He dreams of jogging
but just walks around the house
in his jogging shoes.

In his jogging shoes,
he has a bounce in his step
dodging rattlesnakes.

Scorpions move out
of his way toward the kitchen
so he can hydrate.

He must avoid cramps
while on the hot, dusty trail
conjured in his head.

Maybe tomorrow
the shoes will take him outside
to breathe desert air.

Bemoaning the fact that his
kids don’t pat him on the back
more he asked his wife rhetor-
ically, “Do you recall praising

your mom and dad for much
of anything when you were
growing up?” Then he said
proudly and without hesitation,

“Me? I was selected to be
on a panel of outstanding
high school students at our
public high school…no,

really, seriously, dear, I was.
Back to what I was saying: I
was on this panel and we were
asked what our families had

done to help us along our then
short way. They didn’t say,
‘then short way.’ When it came
to my turn, I said I was really

happy that my mother and
father provided a caring,
loving Christian home. The
moderator of the panel in a

near knee-jerk reaction inter-
jected that surely I meant some
kind of all-encompassing relig-
ious upbringing. Well, I didn’t

but, after all, I was just a
high school kid speaking out
of his own parochial experience
in a public high school. It was-

n’t until years later I under-
stood what the moderator felt
compelled to interject and, of
course, by that time I concurred.

That being said….” “That’s
enough being said, dear,” his
wife said, emphatically. “Yes,
we all wish our kids would

affirm us more than they do,
but we didn’t and they won’t
and that’s that,” she chimed
in with a note of finality.

We are all-accepting,
all-inclusive,
all-welcoming —
we are progressive
Christians at worship
and in our humility
we are, if truth be
told, a little smug
about that.
The congregation is
made up of a rainbow
coalition of God’s
children — blacks,
whites, browns, yellows,
reds, men, women,
young, old, straights,
LGBTs. Early on in
the service, we
knowingly and proudly
pass the peace from
one to another. Still
for all that, last
Sunday, there was
this family three
rows up — grand-
father and grand-
mother, daughter,
son–in-law,
and three adorable
little girls who
sat quietly for the
full hour and one
little kid who
couldn’t keep her
mouth shut while
her parents fawned,
and cooed and
smiled and kept
handing the little
girl back and forth
and grandpa and
grandma winked
and smiled and
cooed and I wonder-
ed why the family,
seemingly oblivious
to anyone’s right to
not have to listen
to the whining of
the little brat, didn’t
drop her off at the
nursery following the
children’s message,
which would have
been the courteous
thing to do.
I couldn’t hear the
sermon which later
my wife, who appar-
ently has better ears
to hear than I have,
told me was about
tolerance.

I am a privileged, white, American male.
I am a middle-class, senior citizen.
I write in deep humility and appreciation of what simply has been my reality.
I write this because I am a fortunate beneficiary of life in America.
I’m a first generation American on my Swedish father’s side.
I’m a third generation American on my Dutch mother’s side.
My parents completed tenth grade.
My father came to America from Sweden
as a five-year-old.
His mother, the grandmother I never knew,
died in childbirth when my father was eight.
His father, the grandfather I never knew,
worked in an East Chicago, IN steel mill.
My grandfather died in the Spanish Influenza
pandemic of 1918 when my father was thirteen.
My mother, one of six children, was the only
one in her family to have a job during the
Great Depression and every cent of her salary
went to keep the family going.
My father hopped freights as a hobo during the depression.
My father worked as a guide at the 1933 World’s Fair.
My father started his own business as a monument salesman.
My mother was a bookkeeper and, later,
a clerk in a women’s dress shop.
When I was a junior in high school,
my father had a major heart attack.
When I was a senior in high school,
my father, unable to provide financially
for his family because of ill-health,
committed suicide.
My mother had a nervous breakdown and
then went on to hold down two jobs to
keep the family going.
I went to community college on a scholarship.
I completed college on a scholarship earning
a Bachelor of Arts degree.
I completed four years of seminary
graduating with a Master of Divinity
degree.
I completed the Doctor of Ministry
degree (with distinction).
I published approximately twenty-five
articles, essays, think-pieces,
editorials and short-stories.
I retired after forty-years of ordained ministry.
I have, in retirement, published two books of
poetry in collaboration with my daughter.
I live comfortably in retirement with my
wife of twenty-one years. We are both
widowed, our late spouses having died
tragically in their forties.
I was given every break afforded white males
in America.
As a first generation, white, American male
I have no patience for any and all — read that
— all white, working class Americans who
resent and bemoan their situation in life and
who voted for what they mistakenly believe
will be their white savior — Donald Trump.
I have nine grandchildren and step-grandchildren
of multiple ethnicities but who are all of one race —
the human race, and I trust and pray that they and
all other children of immigrants (meaning everyone
in America) will be granted all the opportunities
afforded and guaranteed in the United States Constitution
and Bill of Rights.
I will work to help secure the dignity and rights of all
people who are in America and who will come to America
— all ethnic groups, all men, all women, all children,
every sexual orientation, every religious preference
— all, without reservation, that they may be as
privileged as I have been — and even more so.

I don’t care at all for didactic poetry.
Simply tell me your story
and I’ll tell you mine;
then we shall sit back and see
and, perhaps, share a glass
or two of some very nice wine.

You asked me to appear
before you and I am here
to ask you to quietly disappear.
Were you elected president?
Yes, I believe you were,
though illegitimately inferred
and as it is, I would concur,
but that is beside the point.
You pose a clear
and present danger
to this country and a world
in increasing fear,
so, as I am only an arm-chair
psychologist, still, I have to conclude
you are a malevolent narcissist
of huge magnitude,
so, please Mr. President, I am here
to offer you a television contract —
an immense financial figure,
so you can replace your arch-enemy
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
You don’t know anything about
anything really important,
but you do know your heart’s desire
and that is to look across the table
and say, “You’re fired.”
So, take the deal
and accept this modest appeal
and, if you wish, perhaps some day
we may both appear, together even,
on “Let’s Make a Deal.”

It doesn’t stop, the barrage
of hot, scalding, incinerating
lava relentlessly flowing
from the daily eruptions,
the rocks tumbling down
the mountains slamming
onto roads, pulverizing
people, crushing traffic,
blocking and stopping any
progress — and so it goes
or doesn’t go, just explodes
on the soon to bloom
Cherry Blossom rows.

Such need, such overwhelming
need posturing strength, but
revealing only bald-faced need,
screaming need, comfortable
only in front of the deafening
sound of a wildly cheering crowd,
comfortable only in front of
a television with his talking
face flashing back, making more
sounds. What does he do in the
silence, the inevitable, relent-
less silence that comes unaware?
Hide in his own mumbling gibber-
ish, the loud screams of his
dreams? Where did it go wrong,
little boy? Where did it begin,
when did the deprivation start,
— did the warm water turn cold
in the darkness even before you
were brutally thrust into life,
will it ever end or will you be
sucked back into the black hole?
Even in that cosmic silence
perhaps there will be an eerie
sucking sound in your ear to
give you comfort and keep you
company as you disappear.

What’s the new scene?
What do I mean?
Do I mean the mean, new scene
or the same, old scene
only quite a bit more mean?
Two weeks it has only been
but an eternity it seems,
know what I mean?
Not only the dirty water,
polluted air, smoldering earth scene,
know what I mean?
But the social, societal unrest scene,
know what I mean?
The disrespectful, malevolent, narcissistic
scene
signaling what this might mean —
the dreaded, forbidding, end-times
anthropocene,
which might mean
that this is about the soon to be Late, Great, Planet Earth,
which isn’t at all what the author did mean
but more at what the late, great James Baldwin did mean:
God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign:
No More Water, Fire Next Time.

*With indebtedness to Anne Waldman and her poem Anthropocene Blues

It’s The Hollow Man, the Wannabe Stadel Lion-man
with the Faux Lion’s Mane and Pinocchio’s Nose Comedy Show
featuring the comedy cast of Reince “Rhino Skin”
Priebus unlike his boss The Thin-Skinned-Faux Lion-Man
and nitty-witty, ever-so-funny Kellyanne
and Michael Flynn, the kooky conspiracy man
and Can You Believe Steve Bannon,
Wild Hair, Paunch — the sinister Shar Pei Man?
They’re funny, they’re outrageous,
mocking the audience they will shout
and tell all to shut up and get the hell out!
Oh, no, that’s not at us they shout —
it’s just the press, foreign dignitaries,
leaders of state, kings, queens
and the Prince of Wales
they gleefully shout out.
They call them up and then hang up
so abrupt just for fun
and all laugh into the TV camera
shouting, “Trump’s Number One.”
At the National Prayer Breakfast
The Hollow Man said he prayed
for the Terminator before The
Apprentice would terminate
due to poor ratings it would
surely generate
without The Hollow Man at
that ship’s helm.
But now he’s in his own realm —
a universe parallel
with a comedy show nonpareil
which according to the critics
already is in all of Dante’s Nine
Circles of Hell.