On their spring, road trip home

from Arizona to the shores of

Lake Michigan, the couple

observed at the motel’s ad-

vertised free breakfast a lot

of really fat, old people who

sneezed a lot into their hands

instead of their elbows and

stayed at the same motels the

couple did because the couple

had a big Chocolate Lab and

most of the old, really fat

people had very small, really

high-pitched barking dogs, so

they all stayed at the same pet

friendly motels along the way

from the West to the East. Some

of the people picked up their

dog’s shit. Others didn’t be-

cause the little dogs’ little turds

were strewn along the way out-

side the motel right under the

sign about picking up one’s

animal waste. So it was pretty

obvious, some of the old, fat

people probably had a hard

time bending over to pick up

the turds. The couple drove

through a lot of really horrible

terrain, the first part of the trip

being reservations where horr-

ible houses with a lot of junk

sat in places where the dust

blew into nostrils like heroin

in order to keep the people

passive. Silently, they drove

through the deadly CO2

emissions and sat silent

at sixty miles per hour

while vehicles with a zero

rating for particle pollution

roared past.

The PBS news’ commentator

speaking about an immediately

unfolding international power

play summarized the interview

by saying, in relation to the same

old “mine is bigger than yours”

gambit, “Nobody is taking their

eyes off the ball,” or perhaps she

meant balls, and on the same day

earlier on the same broadcast, it

was reported that a UN scientific

study concluded that just about

everybody’s eyes have been off

the ball – in fact – way, way off

the ball called THE EARTH,

and that’s the hell of it, speaking

of thermal heat. We’re apparently

mesmerized, as always, by the

bravado of male member size

and not much concerned with

Katrina, Sandy and the real

wrath of females to come. It’s

not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Hurray for rights for LGBT’s

and justice for all other minor-

ities including the 99.99% econ-

omically, but, the stone cold

reality is, none of these worthy

causes is worth much if the

LGBT folks and all other minor-

ities and the 99.99% economically

drown in floods, die in droughts,

burn in wildfires, or get swept out

to sea. All, of which, beg the quest-

ion, “Are we majoring in minors

and minoring in majors as we all

shrivel on the vine

or drown in brackish brine?”

The following haiku was written by Braden Dahl, my ten-year-old grandson, and was accepted for publication in the Young American Poetry Digest 2013:

Swim through the water                                                                                                           in the depth of the South Platte                                                                                      Search for a stone fly

Sitting at the bar of the restaurant

during happy hour, they watch kick

boxing on T.V. – red faced, bloodied

bodies, humongous belt buckle prize

around the woman’s waist and a

smirk on her split lips until the adren-

aline wears off in the next day or two.

Later that evening in the comfort of

their condominium they watch what

they thought would be the lesser

of two violent shows (not quite an

Agatha Christi off-stage death and

then a great plot until the denouement

but usually not bad as far as evening

T.V. goes) only to be greeted by

fifteen or so cops and others in a

police station blown apart by some

angry kid with a Glock 9 mm before the

opening credits. And the rhetorical

question comes to mind: why are

things the way they are on the streets?

In the early 70’s a young psychiatrist

who set up practice in Podunk

showed statistically the connec-

tion between media violence and

street violence. What ever happened

to that doc? Has this question gone

a beggin’ yet?

The PBS news’ commentator

speaking about an immediately

unfolding international power

play summarized the interview

by saying, in relation to the same

old “mine is bigger than yours”

gambit, “Nobody is taking his or

her eyes off the ball,” or perhaps she

meant balls, and on the same day

earlier on the same broadcast, it

was reported that a UN scientific

study concluded that just about

everybody’s eyes have been off

the ball – in fact – way, way off

the ball called THE EARTH,

and that’s the hell of it, speaking

of thermal heat. We’re apparently

mesmerized, as always, by the

bravado of male member size

and not much concerned with

Katrina, Sandy and the real

wrath of females to come. It’s

not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Hurray for rights for LGBT’s

and justice for all other minor-

ities including the 99.99% econ-

omically, but, the stone cold

reality is, none of these worthy

causes is worth much if the

LGBT folks and all other minor-

ities and the 99.99% economically

drown in floods, die in droughts,

burn in wildfires, or get swept out

to sea. All, of which, beg the quest-

ion, “Are we majoring in minors

and minoring in majors as we all

shrivel on the vine

or drown in brackish brine?”