The Corvette Stingray had a small political sticker

In the rear window and the license plate simply

Read PRE GOV.  It sat in a prized parking space.

Then I saw him as I rounded the corner – slim,

Groomed, wearing an in-style tapered suit, open

Collared shirt, French cuffs, expensive shoes,

Flashing his bright whites, slapping people on the

Back while not quite looking them in the eye and

Waving goodbye to his affluent political aficionados

And awestruck latte drinkers at the outdoor café

On a late spring, bright and beautiful day in the town

Where he owns a really, really big home on the

Lake that opens to the Big Lake – a town he visits

Periodically when not visiting one of his other homes.

He entered the café, made the rounds quickly and

Exited through the back door and around the corner

From the car.  Minutes later the Corvette sped

Away with a nondescript sedan in pursuit. Some-

One asked someone else, “Didn’t he lose that

Election six years ago?”  Someone else asked, “Is

Reality harder to face if you’re a billionaire?”

Clergy, they all simultaneously thought about

Camels and eyes of needles as the car sped off

To another kind of kingdom.

We don’t go to church right

now, and we miss the fellowship,

but what I really miss is singing

the hymns and figuring out what

key the hymns are in by the notat-

ion in the upper left corner of the treble

clef and the first and last notes in the

treble clef and following the base clef

notes for a baritone. It’s just not the

same playing the guitar at home in

the evening in treble clef and harmon-

izing with my wife as she falls off to sleep

as sweet as that is and maybe that’s

as sweet as it gets and I have to get

up to speed on what sweet really means.

At the third out of six group

training sessions for our newly

adopted four-year-old Chocolate

Lab, after hearing the trainer say,

“Give the command; when they

obey, immediately give the treat

and say Good Boy, Good Boy,

Good Boy,” that I began to wonder

why my parents didn’t say that to

me over and over maybe with a treat

like I say it to my dog. I asked the

trainer about that. The other dog

owners laughed knowingly and he

just said, “Tell me about it.”

Poets for the people, throughout the

world, are pariahs to their repressive

regimes and many languish in prisons

like animals in glass and wire cages

at pet stores throughout the US of A.

We keep adopting animals from

God forsaken pet mills but let the

poets languish in oblivion, their

governments hoping they will die

before they once again bark and

bite their repressively, miserably,

illegitimate masters. Just then,

someone adopted an inbred

but really cute Jack Russell.

We have a new dog

who stinks up a tune,

so I follow his trail

from room to room,

sniffing and coughing

and Febreezing the fume.

I dusted him all over

with soda for baking.

My wife, unknowing,

squirted him with vinegar

water she was making.

The dog foamed all over

before my startled eye.

We’re thankful he didn’t

rise up and just die.

So in the future when he

smells and I say, “Oh, phew,”

instead of a lethal cocktail

we’ll just use shampoo.

We live along the

shore of an

inland sea.

We live in a house

surrounded by grass

of that sea.

We have trees and

plants, birds, bugs

and bees.

What we don’t have

are machines that

belch in the breeze.

But, we who live

along the shore

of the sea,

find that tools of

suburbia make

us wheeze.

I’d like our neighbors

to desist and

cease

from use of polluting

machines that make

us sneeze.

But it’s too late;

so it wouldn’t work

even to say please.

I use my inhaler and

continue to wheeze.

Welcome to the inland

sea with a less than

pure breeze.