Driving back with Margaret from dinner with friends... the beautiful city where we live vibrating with life, I could run the risk of forgetting about the horrendous news coming out of Africa about all those Nigerian students who were lined up and shot and the thousands of Africans afflicted, most of them dying, with ebola... and the 43 young student teachers in Mexico brutally massacred by drug cartel hit men, evidently under orders from a mayor and his wife... and the stuff still going down in Ukraine and Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and, and, and...

...so I get it off my chest but don't allow it to be erased from my mind by scribbling lines of free verse... and painting with light... this poem from a particularly bloody Middle East day in March.

PASS THE VINEGAR

Ask any child…

The Yellow Brick Road Theory of Life

Falls apart all too quickly with the death of a favorite fish

Or a dog

Who isn’t a dog at all

But is Maggie or Molly or Rex

Or my god how do you stand it

Death 

Of Grandmother or Daddy

Or the baby who doesn’t have a name yet.

The child knows...

Dr. Pangloss was a fool

And so is the Sunday School Teacher

Who insists that the way to avoid pain is to trust god

With a capital CHRIST.

He knew better

Up there on the cross…

Pass the Vinegar.