OUTSIDE THE BOX:

Beat poet (and publisher and owner of San Francisco's City Lights bookstore) Lawrence Ferlinghetti died earlier this week at 101.  You can read one of his most famous poems, "I Am Waiting," published in 1958, on the Poetry Foundation's website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42869/i-am-waiting-56d22183d718a  You can find some of his more recent work on the City Lights site: http://www.citylights.com/Ferlinghetti/?fa=ferlinghetti_poems  In honor of his passing, I am sharing one of his more recent poems, "Pity the Nation," written in 2007:

"PITY THE NATION"
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
   And whose shepherds mislead them
 Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
            Whose sages are silenced
  And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
 Pity the nation that raises not its voice
          Except  to praise conquerers
       And acclaim the bully as hero
          And aims to rule the world
              By force and by torture
          Pity the nation that knows
        No other language but its own
      And no other culture but its own
 Pity the nation whose breath is money
 And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
      Pity the nation oh pity the people
        who allow their rights to  erode
   and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
                   Sweet land of liberty!