where are the times
when people could rely
     more or less
on what their leaders
     whom they had elected
spoke and did?

when there was yet no need
to fact-check every other sentence
of presidential self-appraisals
or denigrating tweets about opponents?

after three years of suffering
through all shenanigans of the most blatant kind
it seems that rudeness, ignorance, and lies
have quietly become accepted as new normal

we've learned that people we elected
     to fight for our cause
can say one thing
     and then the opposite
throw in a lie or two
and nobody complains
or votes them out of their coveted offices

in fact
thanks to the wonderful examples of our leaders
we now have learned to distrust everybody
even ourselves

eight billion plus of unreliables

You are the Sky ,
You are the River .
Soar high , Flow far ,
For where the Heart is happy is when the Life is at Par !

You are the Sunshine , you are the Star ,
You are the Light shining bright afar .
For where the Heart is happy is when Life is at Par !

You are the Past , you are the Present .
Do not live with any resent .
You are the Queen , you are the Czar ,
For where the Heart is happy is when Life is at Par !

You are the Season ,
you are the Reason ,
You are the one making
every Connection.
You are the Joy , you are the Scar .
For where the Heart is happy is when Life is at Par !

You are the None ,
You are the One ,
You ain't going to be Right or Wrong , just what you decide you are !

© Mrunalini.D.Nimbalkar

fake election victory
fake president
fake impeachment trial
no decisive witness
fake acquittal

real crimes & misdemeanors
go unpunished

fake democracy?

I played with words
much like I fed the birds

    one morsel here
          another there

then suddenly became aware

they pulled together
     and made sense

have been a player ever since

comfortably relaxed
in front of a warming fireplace
somewhat in contemplation of the world
I recapitulate the day

but not too seriously

because the news over the internet
needs some deciphering and filtering
to figure out what’s really going on around the world
same for traditional media

reading through all the news
     the good and the bad
takes up most of my morning
      which I resent
I don't have so many mornings any more
       at my stage of advanced maturity …

I guess I am nostalgically
wishing for older days' simplicities
when one could understand
why certain people did say certain things
you knew the proper filters
to apply to sundry media and people

today it seems to me
that many politicians
say one thing now
      and just the opposite
      one minute later
or they ignore the questions
     and spout off on topics
      they prefer to sell

        and nobody complains
        about that ****** rhetoric

what kills democracy is just exactly
this erasure of trust and factuality
the relativization of all truths
reiterating lies and contradictions
until they sound like the new normal

this tends to make us think
that EVERYTHING in politics is ******
      not worth our vote

yet uncast votes are missed most bitterly

they make it possible
that radical minorities
can steal elections and then claim
they are the rightful leaders of the nation
with votes of less than 25 percent of the electorate
       and some gerrymandering

difficult times we live in

my wish for yet another year
    apart from all the usual
    of good health luck success and joy
is that the news become more elevating
inform us less about what's going wrong
foreground the positive
not only the sensational alarmist frightening

in short
provide a better balanced view of our world
to make it clear from what is seen and heard
that even though
room for improvement on the globe is plenty
we can do it

A HAPPY NEWS YEAR 2020

the annual gift-giving hectivities
in advent time
       when we are

            supposedly

      expecting the birth of our savior
defy traditional ideas
    of quiet meditation
drowning the sense of wonder
with relentless jingles for super discount sales
of things neither we
        nor anybody else
        really needs
even though they suggest we
        and whoever we give those goodies to
would be beyond  the moon

somehow
      Christ
       in spite of all this
gets born