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.

Speaking of ignorance, and celebrating its necessity in discovering knowledge, I read an epithalamium today, a poem celebrating a bride and/or bridegroom, etymology: Latin & Greek; Latin epithalamium, from Greek epithalamion, from epi- + thalamos room, bridal chamber; perhaps akin to Greek tholos rotunda.

I, of course, being ignorant saw the word and being curious looked it up. The link took me to this:
The epithalamium was employed as a literary form for the first time by Sappho, who wrote:
Raise up the roof-tree—
a wedding song!
High up, carpenters—
a wedding song!
The bridegroom is coming,
the equal of Ares,
much bigger than a big man.
which got me to thinking about roof beams which then took me to a remembrance of J.D. Salinger’s story Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters, a story which initially is about a wedding and finally, after all these years of not knowing what the heck the title had to do with the story, although I really liked the title and felt intellectually smug telling friends about such a fine story, my initial ignorance led me to the realization that Salinger’s inspiration for the title of the story was a poem by Sappho.

Voila! Better late than never.

And now, back to the blissful state of ignorance anticipating more
inquisitiveness leading to Oh! if not Om.

The minister/writer wrote
about a student of his. It
went something like in
a rough paraphrase, “If
he rejected the caricature
of Christianity that was
in his mind, I could not
blame him. If he accepted
Christianity, he was accept-
ing something about which
he knew so little,” and that,
of course, is the glory — that
state of ignorance, the start-
ing point, the beginning, and,
yet, it so often, early on, be-
comes the end point or what
turns out to be a zero sum
game for everyone if that
student enters the ministry,
a closed mind to a fathom-
less, endless experience of
enlightenment accompanied
by ignorance accompanied
by enlightenment and on and
on and I, diploma and a preach-
ing award in hand, had the
temerity (It was called “A
Calling.”) to preach on
eternal verities when in
my yet wet-behind-the-ears
years. Thankfully, the congreg-
ants had the kindness to forgive
me and pray that I may catch
on. One particularly kind man,
slipped a ten-dollar bill in
my hand each Sunday as he
greeted me following worship.
It wasn’t a gift in gratitude for
a wise sermon, I don’t think.
He said something like, “Here,
take your wife out for a nice
lunch.” My hunch? I think he
was commiserating with her
and for her for having to listen
to me week in and week out
in a marriage which had just
begun and, therefore, she
deserved some kind of a
gesture of kindness. Back in
the day, that ten bucks bought
the best view in the best
restaurant for Sunday brunch
in Manhattan.

He embraced ignorance as
the only way
of knowing
anything, anything at all
that might come his way.

There are those in politics,
philosophy and religion
who through
history
did postulate
this theory
or that to save humanity
before it is too late.

Here’s the truth, there’s
the truth, everywhere
there’s somebody’ truth, truth, truth.

While not wanting to
sound uncouth,
he realized that the
only truth was
that he was ignorant
of whatever was true.

And so starting with
that assumption, knowing
full well
how to spell
assume,
he assumed he knew nothing
and knew nothing very well.

He was a first class ignoramus
but who was soon to become famous,
because he devised a system
of finding out just one thing.

He had a thesis and an antithesis
and soon discovered the synthesis
which, ironically, led him to
the Myth of Sisyphus.

Are we really just destined to push the
rock up the mountain only to have it fall back again?

Are all human efforts in vain
to find the eternal golden vein
which will secure humanity again and again?

Who can predict what will come next
seeing how close we have come to non-exist?

And so he has decided to live in ignorance
and take his wife to the next dance
hoping the red button doesn’t get pushed
and humanity is extinguished.

But there are no guarantees,
no promises to be made,
except to live in the ignorance that’s bliss
and give his wife a good morning and goodnight kiss

and say, “I love you, dear,” and
then hear eternal words so true,
“Oh, dear, I love you, too.”

And so he concluded he could not
know more than this: the eternal
worth of a loving kiss.

The DNA doesn’t lie;
less peaceful Dutch
blood and more bloody
British blood and a wee
bit Indian from some-
where between the sheets
off an Indian street
where my oppressor
English ancestor said,
“Come hither, my sweet.”
and my oppressed ancestor
had no say, and even
till this day I’m
chronically confused
about which way and
what to say — oppressor
one day; then oppressed,
without say. I guess it
really is all in the
blood, as they say.

The big, solar-powered buffalo
roared down 16th street and
screeched to a stop. “Senior
all day pass, please.” “Changer

broken; get the pass when you
transfer.” “Will do.” “How are
you, Native American man,
Lakota from South Dakota rid-

ing the range up from the ashes?
I was with you at Wounded Knee
and heard the cries and saw the
eyes and the one lone rifle placed

in your grandfather’s hand in
the snow. You know?” “I heard
those same cries, bro.” “How are
you, Romanian man, on your way

to tear down the stand you put up
last week at the US Open?”
“Thanks for the ride.” The buffalo
roared down Roosevelt Road

and ‘whoa-ed’ to a stop. “Senior
all day pass, please.” “Three
bucks; let’s see the proof.”
“Surely, you spoof. Okay,

here you go.” 3rd street — time
to meet my buddy for some
coffee at the sidewalk café
and we shouted above the

roar of all the buffalo stamp-
eding while heeding every
raised hand — “Whoa” at every
bus stop in the desert today.