Mobile Post: Not For The Squeamish

Apr3

Because I have such squeamish friends on Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, I’ve been forced to change the title of the poem “Colonoscopy” to “Worm Hole”.

Chicken!

Look for a new — and more politically correct — poem later today

Geesh!

Genocide

Jan18

A pilot whale appears to cry after she and baby (rear) captured at Taiji, Japan for entertainment trade
[Photo via By Bhavna Singh @Bhavz09]

Once our friends

split-fluked ones

invade Cove

Spears rage

Nets drown

Families culled

From sea womb torn

now orphan Calf

forever slave

Weeps

Tweeted Friday, January 18, 2013 at 3:44 pm CST

[Photo via Twitter By Bhavna Singh @Bhavz09]

Introduction to “Genocide”

Jan17

[Please read “Genocide” poem, next blog entry]

The killers kidnap the vulnerable first — usually a small group, especially juveniles. The abductees cry for help and their kin rush to rescue. Then, the boats herd families into the killing fields; nets trap them, thrashing for breath. Auschwitz-esque selection begins. The youngest and most attractive chosen for lifelong enslavement. The strong, picked for their flesh. The ugly, old and weak perhaps released, traumatized back into the wild. The assassins pummel, club, hang and gut the captives.

The sea bleeds in the coves of Taiji, Japan (as highlighted in the Academy Award winning movie “The Cove”) where an estimated 25,000 dolphins and whales (including Pacific bottlenose dolphins, Risso dolphins, Striped dolphins and pilot whales) have been slaughtered in the last decade. Most of the cetaceans are sold to marine parks — trainers from the International Marine Animal Trainer Association and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums stay on-site to immediately indoctrinate the captives. The remainder goes to feed Japanese school children, to supplement sushi trade, or to spoil in freezers.

Halfway around the globe, villages celebrate their annual ocean festival in the Danish Faroe Islands. Families gallivant to the beach to participate in ancient if barbaric rituals. Residents cheer as men corral, gaff and eviscerate pilot whales on the shore. Children participate by slashing the dead, traipsing in entrails, or playing with dead calf fetuses cut from the womb. The celebration causes upwards of 2,500 whale murders annually.

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Today, Japan, Norway, Iceland and some island nations continue annual whaling slaughters, even though neither meat nor blubber remain survival staples.

For more information about the annual global dolphin and whale genocide, please check the following web sites:

Whales and Dolphins Conservation

{Note: Photos appear on various Web sites, therefore, origination or copyright difficult to ascertain.}

X-ploration?

Oct27

The Space X Falcon 9 with Dragon capsule launches to International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 7, 2012 Photo: NASA

FOR COMMERCIAL SPACE PIONEERS:

Daredevils breathe fire

Loop-the-loop

Around the world

in 90 minutes

Wing walkers watch warily

Will they storm the barn?

Or buy the farm?

Tweeted on Saturday, October 27, 2012 at 3:17 pm CT

Elections

Oct22

“Purple States of America”
artwork by Audrey Schwartz Rivers
© 2012 All Rights Reserved

Note: This poem is not about any candidate or political party, just a comment about the constant animus of the political process.

Audacity of hope, nope, cope, dope

slipperyslope, microscope

grope, Europe, mope

interlope, Pope, fallop

trope, tightrope, misanthrope

VOTE

Tweeted on Monday, October 22, 2012 at 3:48 p.m. CT

Neil Armstrong: In Memorium

Sep4

On July 20, 1969, I held tightly to a stuffed animal and my breath as I listened to the “30 minutes of terror” as a tiny space ship 250,000 miles away from my Iowa home descended toward the Moon’s surface.

Humans ventured to new lands throughout civilization. Exploration pulsated in our species’ DNA. We sought out new lands both for adventure and for their economic riches. Many people died in the attempts. Discoverers too often became conquerors, harbingers of hate, disease and genocide. We wasted Nature, resources and the barbaric “Other.”

Humans looked up to the stars. At first, we placed ourselves in the center of the heavens, only one step below our so-called Creator. Those researchers like Galileo who questioned such assumptions were vilified (as are many scientists today). However, Earth and its ally Gravity blocked any attempts to escape from its grip.

But on that day, more than 40 years ago, in a den in Iowa, I gazed at a flickering black-and-white TV screen as humans surmounted Mother Nature, escaped physics’ anchor and sailed toward a oceanless New World. Humans left Earth’s influence twice before (Apollo 8 and 10) and orbited her many times previously. With less than 30 seconds of fuel left, a cool, confident, relatively calm Neil Armstrong landed his ship Eagle on the soft dust of the Moon. Earth and all her inhabitants watched in wonder.

Neil Armstrong (and his crew mates Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins) contradicted the Columbuses of old. They came in peace for all humanity. While they unfurled the American flag in less than firm lunar soil, they also placed flags from every United States and foreign sovereignty. They collected samples of another celestial body, not as plunder but to unlock secrets of millennia and share with scientists Earthwide.

After their fiery return to Earth, the explorers spent three weeks in quarantine least the unseen aliens we always fear somehow trespassed. The trio must have contemplated the steps they took beyond what past civilizations could ever have dreamt. Surely, they surmised, humans, inspired by their success, by the wonder of the deed, by our exploration genes, would continue research expeditions to Luna. Why, nothing, besides lack of will and wonder, could even stop humans from walking across the closet planet so steeped in mystery and myth — Mars.

Nothing, but a lack of will and wonder….

Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon inspired both my sister and me to dream of working for human spaceflight. We both accomplished our goals, — she as a Space Shuttle Mission Controller; I as a planner and public affairs officer at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

When Neil Armstrong passed away on August 25, I felt despondent. Not only did we not lived up to his boldness, we confined our country only to Earth orbit and, at least for the short term, with the USA lacking even its own transport there. When the First Man on the Moon died, he received less recognition in the new 24/7 social network, cable news media than did pop star Michael Jackson’s demise. Even one major TV network news website announced “First Man on the Moon, Astronaut Neil YOUNG….”, confusing the pop-folk singer with the astronaut. The Twitter generation often referred to “Lance” rather than “Neil” in their Armstrong posts.

Neil Armstrong was a true hero, both as an astronaut and man. He was the “test pilot’s test pilot” and survived many never-fatal disasters with focus and confident calm. While other astronauts exploited their fame for fortune, Neil Armstrong taught at a university (for professor wages) and donated many space-related proceeds to charity. He inconspicuously lived for many years on a farm near Lebanon, Ohio. He had two sons. He lost one daughter to brain cancer as a toddler. He preferred the attention of young people to that of presidents and celebrities.

In memory of Neil Armstrong, I posted two poems I wrote for him many years ago. Please link here for them:

July 20, 1999

Poem For A Friend Who Has Walked On The Moon

And next time you catch a glimpse of the Moon at night (or during the day), please give it a wink to remember its first human visitor.

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Once our friends

split-fluked ones

invade Cove

Spears rage

Nets drown

Families culled

From sea womb torn

now orphan Calf

forever slave

Weeps

Share this:

Like this:

[Please read “Genocide” poem, next blog entry]

Today, Japan, Norway, Iceland and some island nations continue annual whaling slaughters, even though neither meat nor blubber remain survival staples.

For more information about the annual global dolphin and whale genocide, please check the following web sites:

Share this:

Like this:

Daredevils breathe fire

Loop-the-loop

Around the world

in 90 minutes

Wing walkers watch warily

Will they storm the barn?

Or buy the farm?

Share this:

Like this:

Audacity of hope, nope, cope, dope

slipperyslope, microscope

grope, Europe, mope

interlope, Pope, fallop

trope, tightrope, misanthrope

VOTE

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Audrey

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Most innocent

We cast upon U

our locker room Christ

our smug sins

greed, envy, gossip

clique rituals

so we can worship God

in the mirror

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Nature’s paradox:

Arid desert blazes

igneous red

Sea squalls mislay

pearl troves

Lightning bows

neon arc

Sunset,

eve’s rainbow,

allows stars

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For Memorial Day —

Holy Grail turns H2O in2 wine

under Muslim sands

Crusaders syphon dinosaur feces

Their dead crisp like Christ cake

My car sips sacred blood

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Awake

Joints oppose motion

Eyelids sag & collect night’s insomnia

Hot flashes+thyroid storms

Pill ledgers

That age thing

I become my mother

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