Of By and For The People

Yup, that's my dad. He never let me forget while I was growing up that I was somebody special. Every child deserves to have someone who thinks they are something special - and expect them to act accordingly. When circumstances seemed unbearable he did not give me sympathy, he suggested solutions. His life was a hard one, but he always had a ready smile and a bounce in his step. He was still a swinger of birches at 50 years old. He died in 1990, but he left behind the house and valley that he loved to roam and all his writing as well as a huge library of books, complete with hundreds of bookmarks and notations for anyone who wished to continue where he left off. His favorite sayings were, "I doubt, therefore I am," and, "God must have hated the common man because he made him so God damn common!" He did not suffer fools gladly, but he had the biggest heart of any man alive. He never saw any individual as truly common. He would frequently admonish me that being nice and being kind were not always the same thing and when the two diverged one should choose kindness. He always did. This page begins with the poem that best defined him, Question:

Question

By: Edgar de Santos

Always a question
Because we wonder
Does it make a difference
What we do or say?
Does it change the world
Does it move the pieces
Not in a hush
Not in a thunder
But just in some way
Perhaps we hope not
It couldn't- but it does
Tomorrow will be a little different
Because we said it right
Or even a terrible blunder
We have to chuckle It's full of wonder.

The Year 2079

The census shows six thousand prims
Engaged in earthy trades
In the nineteen hundreds, almost all
But now the memory fades

Two nuclear wars, hospital states
Something had to be changed
Laws were passed around the world
And genes were rearranged

It’s tricky work and slips occur
Passion sneaks back in
In placid crowds a face is seen
With a devilish sort of grin

Prims pop up no matter what
The birthing never shows
That little errant gene is there
Until the passion grows

A noxious zest to break the peace
A willingness to learn
The things that no one ought to know
Consistency to spurn

The will to take a chance and mock
The everlasting fates
Then take the mind and wrench it round
To open up its gates

One has to tolerate the prims
The primitives of life
Splicing genes is fussy work
With scope and laser knife

Genetic records didn’t start
Till the second thousandth year
In seventy-nine we’re doing well
With just six thousand here

Some have said we might as well
Prepare ourselves for more
Let their passions run the course
And do what prims adore

Painting pictures, writing books
Wild emotion things
Reliving all the old desires
From which the chaos springs

Others though, still wish to make
Their reproduction cease
One female prim a year ago
Was trying to mate with geese

And males are getting bolder too
Making strange remarks
And even lewd advances now
To women in the parks

Among themselves, one hates to think
Of adversary ways
Last month a rogue prim took a girl
And kept her two whole days

She’s been debriefed as best we can
But patterns still lie deep
Last week she went right back again
Like walking in her sleep

If they had served no use at all
They wouldn’t have been freed
But only they know how to grow
The foodstuffs that we need.