I like to spend my summertime
Making cheerful summer rhymes
I take a clever word and double it.
Then, that’s the start of a couplet.
I do my best at language bending
Looking for cohesive endings
For every line that crosses my mind.
That is why works the best, I find.
I just roll right on with the beat
I depend the result will be sweet.
I find if I think about it too hard
I will miss the rhythm by a yard.

My hope is the spoken word
Will make you feel what you heard
As if it were a voice in your head
That speaks for you in its stead
And moves to you to higher plane;
Makes you feel a bit more sane.
I have been rescued just that way
By understanding words that say
The things my heart truly needed
When my own voice never heeded.
I now trust that loving behavior
I know words can be a savior.

I like to parse in cold times too.
It’s such a warming thing to do
And I get to place myself inside;
I grant myself permission to hide
In my room where it’s warm
And poeticize any awful storms
Turning sentence parts to sounds
And let the harmonics surround
My head that thinks in four-four time
Writing every season’s cozy rhymes.
Then, in hopes I help more than myself
I send the poems off to everyone else.

I miss those wonder-filled days
When watching clouds was fun,
As well as watching movies
And more than only just one.
Two movies, a serial and a cartoon
Was the Saturday morning fare
With greasy popcorn and sodas
If we could find fifty scents somewhere.

My brothers and I loved picking
Through those illegal dump sites
That lawless neighbors often used,
Near us, in the middle of the night.
Once I found a Buddha statuette
And didn’t know who the guy was.
In Christian America of the fifties
Knowing such things had no cause.

Brother Jim found a tricycle there
Almost completely okay to ride
And Dan found a kind of wood box
With a handful of coins inside.
He got to pay for the movies for us
But Sam didn’t find much at all.
He did manage to slip at the time
And take a pretty hilarious fall.

Maybe it was easier then, those days
For kids to stay so entertained.
The only thing that might spoil our fun
Was if nature chose to make it rain.
Many times our fun was exploring
And rain could make it a weary slog.
It caused some unpleasant journeys
Through some unattractive bogs.

We built go-carts out of some junk
We gathered on our treasure hunts,
But usually they were contraptions
My mother definitely did not want.
Mom was like that, careful with us.
Worry-wart that she was back then
It didn’t stop or really slow down
Us four adventure-minded children.

As for me, I chose the alternatives
To do what is right without the superlatives,
To love people without any threat
A choice too many have not made yet.
A loving but jealous and wrathful god?
Even those words put together sound odd.
If this omnipotence were on the level
Why not smite the heck out of the devil?

I never understood that stuff about Eden.
Why have just one tree off limits even?
To people who were basically children
Why was part of paradise ever forbidden?
Any parent will tell you about their kids
They would do exactly as those two did.
You couldn’t keep them away with a truncheon.
Those kids would have a ****** luncheon.

Oh, and what a self-righteous creep was He
To do what what he did to Job endlessly.
It has always sounded evil torture to me;
The work of a cloud-bound twisted bully.
Then for no reason anybody could ever tell
He created a son and then cast him into hell.
He let the Devil make a punching bag of Jesus.
This God creature seems to do what he pleases.

So what about this legend is so wonderful
That we heap money on priests by the basketful?
We create huge bejeweled palaces everywhere
And insist they are houses of God and swear
To visit them will make us all godly creatures.
Yet we demand no solid proof of those teachers.
If a car salesman delivered like that on a promise,
We’d take him out to and pound him into pumice.

I live in a world of intolerant people
Who insist their way is the best.
Many say theirs is the only way;
They totally reject all the rest.
I always have had trouble with that,
Saying their loving god hates;
That their god would choose some to
Leave standing hopeless at the gate.

I read the books that believers claim
Will cleanse me and make me blessed.
They verbally promise heaven to me
If I but bend my knee and request
Acceptance of a human turned into god
For my personal and holy savior.
It has always seemed to me to be
A rather superstitious sort of behavior.

It smacks of me throwing salt around
To promise myself the best of luck.
Or avoiding stepping on any crack.
Mumbo jumbo for which I have no truck.
I read more than the books of religions
To find out where the myth came from.
I am now informed about the eucharist
To know I don’t need a single crumb.

I don’t disparage those who believe
Any more than those who wear copper
To ward of arthritis and rheumatism.
I’ve seen those beliefs come a cropper.
Let others sing songs and nursery rhymes
About golden streets and pie in the sky.
I prefer reality in the here and now.
I’m not a bit superstitious, no not I.

I gag when those who treat our flag
As nothing more than a rag and tag
Along with the Klanners waving banners
From the war against our country;
Their bad manners somehow a badge
They hold up as a symbolic gesture
As they put equality out to pasture
So they can separate, segregate,
Discriminate, and call for assassination
The leaders of our nation that disagree
Like you and me, if we dare object.

It is them I reject, deflect and yes, object
To in the loudest, most heated terms.
They are  germs that sicken us all
And drive us toward a fall, thinking
That they can rebuild the land
So they have the upper hand
And the rest of us can just whistle
If we think this will never come true.
It is so most dangerous for me and you
If they get their way so you can’t say
The slightest word against them.

This is the gem they want for their crown;
To put anyone down who says otherwise
And to freely point to the other guys
And order their destruction and deaths
With what they believe are sainted breaths
But are really exhalations and perorations
Of the devil on earth here to challenge your birth
If you don’t fit their template of acceptability
And deny their culpability in the holocaust
Their evil machinations will ultimately cost.

We have heard the words they preach
The Gospel carpetbaggers teach
That some of us can make their own rules.
Any white people that don’t are fools.
They redefine the meaning of equality
The gladly withhold my rights from me.
They choose what part of good is good
And happily red-lined my neighborhood.

Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.

They think us blind and cannot see
That they openly abhor equality.
They say one thing in the South
Up north they use another mouth,
And speak with a totally forked tongue
And push half the race down a rung.
They cry like they have all been hurt
But it is they who treat the rest like dirt.

Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.

There is no difference from your chant
And the Inquisition’s deadly cant.
These punishing words out of you
Are ages old, they are not new.
If Jesus were here to hear you start
This ugly talk, it would break his heart.

Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.

You can’t afford to worship here
Our Jesus is not your kind of god.
Don’t bother to kneel or get comfy.
You are not worthy. You’re just odd.

You offend good people to worship here.
We don’t allow your kind in our place.
We have rules about parishioners
Of ****** preference, politics and race.

There are many ways to live decently
But they just apply to a special few.
It doesn’t refer to Middle East bloodlines,
Like Muslims, Arabs and even Jews.

You are too dark for voting here.
Too many of you vote Democrat.
Republican supremacists and bigots
That’s where the real America is at.

After all, God has told us all
To treat each other as brothers.
It doesn’t say anything about
Being nice to those ******* mothers.

We don’t have to appreciate those
Who don’t follow the American way.
They commit a sin if they happen to be
Dark, Democrat, non-Christian or gay.

So, hold up your head Supremacists;
We are here and have your back.
Our new President agrees and understands,
And will take our Caucasian country back.