Under the Influence
The length of
this road,
your girlish face,
time we’ve spent apart
drew me back
to draw you close, but
I’ve drawn wrong conclusions.
It’s the time of year
for heavy frost.
I’ve scraped away enough
to find the yellowed leaves
of our calendar
yet knowing how way
leads on to way
I doubted if I
should ever come back.
It’s the time of year
for killing things,
a duck, a deer,
a bottle of merlot.
Let's pull the cork,
let's make a toast
to a past that lies in ashes.
Here's to cold embers,
and a bridge burned long ago.
David Blaine [10:10 AM]
De United States of America
I've been mulling over the future of the nation now that Bush will be leading the country for another term. He and his Republican congressmen and senators will shape the way our country operates for eons beyond that, naming new Supreme Court justices and possibly passing constitutional amendments during the next four years.
I will have to respect the president of our country; the alternative is to surrender my citizenship and move elsewhere.
But I do not have to respect Bush as a person if he acts in a disrespectful manner. Bush thinks he has won a mandate to act out some freewheeling fantasy as he sees fit. In truth he has been shouldered with the massive job of leading all Americans into the twenty first century, including the majority who did not vote for him. Those 54 million votes elected him to lead all 300 million Americans in a responsible and caring manner.
I think Bush should be very careful when he speaks of moral values. I am certain that everyone who voted last Tuesday thinks that they have deep rooted morals. While one person is torn over abortion, another can't sleep thinking about the children getting killed in an ill fought war. Setting aside the argument over whether the war was necessary for a moment, couldn't nearly everyone agree that if it had been planned and executed more effectively, less people on all sides would have died so far?
This is how I feel about moral values. If they are imposed by law there is little glory in it. We have laws supporting moral values now, you shall not kill, you shall not steal. The laws do not keep people from doing these things, they only provide a means for punishment. Promoting moral values requires true leadership, a president who can call people of different backgrounds and opinions together to accomplish something for the common good. A weak leader will continue to divide us, playing both ends against the middle. To use abortion as an example, if the leader could get the abortion rate to drop, without overturning Roe V Wade, that would be an admirable accomplishment. That would mean that while preserving the rights of those who don't agree with the morals of the majority, the nation as a whole turned away from abortion voluntarily. That is the kind of leadership and growth the country needs if it is going to regain greatness. Not law after law forcing intolerance and hatred on us, pitting brother against brother and parents against children.
I saw an interesting map the other day. It showed the blue and red states each candidate had won, but it shaded the counties where the overall winner lost. This gave a much better picture of America. Some have looked at the red and blue states and drawn conclusions that southern and western states are stacked up in opposition to coastal, northeast and Great Lakes states, but that isn't accurate. The shaded counties showed that Democrats prevailed in the cities and Republicans won the rural areas. At least that was how it went in Michigan.
There is your real division in America, in my eyes. De United States.
David Blaine [9:58 AM]