Tuesday, November 22, 2005

 

commute inspired scrawl

Grey washed and darkened my city pulls her coat in tight
and squints skeptically at the somber November morning.
Rain and wind moan and thrash,
chill seeps deep into buildings and bones
urging all to stay abed
in defiance of the clock and calendar.
But the traffic presses and the commuters stress
moving slow in their asphalt arteries,
the sluggish blood of a recalcitrant sleeper
ignoring her alarm unsuccessfully.

Monday, November 21, 2005

 

one cannot preserve something by destroying it

"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America. "
President James Earl ("Jimmy") Carter


The current administration would have us believe that America must reserve the right to torture those it feels are a threat to its security. In other words they are claiming we must go against all that America stands for in an effort to preserve it. This is disgraceful, immoral and illogical. Take a moment to tell them so.


Wednesday, November 02, 2005

 

Defeat Proposal to Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax

The following is the text of a fax I sent to my Senators and Congressional Represenative.

I am writing to urge you to combat the changes to the federal tax code proposed by the President’s tax-reform panel. Among the many recommendations made there are two that are particularly alarming for residents of the industrialized urban “blue” states. “The panel recommended lowering the mortgage-interest cap, which is the amount of a loan on which homeowners would receive a tax break for interest paid, from $1 million to the average regional housing price in the range of $227,000 to $412,000. – CNN 11/1/05”. You know that in major cities and nearly anywhere in Massachusetts one cannot lay hands on a one bedroom condo for $227,000 let alone a home large enough for a family. The panel has also recommended that taxpayers no longer be allowed to deduct the state and local taxes they pay on wage income, investment income and property from their federal income taxes. This is the set of taxes that provide states and municipalities with the funds to fill the egregious gaps within and between the programs provided by the federal government. These two points are a clear attack on the Democratic base. Even with the deductions for our own local and state taxes the “blue states” provide the federal government with more funds than we consume while the “red states” this solution is meant to champion consume far more federal tax dollars than they generate. If this move succeeds not only will Massachusetts and its allied states be economically penalized, but by diminishing the amount of federal tax revenue the road is paved for still more cuts in "discretionary spending" in the future. The right wing knows that the tide is turning against them. They know that the next election will not go well. This is both political maneuvering of the most mean-spirited kind as well as a desperate attempt to undermine any future Democratic majority or president’s attempts to rectify the damage done and bring our nation forward into a more compassionate and sane future. Please see that it is stopped.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

 

Halloween keyboard scrawl

It was cracked karaoke that brought it back to me
This feeling I’ve been fighting for so long,
How you’ve broken my taboos and strong proscriptions
And break my heart where the scarring hasn’t left it hard.
Who are you so young and strange to break my boundaries?
Who are you to launch this challenge from my past?
Who am I to find myself mad with missing you
When your life is yours and I am no one to ask?
There is hope that grows in what you represent to me.
There is danger in what my hungry soul tries to make it mean.
What would I do if I were really alone with you?
I don’t think of you that way though that may be strange.
I am drawn to what it is inside of you
That radiates like daybreak through your eyes,
But I do not dream further than kissing you
Despite the angry ways my carnal insides writhe.
What is this misdirected path that I have landed on?
What is this unrequited quest I must deny?
How have I fallen once again to be the victim of
The deluded dream of the caressing silver tongue
That unfailingly never lies?
You have opened up a window of possibility
A field of options I had never chanced to see,
But while I intellectualize the current reality
That fails to make it any easier to be me.
I believe lives lap like layers
And what was is and might yet be again.
I can only hope that you appear now to remind me
That this is all in the grand scheme fleeting
And on a given day love can be anywhere.

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