Tuesday, October 29, 2013

RAW ORE AND SPICES: LIFE'S NECESSARIES

ANCIENT TRADE ROUTES
In a place where you learn by age three
to hit the floor and crawl to a corner
furthest from the window
at the first sound heard of gunfire,
it is hard to trust the fresh breeze
coming from an open window.
One never knows what, besides cooling air,
may come flying sonically fast inside
with the current winds of our times.

Since man began to explore.
Go beyond the edges of his own village
we have learned to make war
over trade goods of metals and spices.
We figured out that it was easier to steal them
than grub in the dirt, pick the leaves
 and dig in the mines to gather our own wealth.
It IS better to have an army than a workforce.

Spices once used to be worth more than gold
and once refined ores became the base metals
we used to shape of the weapons we easily used
to protect your honest effort traded for your food.
To protect our profit in spices found
turning the boring bland into the grand.

Now do you understand
why heroin, weed, cocaine, prescription pills
are worth traveling the ancient trade routes
over mountains deserts and hills is worth dying for?
and why you learn by age three
to hit the floor and crawl to a corner
furthest from the window
at the first sound heard of gunfire
following the ancient trade routes?

© M Durfee
10/29/13

20 comments:

  1. shivers....kids learning the trade....learning the trade offs of life...how to stay alive...and how to turn a dollar to afford to live...harsh reality we live in at times...

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    1. I think even for the very wealthy even them who have inherited wealth Brian they have known harsh times. It seems as if only them who can view this reality as a stoping off point and not an end are those that the harshness isn't so bad.

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  2. This line will stick with me: we have learned to make war
    over trade goods of metals and spices.

    How sad what we have become ~

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    1. Grace I am no history scholar but it seems to me with rare of any exceptions all wars are not fought for ideology but rather for the wealth of an enemy, they have it and I am going to take it. Sooner or later i will have no other way to acquire my cocaine so i will kill a dealer to get it. Same goes for Saffron or cinnamon, tin and lead.

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  3. Glad I didn't have that kind of childhood. The troubling began much later.

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    1. One thing I know Charles, at least in Detroit the more densely packed people are the more they see what others have that they do not and they will go to war to get it. Everyone needs a "99 Chevy pimped out with 26" rims,a $20,000 stereo and paint job so violence must be the path to it. No one who works hard for their money would waste it like that. Look at governments, they order taxes and then spend like it was theirs for shit no one wants.

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  4. Extremely evocative, Mark.
    Definitely jogs memories of our own childhood and the dangers of that time (The Second World War, for me).
    But after it all, I turned humourist. What the hell.

    (This is surely a historical inaccuracy, but did Marco Polo get stoned with ole Kublai Khan in old Xanadu)?

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    1. Ivan images have to be formed for understanding, even words on paper can create an image, I have a billion in my head and I need to flush them,

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  5. Replies
    1. Cloudia i would rather this patina be cleaned off and the object sold in an udesirably clean state of being.

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  6. Dark and powerful, Walking Man

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    1. Thank you Jeff, time to take the kid gloves off and set a challenge before any who will hear.

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  7. oh mark. i once knew a two year old who was old enough (by necessity) to hold up his drugged Mother. one of the saddest sights i still carry

    a very good poem, mark. raw and real and relevant

    love
    kj

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  8. To "unknown" commentator:

    Ha ha ha ha!

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  9. Different trade but still pirates who exploit and plunder. Much deadlier though. And every kid on a corner is hoping for a big score.

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  10. I liked your answer to Grace; wars are not fought for ideology, but rather for greed. We learn to survive whatever that is, staying away from the window or dropping to the floor. Others learn to trade goods for money. It's all about keeping #1 ahead

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  11. Mark, it scares the hell out of me. What is perceived to be self preservation...what have we become. xo

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So Walking Man I was thinking...