Rough Week

Sky Collapses On The Passamari
by Rockpicker

Winter sky drapes the land, like a canopy
dropped by unseen hands upon a cage.
Farm ground blurs between houses
at an imprecise place, over the creek,
beyond my neighbors' spruce. Past
what we can see spreads
the topography of an uncertain age.
Fence posts pitch and lose themselves
in fog, like stick men heading off
to evening chores, or the dutiful poor
marched off to kill the poor in forgettable wars.
What I took for granted and thought I knew
when sunbeams slanted through
transparent pain, seems now
untenable and untrue. Still, rockslides
and dying forests loom, like deficits
we must assume in this obscuring air.
The looted vault gapes it's open mouth.
Herefords steaming under willows birth
their calves. The little town rubs
its knees beside a flame and tunes
its set for a prompted reassurance.
I kick the empty streets in muffled gloom.
I bounce solid hopeful notes off walls
of unsold homes. Kept birds balance
in dim rooms, each night, a new deception.
With sky this low it can't be clear,
the honest and naive are always tools.
On the Passamari, the dog star fluxes, red
to green, whether occluded or seen.

by freeacre

It’s been a rough week. I thought I’d begin with Rockpicker’s latest exquisite poem, which captures so beautifully, the “muffled gloom” that is so apparent. It’s like he has a way of looking at things as if through a mental kaleidoscope and is able share a glimpse of things from his eyes. The Passamari, by the way, is the Shoshone word for the Ruby River in Montana. I looked it up.

With Murph so sick with some hellspawn virus, I could have won a gold medal if there was an Olympic category for racing back and forth rinsing and returning barf buckets. But, we were not alone in having life get in the way of our blog posting. Charles Hugh Smith was late due to the death of his friend’s mother. And, Nina, lost her dog to a mountain lion, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies. But, although personal tragedies and difficulties may have put off folding the laundry, vacuuming the house, or scouring the tub, as well as delaying postings on the web, it’s nothing compared to the dysfunction of the government.

The ruthless partisanship between the Republicans and Democrats seems to be eclipsed only by the corrupting influence of lobbyists and the arrogance of Wall St. and the central banks. Barely noticed between the entertaining coverage of the Olympics is the inability of the government to govern. The Republican overseers seem to be totally indifferent to the suffering of the tax-paying masses, despite their lip service to the “Tea Partiers.” They vote as one against anything and everything, even extensions of unemployment insurance just to spite the Dems. So what if the people starve, live in tent cities, college grads and young families move back in with their parents, careers are destroyed, 401Ks are lost, half of the children are qualifying for food stamps? They continue to boviate their litany of never-ending trademark campaign messages of disinformation, character assassination and misdirection as if the election never happened. The worse everything gets, the better for them. On to the next election and it’s millions of dollars … let’s focus on Sarah Palin and Glen Beck, shall we? How about joining in and working to reduce the deficit that you are continually complaining about? Ahhh….. no. I didn’t think so.

And, then there are the Democrats. This disappointing collection of numbnuts still mouth the words of their idealistic intentions to help people with health care, jobs, education, peace, etc. etc. But, they are still unable to deliver a single thing, having been bought off or intimidated by the same K Street swine that rule the Republicans. Sweet Mother of God! They remind me of the despicable Muscular Dystrophy campaigns with Jerry Lewis. Ever since I can remember, Jerry Lewis has been hauling out some poor crippled kid and begging for money to make him walk again. And, year after year, people send in their money – and forty years later, muscular dystrophy is worse and audits find that the majority of the money is siphoned off the top. What a frigging rip.

It’s gotten so bad that even the senators are bailing. Republicans and Democrats are refusing to even run next time, pretty much admitting that they’d rather pound salt than serve in the houses of corruption and ineptitude that the U.S. Congress has become. Three thousand more banks are on the brink of failure, according to Elizabeth Warren, one of the very few courageous voices in the government. The L.A. Times is predicting four million new foreclosures this year. That will, of course, drive the prices of homes down even further, putting even more mortgages “underwater.” The next bubble of commercial real estate is beginning to burst, the billions of toxic derivatives have yet to be dealt with, and now China is dumping our Treasuries. Many of our states are on the brink of bankruptcy. Oh, yeah, and the European Union is looking about as attractive as a bouquet of elbows. Despite the delusional rally of the stock market this week, I’d say this is the year that the wheels come off the financial cart.

But, then, it’s only money, right? Well, no, it’s debt servitude, ill health, homelessness, desperation, lost lives. But, in the end, if it wipes out the globalism that has relentlessly driven the working class into the ground by having us all conform to the lowest common peasant denominator, it might get their boots off our backs. Whose boots? The scum-sucking rich bastard financial criminal overlords, that’s whose.

But, it will take more than the collapse of the digital money house of cards to remove the misanthropic stranglehold on the productive class. The rich bastard parasites (RBP’s) are backed up by the intelligence services, the military, and FEMA. When the television programming and the commercials no longer are enough to funnel the populace into the feed lots, then they’ll call out the goon squads.

But, you know what? I have a strong feeling that’s when they are going to lose. What’s going to happen when we all start painting ourselves blue?