OATMEAL DHARMA

by Peter Franklin

I had raisins in my oatmeal
This morning…and I couldn’t help
But think of you and Langston Hughes.
Dreams. Dreams Achieved. Dreams Deferred.
Dreams conferred upon those who know what they want.
But we don’t always get what we want, do we?
Why do some of you get so damned lucky…
The fortunate ones who
Never seem to have any obstacles at all?
You. Get. What. You. Want.
The sun always shines brightly on you. No darkness in your life.
I guess this means that your life is full of grapes.
Not sour grapes.
But sweet, succulent
Hold-the-seeds-please grapes.
Big. Juicy. Full of promise.
Juice dribbles down your chin in your childish excitement to cram as many into your
Mouth as you can.

But in my oatmeal…my raisins…
Have become desiccated to the point where they don’t resemble
Their former selves.
And you expect me to be happy with this?
You tell me that they are just as sweet, that they have their own character.
Right.
If I wanted raisins, I wouldn’t have dreamed of grapes.
Don’t get me started on rotten meat.

The white man’s burden. Rotten. Meat.
Weighty.  Ponderous.  Guilt trip gone wild.
Dream interruptus.
Damn.
Why did I have to bring that up?
Innocence lost.
Innocence tossed.
Innocence bossed like it was meant to be enslaved.
All they wanted to do was to
Get up in the morning, rub the sleep out of their
Eyes and go about their happiness.
But not that morning
Not any morning after that.

You made sure that didn't happen
You wanted to move West. Gold greed in your veins,
Visions of sugarplums or whatever in your mind.
And never mind that it wasn't yours to begin with.
Your distorted antinomianistic views saw to it that you didn't have to look in the mirror and face that truth.
Wait.
You thought I was talking about the other ones?
Those other dreams smashed and swept under the rug?
The one about the innocents stolen, shackled, sold into slavery?
Not that one?
The one about the millions of innocents who were incinerated?
The ones who were melted into ingots of your hatred?
The ones who barely had time to cry mommy before they were mercilessly slaughtered?
Pick one.
Any one.
They all end the same.
How long shall they kill the innocents while we stand aside and look?

I heard on the radio the other day that in the 30 days since the massacre of the babies,
that over 900 people in this country have been
Killed in gun violence.
900.
And counting.
Let’s see.  900.  That’s the equivalent of three 737s crashing and burning every
10 days.
Every 10 days.
The FAA would be all over that like flies on shit.
No one would be flying anywhere until that got figured out.
Imagine that.  Due diligence.  Safety.  Liability.  Avoidance of more deaths. Responsibility.
Hell, even the 787 Dreamliner was grounded because of a faulty battery.
Hmmm…
But what are we doing about guns?
Hell, we’re arguing.
We cite our Constitutional rights to have and to bear arms…
Because we don’t want to be the ones without the guns.
We’re holding rallies to tell politicians that you can have our
Guns when you pry them out of our cold, dead fingers.
In fact, we’re buying more guns…because who knows when those crazy-assed
politicians will make them all go away.
Bad guys with guns can only stopped by good guys with guns.
But doesn’t that make everyone with guns the same?
And I’ll let you figure out who’s good…or bad.

And now I'm back to my oatmeal again.
It’s cold.
Congealed. Solidified.
Raisins just staring at me with a blank gaze.
They don’t get it either.
My dream’s more important than yours.
Just ask me sometime.
I pray I don’t get shot in the process.