Political purges begin
before The Hollow Man is even
in the presidency of the USA.

His son-in-law is doing it the NJ way —
getting rid of Christie and Christie’s
minions who put his father away.

And then the family is pawning
its wares on the US dime, on
QVC and T.V. prime time,
which is illegal at any old-time.

The Hollow Man brings a guy,
a right-wing retired
military guy with ties
to Turkey to accompany
him to his first security
briefing before which
is supposed to be before
only select eyes.

And speaking of select eyes,
The Hollow Man ducked out to
dinner without telling anyone,
so how can we trust The Donald
to be on call
any and all
the time for us all?

And all
The Hollow Man’s appointments
have been put on hold
until all the right papers are filed
again.
Maybe we can do a write in.

Finally, there is still hope
for the Electoral College to
pay attention to all this craziness
and elect the one who won
the popular vote
and elect Hillary as president
of the United States
before it is ever so late,
ever, ever so, so, maybe too late.

Dear Gwen Ifill,

Yesterday, I heard you had died.
I didn’t even know you were sick.
I did notice recently that you had
lost weight and commented to my
wife how good you looked think-
ing the weight loss was intentional
and all for the good. Little did we
know. We watched news journalists
on various stations pay you tribute.
The persons gathered at the PBS
Newshour to reflect on your life
and their relationships with you,
to a person, couldn’t hold back the
tears. I sat and cried with them.
Your pastor spoke of the Ifill
family’s heritage as leaders in
the African Methodist Episcopal
Church and how you were a person
of strong faith evidenced in in-
tegrity, honesty, toughness,
gentleness, compassion and a smile
to outshine the sun. I know you
are a person of faith and so I’m
glad I had this opportunity to
speak to you personally. I will,
so much, miss that smile.

The Hollow Man sits on the bare-
chested, bald man’s lap having his
mane stroked like a lap-dog. The

Hollow Man barks and the beige inter-
viewer with a bag of marshmallows
in her hand blanches, smiles timidly

and asks Marie Antoinette who sits
with her $1,600 red dress on, if the
Hollow Man bites. Not understanding

the question, Marie says as if plead-
ing for civil discourse, “Let them
eat cake,” quoting her favorite

Frenchwoman without attribution.
The children — boys with slicked
down, mobster style hair and girls

with well-quaffed, blond locks —
stand at attention while someone
off-stage far right calls, “Sig Heil,”

without attribution. The Hollow Man
barks, the children giggle nervously
and the bare-chested, bald-man states

with smirky bravado, “The Hollow Man’s
kingdom for a lame horse,” as a bad
paraphrase without attribution, while

millions of white people watching
and hoping to be beautiful and rich
just like the Hollow Man’s ever-so-

white family say, “We’re just one
misfortune away from being million-
aires,” without attribution.

My sister Marcia, who for six months is five and a half years older than I am and for six months is six years older than I am, which, of course, can’t be except when looking only at the ages and not the dates of birth, asked in an e-mail if I were catching up to her. Here is my response.

For a half a year I’m catching up to you, Sister Sue.
I’m seventy-two and not at all blue.
I jog, cycle, kayak, camp
and walk the dog whether it’s sunny or damp.
Wife Chris can tell you
if there is anything else I still can do
like climb Piestewa Peak or chug a microbrew or two but not a few.
So far we’re still having fun
right here in the Valley of the Sun.

On a serious note, I’m just sick, sick, sick that we just elected The Hollow Man (October 15 post) president of the United States. I commit to working in non-violent resistance to policies that would hurt women, minorities and our LGBT brothers and sisters. Kyrie Eleison.

The young bicycle shop owner saw my Brooks saddle and said he loved the leather saddle but that those saddles had never been good for his “business.” A little slow on the uptake, I realized he wasn’t speaking of his bike shop.

Brooks saddles are beautiful but notoriously hard and take years and years to soften. My Brooks saddle dates back to 1975. After all those years, it has reached the perfect equilibrium — not too hard, not too soft — just right.

I couldn’t help myself. I said, “I like that — ‘business.’ That is so much better than ‘junk.’ I don’t want my ‘business’ being called ‘junk.'”

Then I thought about the phrase “God doesn’t make junk.” Junk is for throwing away. Junk is useless. Junk just sounds junky. The sound of the word certainly isn’t aesthetically pleasing.

Junk is trash. Of course, there is the phrase, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” with the masculine pronoun being used intentionally. I like the idea of certain parts of my anatomy being thought of as “treasure.” That’s actually biblical, but back to business.

Business sounds enterprising — business can be good and business can be bad. There are up days and down days, so to speak. And then there is “taking care of business.”

For some reason, we descendants of the Victorians have a hard time calling “it” for what “it” is, but as long as we do, “business,” while way too capitalistic sounding and coldly transactional and not at all romantic or caring or passionate or representative of a way of giving lovingly to another, is far better than “junk,” not to mention that no one wants junky plumbing.

You know, maybe I’ll just call my “business” — “Brooks.”

lassitude crEeps into his bones,
       saps Nourishment from his muscles.
            Nothing seems to work.
 nose dives Under the water’s surface.
lungs fill wIth seaweed; his body flops.

I know we are scared to death,
but there is a part of me that
hopes The Donald is just as much
a schmuck as what referring to him
as The Donald would indicate. No
one would dare refer to Adolph as
The Adolph, in which case that
would be a one way ticket to oblivion.
The good news is that this way,
hopefully, it means The Donald really
is just a schoolyard bully, who is
just a scaredy-cat in disguise. In
which case, he will not be so scary
and hopefully will revert to the
reasonable actions he espoused
in the past. Unfortunately, the
bad news is that the supporters
of Trump, not The Donald, will be
greatly disappointed and will not
stand for it and might really scare
The Donald and the rest of us to
death thanks to the schmuck, The
Donald.

His wife asked what Thanksgiving
and Christmas might be like this
year. He wondered what holidays
were like when “Deck the Halls,”
were sieg heils, and then searching
for denials, he could only tearfully
hum the achingly sad, wistful,
mournful, longing carol penned
in 1944 at the height of the
Second World War, “Have Yourself
a Merry Little Christmas,” and
then he began to cry in earnest.

In a week he will turn seventy-two
and he just wants to cry. This isn’t
about that. He reads poetry daily
and he has a backlog to read because
of missing some days due to travel.
He gets choked up while reading every
one of the handful that sat unopened
in his e-mail box and he is sure not
all of them were intended to evoke
tears. A friend told him recently
about a mutual acquaintance who
is becoming very sentimental in
his old age and even cries while
delivering dry talks on fundraising.
This isn’t that. He is sad because
his country has lost its way and
he sees the hostility and it evokes
feelings akin to those he experienced
when his wife died in a day twenty-
three years ago. He’s not being
sentimental; he’s just in shock,
and scared and sad, ever so sad.

She left so early, earlier than
anyone could possibly imagine,
but images and imagining were
all about her life, her short life,
dead at forty-nine, just as she
was about to hit her stride, her
art about to take off and soar as
a left-brained social psychologist
bluntly stated as he and her
widowed husband passed in the
hallway of the college ath-
letic facility within a week
of her death. And then one day,
years and years later in a dream,
she said to him, “I’m good and
it’s nice here and my art is
appreciated ever so much more
than it ever was before.” After
all those years, in the great
scheme of things, he could accept
that, affirm that and celebrate
that…for her.