Oh, I didn't realize that was Maria Konnikova. That makes it hit differently, now.

Gratitude is, indeed, difficult to keep in one's mind and heart as the loveless bastards of this world further their schemes that abuse the Earth and all her peoples. As the willfully ignorant fools denigrate the wise and extoll the life they lead sans compassion. Mining fakeass algorithmic coins as the poor can't pay for heat, as food is hard to come by, and as we cook the world's oceans.

But I know which side I am on. The side of justice has few to defend it as we creep towards this reckoning, this chaos, this utter misery, born of turning away from our best, our virtue, while revelling in the idiocy of our worst vices. On tv, in the movies, in the net's forums, in public and in private, and in the people we elect.

This Garden smells of eggfarts and petro-exhaust, of misery and deprivation, of for-profit prisons and low-income housing, ketamine-jacked apartheiders, sans loving family, not loving their family, but with enough money to help a million people, but instead supports the living devils, the cruel, lying liars, those who refuse the sweet nectar of compassion.

I'm grateful I'll not die like that, without even trying, settling into their last breath with the universe's knowing that they're only settling further down as time marches on, without a saving grace, with a bloated, stinking, albatross of their life's own choices, bearing down upon their soul.

I damn them, too, for having forsaken love, belittling and obscuring the Way, for lying about the truth, for taking what could be stolen, hating those that love, and for perverting justice. I damn them, too, for that is True Justice.

For selfishness, for money, for fucking money, for kicking the poor while we're down. All this while, they ignore the fact that the universe remembers everything, and it is not unjust, unloving, or uncaring.

No, motherfucker, Time Will Tell, I'm gonna take the Mister from out in front of your name, it's high time to take the power back, for the people of the sun, for the hopeless, for the poets, for the innocents jailed, for innocence violated, for the good men stomped out by the cruelty of unfettered capitalism.

No, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep, in his palace, having created an unjust system that beat down poets who wrote about love and gratitude and the truths of life, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. No, Joseph Stalin will meet his Maker, and he shall reap what he has sown, for the universe is just and compassionate and kind, in how it brutalizes the brutalizers, tortures the torturers, but not usually upon this Earth.

It is just, but not always while we live, unless one counts being deprived of peace. No, while we live, we all get to be as shitty as we like, with no karmic lightning bolt magically striking the evil down. No, we must wait, clinging to compassion and kindness and service and the poetry of a life lived for the goodness of the 19 virtues.

No, we must wait and work and hope and pray, and remain grateful for the little frogs, every single bee, the breeze in the bush, every laugh, every nacho and sip of coffee. And every kiss, while we await the terrible changeover at the end of this brutal set.

Thank you Maria, for Brodsky, for your gratitude.

I'm a crap poet, but my poetry is the poetry of the blunt truth, spoken to fools and wise alike, out of love for all.

Who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand?