The Incredible Shrieking Man

The current discombobulation of our politicians can be seen as a dizzying horrorshow to those of us who have become underwhelmed by the performance of our representative government.

The newsy entertainment media which has sometimes acted as a noisome ringmaster during the wide-spread dissolution of our social, political, psychic, and physical constitutions during this dangerously irresponsible Trumpian episode of  American History is now forced to concentrate on the center ring alone, i.e., the actual existential threat to democracy: our extinction. They are trying hard, but need to try even harder.

We will learn the hard truth about the long-held myths about our worth, and about our purpose, and our usefulness as a force for good in the world during this pandemic.

How we choose to react individually, as a group, or in groups to this scourge will determine whether we are truly fit "to build a shining city upon a hill", or instead shall continue as predatory scramblers and tunnelers for mammon, like Wellsian Morlocks, beneath it.

Groundhog Daze

Dear Disillusioned,

I empathize with you on the recent loss of your Democracy, and I wish to lighten your burden somewhat by posting this brief epistle to you and any fellow citizens who are feeling disheartened [despaired] of late.

That we have sunken to ever more acrimonious depths into the Slough of Despond is readily apparent, but might I not suggest some ways to alleviate the ignominity of this well-deserved consequence?

There are many ways that you can overcome your disappointment [grief] at suddenly realizing that all of your fears about how America has regressed from its time-honored beginnings up through its slaveholding tendencies, bouts of ethnic cleansing, nativism, jingoism, penchant for war, imperialism, corruption, gratuitous violence, white-nationalism, racism, and manifest predation in social, political, and economic arenas slowly tentacling upward and outward into this week's parting Congressional Salute to their befucked electorate were warranted:

1) Make sure not to miss J.Lo. Do DVR the entire NFL production.

2) Read a biographical introduction to Donne, Shelley, Browning, Yeats, and Eliot. (In any order, the object being simply to see how little we need another great poet to fuss over).

3) Learn how to legally purchase, use and clean a deadly weapon in your community. It probably will soon make you sleep more soundly.

4) I could enlarge this list, but I think you get the idea (which is) either accept your situation or take some action to change it [hopefully for the better (whatever that means)], but don't fall into the liberal trap of whining about it. FDR is dead (our loss) and if he was alive, you know he'd be a sitting duck.

P.S. I'm going with Kansas City. It's no Ferguson, but they do have some crazy little women there.
Or so I've heard.

The Reality of Applied Mechanics

A. Golden-feathered bird

B. Held aloft in the mind's eye

C. As an unseen hand

D. Scribes circles in the air

Beyond the Impale

It was a year of homecomings,
and separations,
more arrivals and departures

--my life turned slowly on a spit--

I was skewered,
I sizzled, I crackled, and
though a bit crusty at the end

undone

Contractions in a Golden Year

If you'd've told me I wouldn't've believed
that I wouldn't fret over my return and
that I'd scarcely give it a second thought.

If you'd've told me I wouldn't've believed
that my departure would've been so easy and
that I'd be going on-time just as you'd predicted.

If you'd've told me I wouldn't've believed
that all I'd touched would soon be forgotten and
that all I'd touched I'd just as soon

LC Smith

I see that messenger
     she gave to me so long ago
That harbinger of lives to come
Return
     as a daily dividend

For Ben

Too Soon To Tell

Those words we’ve heard so much.

But were hearing and listening ever the same?

We thought so.

But were we thinking?

We thought so.

Those words we’ve heard so much.

But were hearing and listening ever the same?

Now we know.

They never were the same.

They never were the same.