The vicar's knickers look so fine
As they hang upon the line.
Flapping wildly in the breeze,
They're as sassy as you please.

They used to be a shade of grey,
But on the line, in the light of day,
They sparkle white as they hang about.
Even Mr. Clean would scream and shout.

People in the street stop and stare
As they admire the vicar's underwear.
Hanging there for all to see,
They seem to cry, "Look at me!"

The gathering crowd gives a sigh
When the vicar's knickers seem to fly
As they dance and twist upon the line,
Looking white and clean, and oh so fine.

Inside the house the vicar pleads,
"Dear wife, some underwear I need.
Without my  knickers I cannot say
My sermon in the church today."

The vicar's wife has had enough
Of viewing her husband in the buff,
As he searches for another pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.

"I know where to find a pair!
They're on the line, those underwear,"
Says the vicar's wife with a grin.
"I'll just go out and fetch them in."

The poor man waits and says a prayer
And hopes she finds those underwear.
He really wants to finish dressing
And go to church and say the blessing.

She snatches them from off the line
Where they've hung and looked so fine.
The crowd watches her take them down,
Those knickers, the whitest in all the town.

They'll have to come another day
To gawk and watch those knickers play.
The vicar needs that elusive pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.

The vicar's just as pleased as punch
Because he had a sneaking hunch
He'd never see that last clean pair,
And he'd have nothing else to wear.

Now he's dressed and ready for the day,
And he can go to church and kneel and pray
Because he's wearing a lovely pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.

There is a vicar from Chelsea
Who alas is not very wealthy
Often he dines on communion wine
And curried bat from the belfry

He lights a lot of incense
To hide his flatulence
He gets a bit high
Perhaps that is why
His sermons never make sense



--The vicar gets his knickers in a twist--

The old church roof had seen better days
The pressing need was a serious fund-raise
So the vicar abseiled down the tower
As the village watched by the graves and flowers

With a flurry his cassock flew up in the air
Shocking pink he wore under there
Flapping around it covered his face
As he dangled there in embarrassed disgrace

Someone called the fire brigade
A turntable ladder came to his aid
When at last they got him down
Humbled and grateful he kissed the ground

Felt gospels, locally hand-stitched, hang from the necks
Of the white stone columns. Seven in total.
Wandering eyes have read them all a hundred times.
Each one belongs to a name and number.
The mass assemble on the ground floor.
The circle tiers are near-empty,
They keep their coats on.
I wonder if they are closer to G-d.
The bald island only visible to them,
The vicar’s pure white hair.
Pews are formidable with adults, Sunday best,
A silence dark with giggles, the stained glass
Shone a rainbow of torture, ******,
And I did not know what we were all there for.

Christ hung beneath a turquoise sun, kaleidoscopic agony
Etched on his straight white face. You could play a tune
On his ribs. The vicar stood bored at the platform;
glory in monotone.

Finally, we rose to song.

The adults stood tall, autogenic. I became lost in corn stalks,
Wind of reverence, spirit, mass delusion.
Everyone seems to sway. Some close their eyes. A few
Hold a hand to the sky. A grown man is dancing in the main aisle.
He is making a mockery of himself
And the adults do not stop him. Do not scald him
Or tell him to keep quiet.
The grown man seems to notice no one.
I wonder if he is the closest to G-d.

Water near-boils in black pipes, the wind outside
Seems to find its way to my chest. I choke myself.
Leave our scarves on the burning metal.
No instrumentation! Menace. I mime the words.
Cut my eye teeth climbing garage roofs,
Stole a turnip from Mr. Sutton’s patch -
The air is too holy here. Hypnotic. I cannot breathe.
A football shirt. A pair of jeans. The singing stops.
Prayer begins. The vicar drones, we answer back.
Repeat after me, repeat after me. He is talking
About next week, the order of service,
His out-of-hours devotion, our spiritual homework.
Dismissed, the mass push angrily to the doors.
Quick to their cars,
We always stayed behind. Slow, slow.

My parents led me to the pulpit. The vicar was smiling,
My name was on his list. I wondered if I was getting
The eighth felt gospel..
“You are to be confirmed.”
“Okay.”
I did not know what confirmed meant.
I did not know what submergence was.
The vicar took my hands. I puzzled at his dog collar,
His snap-necklace. My parents stood in the periphery,
The cheap seats; a happy occupation,
A successful operation.

I was to be new again.

“...and let the Holy Spirit pass through Edward,
And help to guide him through inevitable trials.”

My arms were shaking like a tuning peg.
I was a filament, quivering, giving myself away,
Flashbulb memories of disgrace. He must know.
“That’s the spirit of the Lord inside of you,
That’s why you are shaking.
It is working brilliantly.”
The vicar put his palm to my forehead.
Pores magnified, barbs descended from his nostrils,
His overgrown eyebrows. His holiness. His age.
He did not smile with his eyes.

I was handed back to my parents.
They looked pleased with themselves. Did I pass the test?
I looked up.
The ceiling was impassable.
There had been no breakthrough.

Drove past the hospital. Asleep in the passenger seat.
Surgery on my soul. Clean, clean.
There was static on the radio.
The shaking had stopped.

There was a pirate who came from afar
Who sank his ship for a h'penny o' tar
He had a scar on his cheek,
Gold in his teeth
And like Prabhu, a thing for the noir

There was a vicar from Kent
Who gave up religion for lent
He enjoyed a spree
Of being un-holy
Nobody knows where he went

For the tourists to impress
She wore traditional dress
She liked the grass skirt
And the flowery shirt
But the coconut bra caused distress

One of the tourists she knew
Was really enjoying the view
He bought her a drink
Tickled her pink
And said may I remove it for you?

The limerick man was on top
He was writing such a lot
The barrel he dredged
He lost his edge
And didn't know when to stop

Could be I’m on a mission:
Convince the entire world
I am the World's Greatest Living
English Language poet;
Of course, genius such as mine
Goes generally unrecognized until
The posthumous crowd weighs in.
And yet, wouldn’t it be nice?

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Yes, wouldn’t it be nice?
(The Nobel Prize,
Tribute at the Kennedy Center,
A MacArthur Grant,
The Presidential Medal of Honor,
Reverent BJs from hipster groupies . . .
The Poet Laureate in his vicarage,
Enjoying my sweet twilight celebrity.)

(Cue “Guys & Dolls” soundtrack: “What's in the daily news?
I'll tell you what's in the daily news.”)
23: Beheaded at Nigerian Election Rally!
Amanda Knox Gets Away with ****** Again in Italy!
Kung Pow: Silicon Valley Penisocracy Crushes Ellen Pao
German Crash Dummy Co-pilot Flies Jet into the Alps!
Hilary’s Emails Are *****!
Sierra Leone Ebola Lockdown!
Iran: Kooks with Nukes!
Sri Lankan President’s Brother Dies from Ax Wounds!
Saudi Diplomats Evacuate Yemen!
Stampede at Hindu Bathing Ritual, Bangladesh Kills at Least 10!
Simply put:  THE WORLD IS IN A STATE OF ****.

Perhaps it’s time we turn again.
Seek solace in poetry—
“Yeah, chemistry,” insists my Sky Masterson,
My “Guys & Dolls” alter ago.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
All poets are gamblers & moonshiners.
We polish our chemical craft,
Sweet-talking the distillation apparatus,
Getting us, getting at linguistic essence.
Cunning linguists are we.
(Colonel Angus, are you back?)
Oyez! Oyez! The gavel raps:
“The Curious Case of Sam Hayakawa.”
We open this hearing to determine
Whether or not S.I. Hayakawa—guilty of
Numerous crimes against humanity & other
Professional Neo-Fascist “entrechats.”--
Whether or not he merits a kinder, gentler
Wikipedia BIO.
(Wikipedia ( i/ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/ or  i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ WIK-i-***-dee-ə) Wikipedia)
We open this forum, focusing on his
Courageous stand against the
SDS & Black Panthers, part of
An unlikely coalition: The Worker-Student Alliance
& It’s rival, Joe Hill Caucuses.
Da Name of the Place:
(“I like it like that!” Hot Chelle Rae-“I Like It Like That” lyrics| Metro Lyrics www.metrolyrics.com Lyrics to 'I Like It Like That' by Hot Chelle Rae. “Let's get it on, yeah, y'all can come along/Everybody drinks on me, buy out the bar /Just to feel like I'm.”)
The name of the place: San Francisco State,
1968-69, the longest student strike in U.S. history,
Led successfully to the creation of
Black & Other Ethnic studies programs
On campuses across the country,
And, one could argue,
Gave the green light to
Osama Hussein Obama,
Our first Uncle Tom President.
But I digress.

ACTING SFSU President, Dr. Hayakawa—
Perpetual audition, the pressure on,
Feisty, independent-minded & combative,
Screaming at that skeevy student mob:
(Skeevy as in “He bought the thing from
Some skeevy dude in an alley.")
Declaring “A State of Emergency,”
Calling in the SFPD, whose
Inexplicable slogan says”
“Oro en Paz,
Fierro en Guerra.”
Archaic Spanish for
Gold in peace,
Iron in war, by the by,
For you holdouts,
Those of you who still
Think the “English First Movement”
Breathes life still.
I’ve got more news for you:
That crusade died long ago,
Locked up, dark & shuttered,
Bank Repo thugs, their thick
Neck muscles flexing from side to side,
Sashaying across the parking lot,
Like John Wayne on steroids,
Right up to the front door.)
The SFPD: San Francisco city fuzz,
(As they were known at the time) &
The California National Guard, as well,
Obstreperously, generously catered by
Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan,
(Early stage, Alzheimer’s at the time.
But still very much “The Gypper,”
Still chipper in Sacramento.)
Ronnie--keenly interested in
The Eureka State’s congressional clout,
Lassoes a seat in the U.S. House of Lords:
AKA: The U.S. Senate, SPQR.
It’s still hard . . .

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Still hard to believe that California was once
Rock solid in the clutches of the GOP,
Gripped tightly in the Party’s
Desperate talons. But the grip slipped,
Slipped in the slip-sliding 1970s.
It got harder and harder . . .

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Harder and harder to remind
Leroy & the rest of his ebony posse,
That it was Abraham Lincoln—
“The Great Emancipator” himself—who was,
Our first Republican President.
The Emancipation Proclamation:
That toothless rhetorical flourish,
Based solely on Abe’s
Constitutional authority as
Commander-in-Chief,
Not on a law passed by Congress.
It was just Abe blowing smoke
Up their ***** again,
Just an egalitarian blast from
His Old Kentucky past,
A youth spent splitting rails,
Busting his *** just like
Any plantation ******,
A stark plebeian commonality,
Too deeply etched to be ignored.
Poor Abraham Lincoln:
Probably a **** Creek crypto-Jew,
Neutered by the opposition:
His very own Republican majority Congress,
Another example of the GOP
Shooting off its own foot, right up there
With Mitt Romney’s "47 percent of the people,”
The rhetorical gaffe which cost him his
Second & final shot at the White House.
But I digress.

Senator Sam S.I. Samuel Hayakawa:
That inscrutable Asian fixer, is now U.S. Senator,
Republican, California, 1976-83
Pulpit-bullying his Senate colleagues,
Fiercely opposed to transfer of the
Panama Canal & Panama Canal Zone to
Panama: a diplomatic no-brainer; Duh?
Their freaking name is on both of them.
Senator Sam, obstinate & blustering:
"We should keep the Panama Canal.
After all, we stole it fair and square.”
And Hayakawa, later the driving impetus
Behind the Far Right “English Only” movement.
His co-founding an "Official English"
Advocacy group, U.S. English;
Their party line summarizes their belief:
“The passage of English as the official language will help to expand opportunities for immigrants to learn and speak English, the single greatest empowering tool that immigrants must have to succeed."
That’s how they sold it, anyway.
In sooth: just old-fashioned nativist
Anti-immigration hysteria.

Hayakawa: always the high achiever.
Hayakawa: The Great Assimilator,
Preaching his xenophobic Gospel:
“Immigration Must Be Reduced!”
Aryan rhetoric, of course,
A bi-product of radical authoritarian nationalism,
A movement with deep American roots.
Senator Sam: a Japanese-Canadian-American,
Always tried too hard to fit in.
Sam, comfortable in Chicago during WWII,
Not personally subject to confinement,
Advocated that Japanese-Americans
Submit to FDR’s 1942, Executive Order 9066.
“Time in camp, will eventually work to Japanese advantage."
Later, during the Congressional debate over
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 . . .
(Passed the House on September 17, 1987 (243–141)
Passed the Senate on April 20, 1988 (69–27, in lieu of S. 1009)
Reported by the joint conference committee on July 26, 1988,
Agreed to by the Senate on July 27, 1988 (voice vote) and
By the House on August 4, 1988 (257–156,
Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan 8/10/88.
He opposed $reparations for WWII internment:
“Japanese-Americans should not
Be paid for fulfilling their obligations."
Some guys, I guess, would say, or
Do anything for Bohemia Club membership.
Plagued by night terrors, nonetheless,
His Manzanar nightmares, his vivid
Imaginary experience at other Japanese
Internment Sites: Tule Lake & Camp Rohwer.
Stalag (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtalak])
Stalags, infamous still,
“Stalags ‘R Us,”
Still palpable memories for
Issei ("first generation")
& Nisei ("second generation").
See: 323 U.S. 214. Korematsu v. United States
(No. 22: Argued: October 11, 12, 1944.
Decided: December 18, 1944.140 F.2d 289.
The opinion, written by Hugo Black,
Chief Justice Harlan Stone, Presiding.)

Hayakawa: a strange duck, of course,
But we mustn’t ignore his strong credentials,
And I’d like to disabuse anyone here
Of the notion that it was anything
Other than his academic record
That got his case to this Forum.
Oyez! Oyez! The gavel raps:
“The Curious Case of Sam Hayakawa.”
So begins this fractured Pardoner’s Tale,
This petition for forgiveness,
The Capo di Tutti Capi,
Presiding: the original Italian mafioso,
His Eminence--the Vicar of Jesus Christ,
The Supreme Pontiff
Pope Paparazzi of Rome!
Roma: the only venue large enough to
Dispense dispensation of this magnitude.

Hayakawa: everyone says his C.V. is “impeccable.”
But did anyone ever freaking Google it?
Just where did Professor Sam go to school?
Undergrad? The University of Manitoba,
Truly, by any Third World Standard
A great bastion of intellectual rigor;
Grad school? McGill and U Wisconsin-Madison.
He was a Canadian by birth,
His academic discipline was Semantics.
(As in “That’s just semantics,”
That all-purpose rejoinder in any argument.)
Professor Hayakawa, The Semanticist,
He taught us: “All thought is sub-vocal speech.”

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Hmmm? We think in words.
The medium of thought is language.
If you grok this for the first time,
Let’s stop to celebrate our enlightenment,
With a cultural nod of respect,
We salute our Islamic brethren.
Radical Islam: the new bogeyman,
Responsible for keeping lights on in Alexandria,
Paying the defense & intelligence bills,
Sustaining that sinister
Military-Industrial complex
Ike warned us about.
Hang in there, Mustafa, old buddy.
Like the Cold War, this insanity
Will eventually blow over.
Orwell’s Oceania will reshuffle
Its deck of global grab-***, and a
New enemy will suddenly appear.
Big Brother, as always,
In the full-control mode,
Simply put: on top of the situation.
So Hurrah!
Allāhu Akbar. “God is Great!
The Takbīr (the term for the
Arabic phrase: usually translated as
"God is [the] greatest.")

“All thought is sub-vocal speech.”
What a simple, yet profound insight!
Just a short hop, skip & jump to the
Realization that, perhaps, the clarity
& Power of our minds can be groomed,
Improved upon by mastery of—
In Sam’s case, anyway--the English Language.
Was this, perhaps, the germ of U.S. English,
The political lobbying organization
He co-founded, dedicated to making
English, the official language of the United States.
Hayakawa: a wooly conservative of his own design;
No wonder Governor Reagan loved him.

Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, a colorful and polarizing
Figure in California politics during the 1960s and 70s.
Can we forgive his daily afternoon naps.
Asleep on the floor of the U.S. Senate,
Leaving California so pathetically,
So ostensibly under-represented.
Senator Sam’s comatose presence at
Washington-on Potomac; the
District of Columbia.
A long time ago,
In a distant galaxy . . .
Far, far away.

TEAR GAS.
Alas, long before he got to Washington,
Long before ever setting foot off campus,
He called for tear gas to
Disperse those pesky college kids.
I repeat myself for emphasis:
He authorized the use of tear gas at SF State.
Tear gas: a lachrymatory agent?
Actually, a potentially lethal
Chemical agent . . .
(Yeah, Chemistry!
To wit: Sgt. Sara Brown,
Referencing “Guys & Dolls” again.)
Outlawed for use during wartime,
Banned in international warfare
Under both the 1925 Geneva Protocol; & the
Chemical Weapons Convention;
“Tear gas:  a weapon of war against
The people. We believe that
Tear gas remains a chemical weapon
Whether used on a battlefield, or city streets.”

Thus, history will be your judge,
You unleashed tear gas on college kids,
So I wouldn’t expect a rep makeover
Any time soon, Ichiye-san, my ichiban friend.

He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best—
The one whose sense suits
“Mount Ephraim”—
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death’s dream,
Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew
That his spirit was gone
I thought this his due,
And spoke thereupon.
“I think”, said the vicar,
“A read service quicker
Than viols out-of-doors
In these frosts and hoars.
That old-fashioned way
Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me
It had better not be.”
Hence, that afternoon,
Though never knew he
That his wish could not be,
To get through it faster
They buried the master
Without any tune.

But ’twas said that, when
At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster’s grave.

Such the tenor man told
When he had grown old.

There was a vicar from Crewe
Whose congregation were few
To make amends he brought in his hens
And they all lined up on a pew

Then he compiled an avian choir
(For the singing voice of the hens was dire
And the only song the cockerel knew
Was ****-a-doodle-do)

The church fell silent as we heard
The Lord is my Shepherd from the minor bird
The vicar invited us to pray
And we got the Lords Prayer from the African grey

There followed a rendition of psalm thirty four
Performed without fault from the tenor macaw
The parakeets squawked and scratched their fleas
As they jumped up and down on the ***** keys

The vicar was thrilled it was going so well
The geese gave a honk as they pulled on the bell
But then there appeared right at the back
An evil sparrowhawk poised to attack

Calamity reigned inside the church
The African grey fell off his perch
The first to escape was the tenor macaw
As fast as he could through the open door

The chickens shrieked and went home in a flap
The minor bird had a heart attack
The geese walked away back to their pen
And the church fell silent once again

Church!
I feel like if I walked into a church
then I'd probably burst into flames.
She said.

Well, maybe you should repent
of your sinful way of living,
accept Jesus into your heart
then go out and love the poor,
as the Lord taught us to do.
Replied the Rent Boy

Anonymous  (1730s ?)

In good King Charles's golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Furious High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd Preferment.
Unto my Flock I daily Preached,
Kings are by God appointed,
And ****'d are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's Anointed.

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I shall be Vicar of Bray, Sir!

When Royal James possessed the crown,
And popery grew in fashion;
The Penal Law I hooted down,
And read the Declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my Constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.

 And this is Law, &c.

When William our Deliverer came,
To heal the Nation's Grievance,
I turned the Cat in Pan again,
And swore to him Allegiance:
Old Principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance,
Passive Obedience is a Joke,
A Jest is non-resistance.

  And this is Law, &c.;

When Royal Ann became our Queen,
Then Church of England's Glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory:
Occasional Conformists base
I ****'d, and Moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was,
From such Prevarication.

  And this is Law, &c.;

When George in Pudding time came o'er,
And Moderate Men looked big, Sir,
My Principles I changed once more,
And so became a Whig, Sir.
And thus Preferment I procured,
From our Faith's great Defender,
And almost every day abjur'd
The Pope, and the Pretender.

  And this is Law, &c.;

The Illustrious House of Hanover,
And Protestant succession,
To these I lustily will swear,
Whilst they can keep possession:
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will falter,
But George, my lawful king shall be,
Except the Times should alter.

  *And this is Law, &c;.

Went to see the pastor,
he invited me for tea,
a general pleasant conversation,
covered all the room,
we chatted for a while,
and then I made smile,
I asked him "Sir, what's for tea",
He grinned real wide,
and said to me,
" sweet lady, we are having a roast",
and then I said to he,
What is the roast to be today?
He smiled back as he replied,
remnants of the lord who'd died,
"what on earth said I"?
So I smiled back and chuckled a bit,
would we, really roast the holy ghost,
he nodded bowing his head,
"Sweet lady, we are having Fred"
"Who on earth is Fred"? I said,
"Well  milady",
"Fred is the chicken, that scratched in the yard,
who made conversation with the bard,
while, scratching for worms"
"More filling than the holy ghost,
chicken ,tastes a whole lot better than most other roasts"
So,
the vicar or pastor, whichever you care, picked up his chopper after brushing his hair,
dashed into the yard to catch hold of Fred,
Fred didn't fancy being dinner,
so he'd already fled.
(C) Livvi