DEMOCRACY AS A WAY OF LIFE

by George Salamon

"We need to save democracy from capitalism, and save capitalism from itself." —Kevin J. Delaney, “American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity,” The New York Times, July 5, 2020


Let us pretend this leopard can
Change its spots, let us dream
The impossible dream once more.
Not this old boy, who's not ready
For one more plunge into an
Unfulfillable dream to overturn
The one created by our Indian-
Killing, slave-owning heroes by
Our greed-consumed wheelers
And dealers and salesmen from
The Frontier to Silicon Valley, a
Dream without roots in democracy
But in the cult of Mammon and Mars,
Talking the big lie, the bigger promise,
But walking in the bloody footsteps of
Absurdities and atrocities committed
Against the humanism no magician or
Leader can inject into the heart of our
Homegrown capitalism.
We can "save" democracy in America
By making it our way of life, democracy
With its own culture grown from the
Essential democratic truths about the
Values of human life, beginning with the
Long march of democracy, sustained by
The new American Dream, through the
"Unprecedented waves and storms" our
Poet of democracy predicted and, with
Grit, patience and luck reach that "city
Upon a hill" as it morphs from myth into
A place of democratic life.


George Salamon, inspired by Whitman, in St. Louis, MO.

SONG OF WATERS RUNNING RED

by Bill Sullivan

“Spirit, help me to see

their broken stories…”

                                                                   The Wound in the Water, libretto by Euan Tait.

And the oceans, seas and rivers bled, then and now.

                                  1

So many unshackled black bodies,
hauled topside, dragged to the rail like sacks
of trash, worthless cargo when breathless or ill.
Unshrouded, unblessed, tossed to the sharks.

Lost: your freedom, your fields, family, friends,
songs and dances, your chanted village score,
your matching parts. Separated and silenced
you descend to the unknown ocean floor.

                                    2
Now a coyote says, “This far and no further;
A raft is there by the Rio Bravo.” Death threats,
and poverty marched the family north to the churning
spring waters, hoping to elude the border’s net.

“We will not be separated, will stay a family,”
Mid river, the rapids sank the raft, the dream.
Four will never know the opposite shore. Lost—
father, daughter child, and infant, swept downstream.

                                  3
The Mediterranean Sea, the reddest of borders,
graveyard for countless non-Europeans fleeing torture
and war.  First an embrace from the host, then rejection.
For a time, heroic rescues at sea, then cessation.

Thank the Turkish soldier who kindly retrieves
the lifeless body from Bodrum’s shore, who cradles
Aylan, in his arms, a three-year-old Syrian Kurd. Mother,
sister lost at sea; only the broken father left to grieve.


                                           4
Who knows who first pressed the knife’s tip in, opened
the wound? But slave trader, captain and merchant pushed
it deeper.  And despots, dealers, war lords, smugglers twisted
it more than a turn or two—then, hope and story severed.

If you don’t turn your head, you will see children confined,
crying out for their parents, drowning in a sea of abuse,
but also gaze at the perp’s or the collaborator’s eyes,
black and blank, a passageway to the dying soul’s cries.

                                          5
The spirit, the sea—eternal and universal; every creature
a part of the tale.  The sea, the womb; life’s origins.
Joined, at birth, our ties soon severed by Mammon’s legions.
Exiles and lords, cast apart, songless in a wounded sea.

Who in that sea will sing the first note of the song
that sparks the afflicted, that turns the cruel and greedy,
that invites every voice to join, that note by note stops
the bleeding, purifies the water, rewrites the wrongs?

Bill Sullivan taught English and American Studies at Keene State College. He co-authored two studies of twentieth century poetry, co-directed two documentaries.  His poems have appeared in a number of print and online publications.  His Loon Lore: In Poetry and Prose was published by Grove Street Books in 2015. He retired to Westerly, RI and turns to the ocean and gardens when times turn bleak.

O, SAY CAN YOU SEE

by George Held

Mr. Mammon. Posted by Fearguth at bildungblog, February 25, 2016.

Once-temperate female Facebook friends
Who’d reckoned Hillary would win for femmes
Now sound in defeat as intemperate
As the rightwing half of the electorate.

Some blacks and Latins now prove as hateful
Toward whites as the most bigoted of baleful
Enemies who supported the winner, Trump,
Who they’d supposed would land on his rump.

Now that there’s no hope for e pluribus unum,
And our petitions are voided in a tweet,
As we prepare for Armageddon in the street,
Listen up to what the Whitelash has spoken:

A land run by conglomerate Trump Bannon
& Co., in thrall to almighty Mammon.


George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry collection: Bleak Splendor (Muddy River Books, 2016).