“English! It’s made up of all these untidy words, man. Have you noticed?
Native American (skunk), German (waltz), Danish (twerp), Latin (adolescent),
Scottish (feckless)…It’s a glorious wreck (a good old Viking word, that).
Glorious, I say, in all its shambling, mutable beauty. People daily speak
a quilt work of words, and continents and nations and tribes and even
enemies dance all over your mouth when you speak.”
—— Luis Alberto Urrea

Think about that: we speak immigration
every time we open our mouths and yet,

from these mouths we curse each other —
whites curse browns and blacks and we

whites are dangerous because we have
a deadly combination — fear and

power: economic, political, societal,
police -— our curse carries with it

the threat of death. With our white,
evangelical mouths we praise our tribal

god and curse our black, brown, red
and yellow brothers and sisters. With

our white mouths we curse in Native
American, German, Scandinavian, Latin,

Scottish, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian
and we shout, “Talk American, you skunk,

twerp, boy, girl, feckless wreck!” We
shout, “Dance for us,” while an inter-

national quilt of words brought by the
immigrants waltz off our tongues.

And our karma goes forth and soon
karma* will return.

*karma (n.)
1827, in Buddhism, the sum of a person’s actions in one life, which determines his form in the next; from Sanskrit karma “action, work, deed; fate,” related to Sanskrit krnoti, Avestan kerenaoiti “makes,” Old Persian kunautiy “he makes;” from PIE root *kwer- “to make, form” (see terato-). “Latterly adopted by Western popular ‘meditative’ groups” [OED, 1989]. It is related to the second element in Sanskrit.

Disputate, exacerbate,
the Wannabe Tzar never
passes an opportunity to agitate.
He leaves chaos in his wake.
Take note; it is never a mistake.
It is all planned
by Rasputin’s hand.
Rasputin is the Tzar’s right-hand man —
the brain behind every devious plan
the fragile fabric to fray
and toss democracy away.
Standing behind the Wannabe Tzar,
whispering in his ear,
this is a danger — present and clear.
Who is this Rasputin hovering in the shadow?
Look for the one with poison seeds to sew.

The neighbor wonders how our weeds
are doing, referring to the dune grass.
Meanwhile, I watch very large, industrial
size lawnmowers gobble up grass like
roaring, ravenous, devouring prehistoric
beetles while belching out noxious fumes
from their back ends. Then the shiny, purple
backed bugs are loaded up and driven
off and in their wake all is quiet and
manicured beautifully like a cadaverous
body attired in a gorgeous, doily laden
Victorian gown reeking of death and
environmental destruction.

A day of celebration: I just printed all my posts from September 2011 through June 2018, approximately 2,850 posts, almost all poetry — lots of paper, lots of ink. I have no idea what I will do with them, but it is nice to know that they, now, are not vulnerable to the whims of the internet, as in, puff they’re gone into cyberspace never to be retrieved. I plan to keep up with the printing month by month. All should be well unless, God forbid, the house burns down, in which case, we will have bigger issues than my poetry.

he was told that         she       didn’t really know him
that well even after
thirty-one years of
a casual friendship.
                             she was right
                             for the wrong reason.
for some reason she
wanted to hurt him,
to set up a situation
where she could
criticize him for a
few things. then
                               she was all over him
                               like a bad suit.

he just looked down
at his plate of prime
rib wondering why
                     he was wasting the money 
even though
                       it was the best deal in town on
prime rib, better
even than the
prime rib dinner
another friend of
his had at a fancy
chicago steak
house according
                       to that friend’s   testimony.

In Germany, they sat for dinner
with crystal, silver, cloth. The
music on the radio was Wagner.

The trains roared by and when
they passed, the silence blessed
the men who chatted over brandy.

When the trains stopped and the
door opened, silent riders stepped
off and went quietly to their deaths.

In America, we sit in front of the
TV watching (name a sport) while
munching on sweet and salty snacks.

At the border, desperate mothers
and fathers long for their babies’
cries but there is only silence.

There is a loud knock on the doors
of the homes of people watching
TVs now muted. Visitors wear brown.

For the moment, there is just silence.

I read a poem by a man who
when he was twelve had a
bicycle accident, which left

him a quadriplegic. Twenty
years ago at fifty-three I
had a mountain biking accident

in which I broke thirteen
bones. If I had not moved
my head at the last nano-

second, I would be a quad-
riplegic like the poet or
I would be a dead poet. I

shuddered when I read about
his accident. Sympathy pains?
Did I feel a twinge of guilt

that I survived with just a
shattered clavicle never to
be one piece again and lots

of bumps on twelve ribs and
aches and pains? Do I feel
guilty that I forget to give

thanks every morning when I
crawl out of bed that I can
crawl out of bed? In the poem’s

last line, the poet says his
soul sings. I am grateful for
many things including that

poet’s singing soul.

Do you think he is really the
real Manchurian Candidate?
Is he really a genius who has
been scripted to do every-

thing he is doing? Has he
played dumb by claiming
just the opposite? Is he a
joke to the majority to lull

the majority into dismissing
him and his actions? Is he
going to subvert everything
at the direction of a super-

genius behind him? Or is
this just a figment of our
imagination and not any-
thing actually real at all and

that in just a minute, millions
and millions of us are going
to wake up and realize this
has been just another one

of those annoying night-
mares? Or is that just
wishful thinking? And that’s
lots of questions when while

we value the questions more
than the answers as a slogan
in a lot of progressive
Christian denominations,

wouldn’t it be nice to have
an answer once in a while,
especially concerning some-
thing as bizarre as this

president’s behavior? And
that’s another question,
isn’t it? Oh, please stop!
He’s winning at this, isn’t he?

Or is it the genius behind him?

I have escaped the “things-are-getting-better” spell.
While I hopefully affirm Julian’s “All shall be well;
All manner of things shall be well,” for the long haul,
Sadly, I re-affirm dire existential consequences of the Fall,

Now here is a powerful, poignant, descriptive, heart-wrenching, beautiful, understandable poem:

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=adf347f75a&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=f672f541af.

Bob