How attractive he is, and how beset
By those stuffy boots on a Roman hill
How progressive, how forward, how brilliant
And how attached to the bubbly How Now

How fashionable with all his little books
So happenin’, so 1928
“Beyond these symbols” he writes the fashions
About some bones (so conveniently lost)

In the Gobi Desert he dug a tooth
And then upon this molar built his
                                                                     truth?

In the work cart I find a luna moth
And is it dead?  With gentle hands I lift…
And off it flies! into the sunlit leaves
Breeze-wavy in the pale September sun

          Among the apple and cherry and oak

I labor away at summer’s excess
And clear the paths and glades of weatherfall
Sorting out litter to a merry fire
And billets to store for the winter hearth

          Sweet gifts of apple and cherry and oak

The bees seem to wonder what I’m about
Sitting awhile, and thinking the summer out

          Beneath the apple and cherry and oak

The evil that men do lives after them

                                -Julius Caesar III.iii.80-81

The eulogist speaks of the childhood roots
Of a preacher into poverty born
Amusing stories of the Good Ol’ Days
And of the hometown girl he came to love

The eulogist speaks of the ministry
To which the preacher and his wife were called
Their souls twinned in service to God and man
And of the catalogue of sinners saved

The eulogist speaks of the preacher’s soul -
But not of that dear family’s home he stole

“So Tell me, Judas;
            Where do You See Yourself Ten Years from Now?”

Judas is an apostle on the go
Building his resume’, a better gig
Always part of his strategic focus
Going places, a young man on the move

Proactive for the Second Century
His paradigm shift of transparency
A next-generation strategy plan
In today’s competitive marketplace

Thirty Tyrian shekels; that’s the amount -
Laundered through a secret offshore account

Whatever might a performance tea
                                                           be?
Whatever are electrolytes to you
                                                           and me?
No antioxidants will ruin our night
                                                           all right?
And hydration is itself a fright
                                                          ­ Quite!

Blowing sleet rattles against the window pane
And the electrics have again winked adieu
But light the gas and brew up, black and plain
We’ll drink our tea by candles, with a biscuit
                                                         ­  or two

In nice China cups, or a mason jar

Because

The best tea of all is a cuppa char

(Upon reading a ‘vert for specialty teas)

How wonderful to live in Freeport, Maine
Where beautiful women and handsome men
In youth eternal rock their five-bar boots
And flannel shirts in happy, snowy scenes

Where laughter echoes through those forest glades
Forever free of electrical lines
Skunks burrowing under the cabin floor
And neighbors’ overflowing septic tanks

Oh, what a dreamy life for you and me
In Freeport, Zip Code 04033!


(Just having a little fun; everything I’ve bought from L.L. Bean’s catalogue is wonderful!  I’d love to live in the perfect New England scenes depicted in the catalogue. If you squint your eyes carefully you can see Bob Newhart’s inn on page…)

The nectar of youth from which the hummingbirds fed
In the joyful sweetness of their morning flights
Now sullies and sours the afternoon hours
Through bitter infestations and corruptions

Its former clarity corrupted now
Trapped in a tube of stagnation and rot
And scavenged by a malevolent wasp
Her batlike wings pulsing malignantly

But there is always hope: new songs, new words
In the morning’s return of sweet hummingbirds

In fear a child curls up into a ball
A very little ball, a little soul
Desperately seeking approval, and love
And given only disapproval, and blows

Hiding a favorite toy from a screaming purge
Childhood vaporized in an angry hour
Withdrawing into books and shining dreams
Withdrawing behind a fear-frozen face

and forever

Somewhere out there, discarded in the wild
Brave toy soldiers wait for a little child

Click to make a gift

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Click to make a gift

My sadness, anger, and shame concrete plan
I will travel to Rome third-party reporting
Mechanisms examining specific
Options advocate concrete proposals

Click to make a gift

Expertise relevant disciplines need
Such tools already exist our structures
Must preclude criterion zero tolerance
Outreach psychological development

Click to make a gift

This is the church house, this is the steeple
Where the Bishop dumps words upon the people

Click to make a gift

From an idea by Jean Fisher

Six months of gasping, sere, soul-******* heat
Blood-******* mosquitoes, venomous snakes
And fetid, lung-drowning humidity

I loathe the summer, and I care not if
That wretched season goes away in silence
Or in noise -
                       only that it GOES AWAY

An urgent message that was never written
Was then not left beneath the third lantern
On an arching bridge that was never built
Under a wondrous river that never flowed

And men wondered at the unwritten words
They could not find atop the fourth lantern
In an echoing tunnel never dug
Over the steppes east of an eastern shore

And the message never written did not say:
O prelates and presidents – for whom do you pray?

-headline

          And how can man die better
          Than facing fearful odds,
          For the ashes of his fathers,
          And the temples of his gods

                         -Macauley, Lays of Ancient Rome

An argument over a parking space –
Lest all the pink Chinese flip-flops are gone
Triple-wide thongs in naughty, frothy lace
And a rhinestone case for a new MePhone

Cartoon shirts from the Vietnamese, sippy cups
Nicaraguan underwear and funny hats
Squeaky plastic toys for the little pups
And genuine autographed tee-ball bats -

There are causes for which a man might die
But “Ten Percent Off!” is no battle cry

Manichaeism is Quite Wrong, You Know


“…without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then….”

                       -Ivan, The Brothers Karamazov

If there are no boundaries, there is no freedom
With nothing to push against, one’s strength must fail
If God is not, then one can make no plaints
And must take on a burden that can’t exist

If man is never told no, there is no Yes
For him to answer then against the no
And if there is no Yes, there is nothing at all
There is no dichotomy, only the Yes

If there are no boundaries, there is no Yes
And man must cease in silent nothingness

Your Eminence:

Speaking of apostolic poverty
From the queen bed in your apostolic beach house
To those working two jobs to make life happen
Is pretty thin gruel –
                                                   serve it to someone else

Once upon a time:

An aged rabbi talking with two men
Asked them about their holiday in Paris

The first man said: Oh, I hated Paris
There was muck and filth everywhere I went
Stray dogs and prostitutes roamed the foul streets
And the Parisians were incessantly rude

The second man said: Oh, I loved Paris
There were flowers everywhere I went
Artists and beauty, writers scribbling away
And the Parisians were so kind to me

And so:

The rabbi said to them (his voice was kind):
Each of you found the Paris you wanted to find



(Worked up [or down, or sideways…] from a story Rabbi Joel Goor, a visiting lecturer at the University of San Diego in 1975, told his students.)

Dixit ergo Iesus ad duodecim, “Numquid et vos vultis abire?”

“Will you also go away?” He asks us.

                                                        ­              No.

Only sinners mourn at the foot of the Cross
Only sinners approach the baptismal font
Only sinners recline at Table with the Lord

To whom shall we go?
                                   An empty shopping mall?
A 501C cafeteria?
A feast of ashes with the cardinal?
                                                       ­               No.

There is only one Place, one Space, one Grace

Only sinners are invited, and so
Our yes to Him – we will not go

“But my chief argument in defence of **** An-shih is that…
           he retired from the Court decisively, ignored all recalls, and
           took to the mountains to write poetry of no political
           significance whatever.”


              – David Warren on the poet-philosopher **** An-Shih

Recusancy is not pious quietism;
In silence it is a brave voice withdrawn
From pompous Kratos’ halls of treachery
From screaming Demos’ marketplace of noise

And up into the silent hills to save
Something of civilization, to sing
Matins among the mountain mists, to write
A page in praise of Creation, to live -

Recusancy is not quietism at all;
It is a firm rebuke to tyranny

A pair of slacks, a pair of shoes, a shirt
A watch to count the weary meeting hours
Coffee with comrades in the old church hall
And all of these are very good indeed

But like old shoes, old pals, the scenes of youth
We must someday let them all go, and pass
Peacefully, one prays, through the spray and foam
And sail until dawn to that farthest Shore

Where only the NCOs must dress right, dress
And the coffee’s always fresh in the company mess


(But will the smoking lamp will be lit?)

Number Forty Two: “You're trying to undermine my rehabilitation. Disrupt my social progress!”

Number Six: “Strange talk for a poet.”

-The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”



Installing a poem to factory specs
Setting iambic feet into concrete
And lifting adverbs to the tops of verbs
Through the use of heavy machinery

Metaphors must be government-inspected
For solidarity with the collective
And images most closely interrogated
For their relevance to the latest cause

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

As cleared by United Auto Workers Local 2110
So you’d better like it; youknowwhatI’msayin’

An Open Letter to Really Important People
                     The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement
           A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret ****** Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)

There are no days free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to recusancy
Is no defense against the men of peace
Clenching their fists and screaming out their love

There are no nights free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to needful sleep
Is no defense against unhappy dreams
Judicial accusations of the memory

But even panic is no defense against
One’s fierce determination to write the truth

Where, then, do I apply for bribery?
Russians are everywhere here, we are told
So why aren’t those nefarious oligarchs
Flinging dollars and dachas at poor me?

And the Chinese, poking and hacking about
(My last water bill was in Mandarin)
Have yet to pad my secret bank account
Or park a Porsche on my patio

But if they will…

I want to spy for the cool FBI
And party away with the CIA

Two snakes in battle on a summer day
Writhing and twisting on a sandy road
Grappling desperately like taxing authorities
Fighting over a poor worker’s paycheck

Or like fierce coffee-break theologians
In anger ripping a scripture apart
Each clutching a ****** fragment to himself
But careful not to upset the 501C

And in the end, one snake swallows the other
Keeping him closer than a beloved brother

The physician is a good man, wise and fair
But, ouch! - HIS FINGER DOES NOT BELONG THERE!

What a surprise
It sparks, it dies
Return the prize
To those false guys

It wouldn’t fit
I thought a bit
Then stepped on it
And so it fit

Duct-Tape Automobile
How awkward when a body part
Falls out onto the interstate
That fragment of FoMoCo art -
It spun away in a figure eight!

There is a new part now on order
For this old car; it ain’t no Lexus
It rolls along in taped disorder
And that is how we do it in Texas

God bless our state, and the strong duct tape
That holds together my Ford Escape

Old Number Ten Saloon – where Bill was shot
Sitting in this old chair – or maybe not
‘Cause down the street there is another bar
Where poor Bill died; that’s two beer joints so far

And yet a third, here in South Dakota
Right over there, behind that Toyota
Another of those authentic places
Where Wild Bill died over his eights and aces

Everyone has a different tale to tell

And so

We’re not real sure where Wild Bill Hickok fell

Kafka and his Giant Insect
                            Which Might Be a Cockroach
                                      But Maybe Not
                We Could go to Das Scloss and ask Mr. K

An insect woke up one morning and realized
He had been transformed into Gregor Samsa

From a life focused on eating hair and grease
Glue, soup, bread, paper, leather
Sewerage, butter, meat (fresh and decayed)
Makeup, cookies, sugar, toothbrush bristles
Cookies, pizza, flour, tacos, apple pie
Dead bodies, feces, and his own species

He now had to deal with the confusion
The sorrow of being Gregor Samsa

Cheaply manufactured in India
Its fake marbled cover fakier than ever
But not as fakey as this assignment
“Grendl symbolizes existential…”

Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

“Grendl symbolizes…” my senior year
Nobody understands why I don’t want
To go to college, why I quit the band -
Grendl and I are both exiles, okay…?

Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

I love my fountain pen; its deep, dark lines

Just like me

Refuse to be MLA marginalized

“Grendl symbolizes…”

I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

The principal in a cool cartoon tee
His fashion sneakers squeaking across the floor
Sets out candy, pizzas, and canned sodas
Arranges a door prize, and assembles the faculty

Requires them to sign in so he can check on them
Orders them to hold hands and sing the school song
Reminds them they are all one big family
As a preface to his primary agenda:

To tell them to be more professional
The principal in a cool cartoon tee

Avuncular in his style, jolly and loud
An epiphany with an entourage
Of functionaries who survey the crowd
For any lack of enthusiasm

Applaud they must, wearing upon command
Cheap slogan tees averring that their school
Is like totally awesome and ‘way cool
They leap and bounce and cheer as they are told

Chanting a theme, this year’s predictable theme
Desperately cute, a motivational meme -
Oh, those childish, subservient creatures!
The worst part is that they are the
                                                             ­      teachers

You are a poem; your stanzas are your life:
A prologue written in the long ago
(with some few emendations here and there)                   (ahem!)
A closure and an afterword await                

But now about this part of your life:

The iambs of your footfalls dance in time
While    
           anapests
                           leap in search
                                                   of a rhyme
Stiff-built trochees stumble clunkily (ouch)
And alexandrines mourn the sometime sorrows of age

And when writing your poem, remember…

Your poetry of life will be truly true
If you almost never write about
                                                          you

I couldn’t put this must-read down, nor yet
Its many woven layers of tapestry
(Or maybe layered weavings of mystery?) -
This book seethes with passion; much blood is let

Beautifully crafted in the tradition of
A riveting re-telling all gritty
Wild, bold, and haunting, nuanced and witty
A daring, different tour-de-force of love

Lyrical, satirical, and compelling
And when the heroine’s not whispering
                                     she’s yelling

Every daughter is born of royalty
To rule and serve in lineal descent from God
But Claudia from her island of mist
Was borne away to Rome in captive shame

With her father in chains, herself in chains
To speak for their people, to speak for peace
Before the emperor, who in hearing them
Gave freedom to himself, and a crown to her

Though hostage far away from her girlhood home
With love she captured imperial Rome

That clockwork school! If it’s not gearing up
Then it's winding down, except in the fall
Which then is when it’s gearing up again
But not in the spring, when it is winding down

Sometimes it’s just around the corner where
Presumably it is still gearing up
But maybe winding down, somewhere in town
Waiting for the fall to come back around

Then winding down, having worn out its spring
But back in the fall, you see; that’s the thing!

The Peace of Leader Maduro

Yes, Leader Maduro, that is a bomb
And you and your Ken-doll generals flinch
And all your medals and chains of office
Rattle like the bones of the Revolution

Look at your soldiers fleeing through the streets
Yes, look - they have no wish to die for you
“Justice!” you scream, “Maximum punishment!”
“And there will be no forgiveness!”

                                                              F­or whom?

The people and the priests you have murdered

Will pray for you

Absolution from the lips of the dead

Were you ever in love with someone not
Listed as an approved relationship
By roaming mobs of false analogies
In either-or assumptions basely masked?

Friendship and love are regulated now
Not by a written fiat of the state
But by the decibels of imbeciles
The bellowed mandate of the club and fist

The law of love is now the law of bans -
They’ve politicized even the touching of hands

Lunch at the Cleverly Named It’s-Not-Really-a-Fish-Camp

A Penance in Two Parts

1.

Waitress-Speak

Or

What is the Correct Response When Someone Says “Thank You?”


No problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order
should be here shortly no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that your order should be here
shortly no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order should

Note: Read “no problem” as unselfconscious valley-speak with a nasal twang


2.

Sister-in-Law-Speak

So me and her tried this new place my grandson
said *! so I said *! back and then we
all just laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then
I said I was tired of her * and me and her found this sale and then my
husband said * So me and her tried this
new place my grandson said *! So I said
! back and then we all just laugheddddddddddd oh man
this is soooooooo good then I said I was tired
of her * and me and her found this sale
and then my husband said * So me and
her tried this new place my grandson said !
So I said *! back and then we all just
laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then I said

Note: just one margarita but a whole bunch of cackling. Loud cackling.

Is there a God? And did He really build
This world for us in which to live and serve
Each other and Him in sweet caritas?

Is there a God? And does he really love us?

If this is so,

Why does He permit motivational speakers?

The President is writing in ALL CAPS today
And that’s all right because caps are okay:
They keep his head warm in the winter’s cold
He has ‘em in colors: red, white, and gold

And an old one in green from Viet-Nam
Where he was a-serving 1 of his Uncle Sam
Only he didn’t, but that doesn’t matter
He’ll dodge the issue with bluster and natter

Be grateful he sports his red MAGA cap
To cover his head, ‘cause it’s full of
                                                      

        ­                                                                h­air




1 allusion to Kipling's "Gunga Din"

We’ve always sailed among the stars, for they
Do swim around us in their hemisphere
The sea’s a map whereon is writ the moon
In all her moods and whims and vanities

And too the sun, for he flies east to west
And so if we but trace his path across
To Sidon from the Pillars of Hercules
We calculate our course by his long wake

Oh, yes, we sail across the seas and skies -
                  But I would sail the starlight in her eyes

“You are your own god – and are surprised when
                  you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across
                  the desolate ice fields of winter.”

                               ― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Crazy old men bellowing at each other
Crazy old women shrieking at us all:
The Spiritus Mundi is hard at play
Among the wreckage of civilization

The stripping of the altars 1 is complete
Holy innocence is a toilet joke
And the literature of millennia
Now serves as cleaning rags for The Machine

An executioner, while waiting for you
Pauses to admire his latest tattoo



1 cf. Eamon Duffy

A white tee shirt with a pack of Camels
Tucked up ‘way cool in the left-side sleeve
And new blue jeans, the cuffs exactly right
And in my back pocket a happenin’ Ace comb

For keeping that duck tail so hot for the chicks
To swoon about, so High School Confidential
A cheap tin switchblade hidden carefully away
More Sharks than the Sharks, more Jets than the Jets

Even Kookier than Kookie, oh, my! -
While swaggering home from junior high

We’re all reptilian; our skins slough free
Each hour, a few epidermal cells cleared
Sliding away so silently that we
Don’t even know that we have disappeared

And then the dermis – it steps bravely up
The hypodermis in its place stands to
All cells and capillaries to duties new
And slowly, slowly, there is a brand new you

But what is truly important every day
Is that we don’t slough our dear friends away

This is the Last Straw –
and Something About Sacred Buckets of Holistic Ice Water

****** predators, human smugglers
Starvation in the Sudan, civil war
in Syria, mass executions in China
Journalists murdered almost everywhere
Fashionable infanticide, homelessness
Unemployment, urban terrorism
Mass ******, school shootings, wildfires, racism
An unstable national government
Anti-Semitism, border desperation
Riots, arson, ecclesiastical corruption
****, alcoholism, historical cleansing
Skinheads, abuse, Khardassianistas
Volcanos, the death penalty, free verse
Affluenza, Jerry Springer, The View
Herbal tea, antifa, anti-antifa
And the soul-******* existential despair
Of inspirational singer-songwriters:

Nah, not a bit worried about plastic straws

But I must go now; The Voices are telling me
To pour a bucket of ice water over my head
(As long as it’s not a plastic bucket)

A Straw Man Accessorized with Exclamation Marks from the Eighth Grade (Rainbow Brite™ © Glitter Optional)

I heard it, dude; it’s part of the nexus!
A floating island as big as Texas!
All made of straws, there in the Pacific!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, it’s there, specific!

It’s a Russian plot, sponsored by Putin!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, sure as shootin’!
Them plastic straws will soon bring down the grid!
They **** the whales; they even got a squid!

The science is settled; let’s make some laws:
The source of all evil is them plastic straws!!!!!!!

If…
          Some Crown of sorrows sit
          Upon a little world for a little hour –
          Who shall remember it? Who shall care for it?

                    -C. S. Lewis, “In Prison,” Spirits in *******

It’s not a bad cell, but it is a cell
Requiring you not to be who you are
Quietly within your designated space
And keeping your insolence to yourself

A grated hatch of disapproval drops
And leaves you to the berth penanced to you
A hard and narrow bunk of pain and guilt
Against a wall that now must be your world

And in that world do thoughtful battle against
Shrill voices telling you how wrong you are

Our leaders’ reputations decay in the corners
Of their star-spangled offices, curling up
Like fallen leaves wind-blown against a fence
Then writhing in the *******-fires of history

Their bubble reputations in their own mouths 1
Ephemeral as the grey and ashy smoke
Adrift among the vaporous lies that once  
Scented the sewage of their resumes’

Our leaders call us comrades, shipmates, brothers -
From their forward positions on the 501C

1 Shakespeare, “The Ages of Man”

The whole city is full of it – in the squares,
The coffee shops, the ‘blogs, the op-ed pieces
The emails, the news sites, the grocery stores
They are all busy arguing -

If you ask someone to give you change
He says the President is the Begotten One
If you inquire about the price of a croissant
You are told by way of reply that he is not

That the Supreme Court is greater, and that
The President is inferior; if you ask
“Is my cup of Blue Mountain ready?”
The barista answers that Congress is nothing

In the squares, the coffee shops, the ‘blogs,
The op-ed pieces – the whole city is full of it