the poor are breeding stock

the poor are breeding stock

the poor are breeding stock

the welfare and food stamps

the rich dole out to these sows and studs

serves as the paddock’s lock

and the lure to lead them up the ramp

so the ones with promise

            can be separated from the duds

each season they trim their herd

this one has a beauty

            worth cultivating

this one is tall and quick enough

            to play pro ball

here is a voice to make them even richer

            if they decide to let it be heard

a few with minds worth exploiting

            but these are the dangerous ones

                        so their numbers are kept small

then there are those fit to be nothing but cannon fodder

just smart enough to learn to take orders

but not so smart to question why the US borders

circle the world, an empire far, far larger

than just our fifty states

most of them are left behind

turned loose in the wild, wild streets

they live a life of horror

they cluster together in gangs

and churches to survive

but the cruelest cut of all’s

how the rich split the poor in half

the whites fearing colors,

the colors hating whites

the deliberate installation

of the very thing

they say they hate

until we, the poor of this country

the livestock rejected at the gate

the left behind

the true poor

the poverty that goes on for generations

and the only thing we have to leave our children

when it’s their turn to step up to the plate

and so we’ll stay this way

until we learn that white’s a color, too

and skin don’t make the man

admit we have a common foe

for the enemy of my enemy

is my friend

Christianity Is Immoral

I didn't start out this way. Or maybe I did. I don't remember large portions of my childhood. From the parts I do remember, I figure it's probably for the best. I put The Toys You Never Won out here the other day if you want to know how my childhood smelled. Things happen along the way and whether you are a victim or a predator depends entirely on the moment in life you are at. We all are good and evil, sure. We all are capable of being good and evil. I mean, it just isn't fair. It's good and EVIL shoudn't it be like, good and bad? I think jumping straight from good to EVIL right off the bat like that goes right over some very important gradations. What ever happened to nice? It's become a taboo word in our society. Nice is like calling someone a zombie, but more importantly below your radar. One of the invisible people, the ignored. Would it hurt to throw in a couple of grades between A and F for Nada's sake? I'm not trying to clue you in on your own creation, high and allrighty, but most of us are C students with an increasingly large percentage dropping out each month. And if you are so omniscient how come you've never figured out how to grade on a curve, man? This pass/fail shit is killing us. The only way they can sell Jesus anymore is to tell people that if you believe in him, him being the Big Enchilada's Son, he can slip you out a copy of the answers for the final exam and you'll sneak past and into heaven and still get to do all that bad stuff you did down here. Talk about the best possible worlds. Pascal wins his wager big time. Here's the deal:  Christianity has nothing to do with morality. Christianity is how to cheat at morality. Look at it this way: Penalty for lusting after a woman in your heart? Eternal damnation. Penalty for carrying out the act and bagging her (sorry, is 'bagging' an acceptable term? I lost this month's edition of PC Monthly): Eternal damnation. So where is the impetus...the morality...to keep someone who already sees himself as damned from doing whatever they want to as a result? Damned if you do, damned if you don't; so damn it just go ahead and do it. Then you say the 'Sinner's Prayer,' a short little ditty...shorter than 'Now I lay me down to sleep'...in which you acknowledge you are sinner and invite Jesus into your heart...kind of like you have to invite a vampire in to your home...and that's it. Sin again?  No problem.  Another short prayer asking forgiveness...or a few minutes in a confessional...and you're good to go to Heaven again.  The injustice, the immorality of this doctrine can be illustrated by a personal reference. My father-in-law abused my wife's mother violently and physically through the years of their marriage.  He raped his own daughter, my wife.  After the divorce, he became a Christian.  He went directly from being an abuser and a rapist to feeling himself morally superior to his victims...his own wife and daughter... because he was a Christian and they...at least in his own perverted imagination...were not.  This is what Christians call 'morality.'  Here's the truth about Christian Morality…and this is coming from a Preacher's Kid who spent 40 years as a Christian: Christian "morality" is based on lack of opportunity. When the opportunity presents itself, they are just as susceptible as anyone else to the temptation.  When the opportunity does not present itself, then they claim superior virtue.   Worse yet, they condemn in others what they, by their own nature, are not tempted to do in the first place.  Gender preference is established long before religious preference.  But Christians feel morally superior for what they, by nature, aren't tempted to do and condemn others, who have as little choice as heterosexuals in the matter, as evil. Shooting ducks in a barrel is what we used to call it. Everyone has a temptation to which they are powerless to resist.  The only difference between Christians and alcoholics, drug addicts, homosexuals, pedophiles and a host of others they condemn as evil is that the opportunity to act on their fantasies has never presented itself.   Christianity does not have a moral system of it's own.  It feeds on the morality of the society within which it finds itself.  Christianity has a constantly updated and revised rule book by which actions of others...that are perfectly moral in terms of the society in which they live...are judged and found wanting.  That they seek to have their rules established as the law of this country is an open admission their power does not come from a moral imperative but rather from a set of doctrines.   Let me say that again. Christians who seek legal protection for their doctrines are admitting they have lost their moral imperative and are resorting to brute force to impose their rules on society. They exist in contradistinction from the perfectly healthy and functioning quite well morality of the United States. They are outside of the morality of our society. They are immoral. I would use the word 'amoral' but when any group seeks to extend their rules  to others who do not belong to their group by force they do not deserve to be respected or differed to semantically or in any other fashion. Let them howl.  I fall back on a revision of an old cliche: If you can't stand the heat, stay out of discretion.