by CaLokie
 |
| Every public school classroom in Louisiana has been ordered to display a poster of the Ten Commandments. This one? Weird. |
I come from a Bible Belt State where
a majority of the people said
they loved a God who
they had never seen
but voted for governors
and legislators who
passed Jim Crow laws which
segregated themselves from
fellow humans who
could be seen.
Now the Bible Belt state of Louisiana
has passed a law requiring
the Ten Commandments to be
displayed in school classrooms despite
the fact that there is no archeological or
historical evidence of an exodus of
a nation of slaves from Egypt led by
the great emancipator
and lawgiver, Moses.
But having said that I have no
problem with a public display of
the ten commandments since
I’m not a sculptor
and have never made
any graven image, nor
any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, nor
that is in the earth beneath, nor
that is in the water under the earth.
Moreover I have never coveted
my neighbor’s manservant, nor
his maidservant, nor
his ox, nor
his ass.
Carl Stilwell (aka CaLokie) is a retired teacher who taught for over 30 years in the Los Angeles Unified school District. He was born during the depression in Oklahoma and came to California in 1959 and has lived there ever since. His pen name was inspired by the Joads’ struggle for survival in The Grapes of Wrath and the songs and life of Woody Guthrie. His poems have been published in Altadena Poetry Review, Blue Collar Review, Four Feather’s Press, Lummox, Pearl, Prism, Revolutionary Poets Brigade—Los Angeles, Rise Up, Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and The Sparring Artists.