While Reading Award Winning Poets

While reading award winning poets, a couple (two) among the best

float above the rest

using imagery of drifting skyward, rising,

metaphors of heavenly quests?

“All these poems that drift upward in our free-floating minds….” (Jim, poet #1), and

“A boy runs along with an invisible string that goes

right up to the sky….” (Tom, poet #2)

Are they rising toward another dimension?

“Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, way up in the sky in my beautiful balloon?” (The Fifth Dimension, singing group)

“Or were they just, like I, lusting after Marilyn McCoo, too?” (Bob)

I Was Told the Other Day

I was told the other day

that friends don’t call out friends.

What was it I could say,

that a friend never offends?

Spouse or partner falls

In the sterile circle

where no one ever calls

or faces the big hurdle

of finding a way out

to confront the loved one

or perhaps just call out

a friend who needs someone

who can do risky stuff —

the thing that needs to be done,

not inoffensive fluff

that just prolongs false fun.

An intervention waits,

but yes, fools do rush in.

Shouldn’t have said what he hates (?)

‘cause now the ice is thin

in a relationship

couldn’t weather the storm.

His e-mail now does skip

passed. He is not informed.

And in Hillary’s visage

perhaps it takes a village.

This Really Big Name Crime Novelist

This really big name crime novelist appeared in a TV advertisement

hawking his latest corporately written novel (He has a really big staff of writers so he doesn’t have to pen an honest word anymore but gets all the credit and the staff makes a lot of money.),

and I just thought about how corporations now, via the Supreme Court, are considered people with voting rights.

Is there a corporate crime here… somewhere…anywhere that anyone notices and is worthy of a

really good suspenseful, crime novel that is sure to make a ton of money and gets that corporation’s vote?

Pseudo Paul and Big Brother

Pseudo Paul or the Paul who was beginning to be pseudo and just trying to save a ship in stormy seas said there was no reason to fear the authorities

if one hadn’t done anything wrong: “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,

for he is God’s servant for your good.”  Are you kidding? About what authorities was he talking and who was deciding what was good?

Were those early Christians just trying to get along so they wouldn’t be eliminated? What happened to that Hellenistic Spartan spirit and Hebrew Chutzpah, which led them to the lions’ den or the

coliseum to face the gladiators? Had the courage worn thin and they were just trying to survive (I love Jesus, but please don’t kill me, and if you wish, really, I don’t even know who this Jesus is)?

What has happened to us and our Spartan/Chutzpah spirit?  Are we just trying to survive…in the name of Jesus appealing to how Jesus paid it all and

we couldn’t do it without Jesus and now that we are right with God through the humiliating/excruciating death of the God/man Jesus

because God the Father was really, I mean, really pissed off but just couldn’t, even though we deserved it, eliminate us?

Did you ever think there was something wrong with that equation?  I mean the thing about it’s all about me and Jesus and

how I’m just a miserable worm but Jesus paid it all for me and, as such, I won’t smoke anymore and I will try not to drink too much and

would it be all right if I do you know what with my neighbor’s wife (Hey, at least as many of evangelicals commit adultery as the heathens going to hell) and an and an…

and that kind of religious narcissism just is a completely false reading of scripture? In our superficial world where we have reduced faith

to some kind of celestial get out of jail free card and where the street, neighborhood, city, township, county, state, nation, planet, solar system, milky way, universe, universes from micro, string theory to macro parallel/multiple universes

is nothing we need to think about let alone evolution and equal rights and social justice on the little place back home we call earth?

Did you feel the drip from the melting of the polar caps on your noggin?

Don’t even think about it because apparently we don’t know who we are dealing with, or more properly, with whom we are dealing.

They are watching; let me reiterate; they are watching and that is kind of scary.

This Christmas, you better watch out, you better not pout….

A Dream

Congress votes to pull all commodes from the homes of the top 1 %

until they tell their lobbyists to give it a rest with room to negotiate without

scatological considerations.

Black Friday not Good Friday

Black Friday, not Good Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,

violence, shots fired, customers pepper sprayed… at least no one died.

Silent (hold the i and up a note) Night, Holy (hold the o and up a note)

Night as in tradition, all is calm all is bright. Jump a month from

Black Friday on Black Friday to Christmas Eve on Black Friday, and the commercial says

it’s a Pampers kind of night. “Mary, Joseph, grab the box. What can I say?

Jesus just crapped in the hay.”

Standing By the Sliding Door

Standing by the sliding door, staring at the yard, still, silent waterfall, pond with just a bubbler now that fall is on its way and winter is bearing down, goldfish rising to nibble the net, which catches leaves so they won’t float

to the bottom, I now see the wonderfully slim, flaky trunks of the birches, the long uplifted arms of the giant maple which three other seasons blocks my view of the magnificent carved out of the glacier dune, and then as always the

scaly trunks of the white pines with bushy bows reaching ever higher to the sun behind the clouds of fall, the fragile easily swaying trunks of the hemlocks and the arborvitaes who hold back the east winds

while spread around them all over the ground are drying, curling once green, now reddish brown ever duller yellowish tan leaves and a plush cushiony carpet of pine needles. The trees hold everything in place in this swaying sandy paradise.

My thoughts turn to William Wordsworth, “The child is father to the man, and I would wish that all my days be spent in natural piety.” And then as my spirit is lifted at the passing of one season to another and an affirmation of the glorious cycle of life,

and as I was just on the verge of profundity, peripheral vision caught a glimpse. There was the damnable burrowing rodent, Alvin, the chipmunk, scurrying into his hole right next to the pond.

I just know that he and Simon and Theodore are going to scratch through the liner of the pond while merrily squeaking some irritatingly obnoxious version of a Christmas carol and can you imagine the cost of repair or replacement?

Where is David Seville when you need him? Well, so much for that mood.

The Dog is Always a Great Conversation Starter

Wherever we are, hiking the trails in Phoenix Mountain Preserve, walking along the beach, jogging down the street or sitting at an outdoor restaurant, Boomer, the beautiful Chocolate Lab, gets a lot of attention.

If not for the dog, I fear we would be lonely people. It’s the dog that people stop to see and you find that dog lovers make for very nice people and honest ones, too,

like the couple we met while hiking in Phoenix. I’m sure they would have just passed us by with maybe a nod or a hi, but the young man and woman wanted to chat with Boomer.

He was all ears and a wagging tail about the conversation.

I asked them if they lived nearby, yes; where they had gone to school, University of Arizona, and what they had studied. He said he was an environmental scientist.

“Wow,” I exclaimed. “That’s really important especially in this time of global warming. We need a lot of you folks to help put us on the right course.” I spoke excitedly. I can get animated.

“No,” he stated flatly. “It’s all over, so enjoy it while you can. Have a nice hike. Oh, and I’m not kidding, either.” I don’t think she told us what she did, or perhaps we just didn’t hear for the ringing in our ears.

They moved on and we just stood there for a while. I looked at Chris; we both looked down at the dog and Boomer asked us when we were going to continue the hike.

The sun seemed a lot bigger, the heat a lot more intense and the ground even drier and dustier. I needed a drink of water real badly. They seemed nice and see what I mean about the honesty thing?

This was the only time I regretted having taken the dog along. A nod or a hi would have sufficed, and I could have continued walking in blissful ignorance on an afternoon when the sun was small in the sky, the day a bit chilly and the ground all green and aglow with desert plants.

Darn you, Boomer.

Eighteen Years Have Passed since a huge grief experience and while I have stopped worrying about myself, I’m really worried about our republic.

We are still living the deadly consequences of previous administrations’ administrating, as anyone with a brain would know because things don’t just happen and then go away never to be heard from again.

Things reverberate for years like grief, as an example, which some never ever deal with and, of course, all never ever get over because there is never ever getting over the death of a loved one.

You just commit suicide or figure out with the help of a really good therapist how to deal with it.

The nation is now in that place.

It’s suicide or we figure out how to get hold of a really, really good therapist.

The Illusory Perpetual Motion Money Machine

The perpetual motion money machine was put in perspective by a priestly professor from Boston College which is funded, I imagine,

by and large, by that very machine, only, by and large, the more liberal, but not too liberal side of things.

Turns out that the PMMM is occupied by pretty insecure people.

They worry at least as much as the sliding into oblivion middle class people used to worry until they just slid directly into oblivion because the anxiety and worry directed the diabolical work of the PMMM’s lobbyists.

The middle class used to worry about mortgages, credit card debt and paying the tuition at Roman Catholic and Christian Reformed elementary and high schools not to mention Notre Dame, Hope and Calvin College.

Now they don’t worry about those things because their kids don’t go to those places unless those kids’ parents are big money, insecure, Jesus loving capitalists who happen to have benefited from the bail out, which they now despise and criticize.

Three cheers for the community colleges of America, maybe the most democratic institution of all.

Turns out that pretty insecure people occupy the PMMM.

Those insecure people who, even though they love Jesus and see him as their Lord and Savior (Don’t they get it that that originally meant Caesar isn’t anymore and it never was about “sweet Jesus and me”?), didn’t feel comfortable until they had their first billion in the bank,

paid a lot of money to pretty smart lobbyists who were well paid to convince pretty, no really, dumb politicians to vote

for letting the worst president in US history’s really, really big, outrageous, unconscionable tax breaks of 2001 and 2003 to live on maybe but hopefully not forever, not to mention two God forsaken (Was there ever a unforsaken one?) wars in which millions have died and trillions have been spent,

thus allowing really, really insecure billionaires who love Jesus as their Lord and Savior the illusion of the security of low tax rates

which in reality will only contribute to the decline of the only people in the capitalist economic system that can keep the rich insanely rich

– the muddled, befuddled middle class who are so easily convinced by that on the really, obscenely really big flat screened (I think I can see his makeup) TV

that their way to salvation is to buy all the stuff the PMMM makes in China and sells here without paying any taxes do to tax loopholes bigger than the distance between the great USofA and China.

Turns out the PMMM is occupied by pretty insecure people.

And it seems nobody knows that the PMMM is insanely insecure and are the oligarchs and plutocrats running the show which is driving the majority of America into that place that everyone fears

– the poor, who ironically, by the way, as long as they get Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are the most secure people to be found. Is that why they are so hated?

Turns out that pretty insecure people occupy the PMMM.

Hey, Super Rich Totally Dedicated Believers in Christ Jesus, otherwise known as PMMM want to really follow Jesus into spiritual serenity, the Realm, the place of total contentment, purpose and eternal life? In your terms THE KINGDOM?

Just give it up.

Hello, Rich Young Ruler.  Jesus does love you, you pathetic jerk; don’t walk away from the only hope you ever had in life.

Stop destroying this wonderful, young experiment in republican, democratic rule with your oligarchical, plutarchical enslavement of the vast majority, i.e. 99%.

Turns out that pretty insecure people occupy the PMMM

who have to wipe their butts at least once a day just like the rest of those who are sliding this very moment into poverty along with all their brothers and sisters.

It reminds me of the slightly obscene ditty my more scatological than eschatological mother used to say, “The rich don’t think their shit smells, but their farts give them away.”

You go, slightly obscene but on the mark mother.