BYE, BYE, HOMO SAPIENS… WE HARDLY KNEW YA

by George Salamon

“‘All the cemeteries are full': Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza.” —Reuters, November 22, 2023

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." —John Donne, Meditation 17, 1623

On the pile of rubble

the wailing of a mother

means nothing.

On the broken street

the raised fist of a father,

nothing.

The weeping of entire

populations on both sides,

nothing.

The killing of the air,

the end of our oceans,

nothing

In times of exhaustion

and nihilism, values

have vanished and we

are turning into machines,

surviving to function, not

to live.

George Salamon thinks the lords of Silicon Valley have,  million clicks after millions of more clicks, succeeded into turning most of our minds and hearts into file clerks and bean counters.

PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS, 2015

by George Salamon

"In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia . . . he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise is the King."  —Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly.

Faces sly more than virtuous.
Words slippery more than true.
Hucksters and hustlers, narcissistic
Peddlers of the self  selected from
Political machines modeled after
Families of the Cosa Nostra.
Champions of the elite's freedom
To follow every desire, but ready
To foreclose the advance of the human
Spirit to the rest of us.

Their debates shoot-outs,
Where zingers and gaffes determine
Who sprinted ahead and who fell behind
In this sleazy horse race.

We the people of The Greatest Nation on Earth
Do not say, as ee cummings once did:
"there is some shit I will not eat."
We stuff our faces,
Sated and sluggishly sensing that
Our hearts and minds will follow.


George Salamon taught German literature and culture at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and senior editor on Defense Systems Review. He published a study of Arnold Zweig's novels of Word War One and a reader in German history. He contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

PRESUMPTION

by Catherine Wald

Image source: NY Daily News

So many are the barriers we cross –
mountains, rivers, doorways in
and doorways out – we can’t
pause at every junction
to ponder the alternatives,
consider every sharp stake
we might be impaled on; every
body of water eager to swallow
us up; every potential mechanical
malfunction in a world dominated
by machines.

What would life be like if,
every time you drove across a
train track, you had to wonder
what your kids would do without
you, how your gas tank might im-
plode on impact, who you are likely
to kill without meaning any harm?

What we presumed:  SUVs
are invulnerable, trains
are stoppable, each of us
has the right to traverse
any obstacle that blocks
our path.

Were we wrong?


Catherine Wald has frequently taken the Metro North train from New York City to Valhalla. Her books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly andWestchester Review.