Verse (Kirk Downey)

[John Bridge]

Received form Kirk Downey 9-21-01

Steel and Currency and Concrete

Lord, I pray, this day, September 21, 2001, that I am wrong,
Lord I fear:
That this pleasant, fragile web of steel and currency and concrete we call civilization, has already been undone.
That malicious fools have formed a stealthy cadre,
Hundreds and perhaps thousands wide,
Who will step from the shadows and one by one,
Gnaw and pull at the yarns that generations have knit,
Yarns of steel, and currency, and concrete,
Knit into the cities, and economies, and relationships,
that deliver water, and food and services to myself and my children.

Who are these benighted blackguards standing in the corners of our gathering places?
They are the sons of mothers who've watched their children
die starving and ignored.
They are the brothers of infants writhing around a stomach twisted by tainted water.
They are young men who grew up crowded around the town's single television, glowing blue into the night air, watching scenes of delicate luxury - petty intrigue, cool water in glittering stemware, plump titties bulging bikinis by the pool, rippled pecks lowering over her heaving chest in a weekly Dallas rerun.

They are jealous and angry and hungry.
Who isn't jealous of Dallas or Baywatch?
Who wouldn't be angry while grinding poverty abrades their parents, and grandparents, and children?
Who wouldn't be hungry caught in an underclasss beneath an indebted and indifferent nation's prince or dictator or theocrat?

They are jealous and angry and hungry, for the things that generations have knit but can't or won't knit in their place in this generation.
Lord, Will my daughter die of their jealousy?
Lord, will my daughter die of my nation's pride?
Lord, will my sweet wife watch me perish because my indifferent, prideful, frightened and pampered peopl indulge their denial by believing the fictions pumped into their brains by unquestioning Brokaws, Jennings and Rathers.

Lord are we doomed? As I write, are the snares already set?
Programmed to fall in fell swoops across our multitudes and thus returning this generation to knitting with steel and currency and concrete.


Kirk Downey

[Sponsored Links]

[chip]

Very well said!!

When will we see that the greed, that is blanketed in what we call freedom is to be the undoing of us all?

To have the vast riches that are available and the poverty that is abundant with in blocks of one another, with out the "haves" taking time to reach out and help the "have nots".

For the attrocities that have been reported and documented, by our CIA, around the world and not to expect the affected to be allienated, is pretty smug, indeed.

When will we see, that this is truly a world, United by existance? Not a "Us" vs. "Them". Our money, power, Government, democracy, way of life, military is better than yours.

When and how can we all come together, in some way of understanding and Brotherhood. In the belief, that if we can find a way to be one in spirit, than maybe our Sons and Daughters will have a chance to take the ball and run with it, to a goal common to all of their generation.

CHIP

[flatfloor]

That's very nice, but the facts are these people are NOT children of poverty, for the most part they are well educated middle class terrorists. Quite a few are quite wealthy. So spare me that garbage.

Be still my bleeding heart.

[flatfloor]

My comments in my previous post were not directed at anyone. While I still firmly believe in what I said, I said it with the intent of opening a discussion or dialogue if you will, certainly not with censorship in mind. Please do not consider my remarks as a personal attack.

[chip]

Just a little of my limited Polisci, coming out.

Oh, what a wonderfull world it would be!

Chip

[John Bridge]

No problem, Jim. For your penance send the . . . picture, will ya? :D

Art, We take the world the way it's handed to us and hope to hell we don't screw it up any further.

[Bud Cline]

Art? Who's Art?

[Sonnie Layne]

October, it was you who spat me out
early in your reign
to stand naked on these naked plains.

It was I who then moved on to shores
dressed out with sand and backed by your winds.

Oh, October. Now it is you that stands in the shadows
of your forebearer's guilt of fallen towers.
It is on the wings of your heels that I
will now soar to the heights
of a new Autumnal beginning.

As eternal as April's showers,
As accountable as the sun,
As amenable as the moon are you,
my mother, morning, night and noon.

To the dust on your heels
I raise my head to a new task.
Vernal March will be envious of my endeavour.

Yours is the burden to begin the mixing of
fallen mortar
radiant sun
gentle showers
to perform the miracle of rebirth.

[John Bridge]

Well, once again, Sonnie, I'm breathless.

[Sonnie Layne]

I can get away with the first 3 lines because I was born Oct 3, if that clarification helps, but like any verse, you can take what you want from it. Sweety says it should be a national holiday, haha.

I'm truly flattered, John.

peace

[chip]

Please allow me to be the 1st to wish you a very happy birthday. (I just wish I could be there to give you a good ole' fashioned "birthday spankin"!!!)

How many candles on the cake this year? I'll look to the west for the glow, in the sky

Ya'll take good care!! Hear?

Chipster

[Sonnie Layne]

Thanks chipster.

49 and counting strong.

I had to do the math before I could answer.

[chip]

I just hit that mark last month myself.

Your wifes name isn't Lora Lea, Laura Lee or Loralee is it?

Once again congrats and have a great B.D.

When you headed to John's? You know for the 1st annual thingy?

See you there!!

Chip

[Sonnie Layne]

My former wife's name was Lauren, everyone called her Laurie, why do you ask?

Haven't heard the latest about the 1st annual affair, but it wouldn't take me long to toss a weeks worth of clothes in a paper sack and drive down!!!

[flatfloor]

Happy!

[JC]

Nice peom but I'm with Jim, This BS that the rest of the world is jealous is just that BS. Sure they wish they had some of the things we have but that does not turn people into terrorist if anything it makes them want to build business connections and re-locate here not destroy us.
Hell Hong Kong has a the highest standard of living in the world, and Japanese are also much richer than Americans but we don't get jealous and want to attack them.
The real issue is when a little kid picks of a mortor shell casing that just blew away his family and it say 'made in USA'on it.....Thats what terrorist are made of.
Sorry but Bush can keep that "the world is jealous so they blew us up" propaganda coz someone would have to be pretty niave to believe that lame excuse.
Ever wonder why the middle east dispite having 75% of the worlds OIL is going hungry with millions starving to death? Something to think about...........sanctions is the key word here.

[John Bridge]

Dammit, JC, where do you get all this shit? Hong Kong has the highest standard of living in the world? You need to hunt up some new web sites.

Not recently but at a time before the present period I traveled pretty much around the globe a couple times. I did not then, nor would I expect to find today, any country with a mean standard of living higher than the United States. Period. (Equal, maybe.)


That's not to say I haven't visited some places where the people would argue about that. Japan and Hong Kong aren't on that list, though.

[Ron]

Hi John,

I think I read somewhere that Luxembourg has the highest per capita income.You ever been there?What's that country all about?

I've done a bit of travelling too,not as extensive as you,and I agree that the U.S. and,of course,Canada are still the best places to live.

If you look at how the rest of the world gobbles up America's popular culture,you'd think that they all wanna live here too.

[JC]

John you need to get with the times Hong kong has the biggest per capita rate for Rolce Royces. Remember they are no longer an English colony anymore and have a very pure form of capitalism.
I did'nt research the info when i posted but based it upon a documentary I saw on the Discovery station a while back...My bad sorry.
The documentary said Hong Kong was richest and India was the poorest. But the data does not seem to support that arguement for Honk Kong so maybe they ment something else..dunno
Now the term rich can be diffined many ways from GNP to GDP to standard of living to averave annual per capita income so you can see the confusion.
Also there are differant studies that have differant results(we all know how flawed statistics can be sometimes). But I did take the time to do some reseach just now and found out thet if you go by per-capita income(which it appears is the popular way to determine a countries 'richness')


http://www.austria.org/press/94.html

http://www.sunyocc.edu/~easterdl/poverty/tsld013.htm (this shows World Bank as a source should be pretty accurate)

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/pov-j16_prn.shtml (good demonstration about how per-capita income does not equate to bieng rich)


(interesting corruption index)
http://www.transparency.org/documents/cpi/2001/cpi2001.html
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/

(richest men in the world? notice how many billionares come from the U.S. and how this artificially BOOST our Per-capita income figures!!)
http://www.forbes.com/lists/results.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2001&passListType=Person&resultsStart=1&resultsHowMany=25&resultsSortProperties=-numberfield3%2C%2Bstringfield1&resultsSortCategoryName=worth

[JC]

I was curious so so ran the income of a few of our richest men and divided that into the per capita income to see how much we would be worth without bill gates, paul allen etc..

first I took the total U.S. resident population 9via) census bureau:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

Then I added up this incomes of these American Billionaires (just the 20 guys in this page that is).

http://www.forbes.com/lists/results.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2001&passListType=Person&resultsStart=1&resultsHowMany=25&resultsSortProperties=-numberfield3%2C%2Bstringfield1&resultsSortCategoryName=worth

(which came to 300,800,000,000 or 300.8 billion

Ok now that ends up as enough to give every one in this country approximity 1055.00 dollors and enough to lower us our per capita by 1055.00 also and thus knock us out of the top richest countries status.

Now this is not a complete list of all the billionaires just 20 of them, if I added up the rest of the billionaries that Forbes list we would drop even lower.
Other wealthy countries seem to be a little better dispursed money wise according another chart I looked at(lose the link though)

Of course I just have to see how much we would all get if Bill G. dies and leaves us his inheritance. We would get 205 dollars and 90 cents each.. Yea I got to much time on my hands tonight.

[Ron]

Hi JC,

You are way too intellectual to be a tile guy.In a scary way though.Still,that's a compliment.Thanks for keeping us educated.

[John Bridge]

JC, you're full of shit. Just don't know how to say it any better.

For every Rolls in Hong Kong there are at least ten thousand people, maybe more, whom you would consider to be below the poverty line.

Luxembourg, where I have been, is like an extention of Northern France, except they speak more languages. A small country, it has always been dependent on those countries around it for most things, including its external economy.

General George S. Patton is burried in a small American Cemetary on the road out of Luxembourg City heading toward Germany.

[JC]

Geez John I already confessed to bieng wrong about Hong Kong..I was lied to by the discovery channel(read above).

But the whole point is we do not have the highest per capita like we think we do and we don't want to destroy Luxembourg because of envy either.
Thats ludicruos if anything it makes me want to go to Luxembourg and charge 4000,00 to mud a shower. See the reasoning?

[John Bridge]

I haven't been in Luxembourg in nearly 40 years. They had a very good standard of living back then, and I'm sure they do now. But they do not have a better standard of living than we do. They have a standard which is fairly commenserate with the rest of Northern Europe.

Travel to Luxembourg and see how many people have 2 or 3 cars and a boat in the driveway. See how many people own a home of their own.

Per capita income is a very fleeting thing, and it's relative to many other things. It's a subjective issue -- nearly meaningless in the larger economic sense.

"Disposable income" is where it's at, JC. Buying power.

[JC]

O I C,

http://www.bidc.state.tx.us/maps/US-DisposableIncomePerCapita.htm like this you mean?

http://www.spidacom.co.uk/japcon.htm

Your point taken but I wound'nt call it meaningless but rather directly corresponding. Seems the nations with high per capitas also have high disposible income. Don't forget there is alot of poverty in this country unseen by much of middle class America.

[John Bridge]

I guess I'll give up. Most people in this country, middle-class or otherwise, have no concept of what "poverty" is. That includes the so-called "poor people."

Sorry JC, but I haven't seen a lot of "poverty" in the U.S.