“Bitterness is the easiest way to leave this world having had only a near life experience“

Andrea Gibson from the poem Time Piece found in the book entitled: You Better Be Lightening

Rage can become just another form of addiction. We are built to live and thrive. Anger is meant to be a short term handmaid.  Stay angry long enough and one ignites into a terminal bitterness.  This writer and this project needs to step back from the consequences of society’s and this administration’s errors once in a while to restock the life force.  To accomplish the shift in vantage without losing track of the truth I read beyond the politics of the day and find certain forms of poetry help as well as pleasurable to create vents in my personal process.  The work of resistance requires one to clear the fumes of the anger that must pass through the body.   Andrea Gibson, quoted above,  was a poet who had sufficient warning from her fatal medical condition to prepare for death.  As hard as it was for Andrea Gibson, we, the reading public, benefited from her blade sharp, hot honesty put into words as she struggled to live and prepared for death.  Nothing like imminent mortality to teach one how to count blessings and sort out the nonsense.  Gold comes to you when a poet counts blessing in the thin spots of life.

We are being ruled by bitter people who have either lots of power or money. Either way the golden hand cuffs of power and coin wealth lead to a paralyzing form of bitterness and anger that can trap the most privileged, powerful, and wealthy in Gibson’s “near life experience“. And it is likely working inside the limiting handcuffs of their own making near life is where they will stay, for the allure of power and wealth prevents them from actually wanting to live the full life that is their birthright.

Immodest Proposal for Good

Make sure you are living, not the “near life experience“, but a full life that includes love, kindness, neighborly accord, creativity, joy, and spirit. America is perilously close to being a near life nation right now and that is always a tragedy at the national level and dangerous for the world, because it takes war and conflict to sustain the halved life force of a near lifer. Vote for people who live, speak and advocate for the full life for every human being. Resist the grinding, joyless, pure capitalism of the Darwinians who believe in the cartoon versions of the survival of the most fit, powerful and coin wealthy. Fitness, Power and coin based wealth sans the full life sense of good cannot even approach the full life experience. But with the diversity of this nation we still have the assets we can consolidate to reclaim a full life and be a full life nation. So let us claim our strength again using the true wealth of what we have in hand now. That would be good.