“More Babies!” — video with short rhyming poem, artwork

by New York poet NG Swett

Just a quick video post today, including a couple of extra pieces of material:

• notes about the substance of the poem

• when and how I wrote it

• creating and posting the video

The substance of the poem

The billionaires, plutocrats, oligarchs — some are calling for more babies.

Women should have more babies, some say. Women shouldn’t be able to end a pregnancy under any circumstances, some say. Life is too… precious!

Over a lifetime, families can easily shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars per person for taxes, health care, child care, education, shelter, food, transportation, weddings, and finally assisted living. The willingness to pay is only limited by our means. The value of a statistical life was estimated at $7.5 million in 2020 according to FEMA. Oh how the shareholders must drool at a number like that!

Other happy civilized countries don’t have things set up this way. Every heartstring we have is tapped for all it’s worth. Every fear stoked for our last dime.

There’s pushback on social media to this idea of women as livestock, especially among women. But the good news for the owner class is that they can mute ‘em with algorithms. (Studies show that social media is terrible for women’s mental health, especially secular liberals.)

Scientists proved that the human race is stripping the planet of resources, causing mass extinction, and polluting it to the brink of extinction. So do we really need more people? Or should we get our house in order first?

Writing the poem

So this all tickled my funny bone a little, so I jotted down this little rhyming poem in a big black journal that I’ve been using lately for sketching and writing.

To illustrate the poem, I pulled up a painting I did some time ago of a made-up plutocrat, “One.” It’s from a series of mini acrylic paintings I made as art therapy to get me through writing and editing my first novel — a very, very challenging project! The paintings are all illustrations from scenes of the novel.

In the painting, One lounges god-like across a royal-looking chair in front of a glass window at night. You can see a bridge lit up behind him. The rug under his shiny black boots is a rough map of the Outer Lands Archipelago.

Making the videos

I made a short video in two formats, wide and vertical mobile. I added two audio tracks, one with the sound of a typewriter and another with the sound of an eerie lullaby…

I’m placing the wide format video here on 4seasonshelf.com first.

Then they will go on the billionaires’ platforms…

Download Love Poem: “Thoughts Upside Down” by NY Poet NG Swett

People really like this short rhyming poem from Hold Me Tight, my book of love poems

“Thoughts Upside Down” from HOLD ME TIGHT poetry book by New York poet NG Swett. On 4x6 adhesive shipping label printed on a thermal printer.

4YOU! Click image for free DOWNLOAD of png for personal use.

Here is a short video I made of the same poem:

Thermal poetry?

I printed the poem above on a thermal printer and I’ll tell you why.

Printing a poem on an adhesive thermal label is an idea I got by two accidents.

One accident was in the original printing of the paperback poetry book. A poem accidentally sucked. So I made a label with a better poem and covered my shame. (And updated and uploaded my files to Ingram Spark and Draft2Digital for the revised hard cover and ebook editions.)

The other accident was printing out a dozen of the same shipping label for an eBay sale. A waste of precious labels, for sure! But printing a dozen poems on purpose and then sticking them up around town might be fun.

When I’ve got some thermal poems in my bag, I keep my eye open for a good spot. What’s a good spot? Visible, public, out of the elements a bit, smooth surface, and possibly used by other sticker people…

Can you see my thermal poem?

In selling online, I’ve become aware of a huge number of creative, entrepreneurial and community-minded people doing ecommerce, and many of us have thermal printers because of the time, money and paper they save in shipping. The cost of ink these days, am I right?!