Chicken

Are all our baskets broken
that we cannot fill them with our eggs?
Are all our chickens coming home to roost
among the snake-filled nests?

Do we have an intrinsic worth?
Are we free to keep our heads?
Or are we nothing more than feathers
to fill a suffocating bed?

Can we see into the future
when our present is so caged?
Can you take the shit they give us
or have you found your rage?

We can tear down those cages

And we can find our worth

And together build a future
The like we've never seen

Or we can crawl back in our cage
And dream of what might have been

A.J. Ponder

Have a great week everybody. Here's hoping we can all rise to the challenges life is throwing us.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

"To light a candle is to cast a shadow..." Ursula K. Le Guin October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018

To light a candle is to cast a shadow. Ursula K. Le Guin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/ursula_k_le_guin

To light a candle is to cast a shadow. Ursula K. Le Guin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/ursula_k_le_guin

Ursula K. Le Guin was a giant of science fiction and fantasy, daring to stand up and be counted when it came to social issues

In many ways her writing apeared prescient, speaking truths to power. In her 1986 Bryn Mawr Commencement Address she said,

"...when women speak truly they speak subversively--they can't help it: if you're underneath, if you're kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That's what I want--to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don't know the power in you--I want to hear you." -Ursula Le Guin

I love her  National Book Foundation's speech, there's so much about her to admire...

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” -Ursula Le Guin accepts the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014 - it's well worth listening to: 

The day seems a little darker, now that her light, her speaking truth to power has been silenced.

Goodbye Ursula K. Le Guin - one day the word for world will be forest and ocean - until then we shall talk about the day a giant strode the earth, planted seeds of subversion, and called upon mountains to rise up like volcanoes.

A.J.
P.S. Some of her better known books are still available - I've put my favourites together on this page on my author website. 

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. Ursula K. Le Guin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/ursula_k_le_guin