Too Big for their Chemical Britches

FROM THE WEB SITE Food Democracy NOW:

On January 31, family farmers will take part in the first phase of a court case filed to protect farmers from genetic trespass by Monsanto’s GMO seed, which contaminates organic and non-GMO farmer’s crops and opens them up to abusive lawsuits. In the past two decades, Monsanto’s seed monopoly has grown so powerful that they control the genetics of nearly 90% of five major commodity crops including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets.

 

In many cases farmers are forced to stop growing certain crops to avoid genetic contamination and potential lawsuits. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto admits to filing 144 lawsuits against America’s family farmers, while settling another 700 out of court for undisclosed amounts. Due to these aggressive lawsuits, Monsanto has created an atmosphere of fear in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy. Please join us in standing up for family farmers everywhere against Monsanto's abusive seed monopoly.

I did just that a few days ago. I know it's only the end of January, but I'm already thinking about gardening. Robin, my housemate, and I have been planting only heirloom seeds now for several years. And with every year that passes, in the back of my mind I'm thinking of how much tougher it gets for farmers every year. The LAST thing we need is to have 2 or 3 companies like Monsanto feeding this country. Oh, they're feeding us something, alright. 

Please click on the title of this blog post to add your voice to over 55,000 others across the country who have decided enough is enough. Let's put Monsanto and companies like it in their places. 

New Year, New Poems, Old Themes

My last post was in August 2011. Sometimes I wonder why I am keeping this blog. I suppose it's just a fancy place to write, sort of a glorified journal. (God forbid anyone find my real one before I'm dead.)

I feel, at times, like Stephen King's character Alfie, the frozen-food salesman who has decided to off himself in the middle of the bleak Nebraska winter but who can't actually perform the act because he's worried about his notebook full of collected graffiti--what on earth will his family think when they find it?--and so he delays, which, of course, saves his life, though King never gives us that nice, tidy ending we Americans love--well, some of folks do. I can and do live with plenty of unsolved stuff.

No, I'm not thinking of offing myself (I have too much work to do), but rather than collect graffiti in a spiral notebook and sit on the hotel bed reading it and alternatively putting a loaded pistol in my mouth, I choose to write my way out of darkness, or at least into the gray of a cloudy morning. So, here goes--a new poem (one of 3 already) for 2012.

So Much of Relationships is Unseen

So much of relationships is unseen:

The careful placement or concealment of words

articulated beforehand in the silent, mysterious,

compliant mind, calmly assuring a solution to

this two-piece, heart-shaped indelible puzzle;

The sweet, intense, then angry soliloquies

(What a piece of work is man!) we rehearse

until the words lose their meaning and time,

brought at last to its knees, collapses on itself;   

The earnest hopes etched in silicone tablets,

imaginary, shifting ones and zeros that, though

they are arranged with mathematical precision,

forever do not total a sum worth knowing;

The pale, white light illuminating naked fantasies

whose gauzy existences depend on withholding

the shroud of reality--far too constricting a covering,

for fostering festering wayward, juvenile schemes;

The slow but sure erasure of what is and was

and could have been (the bigger loss)--once again:

So much data corrupted by invisible forces--

Real identity theft, right before our eyes.

But so much of relationships is unseen.

__________

Daylight, where the hell are you?