Mudhoney Eats Babies

The greedy grocer put pills in the pile
his jowls were wet
and the lights were awkward
Many stars made witness
Love was something invisible

Green clean Josephine wandered through piss alley
with a sack sewn from hemp
and salmon-skin eyes
She wanted ways to face the day
Her tiny stomach needed packing

Josephine climbed in the blue ogre
She kicked a rat and squished it ochre
Her eyes turned to summer
She saw the bread and potatoes
A plate was prepared

The grocer still hates overbites
His jowls will never jump
The lights don't love anyone
The stars are still ambivalent
But Josephine turned into sky skin

Poison the well
Get out of my dumpster
Kill your friends
Maim your neighbours
Scum

Moral Implications of Chasing the White Mouse

I was staring at the little white mouse while kneeling in my rarely-mopped bathroom. I flicked the baggie with my index finger and a question jet-skied across my slopes; how did this get here?

It was grown in the hills of Colombia by someone who was likely toting a semi or fully automatic weapon. The FARC is a noted supplier of the North American drug market but I have read articles (on BBC?) that their paramilitary counterparts (affiliated with the US-backed Colombian government) also have their place in the drugriculture scene. After being chopped and ground up into tiny slimy yellow grains, it was packed into blocks and carried north through sweaty verdant jungles by stoic foot soldiers. Do they use boats? Planes? I have even heard reports of submarines being used to get drugs onto the American continent.

Rather than digressing on the minutia of the drug smuggling process, I would rather bring the moral case to the forefront. I am an unabashed drug consumer and have always felt that as long as a substance's positive effects outweighed its negatives, it should be legally available. I felt safe in my glistening palace of rebel dream logic and sure that I was on the moral high ground.

I fear that I was wrong.

Because the war on drugs imprisons people that get caught smuggling drugs for me, I am a bad person. With each purchase, I am buying the lives of countless mules, soldiers, police officers, innocent civilians, and even drug lords (they're people too!).

Perhaps my moral compass has finally pointed towards something that fits with a secular humanist viewpoint. Instead of reveling in my savage cityscape until all hours of the night, the morally correct thing to do would be to avoid the stuff altogether unless I can talk to the grower personally.

Obama Blues

Is this really how things are going to turn out south of the border? America has been given a candidate of substance who writes his own speeches, who speaks from his heart (no matter how calculated his positions may be, he still sounds like he means what he says), and who could use his immense rhetorical powers to beat the Republicans... and he is being stymied by a slip of the tongue, an incorrect portrayal of middle America that apparently "disturbs" the populace.

Everyone says things that they regret. Most politicians offend someone just by getting out of bed with a check from a particular lobbyist in their hands. Obama committed the sin of being too "truthy" for the media, his opponents, and hence the entire population of Pennsylvania.

Did anyone ask the people of PA about their opinion on this matter? I haven't seen a lot of print devoted to this burning question. Most has been flaming crud in projectile form being tossed at Obama because he dared to say that people who lose their jobs turn to religion or other red-meat issues because of their frustration with the failure of the political process to protect them.

I am not specifically against Hillary Clinton per se but I certainly have my reservations about her, mainly because of her uncanny resemblance to another candidate from days gone by who went by the name of John Kerry: another monied elite with nuanced opinions but no cogent way to present ones point; another Washington-fed politician who will say anything to keep one's post; another part of the system, assuring us all that he/she will be the ONE to fix everything and make the world spin properly again.

If Obama is seriously damaged by this minor gaffe and loses the Democratic nomination, expect John McCain to coast to a relatively easy victory in the general election in the fall. Hillary is a great person & has some good ideas but she has been co-opted by the entrenched corporate & political interests to really change things. Obama is our only hope, and he is being targeted by both camps.

The question is, should one phrase plucked from a campaign of rock-solid ideas derail Obama's whole campaign? Let the American voter be the judge. We all know that they follow the news & form independent opinions & are worthy to analyze the myriad political maneuvers that go on from day to day.

Obama in 2008, one hundred percent. I don't get to vote (being a Canadian) but if I could, I would have voted for Kucinich (Obama was my safety).

Love & Brotherhood to you all,
Philip
Bleeding Heart Liberal Whose Heart is Actually Not Bleeding (It's in great shape!)