A friend wrote “The sun came up,”
in spite of and in the face of bad

omens. And as the hymn proclaims,
“…though the wrong seems oft,

so strong…,” — “seems” being the
operative word and on Thanksgiving

the congregation sings, “Now thank
we all our God…,” and that’s not

just whistling in the dark or Dixie;
“It’s what we do,” as the president

and first lady are given to say in
a tone of affirmation in reference

to “going high.” We go high as Job
“went high” in spite of everything

to the contrary, we look up, we sing
beautiful songs, we hold hands, we

give hugs, we pass the peace, we
serve each other at the table as

the now ubiquitous Jesus served
the disciples on the beach and as

the omnipresent Jesus broke bread
with the two shell-shocked disciples,

and we say selah and “pause and
take that in,” and “amen” and

“that’s right” and “Preach it,
sister,” in the face of the wrong

that seems, oft, so strong —
“seems” being the operative word.

Trump’s impecunious supporters
may be experiencing existential horrors
when they realize The Hollow Man
will leave them thinking about pan-
handling across the streets of America,
standing on corners saying, “I implore ya’,”
begging for a buck or a silver coin
knowing the election had been purloined.
“Hey, man, can you give me a hand?
I now know we’ve been betrayed by the Hollow Man.”

Let us together disambiguate
what post-truth does obfuscate.
It seems that fact-checking is out of date
so truth from lies we must separate.
But it is hard when over the truth people
simply skate,
causing prejudices to grow and truth to
degenerate
into reasons for fear and hate.
So in order to avoid such a miserable fate,
hold these three high; do not subordinate —
seek the good, the true, the beautiful,
the moral, the empirical and spiritual, the aesthetical,
the holy trinity of being —
such the post-truth (disinformation)
cannot obliterate
in the face of stalwart disambiguation
also just continue to check the facts, mate.

It is said that billionaires are
not very inquisitive. Apparently,

they don’t have great imagin-
ations. Are they then one trick

ponies or, more to the point, a
one-note Donny, as in the Hollow

Man, making a media spectacle
with the gullible assistance of

mainline news shows which don’t
evidence much imagination either

(Is that because they are owned
by billionaires?) of forming an

administration along the lines of
a TV reality show, redux? He sits

magisterially at his resort receiv-
ing the eager wannabees for jobs

as apprentices to the huckster who
has but one card trick up his mono-

grammed shirt sleeve and is more
interested in playing Russian Roul-

ette with the KGB Trickster who
rides that one-trick pony known

as one-note Donny while the
wannabees bay to pin the tail

on the donkey, formerly known
as the one trick pony. And the

show goes on and on and on…
ad nauseum already.

People looked at the bridge
that the trains run on and
said it is a very good bridge,
strong — through and through.

Everyone knows that the road
where all the eighteen-wheelers
run is a very strong road —
through and through.

The branch of the oak tree which
has a rope tied to it so kids can
swing out over the river is a very
strong branch — through and through.

At the meeting to choose new
members of the National Honor
Society, four were deemed exemplary
students — through and through.

As he walked his beat faithfully,
everyone who knew the white
police officer said he was a really
nice person — through and through.

Until…the bridge collapsed under
the weight of the train causing
the train to dive into the river
killing thirty passengers.

Until…the road broke into pieces and
slabs flew all over the road causing
a thirty-vehicle pile up and several
deaths.

Until…the branch broke and two
kids slammed into the bank instead
of dropping into the river and broke
their necks.

Until… the four new National Honor
Society members confronted a Muslim
student and strangled her with
her own hijab.

Until…the police officer snapped and
pistol-whipped an Hispanic woman in
a wheel chair and shot an unarmed
black man killing him instantly.

It was all right there as it always
is, just below the surface —
a rotting infrastructure.

So much for reality,
and the thought that the myth
of Sisyphus
might suffice
(pushing the rock up so nice)
but to be perfectly right
it proved bigger than a slice
of Prometheus’ liver
and wasn’t just a sliver
eaten by the eagle
but, oh, so clever
as the myths worked their way
into to the US of A
by way
of Zeus, the Hollow Man
who has to say and say
and say nonsense all
the while others push the rock way
up the hill and have their
livers eaten only to grow back
each day.
Oh, that rock will fall down
and instill
fear that it will roll right down
upon the heads of the following hoards
and the bigger than sliver of the liver
eaten by the eagle and
condemned to rebirth and
repeating the unutterable
regeneration
of the ignorance
of previous generations.
May we embrace the
myths of Prometheus
and Sisyphus and
the wisdom they impart,
but let us simply say to
Zeus, The Hollow Man,
as Jesus said the Satan
in Peter, “Depart!”

Every step along
history’s way, it has been
about threatened men —
holding women back,
keeping a woman on her back;
reeking havoc on all gays,
harkening back to good old days
when men were men
and women wouldn’t offend.
It actually predates all those days
of corralling women and harassing gays.
It goes back to a primordial time
when men thought only of
populating the world with their own kind,
so all this moral outcry about abortion
is simply about men not getting their portion.
So, in 2016, we think we are so up-to-date,
but primordial and then Neanderthal man,
but certainly not Homo Sapien man
which means “the wise man,”
out of fear of being
cut off, reaches out in hate,
and acts out of hate
and, so we see that men’s fears
are eons old
but, most unfortunately
and oh, so tragically,
still completely up-to-date.

The Hollow Man has started
hollowing out America in his
scary attempt to Make America
Great again, which can only

signal Ozzie and Harriet and
the blackface, white guys as
Amos and Andy and while that’s
a comedy treat hard to beat for

white people, it is a venomous
vanilla concoction for everyone else —
blacks, browns, yellows, reds,
gays and women who were

victims of back-alley butchers
and the invasion of the body
snatchers and came out look-
ing like the Stepford Wives

— every one of them having to
drink the poisonous potion of
subservience, subtraction, in-
visiblity, incarceration and

death. The whites were swing-
ing to the beat originated by
blacks while blacks were still
swinging from trees. Browns

were still said to have wet backs
and yellows were getting out
of the American version of a con-
centration camp euphemistically

termed internment, which made it
sound like a vacation and reds?
Well, take a joy ride through
the reservations out west and

you can see that the Indians
didn’t get the best on their
long, lonely death marches to
the worst geography reserved

exclusively for them and gays
couldn’t look up because they
were on the down low. And now,
the put-upon whites who trust-

ed the Hollow Man’s hollow
promises really have gotten the
shaft while Wall Street walks
off with the mine and have

been double-dooped by the
Hollow Man who has no in-
tention of making America great
again for them because he won’t

and he can’t and what’s more,
that America never was great for
them and it won’t be now even

though they think in poor, white,
hapless hope that they are just
one misfortune away from being
millionaires. Most of all

and certainly to be pitied,
prosperous white guys
who don’t have a clue and
who are just Hollow Men, too.

And finally the world —
earth, water, air —
all that we are
and we don’t even care.

If we destroy the world,
we destroy ourselves;
“The fate of the land
is the fate of man.”*

* from Song as Abridged Thesis of George Perkin Marsh’s Man and Nature
by Major Jackson

Thirty-five years ago, a parish-
ioner and local physician roared
at the New Yorker cartoons. Seven
years, post-college educated and
I still felt so empty of anything
clever, sophisticated and erudite
in response. I just smiled knowing-
ly (I hoped) and chuckled with a
“but, of course” uttered in French:
mais bien sûr. Thirty-five years
later, a really good friend and
retired minister roars at the New
Yorker cartoons and tells me
about them each week when we
meet for coffee. Knowing he
doesn’t speak Spanish, and that
I still don’t understand the New
Yorker cartoons, I just nod with
a knowing smile of agreement
and say, O, senor, no hablo Ingles
and then laugh heartily. I think
he understands my appreciat-
ion of those incredibly soph-
isticated cartoons.

The bad news is that The
Hollow Man is going to be the
forty-fifth president of
the United States. The good

news, in light of that bad
news, is that we are a thou-
sand years away from ex-
tinction according to Stephen

Hawking, pre-eminent theo-
retical physicist, and what
would have been considered
really bad news before the

election of The Donald and
all its implications, now
actually looks like good news.
Humanity will survive for awhile.

Measuring the history of
the earth as a twenty-
four-hour clock, humanity
appeared at twenty-three

hours, fifty-nine minutes and
fifty-nine seconds. And so,
according to Dr. Hawking’s
calculation, we only have

less than a second left. That
puts everything, including
the election of The Hollow Man,
into perspective. And so, for

me that means that I need to
spend the rest of my nano-
second existence in as much
of the glory of nature as I can

— hiking, jogging, kayaking,
camping, cycling — being a
part of that which preceded
me by eons and will move

beyond me with only the
memory of my nano-second
temporal life in the
eternal heart of God.