Empty Houses

by SMSmith

Curried green
And seen if seen
In the haste
Of a summer’s morn.

Not seen
In winter days
In the overcastted late
Of dream-spent spenders
Caught
In the night
Of artificial light.

From body-tired
To mindless ease
From consuming, routined
Hours to please
Powers and privilege.

Weekend escapes
Vacation leaves
Past miles unseen
From abodes unseen
Double-locked and alarmed.

Embellished walls
Wide, mortgaged halls
All
Vaulted silence.

Emptied

In the endless search
For enough
Of more.

© 1987 by SMSmith. Some Rights Reserved. See Creative Commons License at bottom of this page.

"My Country, Wright or Wrong"

Poor Jeremiah, the First! Forty years he spent trying to stem the flood of national self-deception. He was stoned with insults, from the lowly mob through every class, rank, and commentator (through the reigns of three kings Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah). At last, when insults were not enough his detractors resorted to the real thing.

And what was old Jeremiah’s offense? Well, it seems he was a pastor who didn’t walk the talk of smooth things (Isa. 30:10). He spoke as he saw it through the lens of experience, understanding, and revelation.

And déjà vu—surprise! Nobody wanted to hear him. Not too different than one hundred years before with Isaiah. They were tactless, blunt, audacious preachers describing a past, present, and future that no one cared to hear. They contended against staunch advocates of “We are wise! What have [we] done?” (Jer. 8: 8, 6). Rigid points of ego that shuttered minds to the slightest flicker of consideration—“Could any of these offensive, egregious accusations have merit?”

Whatever the present Rev. Jeremiah’s perceived or actual flaws, maybe it would be worth listening to his whole speech. Maybe it would be worth a thought process rather than a knee-jerk contortion of offense. Maybe it would be worth re-reading Isaiah and Jeremiah (and applying the words unto ourselves).

Offering Up The Children

by SMSmith
Once
Laid upon the altar of the world
The innocent child of the Hinnom wild
Killed amidst the groves.[1]

Now
Laid upon the altar of the world
The neglected child in pursuits reviled
For things laid up in store.
The ciphered child in perversities defiled
By addicts demeaning, ever demanding more.
And the embryo child in a world beguiled
By rights of all but those.

By Moloch's priests amidst pagan feasts
Laid upon the altars of the world.
In proxied price for the willful sin
Of an idolatrous kin
Who feign in sacrifice.

What of these groves and altars of the world?
And the plague-orphaned child abandoned while
We surfeit in ease
Bottom-line disease
Kill in war
Pursue self ever more.

How long, O humankind,
These groves and altars of the world?

[1] Jer. 32:35, 19:5-6, 7:31; Isa. 57:5

© 1987 by SMSmith. Some Rights Reserved. See Creative Commons License at bottom of this page.

A Hypocritical Nation?

by SMSmith

Listening to the Pam Fessler piece about Jack Bauer on NPRs Morning Edition (March 17) raised some disquieting remembrances from the book of Isaiah. Thus I am given to wonder if perhaps Jack Bauer is not so much a “quintessential hero for a … frustrated nation,” but rather a quintessential anti-hero of a “hypocritical nation” (Isaiah 10:6).

Are we hypocritical? Do we, seeing, see not, and hearing, hear not (Isa. 42:20) when evidence of our hypocrisy emerges? Consider these questions:

▪ Do we Americans, because of our good-guy self-image and motives, consider ourselves entitled and justified in using all the bad-guy tools of deception, propaganda, manipulation, kidnapping, torture, and even murder?
▪ Do we denounce extremism in others, yet embrace with enthusiasm the Goldwater maxim that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”?
▪ As self-proclaimed guardians and defenders of freedom and democracy, do we violate the fundamentals of both, both here and abroad, in the name of safety and security?
▪ Do we honor transparency and openness in government with our lips, but with our actions and laws disguise facts and figures, seal government and court documents, claim executive privilege, muzzle employees, presume powers, destroy documents, and manufacture consent?
▪ In this land of free speech, do we seek or countenance acts intended to marginalize, threaten, punish, and silence, as “enemies of the people” and as unpatriotic, those who raise dissenting or warning voices, or who expose deception, corruption, failure, and profiteering?
▪ Do we pretend that the invisible hand of the marketplace reigns free and supreme while billions of dollars of public funds and assets flow into corporate collectives by way of government policies, bounties, subsidies, favors, favoritism, non-competitive contracts, and the quiet absolution of criminal conduct?—sleights-of-hand that scarcely get a hand slap when exposed.
▪ Have the offices of Congress in our great Republic become primarily market stalls of access and influence for milling lobbyists?
▪ Have secrecy and dissembling become the norm so that public personas, agendas, and motives can be presented as pristine, like the proverbial Dorian Gray?
▪ Do we look the other way when governments sidestep public accountability by hiring private contractors in the name of free enterprise or efficiency?
▪ As the professed moral opponent of evil empires, are we not the top producers, consumers, and exporters of pornography and violent entertainment—channeling night and day into electronic coliseums worldwide?—from pocket-size to affluenza-size?
▪ Do we claim that violent and pornographic fictions have no real-world impact or consequence, all the while responding to marketers who spend billions on fictional ads boldly selling us behaviors, attitudes, and products?
▪ How often do we strain at gnats yet swallow camels in our political and legal proceedings?

A concluding question is this: If our America of the past 30 years looked into the mirror would she see the face of Eliot Spitzer? And would she, like him, have enough remaining integrity to confess her sins and resign herself to repentance and repair?

I believe that America is a great nation with a great destiny, but if we refuse to admit and correct our numerous hypocrisies, we will break under the weight of them and forfeit whatever other greatness might lie before us. Déjà vu history?

© 2008 by SMSmith, Some Rights Reserved. See Creative Commons License at bottom of this page.

va: Hummer Bummer

“I am so bummed,” the usually elegant Sondra said before I even had a chance to say, “How are you?”

We were meeting for our monthly Cheesecake luncheon and I had never seen, let alone heard, her so disturbed.

“You should see our neighborhood!” she exclaimed in disgust. “It looks like a war zone! Our tree-lined paradise, and now six—I tell you—six Hummers on our block alone and they can’t even be bothered to park them out of sight, because, of course, that would mean out-of-mind, which is not exactly what they hope for us Hummerless neighbors.”

I didn’t even have to raise an eyebrow for she was on a roll. “So, I tell you, if one more house on my block takes to sporting a war machine, I may just go out of my ever-lovin’-American mind and declare my own war on this freedom of excess. I mean, do they not know? do they not care how close we are to sucking fumes?”

I knew I had to calm her. Sucking fumes was several years away. And besides, America was the world’s foremost bastion of freedom and free enterprise. I told her so.

“Free to what?” she cried. “Free to leave our kids in the dark. Free to pine-beetle our way to the death of transportation, as we know it. Free to consume the rest of the world into untimely death by OUR affluenza!”

I opened my mouth to speak about the boon these Hummers might prove for alternative fuel R&D, but she was already there.

“And don’t get me started on the food-for-fuel imbecility,” she warned. “In fact, in protest, I think I shall boycott the excesses of cheesecake and buy bean-futures. Come to think of it, we should start a bean program. Hang a bean-bag on every Hummer’s side-mirror to remind them that gas has to come from somewhere!”

“That’s not likely to win friends or influence the right people,” I said calmingly.

“You mean the wrong people,” she snorted, which wasn’t an altogether pleasant sound for one who sings in the church choir. “We have got so gosh-darned confused about right and wrong in this country that we call a pig’s snout a silk purse and nobody bats an eye, cause we ought to be free to imagine and manifest the future anyway we want it.”

I had to assert some reason. “Well, you know, I’m not sure we have the right to dictate the things people choose to drive.”

“OK,” she said, throwing her hand up. “Let them buy Hummers if they must and park them as monuments to excess in their backyard flower-beds, but when they pull up to a limited resource and drain the common fuel pool a million-times faster than the—

A million times!?!” I interjected.

“I approximate,” she defended, “to a scooter.”

“Well, you can’t expect Moms, CEO’s, staunch Republicans, or confused Democrats to scooter their way to all that is required,” I argued.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “That’s the test.” What-is-required is pretty basic. Set a reasonable standard. We’re all in this together, so I say, for those who haven’t discovered the follies of selfishness and mindless profit, then boot-camp them for a wealth of common experience.”

I could see it was probably hopeless to reason with her. Hummers had spread the fog of war into her burbs. Nonetheless, I felt the need to caution.

“Now, Sondra, I trust you realize this is private property and those things do cost a pretty penny.”

“You’re darn right—they cost the world a pretty penny and that’s why I stand amazed that all those Hummerites and their enviers don’t seem to notice the tremors. I mean, if they’d turn off their engines, they’d feel the big-quake tensing up, and it ain’t gonna be pretty when the disaster compacter comes for the metal and rubber scraps—which by the way, is a whole other boiler that just sends me—”

“Nonetheless,” I firmly interrupted—only to be interrupted myself.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she grumbled. “I know what civil means. Honestly, I’m a Gandhi-ite at heart. I really am. It’s just this deplorable disconnect with my lips— which I guess is my whole wretched point. Oh, mercy! it’s all déjà vu Isaiah, isn’t it? This lips and heart stuff is just gonna do every-sorry-last-one-of-us in. God help us!”

Now how does one reply to that? Amen?