Crushed

Crushed     
    
When faced with all the madness of our times—
the racing, debt and isolation, some
succumb to fear and then are paralyzed—
or else they run, bewildered, through their years. 

But others, savvier, can learn the game
and play it shrewdly to attain their ends.
And these become, quite often, those who herd
and drive the others, stepping up the pace.

******
  
Until we free ourselves, we’re doomed to be
as cogs upon the wheels of fear and greed.
But when we try to struggle loose, we find
we’re crushed—as would a cog that’s not of steel. 
  
It’s only when the juggernaut is slowed,
as one by one we see and we resist—
it’s only then that we at last can be,
from this, our ceaseless whirling bondage, free.

2015 August 6th, Thu. 6:15 pm
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York

-----------------------------------------------------------

Note:  Three pictures follow.  You can click on any one to see all three in a gallery.  The second image will be enlarged, the third even more. Click on the white X at the top right of the black background to return to the post.

At the end of the post are links to some clips from the film "Modern Times", in which Charlie Chaplin's character attempts to fit into the industrial age.  I might add more as I find them.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Time
https://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0911.htm

Joining the Labor Force
http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2014/08/new-luddites-why-former-digital-prophets-are-turning-against-tech

Chariot Wheel, Konarak Temple, Orissa, India.   Patrik M. Loeff, 2008
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bupia/2320134539/in/photostream/

Clips from Chaplin's movie Modern Times

1) a short clip (14:43) with excellent clarity of picture and sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfw0KapQ3qw

  

2) a very short clip (1:49) on a central episode in 1, with picture quality not the best:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1sgls_modern-times-1936_fun 

3) Modern Times (1936)—the full movie (1:23:17)—but with speech dubbed in French:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLHVT0-GgM

  

A Space for Life

   
A Space for Life  

Boat on a Lake / New Day
http://xomnhiepanh.com/doi-thuong-streetlife/ngay-moi/309366.xna

  

Of all the madness in the world, the worst
could be the juggernauts that Man has built.
For all the rest allows a space for life
and even beauty.  What we’ve made does not.

And now we learn there have been volunteers,
as private enterprise extends its reach,
who'd spend their days as colonists on Mars
and so could not return to lives on Earth,

Perhaps in time they'll build the mines and ports,
so commerce then can reach towards the stars.
The universe awaits the gods that we
presume to be, whose presence greens this Earth.

******

A husband writes, defending what his wife
has chosen for herself.  She’ll go to live
in hutments built upon that distant orb.
Their grownup kids and he will stay on Earth.

And some might ask, “Would you then bar a wife
and mother, but allow her man to go?”
I answer, “What’s disturbing is the fact
that even mothers now are not immune.”

Our cities are like sores upon the Earth
from which the pus and putrid fluids flow
that then infect the humans who go mad
and do the bidding of satanic minds.

******

Life feeds on life and all the slaughter is
forever with us.  Is that spark divine,
that gives a being life, the Devil’s gift?
I do not know, and so I ask you this.

And you will answer in your silences
and I in mine.  I walk beside the sea,
beneath the sky—or in the wooded hills—
and seem to breathe the tranquil air of peace.

And yet, within that sea, and in those woods,
there’s life devouring life—and ceaselessly.
And Man has built his world of factories
that spreads its ravage and its ugliness.

******

There still is beauty, kindness, love and more.
Could that be still the Devil’s handiwork?
I do not know, but if indeed it is,
we might forgive the evil he has wrought.
 
We’re like the leaves that live for just a while
and then return to that which does not live.
But leaves retain that beauty and that grace
which we alas have lost in our disdain.
 
A space for life—and also, space for that
which does not live—could that be granted still?
I do not know.  The one I know to ask
is Man—who’s none at end but you and me.
 
******

I pray that human minds and hearts return
to what they were when we were more like apes.
We still had evil and had madness then,
but there were spaces left for sanity.

To whom then should we pray except ourselves?
Within us dwells a better nature yet.
What stress was it that caused its twin to rise
to spread the evil and the ugliness?

It’s sanity that curbs the madness that
aspires to rule the planets and the stars.
Let Mars repose in barren majesty.
Allow the healing of afflicted Earth.
     
2015 August 4th, Tue., 6:18 am
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
  
  

Boat on a Lake / New Day
http://xomnhiepanh.com/doi-thuong-streetlife/ngay-moi/309366.xna