See “Official Secrets”

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See “Official Secrets”

The movie Official Secrets, which is just out, is about Katharine Teresa Gun, the British translator in the U.K. government’s equivalent to the U.S.’s NSA, who leaked a top secret memo in an effort to prevent the Iraq War (in which up to 1 million Iraqis and over 35 thousand U.S. and U.K soldiers died, and many hundreds of thousands of others were injured).

That war was entirely illegal because: 1, Saddam Hussein (Iraq’s dictator in 2003) did not have weapons of mass destruction — as G.W.Bush and Tony Blair lyingly claimed, so there was no “necessity” of preemptive war as an act of self defense by the U.S. and U.K; and 2, because the U.S. and U.K. did not get a U.N. Security Council resolution to go to war against Iraq, because the world body did not see Iraq as a threat to the rest of the world. The failure to get that U.N. resolution was a result of the publication of Katharine Gun’s leaked information.

The memo Katharine Gun exposed was from a “Frank Koza” at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, the U.K.’s NSA equivalent) asking the Brits to help bug the communications of other members of the U.N. Security Council (the non-permanent members at the time) to dig up dirt to be used to blackmail them into voting for war as Bush and Blair wanted — despite the lack of evidence (no WMDs) that war was justified.

Gun’s information eventually made it to the public, and caused such embarrassment to the British Government that after a year of terrifying harassment of Gun (including almost deporting her Turkish Kurdish husband), and taking her to trial (with a long sentence if found guilty of “treason,” and she had confessed), they dropped the case rather than reveal the government documents requested as evidence by the defense, because those documents (findings on the question of the legality of the proposed war, by Lord Goldstone, the U.K. attorney general) in fact explicitly stated that the war was illegal and Bush and Blair were fabricating fake intelligence to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the U.N. and the American and British public.

Katharine Gun (and the reporters and attorneys who worked to expose the government lies and defend Katharine) were exonerated, and she is a real-life heroine of historical significance — Daniel Ellsberg stated that her actions were more significant than his! Bush, Blair and their government associates, who perpetrated the massive Iraq War Crime (20 March 2003) — whose massively bloody and tragic consequences continue to this very moment — remain free, wealthy, untroubled by even a hint of Nuremberg style prosecutions, and are now even nostalgically “rehabilitated” (in the media stories aimed at the gum-chewing ADHD public, as by a sweet-smiling Michelle Obama cozying up to “oh gosh” Georgie Porgie) by comparisons to Trump today.

Once again, America managed to destroy a country, Iraq, and consume monumental amounts of American national treasure, and sacrifice thousands of American lives (as well as thousands of British lives, and hundreds of thousands to perhaps a million Iraqi lives) to lose a war — “lose” since it had no value to the public from the get-go — a war of choice, and an illegal war of aggression (just like Hitler’s war in Poland on 1 September 1939) which our highly privileged war criminals perpetrated. But, they got away with it.

America as a nation failed again (remember Vietnam?). The United Kingdom as a nation failed. To the extent that the American people and the UKanian people do not remember all this, and apply the tragic lesson of the Iraq War — and the Vietnam War — today to prevent the new called-for wars: on Iran, or in Yemen (to help the war criminal Saudis? to help the war criminal Israelis?, really?) and elsewhere that our highly privileged war criminals think they can make a buck and puff up their Wall Street portfolios; to the extent that these publics are so out of touch that they have no flaming anti-war consciousness, they and their nations are failing miserably. Failure is paid for in oceans of blood shed by innocent, naïve, common people, both foreign and domestic.

So I urge you to see the movie Official Secrets. It is well-made, well-played, literate, intelligent, riveting, honest. By doing so you can thank and honor an incredibly brave woman of inspiringly solid moral principle — Katharine Teresa Gun — as well as the journalists and lawyers who made their best efforts to prevent an illegal and unnecessary war; and you can use that viewing experience to help invigorate you own convictions to become aware of truth and not be lulled by indolent comfort or stupid bigotry into acquiescing to the war crime schemes (and the theft from the public commons schemes) of our all-too immune highly privileged war criminals, past and present.

By the way, a kid in my high school class (1968) was called “Frank Koza.” Don’t know if he’s the same one.

Here is the trailer to “Official Secrets”
https://youtu.be/V3vIYy38Fys

Here are the two parts of a round table interview of Katharine Gun, conducted by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!; as well as of the movie’s director, and the two key journalists who broke the story using Katharine’s information.

PART 1:
This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. A New Film Tells Her Story
July 19, 2019
https://youtu.be/u6n1VFDJ3CY

PART 2:
15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak Damning Iraq War Memo
July 19, 2019
https://youtu.be/CWtIu7mbnbM

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For more about my photo taken at the Iraq War protest in San Francisco, in 2003, see:

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2016/04/10/iraq-war-protest-sf-2003/

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Through My Lens, Clearly

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Through My Lens, Clearly

For me, the 1950s ended in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1960s began in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution. I remember the elation in my family, in New York City’s Upper West Side (136th Street, and Broadway), when the Batista Regime in Cuba collapsed in January 1959; and I remember our dumbstruck terror in October 1962, listening to President John Kennedy speaking on our black-and-white TV, wondering if my grandparents would be radioactively incinerated in Havana before we were similarly dematerialized in New York City, or vice versa.

That is how my political consciousness was born; its coming-of-age and definitive molding was done later by the Vietnam War, and the many insistent demands by my government that I sacrifice myself to it. I escaped by dumb luck, for which I am eternally grateful. With the particular curvature and polish of my own idiosyncratic lens for political consciousness, I have come to resolve images of our collective reality that I sometimes feel a need to project, as here today.

People can’t be changed, they either evolve on their own, or they persist as they are to the death. The best you can do, for the rare few, is tell them the truth if they ask.

We live in a world rich in its diversity of intolerance of independent thought and self-directed living. Expressions of personal independence and creativity are threats to the slavish conformity of the mass of fearful repressed people hiding in their submissiveness to traditional ideologies that give them status in social hierarchies that limit the full human potential of the individual. This maintains, without merit, the elevation of patriarchs and power-hungry mediocrities who clip the wings of the human spirit and direct the enforcement of their systems of mental and physical imprisonment of the masses serving them.

Bigotry is popular because it makes stupid people feel intelligent, and weak people feel strong. President (sic!) Donald Trump’s popularity rests on people’s desire to be bigoted and respected for it. Bigotry will exist as long as there are ignorant people who are fearful. Such bigoted people love fascism because under it they can stay bigoted and be proud of it. Fascist bigots, like Trump, don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want to be made to feel ashamed. That is why publicly recognized fascist power-seekers always try to silence their critics: first by ignoring them, then by ridiculing them, then by judicial attacks against them, or by veiled calls to their followers to sprout proxies who will make illegal attacks on their critics, and ultimately if they gain dictatorial power they have their critics killed.

Evangelical Christianity is a cult of fear, and for its men also a cult of patriarchy. Politically, it is irrational Republicanism; socially, it is white supremacy and the subjugation of women. Why do such Republican women remain Republican? Because their bigotry, which is fear, is so embedded that it overpowers their self-respect, which is courage. Evangelical Christianity sees Islam as its reflection and its rival, which is why it hates Islam. In practice, their religion is a hate crime. Heraclitus was so perceptive to write, in about 500 BC, that “bigotry is the disease of the religious.”

The problem of race bigotry in America is like the problem of climate change. It is of our making, and we know how to fix it, but we never will. People are too invested in their ignorance for that to ever happen, and afraid if they let it go they will be weak in a changed world.

Arresting climate change would require the universal application of human intelligence, indiscriminate compassion, worldwide solidarity instead of personal selfishness, and thoughtful discipline instead of thoughtless waste. We are doomed. Climate Change is only a problem for the young, bequeathed to them by the old, who won’t notice it anyway because they’re comfortably done, and will be gone soon (geologically speaking).

I probably should not bother writing about the Climate Change Crisis anymore. Everyone everywhere now knows that it is real, and most have felt its first unpleasant effects. So, some Green Energy actions will now happen in response, probably too few, too weak and too late, but at least a start now that the Global Mind has opened to the truth.

Also, I really don’t need to write any more Jeremiads against Republican Party partisans (there are plenty of others to do that nicely), because it is now obvious to everyone everywhere — even the U.S. corporate media (though it puckers their sphincters to mouth it) — that the Republican Party is just a fascist conspiracy to eliminate democracy in the United States of America, and replace it with an authoritarian corporatized xenophobic bigoted Fundamentalist Christian White Supremacy theocratic oligarchy, to drive us all expeditiously to extinction under their self-satisfied obsessively avaricious command. Thieves lie, and liars steal. For them, it is better for humanity to die out badly than for the stupid, bigoted and greedy to be bypassed. Capitalism is fossil-fueled greed with a total lack of imagination, and a bodacious military. Capitalism is the ideology of parasites.

Who built the United States of America into the richest country in world history?: enslaved and exterminated Native Americans, enslaved Africans, dispossessed Mexicans, and exploited European and Asian immigrant laborers. Who produces American wealth today?: the wage-slave descendants of all of these, who only gain a pittance from their harvested labors. What salve are these squeezed working people given for the bruising sacrifices they make of their humanity into the endlessly grinding engines of obsessive greed?: a patriotism deficient in human solidarity but voracious for taxes. But, don’t think of it as taxes, think of it as tithing to the War Religion.

So in my lens’s focus today I find the following: For the world: Capitalism must die for the World to live. For my country: Tribalism is America’s fatal flaw. Resentment, envy and a fanatical sense of entitlement are its corrosive agents. A generational overturning led by socialist youth is its only hope. For myself and every other person: It’s not what happens to you that determines whether you are a success or failure at life, but how you deal with it. As Thucydides quoted Pericles: “Honor is the only thing that does not grow old.”

And now, back to the bread and circuses.

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My Mind’s Ramble in Science

Ferrari P4 (2004)

(Above: 13, 17, 24, 28)

1972 US GP: Ferrari F1 engine (3 liter, flat 12 cylinder).

(Above: 14, 18, 19, 22, 28)

1972 US GP: Ferrari F1: Car 7 = Jacky Ickx (5th), Car 8 = Clay Regazzoni (8th), Car 9 = Mario Andretti (6th).

(Above: 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 28)

P-51 Mustang (EMG photo, 1992)

(Above: 01, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 28)

Spitefire Mk. XVIe (1987)

(Above: 01, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 28)

Supersonic Jacob’s Ladder – Static

(Above: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33)

Supersonic Jacob’s Ladder – Flow

(Above: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 40, 42)

Imagine a 1 nanosecond snapshot of a nuclear explosion.

(Above: 26, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39)

Sunflare Blue Sky Clouds

(Above: 27, 28, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45)

Longwood Gardens Greenhouse

(Above: 27, 28, 44, 45)

My Mind’s Ramble in Science (1952-2007):

01. Airplanes
02. Tinker Toys
03. Godzilla
04. Rodan
05. Invaders From Mars
06. The Day The Earth Stood Still
07. Forbidden Planet
08. Tom Swift, Jr.
09. Nuclear Power
10. Submarines
11. Bicycles
12. Skateboards
13. Race Cars
14. Piston Engines
15. WW2 Aircraft
16. Supercharged Piston Engines
17. Race Car design
18. Piston Engine design
19. Engineering
20. Mathematics
21. Computer programing
22. Thermodynamics
23. Fluid Mechanics
24. Aerodynamics
25. Supersonic Flow
26. Fusion Energy
27. Solar Energy
28. Photography
29. Gas Physics
30. Plasma Physics
31. Ionized Flow
32. Molecular Physics
33. Gas Lasers
34. Nuclear Explosion Radiation
35. Electrical Physics
36. Nuclear Explosion Electric Generators
37. Magnetohydrodynamics
38. Solar Physics
39. Cosmic Plasma
40. Lightning
41. Atmospheric Physics
42. De-NOx chemical physics
43. Global Warming chemical physics
44. Solar thermal-to-electric generators
45. Publicly Owned National Solar Electric System

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My Excellent Independence Day Rant, 2017

John Kennedy’s grave, April 1964

My Excellent Independence Day Rant, 2017

Bigotry lets stupid people feel powerful. They are bigots because they are greedy, and they are greedy because they are fearful. They are fearful because they are hollow, and desperate for their materialism and worship of power to fill the void of their lack of character, to mask their internal weakness with an illusion of external power.

In American politics: bigotry is allowed to shape the arguments, and money is allowed to control the voting. Hillary Clinton had the most well-deserved electoral defeat in American history; Donald Trump, the most undeserved win. It’s not Trump’s fault, the preference for TV over books inoculates ignorance and bigotry against learning and knowledge.

The corporate-owned politicians lie because lying is the sound of theft. They are the agents of those who think: “The purpose of life is to enrich yourself without being impeded by the needs of others.” The news media propaganda industry is rich people paying rich people to tell middle class people to blame poor people, who middle class people are joining. The lie being pushed is that fulfillment is to be had in a system of economic apartheid without economic security and without personal freedom.

Suffer we must, for billionaires’ money lust depends on it. For consolation we can have: clueless comforting happy talk, or searing bitter bigotry, unless we choose better.

In systems of patronage capitalism it is necessary to sell out your integrity and moral character in order to advance a financially rewarded career. You have to go along to get along. It’s like the perpetuating of physical-sexual abuse through the generations: as a child (or young worker starting out) you are abused by your seniors who demand you loyally cover their asses and slavishly submit to their demands – you cannot be impeded by moral principles or self-respect; as a rising star you find even bigger abusive tyrants to follow while recruiting your own ass-kissing minions to expand your power base; and finally as (and if) a successful pharaonic mega-abuser yourself you get to beat up multitudes, remotely, by using your army of slave-drivers and aspiring tyrants. The seed of all this is weak character, the lack of courage and/or strength to maintain personal integrity regardless of the costs in terms of comfort, money, social position, recognition, and acceptance by the herd.

Q: “Why spend $600B a year on a military to protect us if you Trumpsters and Corp-pols are willing to let us die of treatable diseases and ailments?”

A: You miss the point. The purpose of the US military is to protect Big Capital (corporate assets and operations, and plutocrats’ take), not the public. Also, the economic policy of the U.S. (i.e., the corporate-owned government and economy) is militarism: the big insiders’ war machine / finance capital profit cycle. “The people” are just an excess labor mass from which to extract wealth, and on which to dump the toxic wastes and financial costs (“socialized losses”) of exploiting and privatizing the commons. The graveyards of our war dead are garbage dumps for capitalist expansion. The U.S. is neither united nor a nation, it is a colony. “We the people” are expendable commodities steadily being programmed for slavery. The American Dream: commercializing life and death, and cornering the market.

America has a capitalist system whose foreign policy is imperialism, domestic policy is colonialism, economic policy is militarism, and management policy is patronism.

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Donald Trump’s Medal of Honor Citation

Classified Citation for the Secret Medal of Honor, for Donald Trump

In the Classified History of the United States, Donald Trump will go down as one of the greatest heroes of the early twenty-first century, for almost single-handedly saving the republic from the anti-capitalist insurrection of Bernard Sanders, thus allowing our neoliberal economic order, guided by its Wall Street conservators, to continue without any foreseeable domestic threats for the remainder of the century.

Donald Trump accomplished this feat by his uncanny insights into public relations, his personal investments and losses, and his unsurpassed personal sacrifices in accepting near universal condemnation for his public policies, and opprobrium for his personal behavior. By willingly exposing himself to the public as the villainous foil to our designated successor for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and carrying through with this boundlessly difficult and distasteful role to the bitter end, Donald succeeded in repelling a majority of the American public into the embrace of Hillary Clinton, and thus satisfactorily under our continuing control.

Donald single-handedly ruptured the Republican Party, creating the opportunity for it to repudiate its obstreperous and discredited populist “Tea Party” elements, and to realign itself once again under the full control of its long-standing and stable professionals of our bipartisan national leadership class. By creating what has been called “the most powerful negative pole of political policy and activity ever exhibited in an American presidential election,” Donald caused the fragile and insecure positivity of Hillary Clinton’s “political pole” to be exponentially enhanced in public perception. As a consequence of this felicitous enhancement, the luster of Bernard Sanders has been significantly dimmed, and the rabid enthusiasm of his anti-capitalist followers has been satisfactorily quenched into a mass disappointment that has excellent prospects of enduring as long term apathy.

Barack Obama has been the most successful tool for public guidance we have ever been fortunate to acquire, so it was natural we would once again turn to the Clinton-controlled Democratic Party for his successor. Hillary Clinton is the outstanding choice for that role, because of her lifetime of loyalty to our interests, and the singular confluence of politically useful characteristics she possesses: her female sex, which immediately guarantees her capturing half the votes in America, her absolute freedom from moral impediments, her salubrious cupidity (the bedrock of her loyalty), and her mastery of dissimulation and political manipulation. Where this “dream candidate” has weakness is in the area of easily rallying the public, and we had great apprehension earlier in her campaign with the surge of Bernard Sanders in opposition to her. It required the coordinated efforts of our operatives in the Democratic Party, the media, the corporate donor class, and the Obama Administration (including the president himself) to bring the Sanders insurgency to heel. But, essential to making the anti-Sanders counteroffensive successful were the enormous contributions of Donald Trump in the public sphere, as described earlier.

Truly it can be said that no man has knowingly shown greater loyalty to our class interests, and at greater sacrifice, than Donald Trump. For his unbounded and effective energy, sacrifices and success in our interests, we bestow on Donald Trump the Secret Medal of Honor.

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Hail to the Chief

Hail to the Chief

Democracy is so precious that it has to be rationed,
voting must be guided least it undermine the nation.
A confederation of complacent parasites
triumphs over a panic of anguished bigots’ fright.
The great zombie beast, dazed and confused,
plows on forward, prodded and amused.
The ruptured traditions all have been preserved,
the fragile ideals have successfully been reversed:
The task of public schools
is to press children into tools,
the goal of private schools
is to carve robots out of fools.
Dynasties arise and ancient unions fail,
memories turn over, and to the chief we hail.
No dreams have been deferred, they’ve simply been forgotten,
corrupted as ambition, or as despair turned rotten.
With clarity intact, and old visions of uplift,
with your world I’m out of time, athwart your synchronism.
With insights you attack, I’m now thankfully adrift,
this solitude of mine is freedom from your prison.

22 October 2016

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Yewm-oon Oon-yewm

Yewm-oon Oon-yewm

Of all existence I am the noon
My supernova awareness explodes – kaboom!
Extinguishing that ugly psychic goon
Desperation to extinction must caroom
Illuminated by night’s all-stellar platoon
Changing black to light with relativistic voom
I shine out as the Void’s most blinding moon
My soul unto The All becomes the groom
Liberating joy like a typhoon
From the Hades depths of a psychic tomb
The infinite hopes of a mind-gone loon
Is Nirvana’s salvation that will exhume
The Om-like drones that to genes does croon
The fathomless mind of the unknowable Whom
Echoing timelessly its mysterious rune
For which even the Universe has insufficient room
A volcanic earth-shaking Olympian tune
Unravelling space-time like Penelope’s loom
Exploding air like a basso octoroon
With such a splendiferous sonic boom
Propelling me like Zeus’s harpoon
That from this danger I may zoom
My hopes float upward like a balloon
To thwart this fate that would consume
Be like a clever crafty raccoon
To shield me from titanic gloom
I am left to find my boon
What salvation can I assume?
I am left a hapless maroon
For re-ingestion by Nature’s womb
To be ejected to Earth’s spittoon?
Resisting this I must presume
With insane gibber like a baboon
However I in anger fume
My fate seems like a cruel lampoon
Before my living can resume
My very soul Earth will dragoon
So Earth my body can inhume
Nature’s spell will make me swoon
With salty air as the perfume
Wandering on a windswept dune
With precious visions of Tulum
On a sunny day in June
I shall come to see my doom
I fear it now, but all too soon.

I fear it now, but all too soon
I shall come to see my doom
On a sunny day in June
With precious visions of Tulum
Wandering on a windswept dune
With salty air as the perfume
Nature’s spell will make me swoon
So Earth my body can inhume
My very soul Earth will dragoon
Before my living can resume
My fate seems like a cruel lampoon
However I in anger fume
With insane gibber like a baboon
Resisting this I must presume
To be ejected to Earth’s spittoon?
For re-ingestion by Nature’s womb
I am left a hapless maroon
What salvation can I assume?
I am left to find my boon
To shield me from titanic gloom
Be like a clever crafty raccoon
To thwart this fate that would consume
My hopes float upward like a balloon
That from this danger I may zoom
Propelling me like Zeus’s harpoon
With such a splendiferous sonic boom
Exploding air like a basso octoroon
Unravelling space-time like Penelope’s loom
A volcanic earth-shaking Olympian tune
For which even the Universe has insufficient room
Echoing timelessly its mysterious rune
The fathomless mind of the unknowable Whom
The Om-like drones that to genes does croon
Is Nirvana’s salvation that will exhume
The infinite hopes of a mind-gone loon
From the Hades depths of a psychic tomb
Liberating joy like a typhoon
My soul unto The All becomes the groom
I shine out as the Void’s most blinding moon
Changing black to light with relativistic voom
Illuminated by night’s all-stellar platoon
Desperation to extinction must caroom
Extinguishing that ugly psychic goon
My supernova awareness explodes – kaboom!
Of all existence I am the noon.

19 October 2016

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Enjoy Life, Old Guy!

Enjoy Life, Old Guy!

Don’t waste your time on self-pity,
go out and enjoy life.
Nobody cares you exist
beyond you paying them.
This is the way of the world.
Don’t waste time complaining about it,
don’t waste energy getting angry
at all your so-called friends,
and so-called family,
for being other than typical
self-absorbed human monkeys
focused on what they want to grab next.
Get in that little red sports car of yours
and go for a joy ride!
Fuck global warming,
nobody cares about it anyway
and never will,
even as Paradise dries out and burns up,
and the cinders of Hell freeze over.
Enjoy your wine and booze.
Your mind will love you for it
and never notice
how hard your heart pumps
or your liver strains,
but it would surely detest
cowering in a dark cave of fear.
Dying is inevitable
and death is not a tragedy,
but dying with regrets is.
And let’s be clear about love:
for most love is pure possession,
it is about being happy to have and to get.
Your legacy is zero,
don’t waste energy thinking about it.
Whatever money not siphoned off
to pay for your American-style death
will be squandered
by your grateful loving family.
All those fine books and precious papers
that you put such stock in
will be tossed out in a dumpster.
All that thoughtful advice
that you lavished on your children
will have long since been forgotten.
After all, they don’t pay attention to it now,
so why expect them to remember it
after you’re gone?
You were an envelope to genetic messages
that got sent and received long ago;
you’re done.
Face it,
everyone is so wrapped up in their lives
they can’t think of anything outside them.
At best,
mothers obsess about their children,
and for them people orbit that obsession,
from tight close orbits of manipulable utility,
to distant cometary ellipses of uselessness.
All you have now is consciousness,
a fascinating gift of temporary duration
which can be so exquisitely delightful;
and you have your self-respect,
entirely in your power to maintain.
What you do not have,
despite illusions to the contrary,
is any right to being appreciated,
to being respected,
to being noticed.
Do you wonder why suicide bombers volunteer?
Love you may get,
there are so many possessive monkeys
grabbing onto theirs
that two wanting possessives
may draw each other
mirrored as attractions.
But, don’t be a sucker
falling for the delusion of self-importance.
The cat will love you just as much
for the bits of grilled chicken tossed in its bowl,
as your family will
for the roof you hold over their heads
and the gold
you carpet the paths of their dreams with.
Console yourself to reality,
then, bypassing disappointment and anger,
move on to contentment
for the remainder of your indefinite term
in Paradise: the here and now.
Après moi, rien.

28 September 2016