Keeping Up

Feb 22 2020

I keep up with the news.

As if my civic duty

were to be informed.

Digesting events,

instead of penning op-eds
and doing the grunt work of politics,
picketing
and protesting

and knocking on doors.

So the world goes on

with or without me.

I observe, reason, judiciously weigh.

But see nothing change

despite my vigilance.

As the wise sage once said

if history doesn't repeat, at least it rhymes.

And I find this is so;

that the news isn't new at all, it's old.

Because what would you expect

of flawed humanity?

How we are riven
by belonging and blood.

How we are driven

by power and greed
pleasure and sex.

How the rich get richer

the poor even less.

But the death of a planet?

There are no precedents for this

no end in sight.

Nevertheless

I will diligently follow events

with my usual detachment

until their denouement,

saying I told you so, I saw it from the start.

The flaws of my kind
as well as my own.

Power and greed
pleasure and sex.

Passivity and sloth,

the pride

of self-righteousness.

“He seems to have drifted from online activism to couch-based complacency”