4/1/20: Killing Us #Poetry #Pandemic
Killing us
Narcissism is killing us
A new father wants to witness the birth of his child
He knows he has symptoms
He knows he’s been exposed
He doesn’t disclose
He infects his wife
He panics the maternity ward
He contaminates a sacred place
He compromises many lives
because he is an immature child himself
He just had to be there
and he is killing us
Trash capitalism is killing us
The office manager pushes his peons to stay in their cubicles to the bitter end
one of them that I know gets sick
what happens to the others
It’s killing us
Every person who thinks that money is more important than other people’s lives
be they Presidents, Governors, Rich, Middle-Class or Poor
Everyone who drank the kool-aid of an immoral economic system
is killing us
Everyone who ever insulted or mocked “losers”
who humiliated other people
the rapists, the thugs, the bullies
everyone who lived for greed and power and not love
is killing us
That attitude is the reason that doctors, nurses and other health care workers
go into battle without body armor or guns
Lambs to the slaughter
is killing us
Anyone who said government was a bad thing
actually argued against civilization itself
those people are killing us
Health insurance companies that made a right into a commodity
and created a culture where we accepted that people could be allowed to die if they didn’t have the means to survive
are killing us
Prisons run for profit
crowded to the rafters
breeding grounds of death
devaluing human lives
figuring out a way to make a buck off of lost people
instead of helping them
are killing us
The idea that soldiers should die not for our freedom
but rather for the profits of oil companies and contractors
is killing us
Religious fanatics said that the AIDS epidemic was God’s punishment of homosexuals
A vile violent sentiment
We are experiencing an American Holocaust
not as God’s punishment
But as the logical outcome
of all that is killing us
including religious fanaticism
A “Christian” University keeps its dorms open and creates a death cluster in its surrounding area
Killing us
A state leaves its beaches open far beyond the time they should be closed
Killing us
A mayor wants to encourage local business and goes out for a drink and visits a health club on the eve of shutting down all activity
sending a mixed message and killing us
Lemmings form large crowds at a harbor to view a hospital ship coming into port
and creating more sick people to overburden the hospitals of the city that the ship was sent to relieve
Our greed
our resentment
our stupidity
our narcissism
our selfishness
our bowing to authority
our choice of some crude definition of success as opposed to what’s right
our lack of community
OUR TOLERANCE OF ALL OF THE ABOVE
are killing us
Our choice is clear now
either we individually and collectively commit to human decency
or we won’t survive
When we get through all of this
things must be different
Germany admitted its sins after World War II
and flourished in the aftermath
Our darkness is much trickier than Nazism
Madison Avenue and Hollywood are the greatest propaganda agencies ever made
We have been brainwashed to be
selfish
materialistic
“I consume therefore I am ”
“It is worse to be poor than to be a criminal”
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”
We turned our ambition into a national religion
and we disregarded what matters
What matters being unattended for forty years
is killing us
If you don’t think that a nurse is infinitely more important than a salesman
you are
killing us.
Copyright 2020 Richard Thomas
Richard Thomas Writing Blog 
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