My limerick + what it's about.

a world deliberately concealed from public eye

pollution, suffering, corruption, lies

all in name of corporate rapacity,

the system a paradigm of atrocity

our fares are a sign of the time

Right.

It's not much of a stretch to say that I am very unimpressed with the food system right now in America.

There is this food monopoly going on right now in the market. Big names brand are owning a definite sizeable chunk in our market. Our system has made it so one dollar can buy you a hamburger from McDonalds but it can't buy you a fresh cabbage. 

49 million people are hungry and in poverty right now in America. A few miles from where you live right now there are families struggling to feed themselves and their children. But still, I see food being wasted left and right. I see so much meat being tossed away with no notion of the abhorrent life those mash of animals endured to end up in their hands. We're more wasteful and distanced than we ever were with what we eat three times each day.

Those hungry people can't afford to eat what they want, so they turn to McDonalds for daily sustenance. The irony? It's places like McDonalds that are directly perpetuating and making workers that can't afford to feed themselves.

See where this cycle is going? In what world does it make sense that a packaged hamburger (a baked bread bun, processed meat, cabbages, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and ketchup) would end up costing less than a single cucumber? 

CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (factory farming) have gone way out of hand. Animals are fed diseased food that make them sick, so to counter that they are now being fed a great deal of antibiotics. It's too much. They have put in so many antibiotics that some scientists estimate that we might become desensitized to them through the animals we're eating. Animals are being fed an inappropriate diet (example: cows eating corn when they are meant to eat grass). It's like a person living on caloric cardboard. 

In slaughterhouses, USDA have regulations for how animals are being slaughtered, but the USDA have done nothing to uphold those rules. The waste (especially animal waste) that those places create are being dumped into rivers and oceans. It's killing our ecosystem and marine life. 

I can't manage to fit something as complex and diverse as the food industry (especially the CAFOs, which man. I can go on about that.) 

I just wish we could turn back to more sustainable means, but it looks like it's only going to get worse. For those that might listen, please just buy from your local farmers. The food and meat would be so much better for your health. Know where the food your buying come from. The brands you support make all the difference in the world.

(Fare means food and diet, but it also means the price you pay to board a vehicle. I felt it was fitting. )

My poem-- "Clarity"

Clarity

Every morning the soft stream of light falls on lidded eyes

Curtains ripple as sparrows begin their song

In scorched comfort of tarnished shelter, I hum

Oh, Glorious Day

I’m not worth you.

You, Life, are a creature of light,

(--a gift I’ll only worsen)

a detriment like me does not deserve you

I can be the courageous hero that slays the monster that is me.

I can be the selfless gardener that weeds the snag that is me.

I can be the pious priest that saves you from that which is me.

on this last morning, I will be.

Fear have kept me grounded but clarity lifted the veil

Overdose on what never helped now fulfills its role

(and as lidded eyes grow darker

the sparrows’ song begin to cease

I leave alone, just as it should be

on this last morning…  I will finally

free you )

Do you ever feel that mixture of admiration and envy for those that have a way with words? To those that can manipulate words like its tangible threads and weave it this way and that so they can sculpt a world in our minds from an infinite selection? 

Sorry. Off topic. For english, we had to write a free verse poem about any topic. If you can understand what this poem is about, then extra extra kudos to you. (tell me? )

I'm not completely satisfied with "Clarity"; something seems off. But still, I was able to write a poem of 19 lines! I don't write much poems (but I do admit it's kind of fun, that state in mind where one moment you're writing whatever your fingers compel you to and the next moment you're thinking critically on how to best phrase something), but the few I have written were only a few lines long. 

I won't include them because this post is just about the free verse poem we wrote for class. I hope I can learn rhyme scheme or pentameters too sometime during this unit.