A quip on TV in reference
to Russia is “A gas station
with an army.”

Another quip about Russia is
“A bank which owns Trump
and family.”

Bank on the gas station and
hope Putin’s bank never calls
in the note on Trump and family.

Trump will love Putin as
long as Putin loves Trump
but watch out if Putin
calls out Trump and family.

We might then have to deal
with nuclear death, mass
destruction and at the
very least calumny.

Trump has his finger on the
red button and he has the
backing of the Republicans
and his own family.

However, a couple of quips and calumny
are nothing to Putin’s mafia.
If need be, he will strike first
and goodby Trump and the American family.

Another of life’s most embarrassing moments: a workshop on preaching and, I, at least ten years into ministry, confused the word “pericope” with periscope, as my spellcheck just did trying to make pericope into periscope by insisting it needed an “s.”

Not one for details, I simply glanced at the word, saw the “s” that wasn’t there and made an assumption, and you and I both know how to spell assume.

Not to use it as an excuse as much as an explanation, studies show that when readers are faced with sentences and paragraphs which omit letters, the reader can still read the paragraph because the brain simply supplies the missing letters. Okay, lame excuse. I tried.

Pericope {puh-rik-uh-pee] means an “extract from a text, especially a passage from the Bible.” It’s a word biblical scholars like to use to sound, well, scholarly.

It was in vogue in those days and as things come and go, I don’t know if it still is, in as much as I, in retirement, don’t do scholarly examinations of an extract from a biblical text anymore.

And, well, you know what a periscope {/ˈperəˌskōp/} is.

I thought periscope was a wonderfully fine word to use in the examination of a biblical text. You could really zoom in on it, so to speak.

One last try: when I did a proofread of this article, the spell check highlighted pericope and I had to hit “always ignore.” Obviously, the proofreaders at WordPress are not biblical scholars. All right already, I’ll give it up.

Back to class: the participants got a kick out of my ignorance while all I could think of in the moment was, “Down periscope.”

“Does the West have the will to survive?”
he asks in the words handed him by some
ideologue in his inner circle because
he doesn’t have a clue about the West
besides Kanye and he really liked John
Wayne. The will to survive? The West
has been trying to kill off the Near,
Middle and Far East since before the
Crusades when it was all for Jesus and
then it was for land and then it was to
stop Communism and then it was for the
oil and in the process annihilated millions
of human beings and he asks the question:
Does the West have the will to survive?
What? Survive the suicide bombs, trucks
crashing into pedestrians, bombs in night-
clubs? No, probably not, because the
guerilla warriors have the West’s ovaries
and testicles in hand and the big squeeze
is called “Blow back” and we can’t see
the 900 lb. guerilla called greed in our
own living room. We are filled with mass
fear and when a nation is filled with mass
fear, watch out — can mass annihilation
be far behind?

Even though he comes from
A super evangelical, theo-
Logically conservative,
Socially pious, hymn sandwich
Liturgical place with a minister
Father who was more dictator
Than democrat (with a small d),
He eventually came out of the
Closet, but became a liturgical
Snob. He visited a progressive,
Inclusive, super left-leaning,
Rainbow coalition congregation
Of a friend made up of gays
And straights, former Pentecostal
Blacks and Hispanics, formerly
Rejected Roman Catholics and a
Few Asians who wondered if Jesus
And the Buddha were buddies and
So, the worship was, to say it
Politely, stone soup. The sexually
Liberated, liturgical snob would
Never return. The friend wondered
To himself, well, we all have our
Blind spots, don’t we?

He saw this clever drawing from
the perspective of looking down on a man
whose brain is exposed in a funnel head.
The man is slurping a single strand of
spaghetti which went directly
from the plate through his mouth and
became the brain.

This isn’t your grandmother’s semolina.
It is the genetically engineered, loaded
with chemicals that never go away
but are there to stay
and which thus became
the genetically-engineered-
loaded-with-chemicals
American brain.

Then he thought of the old,
public service TV commercial
warning about what became
of a brain
on drugs —
an egg sizzling in a frying pan.

The commercial didn’t work, because
the American brain doesn’t sizzle
but does the “wash and
slosh” like a top-loading machine
on opioid chemicals
as well as the
genetically-engineered-loaded-
with-chemicals-that-will-last-forever-
semolina-which-then-became
the American brain.

He wonders if in some way this
might help explain
the brain
that tipped the electoral college scales
in the last presidential campaign
or perhaps help explain
the president’s own brain.

It seems about as reasonable
as the other stuff he has heard.

*a drawing by poet David Hernandez

He believes the past, present and future
are right there with him in the eternity of

now, but he knows that his past has it all over
his present in terms of quantity and, right

now, he would settle for less personal past,
a lot more quality personal present and a great

big kiss to the infinite future, which for him
doesn’t really amount to that many more years.

Oversimplification,
Generalization,
Disapprobation,
Vilification,
Vituperation —
Anything but a serious
Explanation
Requiring unbiased
Research
And painstaking
Examination
With a plan
Toward
Rectification
And
Restoration,
Not some knee-jerk
Gesticulation
Of a one-hundred-forty
Character
Character Assassination
Based, not on
Knowledge or critical
Examination,
But ignorance and fear
Leading to the
Militarization
Of a
Nation
Sinking into dystopian
Mortification and
Death as a
Result of
Ignorance of the
Nation’s
Declaration, a sign of the
Severe, land-sliding
Stupification
of the
General
Population.

Banks create money.
From????
Mostly air floating
The internet into
Accounts as loans —
More and more and more
Loans; then banks sell
The loans to other
Banks for a profit
And those banks
Sell those loans to
Other banks for
A profit and
Companies buy
Companies with
The air money
And then sell
The companies
To other companies
For a profit of
Air money
And real wages go
Down and down
And real people go
Down and down
Until the company
Is bled dry and is
Now as worthless
As the air money
That is making
The one percent
Really, really
Wealthy on
Air. And then
The Ponzi scheme
Crashes on Trump
Tower and The
Donald is seen
On the street
Pleading, “Hey,
Brother, could you
Lend me a dime?”
But there aren’t
Any. There is only
Polluted air
Rising from the
Rubble.

A sudden burst of anger,
verging on rage, propels
the man across a field to
stand on the street calling
out the neighbor’s name,
calling out the neighbor
for putting the man and his
wife and dog and cyclist
on the road in front of them
in danger by careless, selfish,
law breaking driving, a
common occurrence for the
selfish, self-absorbed, care-
less neighbor. He screams
at the top of his lungs: Stop
it, stop it, stop it! knowing
as the words blow out of his
mouth that the neighbor
could not care any less,
would never, ever care
and would simply stand
in his driveway with a smirk
on his face. The man turns
and walks back across the
field mumbling, in self-
recrimination and embarr-
assment, so much for losing
it and that it is useless
to scream at all the careless-
ness, all the overwhelming
carelessness. There is just
so very much carelessness.
He shakes his head at the
futility of trying to change
Zebra stripes and so, decides
that he would be quiet, and
as long as he still lives in
a nation of laws would, the
next time, call the cops,
lodge a complaint and let
it go or maybe try to
reason with the neighbor?
Hmmm. He doesn’t think so.

deep breath, sigh, what a waste land
except for the two lesser watched

pbs stations from nine to twelve
p.m. when you can watch top-notch

mysteries in subtitles from twenty-
years ago just like you used to watch

real foreign art films at the art
theatre, (is that theater or theatre?)

[before porn invaded] in hyde park
near the university of chicago when

you were a student at a south suburban
jr. (now community) college and wanted

to appear really, really, intellectually
sophisticated, except that it was easier

then to read the subtitles on a big
screen as versus a relatively small

flat screen hd tv and even though
it was before porn hit art theaters

/theatres (not to mention the per-
centage of viewers of porn on the

internet) you could watch gina lollo-
brigida and not care a whit about

the subtitles and still get a thrill
and then later at home with the family

hear the swedish chef on the pbs
station your children used to watch.