Fools—II (with pictures from Brooklyn and Manhattan, 2016 June)

Note:  Some photographs, taken in June in Brooklyn  and Manhattan, are included at the bottom of this post. Those pictures are not directly related to the topic of the poem. The initial post of July 8th had also included photographs from the first few days of our trip to China in July.  I have now removed all but one of those pictures, so as not to overload the reader/viewer.  I will try and post them later. -- Arjun, 2016-07-23
----------------------------------------------------

Fools—II 

We’re living now in pressured times—
Been doing that for quite a while.
And so, we see our fellows frown
More often than we see them smile.

Where empires each extract their loot,
We hear the cracking of the whip.
We also note the racing, there,
Of mind and hand, of tongue and lip…

For “Time is money.” we are taught,
As clocks and coinage rule the lands.
The ones who rush get praise, while those
Who care and fuss get reprimands.

But here and there, among the serfs,
We find the ones who “play the game”.
They live on others’ labor and
They cheat and steal—and feel no shame.

And some among these folk may “rise”
To “oversee” the ones who toil—
To see that those “below” are squeezed,
As fish are pressed for precious oil.

And there are those who might be slow,
Who question, think and answer, “No.”
And these, we note, will never “rise”.
They’ll suffer till their times to go.

For rackets, scams are “systems” now,
With doubters scorned as “slack” or ‘slow”.
The savvy, to the systems, bow,
And paddle deftly with the flow.

So virtue now is turned to vice.
By those "above", we’re viewed as tools
Or else as problems.  Swindlers thrive,
While honest folk are seen as fools.

2016 July 7th Thu - 8th Fri 
Beijing, China
(1st stanza: July 5th Tue - 6th Wed
35,000 feet above the Arctic Ocean)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To view the pictures in a somewhat larger and clearer format, please single-click on any one image. Allow some time for the pictures to load. Then, to see each picture in turn, use either the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard or click on the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen.  Captions will not be visible.  To return to this post and read the captions, click on the white X near the top right of the dark background.  Thanks.
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Sunset over Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, looking west along Bath Ave from 19th Ave.   2016 June 5th, Sun, 8:24 pm.   © Arjun Janah

  

Sunoco gasoline station, at the corner of 19th Ave & Cropsey Ave, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.   2016 June 5th Sun, 8:34 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Laundry cycle-rickshaw, at a crossing in midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:09 pm. © Arjun Janah

Skyscraper, with clouds and reflections, midtown Manhattan.
2016 June 6th Mon, 7:10 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Man using cellphone while striding past displays in upscale
Manhattan store windows, 2016 June 6th Mon, 7:12 pm.
© Arjun Janah

Skyscraper, reflecting buildings, midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:16 pm. © Arjun Janah

Two skyscrapers, one reflecting clouds, midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:16 pm. © Arjun Janah

Rearviews of Manhattanites, walking along 6th Avenue,
2016 June 6th Mon, 7:17 pm. © Arjun Janah

Garbage can and chained lids, 19th Ave, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
2016 June 14th Tue, 6:44 pm. © Arjun Janah

Our Italian-American neighbor Tony's tow truck, with a metaphor
and a pun, 19th Ave, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,
2016 June 14th Tue, 6:46 pm.  © Arjun Janah
 
(Single-click on the image to read the inscription. Click on the white X
near the top right of the black background to return to this post.)

Rear view of  a woman walking a dog past a shiny blue car, 19th Ave,
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 2016 June 14th Tue, 6:48 pm. © Arjun Janah

Our neighbor from Szechuan, China. 19th Ave, Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn, 2016 June 14th Tue, 6:49 pm. © Arjun Janah

By chance, this man and his family were also once my wife's family's neighbors in Canarsie, a faraway section of Brooklyn. Their daughter was a physics student at Canarsie High School, where I taught for thirteen years, from 1989 to 2002, mostly while traveling an hour and a half each way by bus and foot.  Of course, I was younger then.

The daughter is now a mother, with two boys. Her elder son is a student at Brooklyn Technical High School, in downtown Brooklyn, near Manhattan.  I once also taught there, as a sabbatical replacement, for a term in 1988. 

The daughter told me that her sons loved the scent of the spicy fish I used to cook in the evenings. So I gave them samples of that cooking.  Her mother, also from (another part of) China, gave me hot peppers and other vegetables from their backyard garden.
   

David A. Boody Intermediate School (IS 228), Brooklyn,
2016 June 22, Wed., 3:15 pm. © Arjun Janah
 
I was one of a group of teachers who graded the NY State Physics Regents
exams here: June 22-24, 4 pm to 9 pm & June 25 Sat, 8 am - 12 noon.

   

Shadows, of tree branches and of a human with a book-bag,
cast on the pavement outside IS 228, Brooklyn.
Early afternoon, a day after the summer solstice,
2016 June 22 Wed, 3:16 pm.   © Arjun Janah
 
(The human's unfinished cup of coffee is on
the pavement, in the shadows of the leaves.)

 

Sunset over Brooklyn, taken through the wire-grill of a window
at David A. Boody Intermediate School (IS 228), Brooklyn,
2016 June 22 Wed, 8:28 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Sunset over Brooklyn, with the Verrazzano Bridge to Staten Island at the horizon, 2016 June 23 Thu, 8:21 pm.
© Arjun Janah
 
(I placed my phone's camera-lens in a square in a window-grill in IS 228.)

  

At El Charrito Jr., a Mexican family restaurant near IS 228,
Brooklyn, 2016 June 24 Fri., 9:38 pm. © Arjun Janah
 
I used to stop here after work at nights for a soft taco.

El Charrito Jr., 2016 June 25 Sat., 12:11 pm.   © Arjun Janah
 
(The restaurant was not yet open for Saturday.)

Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station, Brooklyn, 2016 June 28 Tue, 10 pm.   © Arjun Janah
 
(Except in central NY City, the "subway" trains mostly run on elevated lines.)
I was going home after work at a federal election poll station, 5 am - 9:30 pm.

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

Crossing over the Pole, on a Cathay Pacific flight from
New York to Hong Kong, en route to Beijing, China,
2016 July 5th, 6:14 pm EDT.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
   
Note: a related short poem, with the same title, is: Fools 

( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2013/05/fools.html ) 
   

Fools—II (with pictures from Brooklyn and Manhattan, 2016 June)

Note:  Some photographs, taken in June in Brooklyn  and Manhattan, are included at the bottom of this post. Those pictures are not directly related to the topic of the poem. The initial post of July 8th had also included photographs from the first few days of our trip to China in July.  I have now removed all but one of those pictures, so as not to overload the reader/viewer.  I will try and post them later. -- Arjun, 2016-07-23
----------------------------------------------------

Fools—II 

We’re living now in pressured times—
Been doing that for quite a while.
And so, we see our fellows frown
More often than we see them smile.

Where empires each extract their loot,
We hear the cracking of the whip.
We also note the racing, there,
Of mind and hand, of tongue and lip…

For “Time is money.” we are taught,
As clocks and coinage rule the lands.
The ones who rush get praise, while those
Who care and fuss get reprimands.

But here and there, among the serfs,
We find the ones who “play the game”.
They live on others’ labor and
They cheat and steal—and feel no shame.

And some among these folk may “rise”
To “oversee” the ones who toil—
To see that those “below” are squeezed,
As fish are pressed for precious oil.

And there are those who might be slow,
Who question, think and answer, “No.”
And these, we note, will never “rise”.
They’ll suffer till their times to go.

For rackets, scams are “systems” now,
With doubters scorned as “slack” or ‘slow”.
The savvy, to the systems, bow,
And paddle deftly with the flow.

So virtue now is turned to vice.
By those "above", we’re viewed as tools
Or else as problems.  Swindlers thrive,
While honest folk are seen as fools.

2016 July 7th Thu - 8th Fri 
Beijing, China
(1st stanza: July 5th Tue - 6th Wed
35,000 feet above the Arctic Ocean)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To view the pictures in a somewhat larger and clearer format, please single-click on any one image. Allow some time for the pictures to load. Then, to see each picture in turn, use either the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard or click on the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen.  Captions will not be visible.  To return to this post and read the captions, click on the white X near the top right of the dark background.  Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  

Sunset over Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, looking west along Bath Ave
from 19th Ave, 2016 June 5th, Sun, 8:24 pm.  © Arjun Janah

  

Sunoco gasoline station, at the corner of 19th Ave & Cropsey Ave,
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 2016 June 5th Sun, 8:34 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Laundry cycle-rickshaw, at a crossing in midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:09 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Skyscraper, with clouds and reflections, midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th Mon, 7:10 pm.  © Arjun Janah

Man using cellphone while striding past displays in upscale
Manhattan store windows, 2016 June 6th Mon, 7:12 pm.
© Arjun Janah

Skyscraper, reflecting buildings, midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:16 pm. © Arjun Janah

Two skyscrapers, one reflecting clouds, midtown Manhattan,
2016 June 6th, Mon, 7:16 pm. © Arjun Janah

Rearviews of Manhattanites, walking along 6th Avenue,
2016 June 6th Mon, 7:17 pm. © Arjun Janah

Garbage can and chained lids, 19th Ave, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
2016 June 14th Tue, 6:44 pm. © Arjun Janah

Our Italian-American neighbor Tony's tow truck, with a metaphor
and a pun.  19th Ave, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 2016 June 14th Tue, 6:46 pm.  © Arjun Janah
 
(Single-click on the image to read the inscription.  Click on the white X
near the top right of the black background to return to this post.)

Rear view of  a woman walking a dog past a shiny blue car, 19th Ave,
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 2016 June 14th Tue, 6:48 pm. © Arjun Janah

Our neighbor from Szechuan, China. 19th Ave, Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn, 2016 June 14th Tue, 6:49 pm. © Arjun Janah

By chance, this man and his family were also once my wife's family's neighbors in Canarsie, a faraway section of Brooklyn. Their daughter was a physics student at Canarsie High School, where I taught for thirteen years, from 1989 to 2002, mostly while traveling an hour and a half each way by bus and foot.  Of course, I was younger then.

The daughter is now a mother, with two boys. Her elder son is a student at Brooklyn Technical High School, in downtown Brooklyn, near Manhattan.  I once also taught there, as a sabbatical replacement, for a term in 1988. 

The daughter told me that her sons loved the scent of the spicy fish I used to cook in the evenings. So I gave them samples of that cooking.  Her mother, also from (another part of) China, gave me hot peppers and other vegetables from their backyard garden.
   

David A. Boody Intermediate School (IS 228), Brooklyn,
2016 June 22, Wed., 3:15 pm. © Arjun Janah
 
I was one of a group of teachers who graded the NY State Physics Regents
exams here: June 22-24, 4 pm to 9 pm & June 25 Sat, 8 am - 12 noon.

   

Shadows, of tree branches and of a human with a book-
bag, cast on the pavement outside IS 228, Brooklyn.
Early afternoon, a day after the summer solstice,
2016 June 22 Wed, 3:16 pm.
 
© Arjun Janah
(The human's unfinished cup of coffee is on
the pavement, in the shadows of the leaves.)

 

Sunset over Brooklyn, taken through the wire-grill of a window at
David A. Boody Intermediate School (IS 228), Brooklyn,
2016 June 22 Wed, 8:28 pm. © Arjun Janah

Sunset over Brooklyn, with the Verrazzano Bridge to Staten Island at the horizon.
2016 June 23 Thu, 8:21 pm. © Arjun Janah
 
(I placed my phone's camera-lens in a square in a window-grill in IS 228.)

  

At El Charrito Jr., a Mexican family restaurant near IS 228, Brooklyn,
2016 June 24 Fri., 9:38 pm. © Arjun Janah
 
I used to stop here after work at nights for a soft taco.

El Charrito Jr., 2016 June 25 Sat., 12:11 pm. © Arjun Janah
(The restaurant was not yet open for Saturday.)

Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station, Brooklyn, 2016 June 28 Tue, 10 pm. © Arjun Janah
(Except in central parts of NY City, the "subway" trains mostly run on elevated lines.)
I was going home after work at a federal election poll station, 5 am - 9:30 pm.

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

Crossing over the Pole, on a Cathay Pacific flight from New York
to Hong Kong, en route to Beijing, China, 2016 July 5th, 6:14 pm EDT.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
   
Note: a related short poem, with the same title, is: Fools 

( http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2013/05/fools.html ) 
   

Sing the Songs of Tenderness

 
Sing the Songs of Tenderness

The mother whispers lullabies
To soothe her child to sleep—
For there's a time to wake and then
A time to slumber deep.

The piper leads the men to war;
The drums are beating loud.
But when the men return, we see—
Of war, they're rarely proud.

There is a time for speeding and
There is a time to slow.
Too much of one or other leads
To sorrows, more and more.

We've spent our lives in rushing and
We've fed the fires of war.
Let's sing the songs of peace, so we
Remember who we are.

We aren't only soldiers; we
Are not just worker ants.
We also need to smile, to weep,
To kiss and gently dance.

So sing the songs of gentleness;
Sing the songs of love.
Sing the songs of mellow times,
Of languor and of joy.
 
The profits and the wounding grow.
It's healing that we lack.
From Mars and Mammon, let us take
Our Muse and Music back..
   
******
 
There's grief enough to fill the world—
The wars that do not end
And all the cruelties of men
That rend our bodies, hearts.
   
There's separation, illness, death,
The dashing of our dreams,
The waste of labor and of lives,
The loss of treasured stores.

We do not wish to only hear
The pistons and the guns,
The screams, the paeans to the self,
The cacophonous blasts.

So keep from us the bang, the screech,
The speeding, pounding beat
And all the noise that emulates
The wars and factories.

******

We go to work as if to war.
The struggles never end—
For each competes with others and,
To orders, must attend.
 
There's little time to draw a breath
And let it out in peace—
To watch the child or kitten play,
To visit aunt or niece.

We rush about in vehicles—
In cars, in buses, trains.
How rarely can we slowly walk,
So all the madness wanes?

Why waste our time in meanness and
In giving more of pain?
Why spend our lives in earning, when
We only lose from gain?
     
What point is there in battles that
Destroy the heart and soul?
There's need for more of healing and
For all that makes us whole.

So sing the songs of tenderness,
Of softness and of love,
To smooth the furrowed brow awhile
And soothe the hurt within.
 
There's time enough for speeding, yet
There's little time to slow.
So sing the songs that slow the pace
Before it's time to go.
   
2016 February 27th, Sat.
Brooklyn, New York
 

Left to Be

 
Left to Be

How much of pain and suffering can living things endure?
How much of harsh injustice can our fellow humans bear?
The cruelties surround us, yet we seem to be immured.
Perhaps we could not bear them, if we cared to see and hear.

We each have our survival and the cares of those we feed.
But even one, who’s lucky and has leisure, rarely pauses
To listen and to look with care, to read and understand.
So rarely does he correlate effects with hidden causes.
 
It never will be governments—except for just awhile—
Or financiers who will provide the things that beings need.
They must procure these by themselves, together and alone.
They can, if they are left to be—not mauled by fear and greed.

Though Nature can be cruel, as it also can be giving,
The structures that we’ve built that prey on us are clearly worse.
They’re hard enough, though still with joys—our journeys, each, of living,
Without enslavements, gilt or not.   With that, I’ll end my verse.

2016 February 9th, Tue.
Brooklyn, New York
    

Ignorance

 
This is dedicated to the memory of my late friend, Dr. Kenneth E. Rich.  I think he would have appreciated some of the things I write about here.

Ken was the antithesis of the person shown in several of the images below.  (Some wiser folk are also depicted.)
 
Could these two--Kenneth Rich and Donald Trump--belong to the same species?  I am sure that questions such as this have arisen in the minds of other beings through the eons.
  
-- Arjun
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  
Ignorance
 
There’s ignorance that comes from circumstance,
and then there’s ignorance from lack of caring or
from shutting out the things we neither know
nor want to know.  The first is curable,
by effort or by change of circumstance.
The other is, it seems, incurable,
unless there is a genuine change of heart.
 
 

Donald Trump, real estate heir and Republican Presidential front-runner, U.S.A., 2015

 
The ills that plague the “nations”—all the wars
they wage against the others or within,
and also all the conflicts in our lives,
arise, in part or totally, from this—
those darknesses which fate may serve to us
or those with which we choose to be content,
while damning all who dare to point towards light.
   
 

 
The senses, heart and mind can lead us each
to liberation or to bondage deep.
Gotama and so many others past had seen,
in quietude, the ills that work within.
And by observing these, they found that all
that rises also crests—and ebbs and fades,
unless we feed it, through our ignorance.
   

 
How easy it can be to fall in sin—
to add yet more and more to endless grief.
How hard it is to turn away from this—
to face the dreaded emptiness and be
aware of all that soils the space within
that only can be cleansed when we release
accumulations gathered through our lives.
 



 
The virtues old remain our virtues still—
compassion, courage, patience, honesty—
and all the vices that we celebrate
are still the vices that can lead to grief.
And chief among these vices still remains
that ignorance that blinds the heart and mind—
for which we even are content to kill.
   

    

Humility, when learned by those that pride
has led astray, can serve to check its reach.
But ignorance and hubris, hand in hand,
breed havoc, as they kiss and copulate.
The times we’re in, like others past, have carved
these two as idols, intertwined, to which
we sacrifice, while shouting foolishness.
   

When tossed upon the storms that roil the sea,
it seems that we are helpless.  Yet we find
that we can still observe our plight and breathe—
releasing, as we breathe, the pain we feel.
And knowing that the ones who wound have lost
that sight, for which we then may pray for them,
we might regain that calm and peace that is.

   

The wise have learned—how little, what they know,
how vast, that ocean dark of ignorance!
So when they find a piece of light, they smile
and hold it up to see, for just a while,
before they let it float upon its way.
The ignorant persist in ignorance,
insisting that the “others” go away.
 

  

To answer noise with noise, and violence
with violence, may seem the only way.
For see—the quiet ones are silent still,
and those who shied from arms are buried deep.
And yet, aggression—that of speech and deed,
and even in defense, can only lead
to more of this—and more of ignorance.
 

 
So let us pause, or slow, amidst the haste.
How many lives were saved by only this?
Defend yourself and others, who cannot
defend themselves—but know, that path can lead
to more and more and even more of grief.
So be aware of what you do, and see—
the one you strike has eyes and heart as you.
 

   
I saw a frog that sat beside a lake.
I looked at him and he looked back at me.
I’d heard him croaking.  Now that frog was mute.
I saw his muscles tense, as if to leap.
And so I froze—and breathing, looked at him.
We stayed there quite a while, that frog and I.
It seemed we talked—of truth and ignorance.
 

Does Wisdom Come With Age?
http://news.discovery.com/animals/videos/why-cant-chimps-speak-video-140919.htm

    
2015 November 29th, Sat.
Skyway dhaba, Bath Avenue
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn