Now it is the last time
for me to ask you if you love me —
a time I say is the last one
and then you simply make fun
and my only wish is to flee.

And then you blush
and ask me if I love you —
I’m thinking this is a game
and commitment I should feign.
But I gush, “My love for you is true.”

*rhyme scheme from the poem
On the Hill-Side by Radclyffe Hall
at Poem-A-Day, 8/25/2019

Fools rush in where angels fear
to tread, know thyself, the un-
examined life is not worth living,

we are all our own worst enemies
…all kept running through his
head after what he deemed an

unfortunate confrontation. Could
he have done something different-
ly? Of course. Did he learn some-

thing? Of course. Will this inform
him for next time, the inevitable
next time? Hopefully. And finally,

there comes a time to stop playing
the tapes over and over in his head
and second-guessing himself and

move forward; at least that is what
a very learned person, but not an
oft-quoted philosopher, writer,

or anonymous writer of truisms
like those quoted above, told
him — just someone who cared.

The counselor told the man years
ago that the man couldn’t have it
both ways — the man couldn’t
proclaim social justice and need

approval. It would eventually kill
him. The man thought about it
and made a choice. That was
exactly right; that was fifty years

ago and the man, at seventy-
four, is still learning and still con-
fronting and still being rejected by
those who don’t want to be con-

fronted, but the man still can’t help
himself and can’t stop confronting
injustice as he sees it, and no longer
needs peoples’ approval which was

the original concern; in fact, the man
needs approval almost not at all and
he doesn’t do the confrontation out
of spite but just because the need

for social justice happens to keep
happening, but he keeps asking
whether or not he is doing it all
with love. The man then thought

about what his late wife once told
him: he would never have an ulcer;
he would just give them to others.
He has thought a lot about that also.

He sits by the creek
watching the clear,
shallow water move
resolutely down to
the lake.

He thinks about the
chaos in the country,
in the world and, to
be perfectly honest,
in his life right now
with people acting
out.

As the water moves
down, the ducks
move up against
the current looking
for food.

You have to do
what you have
to do to get
through.

The ducks head
back downstream —
going with the flow —
hopefully enjoying
the float.

He sits in the shade
under a canopy enjoy-
ing the solitude of
watching the flow.

A zephyr wind blows
by scattering the
gnats and mosquitoes.

He breathes deeply of
the fresh, dry, late
summer air.

The therapist wrote of the couple 
whose elder son 
killed himself with a shotgun, 
and they gave that very gun 
as a gift to their younger son. 
The creepiness still crawls; 
the evil still stalks. 
Depravity 
is the universal cavity 
and we beg for Huxley’s Soma/Novocaine 
to end the pain 
while we experience
more of the same,
that which is more and more insane —
    more domestic violence-ism,
          hedonism, 
               narcissism,
                    egotism,
                         ethnic racism,
                              ecological destruction-ism,
                                   and the beat 
                                        goes on, 
                                             and on 
                                                 and 
                                                      on -- ism.

*idea from a reminder from of friend of Scott Peck’s
“People of the Lie,” published in 1981

.

It is said, the only land
the Occupant can live
in is the land of syco-
phants. This is not the
land of Jonathan Swift.
Gulliver didn’t travel
here. They say that the
Occupant has “jumped
the shark”; some say the
shark got cheated; others
say, “We did.” Some say
the Occupant is on the
way out. Sartre said there
is no exit. Camus said
something like, in spite
of the fact that not much
of this makes any sense
at all, do the ethical thing.
If Camus were alive, I
would wear a tee-shirt
proclaiming, “Camus
for President.” and
if Sartre were alive,
another one saying,
“Sartre for Secretary
of State.”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” said Marcellus to Horatio
and the Occupant, of the federal nursery school, said, “I won’t go.”
There is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark or in Greenland;
the problem is in the states and Denmark put an end to a ludicrous plan
for the US to purchase Greenland and the Occupant to build
a golden tower in the land of melting ice and alcohol distilled
which is why Marcellus made the remark he did.
Denmark, under the influence of spirits, was a Shakespearian poetic fib.
Hamlet blamed it all on booze but there was not a chance.
The problem was crazy Hamlet who acted like the infantile Occupant in big pants.

the man read an article about anthony bourdain
and he felt sad
all over again;
then he thought about his dad
and all over again
the man felt sad;
then he thought about a minister friend
who intentionally caused his life to end;
at all these self-inflicted wounds
causing emotions to be strewn
far and wide, the man just couldn’t get mad;
for him, all over again,
it is all just so very, very sad.

When he applied to the
ethnic college and then
finally got there after a
community college

detour of two years,
he realized he wasn’t
part of the clan. He didn’t
have the right last name

and he didn’t grow up
in the same circles and
so basically he was an
outsider. He graduated

from that school and
went to the sister school
across the street and
realized he was even

less a part of that com-
munity which was even
more ethnically ex-
elusive. He tried and

tried to be a part of
that group and found
that it just wasn’t
working. He thinks

it is because that
community’s ethos
is “niceness,” regard-
less of how much

they might talk of
social justice. They
just don’t want to
offend anyone and

that certainly isn’t
his moniker, and so
now, as a senior
citizen sitting among

that ethnicity, he says,
“Tough toenails, I am
what and who I am.” (It
it wasn’t toenails he said,

but he wrote that because
he wanted to be ethnically
nice). Some habits are
really hard to break

or is it a lingering
desire to be accepted?
“Oh, Lord,” he says,
“I certainly hope not.”

When they moved in, twenty years ago,
an acquaintance who lived at the top
of the dune in a big house, drove by

in his late-model luxury car, stopped,
rolled down the passenger side win-
dow and called to the new resident

in his driveway, “So you are the new
riffraff in the valley,” and drove off
laughing at his cleverness. Ha, ha,

ha, ha, the new person in the neigh-
borhood thought to himself. There’s
always some message disguised in

humor — something one can get away
with — in this case, a word about
status. Vance Packard would certainly

agree. The man and his wife then walked
up the dune to the stairway down to
the beach. They stood at the top and

looked out. The man said, “It’s sixty
miles straight across to Racine. I knew
a guy who once said to his wife, ‘Honey,

I’m going out for breakfast,’ and he
took his fifteen-foot fishing boat to
Racine and had breakfast.” They walked

back down the dune to their new home
and he said, “I like living below the
dune in a cottage. I like seeing the

Big Lake and not being able to see
Racine. I like the proportions. I think
this will help keep things in perspective.

* It’s the birthday of poet Heather McHugh, born in San Diego, California (1948). She said: “I have always lived on waterfronts. If you live on the edge of an enormous mountain or an enormous body of water, it’s harder to think of yourself as being so important. That seems useful to me, spiritually.”  — from the Writer’s Almanac, 8/20/2019