“Zeros and Ones”

            Conversations lately dive into “what if” the economy gets hacked. What if all of those “ones” become “zeros” with accounts wiped clean? At the moment, I have $3.00 and a handful of quarters in my purse. Trusting that our system works, and that no criminal mind or terrorist group will implode our financial system, means there’s a cross of faith I wear daily.
            Would the people who always have “ones” step forward to care for those who have nothing? Would estranged families reunite to stand together?  Would the best each of us has to offer spring forth in collaboration with neighbor helping neighbor? Would our communities, towns or cities share resources freely? Would state and national governments pull together, providing food, shelter and safety for each citizen?
            What will be the crisis response if more than towers go down?
            I believe those of us who can will share and care.
            I believe in unity.
            I believe in cooperation.
            I believe in decency.
            I believe in sunrises.    




       
Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Lizard Brain”

A clear objective—survival       
Tuck head down and traipse through desert sands—       

            An Arrakis boiling with religious certitudes,     

                      ancient political nuances   

Multitudinous paths leading to destruction       
Ignore the razor winds that slice through reason   
And only hone instinct   

Survive   
Clutch the knife of insanity in your righteous fist   
Rip into the enemy’s flesh   
Retaliate—an eye for an eye—until all are blind   
Blades become bombs   
Homes reduce to rubble housing mutilated families   

Logic stumbles through the wreckage   
And gets lost in the stench of decay   
Becomes overburdened and overrun by molecular rage—   

            (Passed down from evangelist to fanatic     

                       to zealot to extremist)   

Until it dries up and dies   

 

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman