was the plumbing in my bathroom, again, the ongoing problem which only hits at inopportune times. Awesome.

Normally the shining light of any Saturday, no matter how I feel, is the big newspaper.  Today it was overflowing with articles so deadly depressing I had to get up and leave the apartment for the grocery store even though the swollen glands were screaming for a nap. That is the mood in which today’s poem was written. I’m hoping that the general disposition of the world and the countries that comprise our planet shifts to being a more desirable place to inhabit sooner rather than later.

Armed and Broken

by Nicole Speulda

What I see is a sprawling earth
dirt filling the drying seas,
where land drowned is reborn
in Christian waters, jihad blood
in rain-filled ravines
bloated with redemption.

We look away while bush fires
devour an entire continent,
and stare blankly at bombs we set
in lands not so far away.

For the war is home and thriving;
Fortune 500 leaders hanging by
threads or by their own bedsheets,
scarred and scared survivors

of war, retirement fund fraud,

and emasculation by unemployment,

all defeated in spirit, the dollar we worshipped

driving people to guns, crime, general rampage.

I want so much to believe
in whole thoughts, a pinch of reality.
But I am in pieces, root, bark and leaf
parched and hovering like a bird of prey,
waiting for that piece of life to show itself,
to plunge, envision and clutch
the meaty colors of life once more.