They were terrible to animals.
On the Texas ranch, after a good rain
the frogs would come out.
They’d shoot them with BB guns,
or else they’d stuff them full of firecrackers
and throw them up in the air. 
Ker-pow! 

Gandhi said
you can tell a lot about a culture 
by the way they treat animals.
St. Francis said that, too.
It’s been said that boys who torture animals 
are more likely to grow up to be serial killers.
Or Presidents.

Someone once said to me, 
“How could the German people
have let the holocaust happen?  
I would never have been complicit
in the torture and murder of 
so many people.”

And I think of the man in Abu-Ghraib
with electrodes attached to his crotch.
And the one that was beaten until he passed out
was revived by an army doctor so he could be 
beaten unconscious again,
revived, beaten, passed out
revived, beaten, passed out
until he died
a phony death certificate all that was left.

A third of my paycheck goes to the 
United States government.
I have supported the oil cartel with 
every penny I have spent on gas.

We are those German Citizens of the 1930s.

I remember hearing that if you put a frog 
in a pot of boiling water
he’ll jump right out, but if you put 
him in nice lukewarm water and heat it up, slowly
he’ll stay in until his skin falls right off.
Aside from trying to figure out why
anyone would want to boil a frog to death,
this is supposed to clue us in to the fact
that a situation can become lethal
and we won’t even realize it
so long as it’s just a little bit worse
every day.

Acceptable nukes?
Acceptable levels of arsenic in the drinking water?
Acceptance of secret trials, or holding a person 
indefinitely without charging them 
with a crime?
Acceptance of the torture of prisoners of war?

I have a friend whose father used to beat him every day.
His father went to prison when my friend was 13
and he’ll be in for another 20 years.
“Fuck him,” my friend had said, “I hope he dies in there.”
My friend was in the marines until he got kicked out.
“I’d have gone to Iraq,” he said, “I just wanted to kill people.”
What he really meant was, “I’ll never be a victim again!”

In this country
we live in anguish, anger and fear.
For good reasons.
Like 10,000 hand gun deaths per year.
Like 10,000 nuclear warheads.
Like how almost everyone I know had 
a shitty childhood, and almost every 
woman I know has been raped.
Like a frog in a pot of boiling water
Like a frog in a pot of boiling water
Like a frog in a pot of boiling water
You can tell a lot
about a culture
by the way they treat
the animals.
Gandhi said that.

But Gandhi also said this—
When some British official asked him,
“Little man, do you think we are just 
going to give you India?”
Gandhi said, “Yes!”
And that is exactly what they did!
I know a small girl who believes she 
will change the world.
And she will.
Her dad, my friend, said,
“All I wanted was to kill people
until I opened my eyes to the fact 
that there is no hope but that which we make.
I made peace with myself and with my father.
I could never kill anyone, now.”

They were terrible to animals.
But we don’t have to continue
to let them be terrible
to humans.