On Considering Getting a Twofer

Lift your hand if you are in favor of a hand lift to go

With the face lift (maybe getting a twofer),

Because you can have the face lift, but people will glance

at the back of your hands to get the truth about your

“Can he/she possibly look that young at his/her age?”

Of course, you could save money by walking through life with

your palms upward and the backs downward to hide the truth.

Besides they’ll think you are open, accepting, vulnerable, giving, prayerful

spiritual and maybe even a Buddhist – a very young looking Buddhist,

or perhaps a very young looking panhandler down on his/her luck,

or, if you pull your shoulders up around your neck at the same time,

someone who just doesn’t know the answers to life’s greatest questions,

but who could be forgiven, given your obvious young age.

While Reading Award Winning Poets

While reading award winning poets, a couple (two) among the best

float above the rest

using imagery of drifting skyward, rising,

metaphors of heavenly quests?

“All these poems that drift upward in our free-floating minds….” (Jim, poet #1), and

“A boy runs along with an invisible string that goes

right up to the sky….” (Tom, poet #2)

Are they rising toward another dimension?

“Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, way up in the sky in my beautiful balloon?” (The Fifth Dimension, singing group)

“Or were they just, like I, lusting after Marilyn McCoo, too?” (Bob)

I Was Told the Other Day

I was told the other day

that friends don’t call out friends.

What was it I could say,

that a friend never offends?

Spouse or partner falls

In the sterile circle

where no one ever calls

or faces the big hurdle

of finding a way out

to confront the loved one

or perhaps just call out

a friend who needs someone

who can do risky stuff —

the thing that needs to be done,

not inoffensive fluff

that just prolongs false fun.

An intervention waits,

but yes, fools do rush in.

Shouldn’t have said what he hates (?)

‘cause now the ice is thin

in a relationship

couldn’t weather the storm.

His e-mail now does skip

passed. He is not informed.

And in Hillary’s visage

perhaps it takes a village.

This Really Big Name Crime Novelist

This really big name crime novelist appeared in a TV advertisement

hawking his latest corporately written novel (He has a really big staff of writers so he doesn’t have to pen an honest word anymore but gets all the credit and the staff makes a lot of money.),

and I just thought about how corporations now, via the Supreme Court, are considered people with voting rights.

Is there a corporate crime here… somewhere…anywhere that anyone notices and is worthy of a

really good suspenseful, crime novel that is sure to make a ton of money and gets that corporation’s vote?

Pseudo Paul and Big Brother

Pseudo Paul or the Paul who was beginning to be pseudo and just trying to save a ship in stormy seas said there was no reason to fear the authorities

if one hadn’t done anything wrong: “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,

for he is God’s servant for your good.”  Are you kidding? About what authorities was he talking and who was deciding what was good?

Were those early Christians just trying to get along so they wouldn’t be eliminated? What happened to that Hellenistic Spartan spirit and Hebrew Chutzpah, which led them to the lions’ den or the

coliseum to face the gladiators? Had the courage worn thin and they were just trying to survive (I love Jesus, but please don’t kill me, and if you wish, really, I don’t even know who this Jesus is)?

What has happened to us and our Spartan/Chutzpah spirit?  Are we just trying to survive…in the name of Jesus appealing to how Jesus paid it all and

we couldn’t do it without Jesus and now that we are right with God through the humiliating/excruciating death of the God/man Jesus

because God the Father was really, I mean, really pissed off but just couldn’t, even though we deserved it, eliminate us?

Did you ever think there was something wrong with that equation?  I mean the thing about it’s all about me and Jesus and

how I’m just a miserable worm but Jesus paid it all for me and, as such, I won’t smoke anymore and I will try not to drink too much and

would it be all right if I do you know what with my neighbor’s wife (Hey, at least as many of evangelicals commit adultery as the heathens going to hell) and an and an…

and that kind of religious narcissism just is a completely false reading of scripture? In our superficial world where we have reduced faith

to some kind of celestial get out of jail free card and where the street, neighborhood, city, township, county, state, nation, planet, solar system, milky way, universe, universes from micro, string theory to macro parallel/multiple universes

is nothing we need to think about let alone evolution and equal rights and social justice on the little place back home we call earth?

Did you feel the drip from the melting of the polar caps on your noggin?

Don’t even think about it because apparently we don’t know who we are dealing with, or more properly, with whom we are dealing.

They are watching; let me reiterate; they are watching and that is kind of scary.

This Christmas, you better watch out, you better not pout….

A Dream

Congress votes to pull all commodes from the homes of the top 1 %

until they tell their lobbyists to give it a rest with room to negotiate without

scatological considerations.

Black Friday not Good Friday

Black Friday, not Good Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,

violence, shots fired, customers pepper sprayed… at least no one died.

Silent (hold the i and up a note) Night, Holy (hold the o and up a note)

Night as in tradition, all is calm all is bright. Jump a month from

Black Friday on Black Friday to Christmas Eve on Black Friday, and the commercial says

it’s a Pampers kind of night. “Mary, Joseph, grab the box. What can I say?

Jesus just crapped in the hay.”

Standing By the Sliding Door

Standing by the sliding door, staring at the yard, still, silent waterfall, pond with just a bubbler now that fall is on its way and winter is bearing down, goldfish rising to nibble the net, which catches leaves so they won’t float

to the bottom, I now see the wonderfully slim, flaky trunks of the birches, the long uplifted arms of the giant maple which three other seasons blocks my view of the magnificent carved out of the glacier dune, and then as always the

scaly trunks of the white pines with bushy bows reaching ever higher to the sun behind the clouds of fall, the fragile easily swaying trunks of the hemlocks and the arborvitaes who hold back the east winds

while spread around them all over the ground are drying, curling once green, now reddish brown ever duller yellowish tan leaves and a plush cushiony carpet of pine needles. The trees hold everything in place in this swaying sandy paradise.

My thoughts turn to William Wordsworth, “The child is father to the man, and I would wish that all my days be spent in natural piety.” And then as my spirit is lifted at the passing of one season to another and an affirmation of the glorious cycle of life,

and as I was just on the verge of profundity, peripheral vision caught a glimpse. There was the damnable burrowing rodent, Alvin, the chipmunk, scurrying into his hole right next to the pond.

I just know that he and Simon and Theodore are going to scratch through the liner of the pond while merrily squeaking some irritatingly obnoxious version of a Christmas carol and can you imagine the cost of repair or replacement?

Where is David Seville when you need him? Well, so much for that mood.

The Dog is Always a Great Conversation Starter

Wherever we are, hiking the trails in Phoenix Mountain Preserve, walking along the beach, jogging down the street or sitting at an outdoor restaurant, Boomer, the beautiful Chocolate Lab, gets a lot of attention.

If not for the dog, I fear we would be lonely people. It’s the dog that people stop to see and you find that dog lovers make for very nice people and honest ones, too,

like the couple we met while hiking in Phoenix. I’m sure they would have just passed us by with maybe a nod or a hi, but the young man and woman wanted to chat with Boomer.

He was all ears and a wagging tail about the conversation.

I asked them if they lived nearby, yes; where they had gone to school, University of Arizona, and what they had studied. He said he was an environmental scientist.

“Wow,” I exclaimed. “That’s really important especially in this time of global warming. We need a lot of you folks to help put us on the right course.” I spoke excitedly. I can get animated.

“No,” he stated flatly. “It’s all over, so enjoy it while you can. Have a nice hike. Oh, and I’m not kidding, either.” I don’t think she told us what she did, or perhaps we just didn’t hear for the ringing in our ears.

They moved on and we just stood there for a while. I looked at Chris; we both looked down at the dog and Boomer asked us when we were going to continue the hike.

The sun seemed a lot bigger, the heat a lot more intense and the ground even drier and dustier. I needed a drink of water real badly. They seemed nice and see what I mean about the honesty thing?

This was the only time I regretted having taken the dog along. A nod or a hi would have sufficed, and I could have continued walking in blissful ignorance on an afternoon when the sun was small in the sky, the day a bit chilly and the ground all green and aglow with desert plants.

Darn you, Boomer.

Eighteen Years Have Passed since a huge grief experience and while I have stopped worrying about myself, I’m really worried about our republic.

We are still living the deadly consequences of previous administrations’ administrating, as anyone with a brain would know because things don’t just happen and then go away never to be heard from again.

Things reverberate for years like grief, as an example, which some never ever deal with and, of course, all never ever get over because there is never ever getting over the death of a loved one.

You just commit suicide or figure out with the help of a really good therapist how to deal with it.

The nation is now in that place.

It’s suicide or we figure out how to get hold of a really, really good therapist.