Globalization Part III

The sprawling ruins
of Bethlehem Steel
hugged the Erie shoreline,
deserted with the haunting air
of a conquered fortress.


Smokestacks silent and clogged
with rust, glass windows shattered
by the lake's unrelenting winds
and tall weeds the only occupants
to be found behind
the barbed fences.


Chad stood dazed outside
the rusty gates.
Growing up in Buffalo
he recalled half his family working
at the abandoned plant.
There was even a time
he thought he would too.


But the plant closed leaving
thousands of Buffalonians
out of jobs.
And others followed suit
until this part of Erie shoreline
(Lackawanna it is called)
was left to homeless ghosts.


In many ways
the desolate factories
and Chad were the same:


Both victims
of broken promises.
Both nullified
by othere determinisms.
Both robbed
of their dreams.
Both survivors
in body.


In a flat world
the casualties of war
are seldom counted
in body bags.


Chad now saw
in the cracked red bricks
the scars left
from wounds inflicted,
amputeed soldiers bound
to their fates
with little hope beyond
the rusty gates.


"How could I have not seen this"?
he upbraided himself.
"All the times I looked the other way!
All the times I thought
of only myself and my
University of Chicago degree,
as if my "security" was
the only security that mattered."


Chad felt desperation exuding
from the red-bricked walls,
as if the ghosts were begging
for his help.
It echoed his own despair
of giving up his robes-
no different from thousands
who had punched their
last time cards.


Not to know where
the next meals would come,
the next month's rent
or children's clothes, nor
for what the future holds.
Like Chad there was
no job to pay
for school loans.


Chad swallowed hard
trying to get by
the lump lodged
in his throat,
to quell the nausea
deep in his gut.


It was too much to bear.
Too much to understand.
How so mant dreams
could go awry,
so many futures
abruptly end.


What lack of care?
What lack of reason?
What breed of scurrilous greed?


In a flat world
there's no guarantees
beyond the moment.


Chad was starting
to understand.


It had become
all too personal.
As though fate
had led him
to the precipice
that he might see
the maw of the abyss:


The abondoned factories left
to rot and decay,
the displaced and jobless,
homes broken
from financial collapse,
less revenues for wherewithal
to educate the next class,
Lake Erie too polluted
to drink or bathe,
the smoggy air
he once breathed
and never once objected.


In a flat world
it's easier to live
with closed eyes.
To pretend all is well.


But there's always
a leveling process.


Always a virus
ever changing,
ever mutating.


And so contaigon spreads.


Strangely,
Chad sensed relief
he wasn't among the weeds
trapped in oblivion.


Though wounded
and to the brink of defeat,
he nonetheless stood free
beyond the rusted gates
of the conquered fortress.
~~


A flat world
depends for its survival
upon contaigon.


In a flat world
there must be agreement;
agreement to be,
to do and to have
as agreement dictates.


Thus contaigon spreads
to make the world
ever flatter.


A flat world
is neither natural
or native.


It is learned.
~~


Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels
All Rights Reserved.

Globalization Part II

A flat world
has no borders.
It defines the seasons.

That conquest
remains incomplete.
~~

The long awaited summer
had finally come.
The stage was set
with many of the props
just as Chad imagined.

A perfect day in Chicago
as the weather goes-
bright and sunny, the air
crisp and bracing.

At once an adieu to Spring
and fair welcome to Summer.

Chad stood motionless,
fixed to the mirror.
His image the end
of a long journey.
One which had taken
most of his life
he could remember.

Long, black robes eddied
about his arms and torso.
The black, tasseled cap
jauntily cocked
as if to say,
"We've arrived."

Chad hesitated.
He couldn't let go
of this picture
for him complete.

And thinking to himself,
painfully all the while,
"Where did I go wrong"?

It was Graduation Day.
The culmination of many
small wins upon larger wins
to be the biggest win
of his dreams.

But in all his diligent,
Chad had not learned
about the consequences
of a flat world.

In a flat world
there are no barriers.
No windbreaks to buffer
the storms of recession.

Chad's dreams, pinned
to an economics degree
from University of Chicago,
lay shattered in shards
of broken glass
strewn across the highway
of a flat world.

Promise of "security".
Internship to lead
to a career on Wall Street.

That promise of position
now rescinded.

All that was left
was in the glass.
This moment.
This reflection.
~~

A flat world
influences beyond
topography.

In a flat world
a virus takes
many forms,
ever changing,
ever adapting,
insidious to its ends.

In a flat world
there's always
a leveling process.

Nothing is sacred
or immune.
~~

Chad couldn't bring himself
to move from the mirror.
Uncertainty had corralled
his strength of resolve.
His heart bleeding tears
he could not cry.

The ending of the ceremony
the final blow. The thought
of giving up the robes.

For the first
in his life,
Chad was scared
and alone.

For the first time
without direction.
"Had the map
been misprinted,
or was it the wrong map"?
a voice deep in his thoughts
asked over and over.

Chad was overwhelmed
by sorrow of loss,
knowing the day's end
would mark his defeat.

He stared into the mirror
as if to steel
the glass in time,
his last best hope
the glass reveal
beyond its image
a world that was round.
~~

A flat world
is ubiquitous.
It is uniform.

In a flat world
without barriers
contagion spreads.

The mores
of society engulfed,
obscured to sameness,
a single datum,
a single map,
a cap and robes.

Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels
All Rights Reserved.

Globalization Part 1

A flat world
has no barriers.
But equally no identity.

It has no windbreaks
or sheltered valleys
or deciduous dells
of refuge.

A flat world
made with people
inextricably joined
yet distant and alone.

There's no need
to see each other-
eyes or smile or face-
in tears or in joy
no need of embrace.

A flat world
with instant messaging
but uncontrollable winds
and floods and drought
and pestilence and storms.

A flat world
makes us toe a thin line
with scant chance to falter-
dwindling glaciers,
vanishing rainforests,
diminishing topsoils
and spiraling CO2.

Where traditional craft is traded
like trinkets for a grab bag.
And acquired skill defunct
by something better
so we are told.

Factories once a testament
to industry and vigor
lie abandoned and tumbled-down,
optimism turned weeds overrun-
a blight from which the eyes
can safely shy away
to aid a nulling mind.

The family table
once the convivial hub
for shared fortunes of the day
now, too often, for Daddy to tell
with trembling voice
and held-back tears,
"They're taking my job away".

But in a flat world
there is by necessity
a levelling process.

But as jobs grow fewer
corporations grow fatter
so as to own
the water,
energy and medicine
and food and seed.

Forgetting
these things were ours.

When we husbanded the soil
to its natural trait having
no use for chemicals,
planting seeds we saved
and not Monsanto genetics.

In that day we were content
to be Nature's shepherd
not her arrogant master.

To feed ourselves and neighbors
with abundance beyond food-
nourishing the spirit
on meaning of community-
each depending on the other,
each surviving as the other survived
and from our labors
rejoiced in celebration
to be so blessed.

But the family farm
must as well surrender
to the levelling process.

In a flat world
we must accept
a different measure of success.
Materialism of houses and cars
and degrees and promotions
and 401Ks.
Never mind
such shiny things are tenuous
and first we must assume
the status as debtors
before the game begins.

But to closed eyes
all is well.
So we pretend.

While scarcely a nod
to our neighbor.
Loners isolated in condo-boxes
with little need to know
beyond our quarter,
too timid to step
across the line, cowed
by feared consequences.

Never reflecting:
"For whom the bell tolls".
Never protesting
greater corporate control.

A flat world
homegeneous and unquestioning
faceless
from deprivation
of tradition and culture.

So marks the epitaph
of dead civilization.

A flat world
with no mountaintops
to touch the heavens.

Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels
All Rights Reserved.

Phoenicia

Phoenicia-
Just uttering your name
and hearing the sound-
("Phoenicia").

Dreams brazen in my blood
dark red like your skin,
your swarthy hair,
your twilight eyes.

Memories trenchant as glass,
unfading and unrending
that keep your love burning
an undying candle.

Like the desert phoenix
who lives alone
for whom beauty
there is no equal.

Phoenicia-
Forgive me if I am selfish.
Fortunate as I have been
to breathe amongst your tall cedars,
traipse your blue Mediterranean shores
and sail your fast ships of adventure.

Granted as I was the gift
to script your fame
in legend and verse
and paint your august beauty
in crystal.

Though onerous as it may seem,
I can think of harsher burdens
than to live as I must
with your unflagging memory,
which sorely teached me
the void
of need
and want.

Phoenicia-
I carry the torch that is you,
that burns by the glory
of your art and craft
and substance of commerce.
To what lands shall we now go,
what oceans to cross
or mountains to traverse-
to what worlds
or planets
or stars?

As the phoenix rises from its ash
to live and die again and again,
I must bear your destiny.
Waiting
for that solemn day
you return,
when I shall voice
the verses of our triumphs,
etch the colors of your beauty
for the world
and relish forever after
our tour de force.

Phoenicia!
Phoenicia!
Phoenicia!

Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels
All Rights Reserved.

Painting Clouds

No Starbucks.
No e-mail in-box.
No I-Pod downloads.

From a secluded corner
of a neighborhood park
with nothing but easel and canvas
between me and sky,
I took refuge beneath a canopy
of flowering chestnuts.

And painted clouds.

Bunches.
In towering columns
and billowing masses.

And renegades,
such as myself,
defecting from the horde.
Some to go alone vanishing
into the heavens.
Others hooking up together
as new tufts
of tumbleweed.

While the world kept rushing
to sign Facebook and My Space.

As I painted,
I took on faces
of the clouds.
Trailers from the past
rolling
by my eyes,
restless to move on-
people, places, dreams
left behind.

Eavesdroppers encroached.
One then a second,
enough flutter jarring thoughts
back to my computer
impatiently waiting
for its next command.

Annoyed,
I knit my brow
putting on indifference,
ignoring the intruders.

The skies mirrored
the tide of fortune,
the clouds themselves
guised as augurs:
a horn of plenty spilled over
with succulent flowers and fruits;
ancient ruins the Acroplis lay
wasted on a hill;
a mocking harlequin
laughing
in sequins and mask;
Father Time
waving
the ominous scythe
and hourglass.

Vignette fading to vignette.

Portent or whimsy?
The craft of these shape-shifters
shuffling
between life and death like
wandering troupes of theapians
lost between worlds.

And then came the jolt.
Besieged by what was now
a gaggle of eavesdroppers,
eyes riveted to the mutating
panorama of my canvass.

My heart sank.
( "Damn it!" I cursed to myself,
Was there no sancity left
on this planet?)

But my hands
kept on painting
as if having discovered
another purpose
than clicking icons.

With tranquill colors,
smell of chestnut blooms
and divinations tunneled deep
in my tissues,
I took my ease.

To notice the gaggle and I
seemed to paint as one
like the defecting clouds
drifting apart
to rejoin again,
each finding something
that was lost.

I realized
they were no different
than I-
needing to escape
the self-imposed cubicles
running our lives-
synthetic spheres wired
by some other-determined web.

Needing
to be like the clouds,
wanderers
in our own worlds.

Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels