They always look good

when they walk out the door

and when they walk back in.

Even while working in the yard,

bending over flower beds, then

looking up, smiling, laughing,

waving. The kids come home

for holidays and they always

look good, too, unloading the

little ones from their safety seats

with grandmother and grandfather

opening the door and walking

to the car and hugging the kids,

lifting the grandkids in their

arms and everyone happily

heading inside. They are all

very religious and you just get

that feeling from them like

they’ve got it knocked more

so than most everybody else

and maybe they do as they walk

out their door and back in again.

Ironically, can you believe

that DNA on PBS right now shows

that we are all brothers and

sisters back to Adam and Eve,

just like the Bible said,

metaphorically speaking

(Well, actually literally speaking

there was a family a 150,000

years ago from which we all

descended, but I digress),

while throughout the

good old US of A today,

right this very moment,

brothers and sisters face

off against each other

believing the dirtiest,

low down lie ever

told by Satan, the

scared angel who

does what he does,

and, of course what

we do, because we

just want back in the

eternal loving relationship

we are already in because of

Jesus

but which we don’t know

we are in for reasons of

pride, egotism, selfishness,

insecurity, fear, whatever (as

they say these days)

and as a result cause,

foster and propagate the worst

violence imaginable?

Thank God it isn’t Hitler’s

Germany, Stalin’s Russia,

Bush’s Iraq, Pol Pot’s

Cambodia, and on and on

and on throughout history

because it is bad enough as

it is. Christ have mercy.

The scared shitless white boy in blue

blasted the big, intimidating black boy –

it’s true.

So, what else is new?

The scared for his political life

county’s attorney

told the grand jury

not to hurry.

Idle hands are the Devil’s

workshop.

Ferguson justice just played

hopscotch.

Nothing’s new.

Nero fiddled

while Rome burned.

Once again, we

get what we’ve earned.

White man’s fear wins

once more. So goes

the unending,

Amerikan Civil War.

Kyrie Eleison.

on monday evening it

was mostly black on black

while the man, hiding

behind riot gear, shot gas

into the crowd. tell me

the old, old story isn’t

supposed to be this

old, old story. what will

black friday look like

on thanksgiving when it

starts at about

three in the afternoon?

wasn’t there another

black friday that got real, real

dark about three? there

doesn’t seem to be

much for which to give thanks

this thanksgiving for anyone

except for the

DEVIL OF RACISM

who keeps putting kkk’s

for amerika into the handbasket

of hell purchased as the

clock strikes midnight and

people buy the lie and

crash the door

to get to trinkets

and continue to ignore,

ignore, ignore.

He said he thought

the T.V. guy was

handsome. He wasn’t

used to doing that. He

was much more into pointing

out good-looking women

on the screen, but sometimes

his wife would frown,

so he thought turn

around is fair play and,

aesthetically, the guy

looked pretty nice —

good hair and all,

so he said it. Is that

really turn around? Her

response was that the

T.V. guy was too

perfect. “Too perfect?”

“Yeah, I like a little

bit of a bad boy –

not too much, just

enough.” He smiled

a sheepish, shit-eating

smile and said, “Really?”

“Really,” she smiled

back and that was

that for then.

The reader and writer of poetry

diligently reads

the Poem of the Day, everyday,

along with the biography of the poet

and then he peruses other poems

by the poet and other poets’ poems

and he thinks to himself, I don’t belong

here. And then Billy Collins comes

to the rescue as if the Holy

Spirit had sidled up to the reader/writer,

taken a seat at the counter next to

him and said,

“The coffee is on me.”

He sat at the bar

engaging a young

couple

in conversation.

He mentioned that

recently he

turned seventy

hoping the couple

would remark about

how young he looked.

Silly boy. It was a

young couple staring

back at him. Instead, the

young man, a big

Chicago Cubs

fan, glibly, perhaps

innocently, responded,

“Ah, the seventh inning

stretch.” Easy for him

to say. Whoa, that means

only two or maybe at

best two and a half

innings to go,

he thought.

He hadn’t

thought of his age

metaphorically,

but it turns out the

young man was

also a professor

of poetry. Seventh

inning stretch? Hmmm.

He couldn’t even hear

Harry Carey sing,

“Take Me Out To The

Ballgame,” because

old Harry finished either

the seventh or eighth but

certainly not the

ninth inning of life (How old

was he when he died?)

himself

a few years ago

in but one more

proverbial

Cubs’ loss.

He just knew there

was no Northside

World Series

in his future.

Now into life

as a baseball

metaphor, the

newly minted

septuagenarian

thought, at least

the young prof didn’t

say, “Strike two!”

You,

I’ve really been thinking a lot about you and feeling a lot for you and with you.

My heart goes out to you as a fellow traveller on the loneliest journey of life.

It took a long time before I laughed with a genuine laugh.  It took a long time before I could see colors.

I want you to get to the genuine laugh, to see the vivid colors of life.

It will take time.

Me

He had just seen Patti LaBelle

belt out “Somewhere Over The

Rainbow” for the President of

the United States and he felt the

tears well up, not for Patti, who

certainly doesn’t need his tears —

she’s going so strong at seventy,

and not even for Judy Garland,

who is way beyond his tears,

but for Eva Cassidy who sang

the most beautiful, heart-wrench-

ing version he had ever heard

and who died at a young and

tender age from skin cancer

and, of course, for all those

who cried, why, oh why can’t

I and then died young and may-

be a bit for himself as he sits

here missing them.

A single pair of sneakers for a kid

about four-years-old were found

in the desert on the US side of the

border with Mexico. A baby back-

pack was a little ways away. How

far away are the jowly, double-

chinned, booze bloated public

servants who sometimes sit in

their places along Pennsylvania

Avenue in those hallowed chamb-

ers of the Republic wearing their

Allen Edmond shoes polished

by the shoeshine boy who is

actually a man in the lobby?