No doubt the earth will stay alive,
but one wonders whether we will survive
all the punishment we have caused
our home, which hangs on with open claws.

The oceans deal with all the plastic;
land deals with all that which is caustic.
The air wheezes so asthmatic.
The animal’s survival is problematic.

Everything still looks so good;
we are lulled into a good mood,
but appearances are ever so deceptive
and political reality is unreceptive

to anything that tells it like it is —
the truth which is perceived as the abyss
and so obfuscation is de rigor
until we, as a species, are no more.

Did Theseus have the
thread that ran so true —
about which one
would never rue?
Princess Ariadne gave
him the thread to use
as he traveled the labyrinth,
killed the Minotaur, then flew
back, navigating halls and halls
to travel through.
For Jesse Stuart, teaching was
the “The needle’s eye that does supply,
the thread that runs so true….”
Theseus was the needle’s eye,
the teacher who showed the way
the labyrinthine life through —
so true no student would ever rue.
And so we face our Minotaurs
along life’s labyrinthine way.
We fight the inside and outside wars
and by grace, with the help
of the thread that runs so true
and the needle’s eye
of teachers along the way,
such a life, we will never rue.

One learns legitimate argumentation
in any introductory debate class
and stays away from defamation —
address the issue, cite the facts
never argue ad hominem,
and never, ever go on the attack.
We’ve never seen the occupant’s
transcripts, so we don’t know
and we might look askance
on if he ever took a debate class,
but if the stable genius did
he forgot everything very fast.
One just has to follow his tweets
to see how such an effort
ended in a miserable defeat.

“I want it all
and I want it now,”
is the advertisement’s clarion call —
a cavernous “Christian” country’s maw.
“It’s better to give than to receive.
The one who loses his life will find it.”
It is capitalism’s intent to deceive.
In evangelical America, the real Jesus is a misfit.
He says, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Well then, pack up that Jesus and ship him off via Amazon.

For some unbeknownst reason…
“The day dawned” is a phrase
that keeps popping into his head.
It’s hackneyed and ever so trite.
He might…
just as well have written,
“The dawn of the dead,” instead,
but as trite as it is,
it is…
what happens every day.
He couldn’t very well say,
“The day set,”
when it was dawning
or “The day dawned,”
when it had set.
And so he glanced at the clock
and it was “the noon hour,”
and decided he wouldn’t cower,
but would start the poem
with just such a phrase
and let the readers curse him
with faint praise
for writing a hackneyed phrase.

Sadist Steven wants to send
children to their deaths back
home where they can’t get
the treatment they need here.

Sadist Steven wants to keep
children in cages without basic
hygiene including girls bleed-
ing into their undies.

Sadist Steven continues to
separate children from their
parents at the border and
keep them separated.

Sadist Steven acts like a fascist
and his people suffered in con-
centration camps and were
gassed and burned to ash.

Sadist Steven, seriously, what
went so very wrong for you?

The couple backed the car out
of the driveway, the husband at
the wheel. They were starting
out for the airport where the
woman would meet her mother
and sister for the first leg of a
trip to Greece for a vacation.
The car pulled away. The across
the street neighbor whistled after
the car. It stopped, backed up.
The woman rolled down the win-
dow. He called out, “Say hi to my
good friend Zorba for me. We were
dancing partners back in the day. ”
“Will do.” “Have a great vacation.”
“Thanks.” The neighbor could hear
the anticipatory excitement in her
voice. She waved as her husband
drove down the street on the way
to the great adventure.

They were going to drain the swamp
but they crawled into the political sewer.
They adopted the vicious tactics of Trump.
After the election, hopefully, there will be —
fewer and fewer rats crawling
in and out of that dis-ease ridden sewer.

“Poetry is not a means to an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive.” — Poet Kim Addonizio

After taking out the dog,
after feeding the dog,
after taking his pills,
after cleaning his eyeglasses,
after flossing and brushing,
after cleaning the dishes,
after making the coffee,
he sat and glanced at the clock.
In five minutes he would
turn on the radio and listen
to Saturday morning jazz.
Then he sat in the silence,
breathed deeply
and gave thanks.
Soon, he would read a few
meditations and poems.
A car went by,
a runner went by,
the sun reflected off the dune grass.
Through the closed window
he heard a bird.
He thought about the
holiday weekend in his resort
area — today, Sunday, Monday.
He, his wife and the
Chocolate Lab would be
staying pretty close to
base camp and not attempt a summit
of the “southeast ridge of Annapurna III,
one of the great unclaimed prizes
left in the Himalayas.”
Tuesday, he and his wife might go
for a bike ride to a really nice,
up and coming micro-brewery,
“Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”

He read an account of three young
fellows, expert mountain/rock climbers,
who died in an avalanche. The article

profiled all three and their substantial
accomplishments. Along the way, grue-
some stories of the deaths of climbing

friends of the three were told. And then
the author made a short, partial list of
those in the treacherous sport who had

died on this mountain or that — seemed
to go on and on and on, death, death,
death and more death. Almost in every

paragraph, it seemed that death was
mentioned, grief was visited. When the
article ended, the reader looked below the

writer’s name: Filed To: Climbing, Canada
Search and Rescue, Mountaineering,
Athletes, Survival. That’s right, the last

word is survival not death. They didn’t
survive; they died. The word death appears
nowhere in the “Filed to.” It is ubiquitous

in the article. Is such subject matter so
hard to face and name — I guess they just
passed away; were lost; simply went on to

glory to be with their Lord as they write
in the obituaries of the last of the old,
ethnic, evangelical Christians in the

once ethnically dominated town. Why
didn’t they just call it what it was? It
wasn’t survival; it was death —

sudden, tragic death.