Some NSA guy sat in an office somewhere in

obscurity, not unlike a drone pilot on the third

floor of an office building in downtown Wichita

or wherever.  The NSA guy, fortunately not the

drone pilot, sat staring at us through our T.V. 

Our Chocolate Lab wasn’t feeling well and laid

at my wife’s feet under a blanket. We hoped he

didn’t have Valley Fever, a fungal disease which

gets in the lungs and not excitement over ASU’s

sports teams. We wondered if the NSA guy felt

sorry for Buddy Baloo and offered a prayer for

him from his office in obscurity. The show we

were watching was a bit boring so to entertain

ourselves we waved at the NSA guy.  To spice

things up for the guy during this festive holiday

season, I asked my wife to remove her shirt and

bra. Chagrined, she just stared at me and turned

and stuck her tongue out at the NSA guy I guess

for invading our privacy without asking permiss-

ion.  I hope she won’t be carted off to Guantanamo

but perhaps she will have already been released

during Obama’s first term because that is what he

promised, so she would be back home with her

feet up on the ottoman like now. But it is well

into his second term, so I guess, if she does go,

she won’t be getting out any time soon unless

Congress decides to get a life and stops trying to

sabotage the president and actually votes to shut

the thing down. I’m sure it would make Fidel and

his brother Raul happy not to mention my wife

and the dog who misses her already and that’s

probably why he isn’t feeling very well, so it’s

a relief to know that he doesn’t have Valley

Fever after all.  Meanwhile, my wife’s feet

are still on the ottoman and the NSA guy is

counting each toe, but the drone pilot appar-

ently doesn’t know, thank the Lord.

He hung the string of jalapeño shaped festive lights

from the Arizona condo balcony heights,

and saw at the swimming pool beneath

a shapely young lady in a swim suit so brief.

He leaned over to see down the low cut top

and did his best holiday salsa flip-flop.

The young lady heard the big plop and knelt

over the poor rube,

who, now unconscious, couldn’t appreciate her,

ah, cleavage.

He had to stop jogging

because of sciatica gained

over a two thousand two

hundred mile journey by

car all the while sitting on

his wallet. The solution,

according to a web med

article might simply be

to remove the wallet much

to the chagrin of the attorneys

seen on late night T.V. who

wished to reach through the

tube directly into the back

pocket to pick the wallet

which no longer was there.

And so the next day with

the assistance of four

ibuprofen tablets he

started jogging again and,

with that behind him, no

pun intended, and with

ankles, knees and hips

still good and the fleeting

memory of the previous

night’s T.V. ads, he started

worrying about LOW test-

osterone. Just then following

another of those seemingly

ubiquitous commercials and

without saying a word but

with a pitifully plaintive look

on his face, he glanced at his

wife who sat on the couch

watching re-runs of Route 66

and feeling sorry for the old

boy and with a knowing look

in her eye said, “You’re just

fine, darling. Now it’s time

to remove your jogging shoes.”

Smiling a Man from Dementia

smile, he removed his wet

jogging shoes from de Nile,

and his wife hung them out

to dry.

“Old cowboys don’t pass on.

They just spend the day

in the barn napping on the hay

with all their cowboy duds

still on.”

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his boots and spurs on.

His wife told him to go find some old mare

and with that gave him a real mean stare.

So, he then slept in the barn on the hay

with his boots and spurs still on.

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his six-shooter on.

It went off by accident one night

and gave his wife a mighty fright.

He then slept in the barn on the hay

with his six-shooter still on.

There was an old man from Tucson

who slept with his old chaps on.

He mounted his wife and rubbed her legs raw,

so he then slept in the barn on the straw

but, by God, he had his boots, spurs,

six-shooter and chaps still on.

The more metaphors

a poet stuffs into

a few lines is potato

sausage stretching the

gorged intestines of

a constipated bull just

before it bursts in the

hands of a Swede who

stuffs  the sausage into

a stew pot and slams

the cover with an

exclamation mark

heralding the

celebratory Christ-

mas season as the

boiling lutfisk

lifts the cover of

the pot on the next

burner revealing the

stinkiness of the

poet’s stuffed sausage

stanza not to mention

the literary allusion to

luscious lutfisk.

Dead albinos of Tanzania are

buried in cement poured over

wire to keep out those who

would raid the graves and chop

off limbs like rabbits’ feet to

be sold to the powerful. The

dead are safer than the living.

Witch doctors do the bidding

to frighten villagers with

superstitions and myths of

riches. There it’s blacks on

whites.  Here it’s whites on

blacks and the witch doctors

in both places do the bidding

for the powerful who are

scared of blacks and whites

and everything in between

including their own shadows.

And dead albinos there and

dead blacks here still cry for

justice and freedom from

cement graves imbedded

with wire so that albinos

there and blacks here will

live for justice and freedom

and Jesus in albino skin

there and black skin here

forgives and loves even

when they come for his

body parts.

“Nature lets us stay here,

and, one of these days, nature

is going to tell us to go,” his

wife said, “and then where will

we be?” she asked. After the

use and abuse in a very short

period of time, from an

anthropologist’s perspective,

perhaps

Mother Nature will

have had enough and we will

be out of (not in) the cold,

hot, cool, warm, wet, dry,

humid just somewhere

to nowhere place

and Mother will

start again from pro-

creation to protozoa

to a newly peopled

world without the people.

He didn’t think there

would be such a public

outcry against the anti-

gay, anti-Hispanic, anti-

black, anti-female att-

itudes and action, and

there really wasn’t,

except for something a 

little more than a

whisper on MSNBC,

but what an uproar

there was concerning

the anti-old white guy

stuff documented in a

fair and balanced way

on Fox News and dis-

cussed rigorously by

those doing water aerob-

ics in gated, 55 and older

Del Something-Or-Other

communities throughout

the South and Southwest,

most of the handful of billion-

aires floating around out there,

Congress and, without men-

tion, paranoid, old white

guys on Medicare and some

on Medicaid sitting around

simpering over white power

slipping through their arthritic

fingers forming puddles on

the carpet that the black,

nursing home custodian

would have to wipe after

the overworked, fatigued,

minimum wage, lesbian,

practical nurse notices

before she opens the win-

dow in the air-conditioned

room to let the stale air

out and notices the Hispanic

gardener clipping the

hedge on a day when it

is 95 in the shade.

The bitter, humid cold, like so many other

bullies, rudely rolled in and unceremoniously

shoved out the soft, seasonal warmth without any

consideration for the wishes, wants or desires

of javelinas, coyotes, let alone people or scorpions

or tarantulas or even the affable seasonal warmth

itself, which had discreetly cajoled the sadistic summer

heat to move aside for a season and, in this case,

decided that discretion was the better part of valor

by moving aside only to return another day much

to the satisfaction of all those mentioned above

and even the rattlesnakes who were preparing

for a long winter’s nap on the heels of the trans-

itional, soft, seasonal warmth.

Looking up while walking

his new,

ninety-five-pound, four-year-old

Chocolate Lab in the

desert, he saw

a plane flying low enough

under the clouds but

over Piestewa Peak into

Sky Harbor just

when he was thinking of using

a jet plane for a simile of the

blustery, windy, grey skies swooping 

down in the pre-winter

dust blow-up

over the desert.

And that’s just plain the way

it goes sometimes when verifiable reality

intrudes on imagistic poetry, just over

the rainbow, way

up high

with a really big 747 way

up in a dusty, desert sky,

a historical reality

he hadn’t

counted on for the authenticity

of his poetry.  And here, he

thought of it before

he saw it way up

high

in the sky.