Talking doesn't make you any smarter
Spirits whisper when you're walking harder
Further up the mountainside
Moist and friendly dirt abides
A setting star pulls two along
A feeble path less trampled on
A doe a buck a friendly pine
A stony seat where two recline
Smell the dew
In walking shoes
With misty skies above
Pay your dues
And find the view
Where Earth returns your Love
by Richard W. Bray
Smashing into walls
Cuz you really like the view
Singing to your hatred
Cuz it loves you so true
I might pay a price for telling the truth
But it sure beats living a lie
Practicing your backstroke
Swimming in the gutter
Wearing your deception
A coat of many shudders
I might pay a price for telling the truth
But it sure beats living a lie
Self-preservation
Is the only thing you trust
Throwing friends and lovers
Underneath the bus
I might pay a price for telling the truth
But it sure beats living a lie
Inside out
Your pride is really shame
There's nothing left to hide
There's no one else to blame
I might pay a price for telling the truth
But it sure beats living a lie
by Richard W. Bray
She's got big dreams and small feelings
Treats me like potato peelings
I'm hung up on a woman
Who can't respect a man
Lobotomized accommodations
The sudden fall of mighty nations
I'm hung up on a woman
Who can't respect a man
Stupid people and stupid talking
Close my ears and just keep walking
I'm hung up on a woman
Who can't respect a man
Cheats and liars getting wealthy
Surrounded by so much unhealthy
I'm hung up on a woman
Who can't respect a man
Stop my crying. Stop my stinking
Time for me to clean my thinking
I don't need a woman
Who can't respect a man
by Richard W. Bray
What is neoliberalism? It is the extension of market dominance to all spheres of social life, fostered and enforced by the state. In economic policy, this means deregulation, privatization, and financialization. In culture, it means untrammeled marketing and the commoditization of everyday life, including the intimate sphere. In law, it means consumer sovereignty and a restrictive conception of the public interest. In education, it means the replacement of public by private (i.e., business) support for schools, universities, and research, with a corresponding shift of influence over hiring, curriculum and research. In civil society, it means private control over the media and private funding of political parties, with the resulting control of both by business and the ultra-rich. The upshot of this political-economic regime is prosperity for Wall Street, Big Tech, and a few other favored industries. For intellectuals - at least those who have not sold themselves to business or the state, which is actually a pretty good definition of public intellectuals - it means austerity, a squeezing of the creative economy, which is a gift economy, the antithesis of a market economy. For everyone, it means a narrowing of horizons.
–George Scialabba
It grinds up your bones
And drinks the living marrow
Your life means less
Than the fall of a sparrow
It puts a tollbooth on your heart
Sucks the life out of culture
It worships only war
And prays to the Vulture
It turns love into commerce
And siphons every nickel
It drinks from the firehose
And offers you a trickle
Financialize and privatize
And profit from inflation
Jeopardize and terrorize
To drain a bleeding nation
by Richard W. Bray
Laughter hope sock in the eye's Blog 