Some tea induced poetry..

I am at my favorite little teashop in midtown (Hina's) after doing a little interview work at Encina for the ACP project that I am doing for my Israel trip in January... the kids in my research group were great. Very sweet, and eager to help. I asked Hina fora strong green tea, she asked if robust was OK... this is the result
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A Treatise on Stuff

Things are different today
There is ice hanging from the downspout
Frost all over the lawn
Yet we are short, and the lady on the news says
We might catch-up
Or then again
We might not
Not enough rain, that is, and
Too many people and
Too much stuff makes for less rain and
An economy that feeds on feeding us useless stuff
To turn off
and on
and plug in then it is
Time to replace
The useless stuff I bought to plug in, and turn off
And on
I found that the useless stuff, needs
A factory
And children to
Assemble the useless stuff, that
Required a mountain to be taken down and forest to be
Disassembled so that the
Useless stuff, that
Requires a ship to take it back to be reassembled as
Useless stuff
That comes back again as
Car parts and cell phones and underwear and
Plastic stuff
Cheap
That breaks or replaces the stuff that broke
And replaced the other stuff before that
That broke.
The TV promises that your
Children will cry if they don’t get the right useless stuff that
They demand
From Santa.
My TV taught me that
If you are good
Santa will bring you lots of useless stuff,
That he stuffs down your chimney and puts
In socks
Hung
By the chimney, with less care than hope
For useless stuff.
Parents fret if the useless stuff isn’t heaped
High enough around
The tree
Made in China
A perfect Xmas should include perfect useless stuff
The media frets
Far too many people
Are not buying enough useless stuff to
Heap around their trees.
Made in China

The icicles on our tree are made in China.