Killing Upstate New York

I fished in up-state New York last fall,

Seeing the fish in their colorful outfits

Before sending them home,

Connecting with creation,

Marvelous experience.

At age ten I came here with my grandfather.

That’s where I got this urge to come back,

Returning, like salmon swimming upstream,

But it’s different now.

You can’t eat the fish here anymore.

Not that I want to but it saddens me,

Knowing that eating them would make me sick,

Too much mercury, carcinogens and other poisons.

Not just this river,

Every river in New York state,

Filled with beautiful poison fish

Staring back at us with empty socket eyes.

What have we done to you mother?

What have we done to our mother earth?

Donnel Lester

September 2005

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Chuck-E-Cheese on a Sunday Afternoon

Sensory overload,

Gluttonous consumption,

Sound bites, overbites

Mega-bites of heart clogging pizza.

Children running without direction,

Gorging themselves

On meaningless images,

Stuffed into fragile minds.

Eight screens,

Background to hyperactivity,

Force-feeding minions

Saturated with food, sounds, images ad nausea.

Cacophony is the norm here,

Spread thicker than cheese on the pizzas

So a mind cannot breathe,

Stamping out all other images except those of Chuck E.

People bumping into each other,

Seeing only objects, obstructions

On the path to the salad bar.

Don’t get in the way of my bacon bits.

Tokens reign in this cheesy dungeon,

Twenty-five cents for a five cent toy.

Where are you Jesus

For  these money changer’s tables?

God save the king and queen…

From Chuck E. Cheese

And his sponsors.

Donnel Lester

August 2005