Well, now we have the biggest security
breach in memory, maybe history, and
the front-line defense is made up of sixth-
grade level bully boys who stood on the
playground during recess telling sex jokes
and singing sex ditties they didn’t under-
stand but guffawed over anyway so as
not to be seen as clueless by all the other
clueless kids on the playground. Russian
Roulette, anyone?
Of course, I take this good, old gospel song (with slave origins) metaphorically/allegorically but because I have known it from my youth, it strikes a tender chord in my heart.
Right now, I’m not feeling like this world is my home and I take comfort in a warm image of an eternal mystery, which actually is the mystery within which we lovingly live now.
Fleeting sunlight shines
Spirit’s everlasting love
On all of nature.
Under some misguided notion
of religion, just the bare bones
desire for immortality or stark
fear of death, we do everything
we can to save the body in time
and space even when the spirit
has departed, thus embalming
as a flesh preserver and sealing
as a guarantee to preserve the
flesh even further and, of course,
the favorite suit, shirt, tie, dress,
skirt, blouse thus relegating “ash-
es to ashes and dust to dust” to
the dust bin, but nothing lasts for-
ever, so when we stand at the
graves of loved ones and look
at the headstone we don’t think
of dilapidation in action and we
certainly don’t wish to think of
mom or dad as a scull in rags
six-feet down, so when we are
done with death denial and con-
sider faith, hope and love and
trust in the greatest of the three,
we can scatter ashes to the wind
confident that love has its myster-
iously loving plans.
300,000 and counting need not have died
if the solipsistic, narcissistic temporary
occupant had not lied.
His heart is mean;
his hands aren’t clean;
he just wants to be seen
and make money in amounts so obscene.
Electoral votes are being counted;
few are astounded
because the will of the people perseveres
and the end of the Occupant’s occupancy nears.
Those watching the counting hear cheers
despite the death threats and ignorant jeers
of those cultists and drinkers of Kool-Aid
whose presence, hopefully, will soon fade
from the scene
and will no longer be seen
along with their leader, the meanest
that has ever been.
Please, head back to the sewer
or under a rock
until there are fewer and fewer
and upon your house a perpetual pock.
The late writer Lester Bangs wrote, “The ultimate
sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.”
Apparently, 75 million Americans don’t care or just
don’t get that the Loser/Performer has committed
the ultimate sin of contempt and it’s against them.
Thank the Lord, the show has just about run its course
and is about to be canceled and one has to wonder,
“What show have the fans been watching for four
years?” Of course, it is a fact that the abused sidle
up to the abuser. “You love me don’t you, daddy?”
*The Bangs’ quote is from The Writer’s Almanac.
Maybe we American males were dependent for just a very short period of time, suckling
at our mother’s breasts, but then we stood up, got going and did everything necessary
on our own. Say what? Oh, it’s true for the true red, white and true blue patriot. We are
self-made men, in charge, doing our own thing. We stand tall, erect, straight arrows always hitting our target. We say jump and servile others say how hi. We point a finger and servile others head jiffy quick in that direction. We begin to open our mouths and servile others anticipate what we want and do our bidding. We’re self-made American males. We own stock. We buy stock when low and sell stock when high. We created the great, vulture capitalistic system to benefit ourselves. Oh, wait. what am I saying? I don’t have any of that. I have been held down by a vicious, socialistic system that wants to take what I have and give it to the servile others and they have and I won’t take it anymore. I’m looking for the self-made man who will give me everything I need to be the autonomous man, the rebel against all odds, the Ayn Rand baby who suckled at Ayn’s objectivist breast. Wait a minute. Did I just say give me everything I need to be the self-made man? How can I be self-made if I am dependent on the secular savior? And the savior? He just lost the election the socialists say. Whatever. I don’t need him. I have my John Wayne, Gene Autry, Lash Larue, Lone Ranger, Superman outfits and plenty of guns. Did you see that Hollywood is putting out a lot of what look like really great shoot-em-up westerns during this fake epidemic? I’m going to be heading out, jump in my 500 horsepower pickup truck (on which I still owe a ton of money) with the big American flags flying to save the day right after I suckle at my wife’s breasts. Honey, please, pretty please….
*idea from a Richard Rohr meditation
So, I stopped for gas and one
of the employees asked if I had
paid the $491.72 bill for the new
tires I bought two months ago.
Oops. I said I thought so but
that I would ask my wife who
has a degree in accounting and
was a Human Resources Senior
Professional in the corporate
world. My gas station guy just
looked at me quizzically. She
said, “I’ll check.” She found
the invoice with scribbled in-
itials indicating the bill had
been paid. But the bank state-
ment differed by fifteen dollars
more, to which my wife stated,
“Ah, there’s the rub. Must have
been a few bucks to top off the
gas tank.” I, neither a car repair
guy or an accountant, asked
factiously if my wife wanted
a job as a bookkeeper at our
friendly neighborhood gas
station as she sat finishing
another beautiful mixed-media
sculpture, a product of her new
vocation. She looked up from
the final tricky stitch and just
stared at me quizzically. I rum-
inated. I’m such a fortunate guy
to have so many talented people
in my life like great service station
guys and someone who keeps
track of bills and someone who
makes beautiful art. I guess I just
have the knack of attracting excel-
lence in so many forms. But the
service station guys still need a
bookkeeper and, well, that’s not
one of my many talents. And then
I saw a quizzical look in the mirror.
Fifteen days till Christmas —
This year not much fuss.
We’ll buy on line
And that has to be fine.
Get the presents in the mail
Or sent directly without fail
To the grandkids out there —
In states somewhere.
Let’s hope Santa knows
And points Rudolph’s nose
In the right direction
While Santa sings his signature inflection,
“Merry Christmas to all
And to all goodnight,
GOOD NIGHT! ALL RIGHT!”
“We need a leader; we need a leader,” the professor from Yale pleaded. Who am I, a product of middle western, public (and in full disclosure — some parochial) education to say, “We need a leader.”? But even the Ivy League, the best and the brightest, say, “We need a leader.” Oh, wait, wasn’t it Ken- nedy’s “best and brightest,” who got us into the quagmire of Vietnam when the quagmired French told us, “Don’t do it. You need a leader.”? And Kennedy listen- ed and then took a bullet (I was just turning the corner from Halsted onto 144th Street that dark day in 1963.) near a knoll in Dallas and the hayseed from a Texas teacher’s college was sworn in on an airplane and listened to “the best and the brightest” instead of himself and the protesters shouted, “We need a leader,” and their voices echo today, when in forty-some days we will have a leader — educated at a state university, a public school of American higher education — educated as a leader in the great and wonderful way we (thanks to the 2020 Presidential election) still have today — in the democratic republic. But in all honesty, the Ivy League does sometimes gets it right, like the time Harvard beat Yale at something when no one was watching.
bobdahl 