NAPKIN WORDS #37 2011 - Dedicated to Mike Prevor

 

1. WHAT WE SHOULD BE
It is in our power to be wiser today than we
were in the past.

We should be willing to admit that we
are uneducated in many areas that are
of great importance to others. If we admit
to this, maybe, just maybe, we won’t be
so quick to give an opinion on something
we know so little about.

Also in our power, is our willingness to learn.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow, all we need is
the willingness.

Should we have that, we learn!

2. CIRCUMSTANCES
We are all captured by the success of friends.

Let us be wise and keep the friend as if success
was hidden.

Dark in the neighborhood which is lit by their
time!

3. IT IS THE ONLY THING
All we really have is our heart!

4. AFGHANISTAN
England discovered a graveyard.

Russia discovered a graveyard.

America is discovering a graveyard.

NATO is discovering a graveyard.

The one who is always nearby, who digs
the graves, are the mighty Pushtuns.

The sad part of history is their abundance of
shovels, which so many have asked to borrow!

5. LIFE
Life needs to whisper more.

All it takes is to lower your voice.

Be wise: Hush the loudness!

6. TIME
Laugh at it.

Live with it.

Love because of it.

Remember, it will leave you whenever it wishes,
so laugh while you can live and love!

OUR MISSING CORE

A chiseled glass rests glimmering thick in its emptiness.
Silent, immobile, on a thick, off-white coaster telling
of beer brewed in another country far away.

Here in America, only service is offered (if we are lucky),
little else. For we enjoy goods which others produce for
cheaper wages, longer hours, under horrible conditions
we say we would never allow.

Flowers, even American roses, come from foreign shores,
along with peaches, pears, and small American flags
bearing our American stars and stripes.

We dine on plates created in beauty by Asian hands,
African art, Indian toil. Those many aches of earning a
living where greed and indifference live side by side.

We drink fine wines of European harvest, paying coins of
wealth, while pinching pennies tasting even finer wines from
all over this land.

Ask of salmon which river it swam? Yes, from the mountains,
to that famous prairie, even towards our oceans white with foam,
we import bottled water from lands other than ours.

Only the gas of disquiet is truly ours, created by worries of every
day. Asking, always silently asking, how long will jobs belong
to us?

Hiding deep in our soul an awful question: Who will hire our
children who only know a core of our business that comes from
other lands?




by Edward Hunter