Human Rights: Towards the Greatest Common Circumstance

A far away land on the edge of Cuba
where the bear guards the walrus so sure so safe and yet
so afraid. Of forgotten attics in Beirut and Iranian wisps of
proud yet empty Egyptian smokey corrupt triumphs
glad handed whispers and baby rattling tantrums terrorfied
of human frailty equal in world of no man's land measures magnifying
manipulations imagined while glaring false truths and
CNN sound bites.

The bear sometimes looses to the walrus. Sometimes
instinct is not enough.Sometimes storms arise,  truths are challenged,
winds blow as a small world rushes in
like the Time Machine Moorlocks and the holy ones who
chose to stay on the surface in a not so bad movie from the sixties.

A far away land on the edge of Cuba  where,
theories about thought and behavior mean nothing,
where protest songs about Israel and the Palestinian question
hang heavy on the lips of languishing potential doomsday prophets
who took up arms against a shadow;
who screamed religion, religious virgin warrior doomsday martyr
leaving humanity behind,
leaving "who is innocent" and "who is guilty" behind.
No thought, no question. The only thing left:
The old and the weak. The sheep and the cattle.
The dead and those lucky enough
to make the YouTube Funnies.

A far away land on the edge of Cuba, where American
proud and truly loyal safe citizens so safe and secure in their judgement
and perfection, so sure of who deserves the West Bank
so certain about Health Care Insurance Reform,
so confident in righteousness and
rightness and reality  comprehension and dominance.
Ah Dominance! The Right of the holy,
the province of the saintly,
the certainty of the superior.
The inherent face of inevitable possession for those who are born
to possess. And what of the Earth?
If she in all her wisdom suddenly decided to join her human
children declaring:
"Where's mine?"

And what of the bear?

The bear who grows too weary for the chase,
too tired, too sick too black or too white,
to rich or too poor     or
not  "bear enough?"
What of the wretched bear who
no longer can hunt the seal,  who
no longer wishes to drink the blood of Dawrinian holy
exactitude? The hunter, the warrior who only wants
to come in from the cold?

What if  what is true was a meal served only to skeptics?
What if human rights was purely
a question of who is asking?
What if the bear who can longer hunt, then became food
for the seals, for the down trodden,  for the ones
for whom revenge indeed is a "dish best served cold?"
And then, what of human rights?

A far away land on the edge of Cuba,
where any one who takes the the time can plainly see, that
The world can still end:
not as the poets say, with
a bang or whimper but
with a single common plaintiff

cry:

We are better than all of this so
why
why does it end
                            like
                                this?

Tom
Fall 2009

dedicated to Vance Denard
someone from memory.