Monday, April 25, 2011

Play Ball

















How many times have I tried to clean up the mess,
scrub off the scum, undo the duress?
Made every effort to keep things sane
only to have it all topple again, chaos reigns
washed pigs return to the mud, and somewhere
in my mind I think it should be different.

Life should be clear of debris, upsets kept to
a minimum, diplomatic efforts used to maintain peace,
politically correct deference to avoid offense
but maybe these are the lies that are the source
of my upsets. After all, Cain and Abel, the first
children, solved their problems with the death of one.

With wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya
not to mention civil unrest worldwide,
it seems fighting is the norm. That is -
to take a bat or bomb, and hit another
with it. Hard enough to cause some harm,
often enough, to incapacitate him.

Maybe the real lesson to learn
is take no prisoners and let the defeated know
who's the ruler, the conqueror, the winner,
but the truth is… I don’t want to live in a world
like that. The ideal that still bubbles up is peace
among families, tribes, and races. Life arranged

clean and orderly, everything has a place
with everything in its place, a world grid
and common understanding for how things work
who goes first and whose left standing, but whose
rules of order? Those followed by the Taliban, or
the caste system in India, communist of China,

or democracy in America? Perhaps
with all these social experiments
things should return to the simplest form
the one with the biggest bat wins.
Everyone follows the same rules and losers
deal with it until a new game begins.

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