Oil

Oil. People are losing their lives for oil. Mothers are starving themselves in DC because of oil. Their sons spending sleepless nights in a dry, hot, desert in a far away place that we only see through television screens, that we only see when things blow up, or people get burned, or an American loses his life. Places that we only hear about when the alert goes to red, and we get checked twice before we get on a plane. Places that have a different religion, a different set of beliefs, and a few extremists who want to blow up things.

Remember seeing the oil fields burn during the first desert storm? When Shwarzkopf was played by Chris Farley? Remember watching the bombs drill the enemy on our televisions? The warm bodies lit up by green in the dark night, with headwraps, a different religion, and families, walking around their cars just before the missile hit?

This black liquid that spews from the Earth covers all of us in ways we can’t imagine. Everything we touch? Everything we see? Has oil touched it? Left it’s grimy fingerprint, bloody to the core, all over the surface…of the earth?

Why are we in Iraq? Why are mothers starving themselves in DC while meeting at my restaurant? They only order hot tea, or cranberry juice, which only cost two dollars, which means I might get a dollar in tip…there’s oil on that dollar. There’s pain in that exchange.

Why is it that we never realize how horrible this war, this black liquid, this world we have created is until we see animals covered in oil struggling for air - for life? Why is it that we have to see a seagull covered in oil, in our filth, in our wars, to realize how bad this all is?

~ by kevinthomas on August 11, 2006.