Administration explanation:
cacophonous sounds rose,
crossed, swirled, fell
in contrapuntal obfuscation
making it all clear as a bell
rising up from the ninth
circle of hell.

People are afraid and there
are Hispanics right now who
are being torn from family and
friends by the Trump Gestapo
forces known as ICE and that is
existentially really scary and
the totally under-reported bad
news but the really good news
about the really bad news is that
this administration is in the
throes of death in the first month
of its existence (You can hear the
death rattle in the president’s
lies.), as we speak because, dumb
as they are, they don’t even know
that they have committed high
crimes and misdemeanors against
the Constitution and word has it
that the Donald would really like
to be out of the lonely nights in
the White House and free to be
the Donald of all Donald Trump
enterprises and, as he will say
some day, he had no idea how
boring it could be being the
President of the United States
and that from a boring jail cell.

Happy hour at a local, award
winning, contemporary Asian
restaurant and after two hearty,
happy hour vodkas on the rocks,
the patron stood and massaged
his wife’s sore shoulders from
yesterday’s bike ride and thought
of a great idea: “Hey, guys, how
about ‘A Martini and Massage’
for happy hour? What a great mar-
keting idea. My salary would be
negotiable.” “Right,” and the
proverbial, “Don’t call us; we’ll
call you.”

Waiting next to the check-out line
at the grocery store, he saw an

employee marking down the price
of boxes of Godiva chocolates on

the day after Valentine’s day. “See,
dear,” he called to his wife standing

in the check-out line, “if I had wait-
ed till today, I could have bought

you two boxes of chocolates. I’m
guessing a dozen red roses are half

off, too.” Silence.

He heard a crack — soft,
quiet, almost imperceptible.
He was out on the trail. It
could have been anything,
say the sound of a piece of
dead, dry cactus being step-
ped on by a coyote. He was
sitting at home. It could
have been anything, say the
sound of the dog’s knees
when he rose. He was lying
in bed. It could have been
anything, say the sound of
someone stepping on a twig
while walking past the open
window. He could have been
anywhere and it could have
been anything, say the soft,
cracking sound in the fragile
fabric of a democratic re-
public made under the first
step of the descending heel
of the boot of tyranny.

If she said, “If you loved me, you would
know what I need,” once, she said it a
gazillion times, to which he would say,
“I do love you and want to do whatever

you need because I love you, but I’m not
God and so you have to tell me what you
need,” to which years later, she would
say, “You think you know me, but you don’t

know me, really know me,” with this air
of self-satisfaction inferring that she,
obviously, was way too mysterious and
complex for simple, old him to know and

understand, to which he would say, simply,
“Okay,” and then she would say, “I never
ever want to be thought of as common. I
am anything but common. I am un-common,

unique,” to which he would say, “That you
are.” And in hind-sight he wishes that he
had responded as calmly as he reported,
but, of course, didn’t — leading to a ga-

zillion unnecessary arguments in varying
degrees of intensity and volume which is
what led one of their kids to quip sar-
castically and rhetorically and not a

little meanly, “We look pretty good to
the outside world don’t we, in spite of
the way it really is?” To which, he had
nothing to say as he cringed inside, the

shame rising. All that took place years
ago, years after his wife had died and so
he discovered it would take many of those
years to come to a separate peace, self-

forgiveness and the acknowledgment that
he did love her however imperfectly and
that he did know her a bit more than she
gave him credit for knowing but that he

didn’t know himself well enough and was
too insecure to offer her the fruits of
the spirit — peace, patience, kindness,
and self-control along with a dozen
red roses for starters.

He told his wife he was in a
general state of malaise for
at least two reasons. First,

foremost and hopefully of
very short duration is life
lived in immediate, instant-

aneous upheaval (personal
and societal) under a new
federal administration.

Second, and hopefully, of
even shorter duration
is gout from drinking

alcohol. This one he tries
to make sound glamorous
by identifying with one of

his favorite writers, Jim
Harrison, who suffered from
gout because he ate rich

food and drank too much.
But it doesn’t work because
the gout hurts too much.

So, of the two reasons for
his general dis-ease, there
is something immediate he

can do — stop drinking so
the gout goes away which
then gives him the ability

to address the other source
of malaise. With the pain
in his toe gone he can join

a protest march against the
present administration. He
won’t be drinking to that.

Why turn to Haiku
when the creative is blocked?
Because of the form.

The form frees the mind.
It supplies what is needed
to put mind in gear.

Sometimes some structure
frees the creative juices
to flow like rivers.

Three thousand years of fighting
over land rights with their god

on their side – the land flowing
with milk and honey, no, the

land flowing with the blood of
men, women, children, destruct-

ion to livestock, to crops —
a heel continually crushing a

single, solitary Rose of Sharon
that cries in the desert from

a kingdom — not of this world.

Mean, old Trumpelthinskin
unlike Rumpelstiltskin
could only spin fool’s gold from straw
even spinning while combing
his thinning, fake hair,
which could be mistaken for straw.
Being hollow he wanted to
be filled with everything he saw.
Such greed got him into bankruptcy
but he managed to bully and spin
with fake facts his way
to the presidency
where, being a malevolent narcissist,
early on he sent out
vindictive directive after directive
at which his inner circle of deplorables
cheered with invective.
The courts he tried to win
with his alternative fact spin
but they refused his advances of
lechery
and in their verdicts exposed his
treachery.
Alleged to have relieved himself
on Russian women in the buff,
he thus tried the same thing on
fair maiden Lady Justice
only to receive a solid rebuff.
Now, we can only hope he follows
the self-destructive behavior
of another hollow man
from dark fairy land,
Rumpelstiltskin who when
refused his obscene demand
of the fair damsel’s first child
went wild
slammed down his little feet
and maybe his small hand
creating a hole so deep and wide
he fell in
and never, ever was seen again
in all the land —
thus would end the presidency
of the deplorable Trumpelthinskin.