It Rains Every Day

In Hawaii, it rains every day. The light rains barely disturb the seemingly constant sunshine. Foliage blooms, and the island is awash in a rainbow of orchids. Stress and tension melt away to the strains of The Beatles and Mozart. My mind now draws blanks at times and cannot recall trivial things, but I remember I once saw palm trees dancing to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Young, bikini-clad ladies still stroll along beaches, catching the eyes of angst-ridden young men. Children run and play in thick grass, tumbling with glee. Adults sip Mai Tai drinks sharing knowing gazes, oblivious to the strife and poverty at the core of Oz. I lose my train of thought in mid-YellowBrickRoadsentence. Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother Suite” reeked of Stravinsky as I reeked of marijuana in the wee hours, listening. I wonder where my words come from when I talk; I don’t think of them before they come out of my mouth. Bonfires illuminate hula dancers draped with leis at luaus. Everyone shares in the feast of roasted pig. How the scent of the charred remains of dead animal flesh induces lustful saliva. The most complex ideas cannot survive. I laugh hysterically. Frank Zappa provides the soundtrack to my life. Pollen drifts on the breeze. The Hawaiian tropical storm passes before it is even noticed.

This Charitable Nation

This charitable nation sends vast sums of money to aid those unfortunates who suffer from the harsh calamities natural disasters wreck. This charitable nation air lifts food, water and medical supplies to the needy and starving citizens in foreign countries. This charitable nation deposes dictators in foreign countries, and in the process of bringing the "freedom of democracy" to the people of those countries, this charitable nation destroys their infrastructure, decimates their economies, induces civil war and imposes a martial law more restrictive than the preceding dictator's government exerted. This charitable nation wants to erect its own Berlin Wall, seeking to prevent the natural, migratory and instinctual urges of the poor who only want their fair share of the affluence available within its borders. This charitable nation supplies funds, and sometimes even equipment and manpower, to assist in rebuilding the infrastructure relevant to the businesses within its own cities - while ignoring the needs: evacuation, food, health, housing and welfare of the citizens in those cities - devastated by natural disaster. This charitable nation offers hundreds of billions of dollars to businesses and businessmen whose insatiable greed induced them to exercise poor decisions, wrecking havoc in the national and world economies, while supplying the mere pittance of $500 to most of its citizens, all of whom were affected by the economic collapse and most of whom engaged in no contracts or other circumstances which led to or induced that collapse. Meanwhile, this charitable nation provides no relief whatsoever to the poorest citizens - who need assistance the most but will, instead, find public assistance to the poor, as well as privately funded charitable assistance to the poor, drastically cut. This charitable nation spends exorbitant sums for projects and policies its elected officials deem necessary, whether or not the citizens concur, and then passes on the bill for payment to its children and grandchildren with accumulated, usurious rates of interest at the same time as incorporating irrational and economically stifling inflation. This charitable nation provides tax shelters and itemized deductions to the wealthy, enabling them to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while the middle class is taxed into poverty. This charitable nation systematically reduces funding to the poor and those who give aid to the poor, stealing the shelters for the homeless as it both creates more homeless everyday and also enacts laws to prevent the homeless from camping on any land within its national borders. This charitable nation has converted LBJ's war on poverty into a war against the poor, everywhere, seemingly seeking to exterminate the poor of every land in a cultural/economic genocide.