They may be the one percent, but,

in all reality, if they don’t wipe

their bums rigorously, wash their

bottoms thoroughly along with

armpits, and between their toes

daily and floss and brush their teeth,

gargle at least once daily, use

bacteria killing breath strips

regularly and have their clothes

washed when they get soiled or can’t

pass the sniff test, nobody will want to

be around them at their gated social

get-togethers, at least, not their

fellow one percent, the really good

friends who on Saturday evening

yuck it up together and on Monday

morning turn down, without a flinch,

the loan request from the host who

is hung up by his a very clean and well

washed family jewels. See why deodor-

ant, in spite of the dangerously high

aluminum content, is so important to

the upper class? One wants to be sure

to wear clean underwear before

getting in an accident or being screwed

by a yuck-it-up-buddy-one-percenter.

Which reminds me of the story of

the three engineers who discussed

the nature of God.  One said God

is a structural engineer because of

the wonderful skeleton and vascular

system.  Another said God is an

electrical engineer because of the

incredible neurological system. The

third said God is a civil engineer.

Why, they asked.  Simple, he replied.

Who else would be clever enough to

think of  putting a toxic waste removal

route through a recreation area?

But I digress.

On the other hand, the rest of us,

the Great Unwashed (and where

exactly does that start, $249,000

and down, down, down?), at least

in the minds of the one percent,

just love, as they imagine in their

animal brains, to conjure thoughts

of us lazy, government dependents

sniffing our days away, wallowing in

each other’s sweaty loins, swinging

from the chandelier, down and dirty

copulating day and night to the sweet,

salty, fishy taste and skanky smell of

lusty love of, for sure, the forty-seven

percenters and probably all ninety-

nine percenters. “One can only imagine

what they do down there.”

So, why kill the fun with the reality that

we live normal lives, get tired and go to

bed hoping to regain a smidgen of energy

for the tasks of the day ahead?  Let their

misplaced, mythic, horny envy of what

they fantasize to be our earthy, extra-

vagant “perpetual motion machine” sex

life be an answer to their out-of-touch

question, “What do the simple folk do?”

And in the meantime, may we, the Great

Unwashed, unbeknownst to the one per-

cent, keep practicing the require-

ments of basic hygiene noted above, eat

healthy and exercise regularly, and get

at least eight hours sleep, but please,

let’s keep it to ourselves. We wouldn’t

want to spoil the fun, the fun of these

dirty, little, envious, and above all, jealous

minds.

Such thoughts must keep them from utter

boredom and it might just prove to be the

only edge we have, that is if they are actually

thinking about us at all.

The help asked for help for tuition for

her honor roll twins to go to college – a black

school up in some backwater, southern town.

So she built up the courage to ask massa and

missa just at the end of breakfast while they

were finishing up reading the morning

paper, him the sports, her the editorial. Massa

heard the word loan, jumped to his feet, kissed

his blond haired wife goodbye and left.

Missa condescendingly listened and told the

help that she needed to show her independence –

independence she actually said – by earning

the money, being self-sufficient and finding

dignity in self-determination.  She said all that

to the help who quietly slipped back into

the kitchen. Years but only a motion picture day

later, a candidate for president of the United States

of America, a child of privilege from a

northern state, said virtually the same thing,

as strategy to kick-start the economy, to those

who needed a low-interest loan with

determination to repay.  Learn self-reliance,

and the dignity of self-determination as he,

the self-made man, had.  The words were

uttered with the same scorn heard in the

inflection of missa back in the day, but

the words came out muffled and

hardly understandable to those who

heard because of the silver spoon

still in his mouth.

We sit before the tube each day

For several hours,

And as we passively watch the display

For several hours,

We see the lies upfront and on display

For several hours,

So why be shocked at pols’ display

For several hours,

Of lies and lies thrown our way

For several hours,

To our great dismay each day

For several hours?

The piece of fragrant

wood burns down in

the fire pit along the

shores of Lake Huron

in Michigan’s thumb.

The embers glow red-

orange and the wood

looks like a dried out

corn cob with blazing

kernels or really bad

teeth in a really big

mouth – dirty, dried out

orange teeth that glow

so ghoulishly beautiful in

the October night and

then turn chalky white.

Looking up at the

full moon, he decides

it is time to go into

the camper and read

one more Sunbeam

in The Sun before

falling asleep. It’s

Kurt Vonnegut’s Sun-

beam: “If people think

that nature is their friend,

then they sure don’t

need an enemy.” He

locks the door for the

night, looks out the

window at the shrivel-

ed teeth in the dying

embers, the full-

moon and the darkness

in the forest beyond.

The Swedish immigrant, came at

five

from the lakes and woods with Gerda Anna, Edwin

Oliver and baby brother Eric,

whose mother died a few years later in child-birth

trying to give American citizenship to a still-born

sister, and whose baby brother

went back to live with relatives never to be seen

again and whose father died of Spanish Influenza

when he was thirty-three and Gust was just

thirteen.

Gustav Edwin Oliver, alone, orphaned, tossed from

Svenska foster family to foster family, went on the bum at

twenty-one

hopping a freight train out of the yard in South Chicago

headed west through North Dakota, with a stop over to

work the fields of Swedish farmers, getting hemorrhoids

because there wasn’t any place to go,

jumping on and off, nearly breaking a leg, sitting by a

fire, taking dumps in the weeds, wiping with leaves,

never bathing, getting attacked by horny guys in the

night on the hay in the moving box

cars, back and forth, from Chicago to San Francisco with

a stop at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair and a job as a

captain in the guides, a flush toilet, a bar of soap, a shower,

a uniform, a big photogenic smile on his Gerda round face,

blue eyes, blond hair and a taste of the slice of the

American pie in his mouth and hope for the future

for a Swedish, immigrant, orphan of

twenty-eight

who one day would become a Swedish-American who needed

hemorrhoid surgery and six days in the Roseland Community

Hospital on the south-side for recovery,

the same hospital in which he recuperated from a heart attack at

fifty-five

and one year before he couldn’t take one more bite of the slice of the American Pie and instead of jumping on the train just stepped in front of it at

fifty-six,

fifty-one years after he left the lakes and woods

for the opportunity of a life-time for an immigrant kid, one he hadn’t asked for,

a slice of the American pie.

Someone asked

him accusingly

“Do you pray?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Why?” someone

asked. “Because I

don’t have all the

answers,” he said.

“Would you stop

if you did?” some-

one asked. “If I did

what?” he asked.

“Have all the answers,”

someone said. “Do you

think if I had as

many questions as

Socrates had before

someone handed

him the hemlock,

someone would

hand me the hem-

lock, too?” he asked.

“But what if you had

all the answers?” some-

one asked. “What if I

did?” he asked. “Well,

would you still pray?”

someone asked.

“Would I?” he asked

someone.

At a workshop on preaching through Lent

two old friends renewed, reminisced and

reminded. They spoke of times past which,

of course, are now and in the future for

good and ill. One reminded the Other of

the time in class the Other used the wrong

word.  One laughed forcefully; the Other

forcibly.  During now, which is then

and the future, the Other wanted to make up

for years ago and find redemption along

with renewed, reminisced and reminded,

referring to the periscopes of the texts

for the week. The room fell silent and

the professor said, “I think you mean

pericopes.” The Other started to sweat and

wanted to run from renewed, reminisced and

reminded. The One periscoped right in on this

particular pericope, looked at the Other and smiled

forcefully. Is the Other destined to add repeat to

renewed,reminisced, reminded while redeemed

silently, painfully slips through the floorboards away

from the smile of the One?

Summer is fading and the Eastern

Hognose glides across the trail on

his way to the evaporating pond for

a refreshing swim. Will fall rains tickle

the open, gaped mouth pond or quench

its thirst till it overflows and rises

along the scorched, cracked earth

seeping into crevasses and down to

where chipmunks have burrowed?

He assumes so but doesn’t know

as he watches a drop fall, land on a

rock near the pond and vanish without

a trace, not even a fading wet spot.

Harrison’s poems of the north country

and way out west

moved me to fish and hike and reaffirm

the outdoors is best,

and Transtromer his few but Nobel words

slight tomes would wrest

me from my literary loquaciousness and

know that less is best,

but Charlotte’s Web brought tears tumbling

to this old man’s chest.