Spare Me the Details

Spare Me the Details presents three poems of disparate subjects, but with similarities in style and length.

Since the Dark Ages

Suffering from the hangover of The Enlightenment

Lingering on for one thousand years

Learned too much

Way too fast

Breaking from the Darkness of Obedience

It was so bright didn’t see our fears

Saw too much

Thought it would last

The Soul of Darkness Power and Greed

Disguised as a church and a faith

Oppression so deep

Can’t escape that Past

Replaced by Critical Thinking

Rationale and Logic expanding

But carries the innate baggage

The urge to exploit one’s own standing

So on to actions Imperial

And Empires built by Force

Take a boat

plant a flag

And claim that is yours

Then on to colonization

Plunder every Natural Resource

Expel the Aboriginal

Annihilate the indigenous

The most Profitable course

Bring in some real cheap labor

Import it from some other Land

Ignore the fact that they’re HUMAN

Slaves at command

Industries born of Brute Force

Tobacco Sugar and Cotton

The Bounty of the New Land

Payrolls at a minimum

Margins at a maximum

400 years it would stand

Filling up Bank and Boerse

On to the 21st Century

And The 2nd Millennia of such organized Greed

Profit as a Foundation – yield from Oppression’s cruel hand

And every global transaction

Is tainted with blood indeed

Forget the Revolutions

Forget the Civil Wars

No matter their Resolutions

No matter who won or lost

Victorious was Economics

And we should know how much it cost

_________________________________

At 350

The coats of arms

Of all the printers

Through the Ages

Hang on its edifice

Inside

The history of knowledge

Its distribution

Its evolution

Enabling Human Advance

It has stood more than a Century

And should stand for many more

Built with materials

Only used before

Solid as a castle rock

Sturdy as a fortress

A citadel protecting

The most valuable of forces

The pages that it printed

The books that it bound

Information it minted

There knowledge is found

Propelling the advancement of Man

That first great catalogue

Of the titanic cross town store

Shipped to all corners of the New Republic

Profit motive at it’s core

Defining the dominance of commerce

Then came the dial tone

And the need to know how

To reach out to all others

In the immediate now

That massive volume

Revered for so long

That offered the printed proof that

Each person’s name and number Belong

“I’m Somebody now!”

Such printed pages

Gave way in stages

To this age’s

Electrification

Presses replaced with Processors

Butt rolls of paper

replaced by server stacks

Ink replaced by light emitting diodes

Where once organized stains of meaning

Were formed on layers

Of pressed ground up wood

Now organized electrons

Ones and zeros

Are stored

And moved

At the speed of light

On glass pathways

Between steel boxes

Media is the storage of knowledge

Outside of the memories of one’s brain

From scribbles on cave walls

To the Gutenberg Bible

To the heights of literature and science

To the depths of pulp fiction and propaganda

To the Sears Catalog

To Ma Bell’s phone book

To the core of the Internet

And to the World Wide Web

The evolution of information

Has been happening

And will continue to happen

At 350

__________________________________

Saving Damar

Consecutive plays

A week apart

One that ended a game

In the very worst way

The next that began another

In the very best possible manner

A beautiful young soul

An elite human specimen

Youth and strength

Extreme conditioning

The peak of physical fitness

Hit so hard his heart

Just plain stopped

And then he just dropped

From the depths of horrific scenes

Witnessing death overcome

Immediately

Urgently by

knowledge and understanding

Process and practice

Science and medicine

Trained medical professionals

Showed us how to save a life

On live prime time TV

And for those at home

Glued to the entertainment monitor

Stuck in a gaping mouthed awe

Hearts dropped

Adrenal glands surged

10 million Lungs

all at once

Collectively gasped

And we all just stopped

Stared

Sobbed

Hoped

And the prayers began

And so did donations

And this young man

Became the center of attention

Concern transcendent

Beyond just fanatics

Beyond owner and tv profits

Beyond the athlete expendable

Humanity in concert

And meanwhile

in the intensive care

Elite doctors came to the fore

The state of medical technology

Sustained the resuscitation

And cooled the inflammation

Of every shocked organ

Taking over his respiration

Witness

The miracle of modern science

And his strength returned

And so did his cognition

Every cell in every tissue

His body had to recover

And those living little protein pods

So recently oxygen deprived

Had a remarkable recuperation

And by the way

Everyone prayed

Or performed some

Reasonable facsimile thereof

And all good thoughts

Focused together

Made us all feel

Like we had an impact

Like our efforts helped

It’s nice to feel that way

The respirator appreciated our concern

It’s nice to feel that way

The video monitors tracking his vitals

Heard all our prayers

200 years of medical science

Confirmed when somebody prays

And then the opening kickoff

Of the very next game

And the touchdown return

As if there were

Some kind of

Divine Intervention

Like some kind of

Divine Intervention

And they won the game

The injured came home