There is nothing like
a bathroom window
where you can sit comfortably
and watch the snow
piling up on the branches
of the barren trees
in your yard;
I once met the people
who invented thermopane;
thanks, guys! it looks
really cold out there,
I think I’ll bake
some cookies.

I've noticed a lot of Right/Left dichotomy on this site. What's happening in the U.S.A. right now has nothing to do with Republicans and Democrats, liberals v. conservatives etc. What's happening right now is an attempted destruction of the system of government of the U.S.A. a/k/a our Constitution. Our system of government is based on the Separation of Powers, which you hopefully learned about in high school. The purpose of which was to prevent a dictatorship. Trump is trying to overrule Congress and appropriate the powers given to Congress by the Constitution, such as  the power to appropriate funds. The only barrier between our democracy and a dictatorship remains the Judicial branch. It remains to be seen if the Judicial branch will put a check on Trump's power; if not, it's all over for American democracy.

Who and what is Trump? I'm a licensed psychotherapist with more than 30 years of experience, and spent 30 years in New York City, as Trump's neighbor. Trump is a sociopath. This is clearly seen in his value system, in which power and "winning" is the only virtue, and losers deserve whatever horrors happen to them. Remember what he said about military service people who lost their lives defending the U.S.A--that they were "losers" because they were killed. He is in love with Musk because as the world's richest man, Musk is the ultimate "winner." There is no morality or community obligation in this mindset; winners take all, losers can be treated as food or as garbage. Trump does have an ideology, which is somewhat uncommon among sociopaths--he's a racist. He isn't "anti-immigrant;" he loves immigrants who are white, such as Musk, Melania. He cut USAID because he wants to **** black and brown people. Trust me, all New Yorkers have known for a long time about Trump's racism; he was famous for it in New York.

Trump is gutting the federal bureaucracies as part of the type of purge that all dictators engage in early in their dictatorships. He wants total control and to perhaps give jobs to his supporters. The long-running paranoid conspiracy theory about a "Deep State" has groomed the American public into thinking this purge is a good idea. The civil service is actually a bunch of professionals and workers who have been doing their jobs for a long time and have expertise. They only implement the laws and regulations that Congress passes or that the President orders. Without civil service workers, an large array of government services will cease to exist or will be done incompetently by Trump's political appointees. These include processing and mailing Social Security checks to the elderly and disabled, regulating the sale and marketing of medicines and consumer products, and collecting intelligence overseas about our enemies (yes, we have enemies). The enemies of the U.S. are chortling and licking their lips.

I don't know how it will end. If things get really bad, I'll take my inheritance and perhaps flee to Scandinavia. The rest of you will have to fight or resign yourselves to living in something that will resemble Putin's Russia.

She was an old barn cat, around the place for
a dozen years or more. Superb mouser and
yard hunter. Came from feral parents, aloof
by nature, and breeding, a little wild at heart
I suppose.  In time she developed some slight
affection for some of my family, me included,
eventually a regular welcomed visitor to my
porch, even crawling upon my lap for pat and
scratch under her chin but always declining to
be held by any human being.

She would come when I called her, running
full tilt and jumping fences, ignoring the food
just wanting companionship and attention.
Over the years she and I became good friends.
She came every day, morning and evening to say
hello and oh yes, get an offered meal. Rubbing
her sleek cat body on my feet and legs, offering
up her affection with an audible purring for
everyone to hear even from some distance.

Her age was starting to show, thinner, slower, she
was getting on just as I am, perhaps we both knew
it. Last night she came to the glass door and looked
so forlorn. Though cold outside I put on a coat and
brought her out some food, and I sat in my chair.

She sniffed the food with disinterest then came
over to flop upon my feet softly meowing, I could
feel her little purr motor vibrating on my shoes.
I reached down and gave her a tummy scratch,
she always loved that.

We resided like that for a while, her upon my feet,
me in my chair. Becoming too cold I started to rise
to go back inside, but she did not move, I reached
down and felt no purr vibration, she was unmoving
and silent. In that moment I knew that she had passed
from this earth. I picked up her now limp unresisting
body and placed her on my lap, my eyes teared knowing
that she was gone.

So sudden, one minute there and then just gone.
Not a bad way to go, rather than some long-drawn
-out affair, with doctors, useless operations, hospice
and lingering formidable pain. Just lay down and
go to sleep.

We should all be that lucky when our time comes.

Perhaps time is a machine gun when it stops. These words capsules for the unbearable. I would go away from the smitten crowd and talk to the sea. I pray to her: at least she examines its hallucinations of power.  To restore the heraclitean movement of our tragic faults. Try to create life with dead words from a dead sea of splendour, but the beauty of words is always unexpected.
Inflation accelerates in this incubator of power, its obscurity a destiny.
Do we still understand the meaning of light when women get pregnant with salty wounds, with poems that decompose as soon as they are born. I'll keep wondering if the echo of the sea grows in circles while this deluge of deception is a tomb for our thoughts without echo. Trauma is ahead of the game shaping falsified days for deranged deeds. Perhaps a sea of laughter is restored somewhere  like a pool of light fleeting on somebody's lips.
How can we see and it's in front of us: cruelty writes history.
Time violates its own decay when the world gets to be somebody's prey.

I admit, there is no lack of wanting
for my Holy Time with Thee
A blessed Majesty,
akin to full inversion in
a warm, still, six-sided body
of luminescent honey, sticky sweet
is the nectar reaped
from the Scepters of Seraphim

Glazing my electric form
in the Image of Thy Son
Baked firm is my clay
in the Kiln of a Fiery One
Wherein I’m warmed within
the flames of a Golden Soular Sun
Steam-cleaned in th’purifying
Stream of Divinity

Transfixed and transformed
in transparent Transfiguration
I am the Stillness of Awareness
in this place of Timeless Space
Awash in tears of reverie,
I gaze upon Thy Face

I am safe, free from harm,
in the arms of Holy Mother
She's my Fortress of Protection,
Thy Immaculate Conception of no-self

Thus, I AM that I AM
If I am not, I must urgently peel off
this very last veil that casts the shadow
of my disconnect

So, when my proud, pierced, pulsing heart
exhales an aura balloon, engulfing the room,
I pray it envelops everyone and everything
I shan’t yet forget
But if I do,
I’ll blow an infinitely bigger balloon,
That holds the Universe
in quiet peace, to fall asleep,
wound 'round the Wholly Fire,
in the Womb of Thy Room

And when I’m done,
I shall return to my cavernous cocoon
Wherein, I’ll snuggle up to sleep,
then soon thereafter dream
of sprouting patterned wings, so pretty
I must flutter them about
in a gently blowing breeze,
for a time, 'til I fall through the sky,
like autumn leaves
from the Branches of Thy Tree
to the Earth, I am returned
where I wake up from my dream ~

night rests her weight on my shoulders
the cry of seagulls tears the unconscious of morning
I see what I need to see, the stranger in me
I absorb crises, storms, bridges,
life's torment  to invent its limits
the differance - the forgotten passion of language
the effete and the barbarian.
the sun also rises unhindered
on wheat plantations

last night I dreamt the Authority of dreaming
I had to send a petition so they tell me how to end the dream.
dreams do no harm when they keep their innocence
between innocence and experience a handful of pebbles
to help find our way in the blinding light