The New Colossus

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” – Donald Trump

Call the Carpenter

Forever a Carpenter ‘neath the lowing sky,
in my mind’s eye, you can see yet not be seen;
seems it’s not yet the sleeping scene…

In search of lost time, a Black Plague carrier costs one thin dime,
but just this once, mass-murder’s not really a crime;
dark skies closing in on the devil’s clever sin,
incarcerated martyrdom, don’t play dumb with me,
hand on my heart I salute the Brute with pride;
all the pansies and chrysanthemums hide
with dinosaurs and dime-store whores,
quartz crystal candlesticks sweep slick sickly fizzlesticks;
so, please play hide-and-seek with me for all eternity,
hold me, hug me, never tell me the truth;
like sand falling from my fingers, moist-lipped kisses linger,
a symphony of sympathies full of inconsistencies;
call the Carpenter a transcendental mental case, just in case…

“No,” said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and unemphatic speech—”there’s debts we can’t pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I’ve been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing—it’s too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man’s turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else.” – George Eliot, Silas Marner

You can’t grow roses in cement

If you’re looking for justice, just turn away,
somewhere, there must be a better game to play;
like an egg salad sandwich left outside to rot,
the have-nots languish
in a hopeless state of anguish.

Try to greet the day with smiles,
yeah, it really is a chore,
is there food to feed the children?
Not today, not no more.
enough schools to teach the children?
Not today, not no more.

The sun never seems to shine
in this lonely jail of mine,
but there’s no reason to lament,
you can’t grow roses in cement,
no, you can’t grow roses in cement…

Atticus Finch: If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. – To Kill a Mockingbird