An ice storm rages along the Big
Lake instead of fluffy, lake effect
snow for skiing, snowboarding,
sledding, while dunes are wiped

away and million-dollar homes
are crashing into the lake and a
rain and wind storm cranks up
along the Gulf keeping walkers

off the shore and running for
cover, with a prediction of
seventy-mile-an-hour straight
winds arriving in the morning

with flooding all up and down
the eastern seaboard and mon-
umental snow storms rage a-
long the upper West and Mid-

west and it’s just another normal
winter day and the Farmer’s
Almanac didn’t even see this
coming — well, we can’t see

beyond the ice, wind and fire
and neither can Earth, Wind
and Fire. I guess the Bangels
were the prophets on global

warming, telling us (with sweet
eighties’ lyrics) that it’s just an-
other manic (Saturday, Sunday)
Monday. No, they didn’t.

In my nightmare,
I thought I was visited by
creatures chthonically other
but it was only mother.

Rightwing, white, evangelical Christianity is desperate and has found a foil in Trump to advance its last-ditch, reactionary, racist agenda.

This isn’t about a simplistic, ethically shallow, either/or notion of abortion (Who relishes abortion? It’s complicated); that’s just a front so evangelicals can tout moral indignation and ethical righteousness while advancing their fear-based agenda.

Projection is a reality and the rightwing talks about the “Deep State.” There is no Deep State, but there is the Desperation State that wants to take over America and return it to the imaginary white, halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best and the Brady Bunch.

We need to do our due diligence and vote the whole bunch out and quit giving a voice to the fear-mongering of white evangelical Christians. The second Tuesday in November can’t come soon enough.

I just hope we don’t get into a huge blowback situation that will escalate into another horrendous, avoidable war resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of lives of God’s children, including two of our own who are in the military.

Where is sanity?

We Americans are smug because there isn’t a nuclear bomb that can reach our shores — but such a day is right around the corner.

If we as a nation can’t be proactively ethical in relation to Middle-Eastern nations, we, at least,  could act with enlightened self-interest instead of unenlightened callousness and a brutality that begs for blowback.

A lug-nut she called him
and he was feeling grim.
And then he felt glad
and no longer very sad.
While she meant to harm,
he raised a victory arm.
Without such a nut
the car goes caput
and all the wheels
come off with a squeal.
And then he gave heed;
Washington does not need
more empty-headed pompadours
but lug-nuts galore
to save our democracy.

Chaos
[ key-os ]

noun
a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of
organization or order.

The child-king maintains power by creating chaos and
pointing at everyone else to blame. This is the way
the child-king maintains control.

Angst, angst, angst.

Welcome to the wonderful world of American chaos
instituted by the child-king while we, in response,
desperately grasp at and try to maintain the illusion
of rational reality and order in order to cope with
the fearful state of what such chaos might mean.

Angst, angst, angst.

It is something to which we, like parents of an
out-of-control child, cling in order to cope
with the fear of the actual reality of chaos
and its dreadful, dire, potential consequences.

Angst, angst, angst.

The American government is out of control
and we need to face up to the fact that we are
being led by an out-of-control child-king of chaos.

And where are the adults? Please, where are the adults?

Please.

Angst, angst, angst….

He stopped by to fix the
washer and stayed to tell

about the tragic death of
his beautiful, twenty-four-

year-old daughter one year
ago in a head-on collision

with a drunk driver. He’s
a part-time pastor sharing

with a retired pastor and
they cried and hugged and

found solace in the brief,
eternal moments of blessed

silence. They just held
each other.

The pharmacist brusquely motioned the man
to the counter on a late Monday morning.
“Slammed on a Monday morning?”
“Snowbirds.” Being one, the man felt the
sting of arrows aimed at his geriatric chest.
“Well, three months and we’re gone and
you can relax.”
“Spring break and all the teeny boppers,
then there is summer and the onslaught
of the sun worshipers with all their skin
cancer and then the fall and the ominous
reappearance of early Snowbirds and what
that forebodes.”
“Wow! No rest for the wicked, I guess.”
A feeble arrow winding his way.
He never looked up.
“Next.”

He said he could stand on 5th Ave.
and shoot a gun and no one would
stop him, well, he has now done
it twice in the Middle East killing

twice and no one has stopped
him and his newfound power is
an aphrodisiac and he is high on
adrenaline and emboldened to

flaunt the law and ignore the
Constitution he knows nothing
about and do whatever he wants,
when he wants and will dictate

what he will do with impunity
via his tweets and we have a
malevolent narcissist Occu-
pant surrounded by sick

sycophants and demoniacs
and there is no one to stop him
from doing whatever he wants
to do as impulse would dictate.

Do you think the lapdog legis-
lators will stop him? They
are in control but in cahoots
because all they want is power

and money and reelection to
the cushiest job imaginable as
our democracy slips away while
we sip our soma, stare blankly

into space and at our TVs and
phones and wander into a fascist
regime and human servility and
bondage to an imbecilic king.

And there will be blowback.

The first man walked down the hallway
on the way to the outlet mall bathroom.
He was stopped by the second man who
said that there had been an accident

and there were feces all over the floor
and the third man who had the accident
was still in one of the stalls. The first man
walked around the mess took care of

his own business and then asked the
third man if there was anything he, the
first man, could do to help. The third
man said no but thanks, so the first man

left and reported the incident to mainten-
ance. Later while standing outside stores
of the outlet mall, the first man saw who
he assumed was the third man emerge

from the hallway and walk with as much
dignity as he could muster down the
sidewalk. The first man thought about
a fourth man, who was caught years

ago, hiding in a bunker after wreaking
havoc on civilization, causing the death
of millions of people, and posturing in-
vincibility. In the bunker, presumably

in his own excrement, the fourth man
shot himself dead. The first man then
thought about the third man walking
down the sidewalk and celebrated the

third man’s vulnerability and dignity.

We hate to be given guidance
(told what to do). Remember your
guidance counselor in high school?
Yeah. It rubs up against our once

necessary survival skill of total-
selfishness which no longer is a
survival skill but a one-way ticket
to self and other destruction. So,

what to do? What do you want
anyone to do with and for you?
Stand with you? Sit with you?
Silently listen to you? It’s “sym”

pathy — feeling together in suffer-
ing and even more “em” pathy —
getting inside the feeling and suffer-
ing with. Of course, there are times

we simply need to be told things,
like an adult version of don’t put
your finger in the electric socket
of life, but mostly, almost entire-

ly, we need someone simply to
be — with us (to come alongside)
and we with them in the healing
silence so together, we may hear

the still, small voice of God’s love
powerfully penetrating our being,
energizing the existential enervation —
and giving us hope eternal.