Sweet Life

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Sweet Life
By Rogi Riverstone
02/09/08

Cultural illiteracy,
Boss man’s decree:
Bachelor’s degree,
Basic currency.
Got no job for me.
Think you’re getter than me?
Celebrity.
What are we celebrating?

"The warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! "

Soma and Somalia appear together in a Google search.

Since SOMA may cause drowsiness and/or dizziness in some patients, make sure you know how you respond to SOMA before engaging in potentially hazardous tasks, like driving an automobile or operating machinery.

Soma is manufactured by MedPointe,
Of the Monsanto Corporation.

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."

Things go better with Coke.
Got hope?
Change in America.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
I put $1.00 in the Pepsi machine.
I was a quarter short!

"Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds."

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
ADM, Supermarket of the World.
$1.00 ADM HFCS costs US taxpayers $10 in subsidies.

"You do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma."

Brazilian sugarcane refined as ethanol
ADM, Supermarket of the World.
$1.00 ADM ethanol costs US taxpayers $30 in subsidies.

“Why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly."

ADM: Sponsor of News Hour on PBS.

Let’s drive to the store for a soda!

Somalia exports: sugarcane, corn,
The largest refugee population in the world.

Since 1985, all ADM humanitarian food deliveries
To Somalia arrived at harvest time.
None arrived during critical hunger periods.
Consensus of the donor community:
ADM’s timing lowered farmers’ prices
To discourage domestic production.

"Too awful! That blood!" She shuddered. "Oh, I wish I had my soma."

Quick! Let’s get in the biodeisel and get a soy milk!

ADM processes Monsanto GMO soybeans
As soy oil in Franfort, Indiana.
Roundup Ready soybeans.
Roundup is a Monsanto product.

Frankfort, Indiana,
Hometown of William Aughe Ghere, botanist.
Learned botanical names
of local plant species
from his grandpa.
Will Geer. Grandpa Walton,
Sheriff in “Salt of the Earth,” about
Zinc Town, New Mexico.
Will Geer, blacklisted for giving a damn.
At his deathbed,
His family sang,
“This Land Is Your Land.”
His ashes were later scattered
In the Shakespeare Garden
Of his Theatricum Botanicum.

Years earlier,
I’d swung from the “Swashbuckling” rope,
Thick sailor’s hemp,
Knotted twenty feet up
A barrel-thick limb
Of the live oak
Which anchored that stage.
One muddy, December day,
Playing with my Goddaughters.
Virtually homeless, house sitting next door
To, of all people, Will Geer.
A wall of threatening mud
leaned over the tiny cabin as
I chopped firewood in downpours,
Gritted my teeth each time I drove
Over the hand-crafted, wooden bridge
That barely straddled the overflowing creek.

Two months after my father committed suicide,
My mother, psychotic, brandishing a knife,
Accusing me of killing him.
I lived in that mud for a month.
I swung frequently from that rope,
Screaming in sweet release.

This land is your land, Mr. Geer.

ADM invented the modern feedlots.
ADM corn,
Fortified with minerals, including zinc.
Stinking, fetid miles
Of sky and trampled ground,
Poisoned groundwater.
Cattle standing to knees in their own filth
Force-fed for the slaughter.

It’s no longer smarter to eat tofurkey than Big Macs.

"Soma may make you lose a few years in time," the doctor went on. "But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity."

I print out this poem
I practice reading it
In my back yard.
My goat snags it from my hand
And eats it.
My illegal goats.

Albuquerque law used to say that,
As long as they had adequate
Shelter, fenced space, food and water,
Citizens could keep livestock
Within city limits.
Now, the law has been amended.
Citizens must provide 40,000 square feet
Of land, per animal.
My goats compost grass, paper, leaves, bamboo
For my garden.
My garden feeds my goats, me, my chickens.
I got the chickens for eggs.
I got the goats for milk.

But I’m not Archer Daniels Midland.
I’m not Monsanto.
I must acquire food,
Wrapped in petroleum plastics,
Laced with antibiotics
And high fructose corn syrup,
Shipped in planes, trucks, boats,
Powered by petrochemicals
And biodeisel.

"And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is."

This Land Is Your Land.