His wife has noticed that since the Republican primary,
her retired minister husband’s language has
dropped through, as he would say,
the f-ing, s-hole of decency.
She has been tolerant but raises
an eyebrow when at the TV,
he over and over does swear,
“The p-ant (p)-resident and those SOB, kiss-up, kiss-a,
f-ing Republicans just don’t care.”
And so with soap bar in hand, she asks,
“Have you had your mouth washed out in the past?”
He shouts, “Yes, my bloody mother did that GD task last!”
“Well, it’s obvious, the effects have
worn off since then,” she states,
and asks if he would prefer Dial or Dove to taste.
It’s then he pulls out the alcoholic’s old promise and excuse,
“I swear, GD-it, tomorrow I’ll f-ing quit,” hoping to schmooze,
but she knows that the next day
come what Republican BS may,
refraining from swearing is a wager he will always f-ing lose.

Our Mac guy, not given to patience
with people who just want to get
e-mail, surf and work a blog, like
us, helped us figure out how to add

a name to e-mail on the new I-Pad,
and this over the phone and to give
him the credit he deserves, he, sur-
prisingly, was pretty patient. And

so as the call concluded, I told
him, knowing his political leanings,
that he was the second “stable
genius” in the country, and so he

asked, “Oh, yeah, and who would be
the first?” “I feign from uttering
his name,” said I. “Well, in compar-
ison, that guy makes all of us look

like stable geniuses,” he offered.
I had just gone through my down-
loads as a way of clearing space on
the our computer as recommended

by our Mac guy and came across
the results of an IQ test I took in
2002. They were pretty good.  Such
tests don’t have time restrictions,

so I had lots of time to think through
the answers. I was never very good
at the timed type. Proud of it, I
transferred it to documents. I didn’t

make genius. I didn’t tell our Mac
guy, but did ask my wife, “I think
I’m pretty stable most of the time,
aren’t I, dear?” but she had turned

her attention back to the I-Pad and
our Mac guy impatiently had hung-
up with his speedy, signature sign-
off, “Um, bye-bye,” click.

He read a line from a poem
about, to paraphrase, an
adult child experiencing

the haunting, judgmental
presence of a mother long
dead in the ground under a

Swedish granite monument
in a cemetery two states
away and he started to

think about such a haunt-
ing and it, too, is a mother
and he thought about his

wife and her haunting, which
is from just down the road
at a cemetery she never visits

but is the ghost of her father
and when husband and wife are
in the reconciliation phase of

a domestic disagreement, when
the heat has cooled and breath-
ing comes more slowly, the

couple realizes, but once again,
that he is arguing with his
mother and she is struggling

with her father and, unfortun-
ately, he and her father are
both Bob, and so he thinks

perhaps he should go by his
middle name just to help
maintain boundaries, but

for the fact that his mother
and his wife have different
names and the ghost still…

won’t stay in the grave.

On a sunny winter’s day
we sat taking in a ton
of information much to our dismay —
most of which
will be forgotten
by the time
we get home at the close of day.
And it was.
Time to buy
“I-Pad for Seniors,” right away.

The (p)-resident had been on
good behavior for a few days
and then dropped the verbal
bomb, according to TV talking
heads, about immigration from
“shit hole” countries, meaning,
of course, countries of black
and brown people. Is he speaking
for the United States? No, he’s
talking to and for the angry,
white, Republican base who
are scared “shitless” and are
in a Custer’s last stand stand.
Well, now, we all know how that
worked out for Custer once the
truth came out-and-out-and-out,
as it always, eventually does
according to holy writ.

My Dutch grandmother stood
in her kitchen kneading with
her small hands and pressing
and rolling with her much-loved

rolling-pin, and popping the
not yet laden with herbicide
and pesticide dough into a
baking pan and leaving it to

rise in glory until she re-
turned to slather the dough
with butter before putting
it in the 350 degree oven for

an hour only to remove the
pan with her oven mitts, place
it on the kitchen counter let-
ting it cool just long enough

before removing it and plac-
ing it on the kitchen table,
slicing it and slathering it
with butter while we several

grandchildren watched in
eager anticipation, perhaps
not unlike the Cratchit
children anticipating the

plum pudding. Years later
after my grandmother broke
her hip and was restricted
to a wheelchair, which I

used to race through the South-
side of Chicago shotgun home
from the kitchen through the
dining room into the living-

room back to the kitchen,
stated with a voice that
sounded like a line from
a black spiritual, “Oh,

my bread baking days are
over.” And that they were.
We grandchildren joked about
that declaration, mimicking

her elongated, spiritual
vibrato while we sat around
at church camp, but, truth
be told, we all missed the

kitchen ritual and, needless
to say, our grandmother’s
unbelievably wonderful,
homemade bread slathered

with freshly churned butter.

*With appreciation for the idea
to the Poetry Foundation for the
poem “Bread” by Richard Levine

The Cambodian on the
boat was raped over and
over and over; she went
crazy and no one could
keep her clothes on her
as she wandered the halls;
the mentally-challenged
are raped over and over
and over again by relat-
ives and relatives invit-
ing others to the party;
sea turtles are at risk
of extinction because
poachers steal the eggs
to be used as aphrodisiacs
for insecure, low testost-
erone, wannabe, horny
men, then turtles are kill-
ed for shells for jewelry
for women who just love
the look of the artistic,
shell jewelry, never ask-
ing where it comes from
and not caring any less,
and so it goes on a Wed-
nesday in January on the
most trusted news net-
work in America.

She said, “Dad, I think it’s spiritual,” —
his daughter about running along the
trails in the desert places of Arizona —

ten miles, twenty miles, thirty-five
miles — across low lands, up mountains,
across high deserts, through sacred

native lands by invitation. He listened
and nodded. He had about forty-thousand
miles on his legs, three to four miles at

a time for five days a week for forty-
eight weeks a year for forty-five years
mostly on black-topped roads but for the

last fifteen almost exclusively on trails
through the woods and along the shore
of Lake Michigan and on trails in the

Phoenix Mountain Preserve. He talked
with his son in Colorado who only runs
on high altitude trails along the Flat-

irons and says, “Dad, It’s a spiritual
experience.” Father now jogging ever
so slowly, daughter and son running

back ten, twenty, hundreds of thou-
sands of years back, back, back,
back through the low desert, up

the mountain, across high plains,
in the woods, along the river,
lake, sea to a time of their true-

ness — to who they were, who they
are and by the grace of God, who
they will be — eternally.

School’s cancelled.
“Hooray!!!” the kids say,
much to their parents’ dismay.
Inside, the children will
play all day,
then get bored and start to fight.
“Off to your rooms,” the parents say,
And finally, they say
the best words of the day,
“Good night!”

They shout,
“Drill, baby, drill,”
day in and day out —
They seem to get
an orgiastic thrill
about “Drill, baby, drill.”
“It’s a Man’s World,”
was the name of the
series on TV
back in the day,
and it was a show about confused,
white, college boys being confused
day after day
and innocence has
turned to hate
and fear and greed
and here and there
a vile double entendre:
“Drill, baby, drill,”
in the salty sea,
in national lands
reserved for you and me.
Drill, rape, screw climate
change,
but they only feign
bravado.
They grovel before
the throne
and bow before the
donor class
and ask, “May I
kiss your ass?” —
scared, little, lying,
white boys in a
circle jerk
called the Congress.