In Plato's description of Socrates' "Apologia," he describes the latter's defense during the trial of Socrates. Socrates says he is the wisest because he knows nothing about anything, an astute defense. Nonetheless, he is found guilty and sentenced to death. Socrates receives this sentence with equanimity.

In contrast, **** Trump, like Socrates, knows nothing about anything, but unlike Socrates, **** Trump is so ignorant that he is not conscious of his stupidity;  rather, he thinks he knows everything about everything, which not only tells you how deluded he is, at best, but also shows you what an existential threat he is to our nation, and indeed, to the entire world.

I wish Plato were still alive so he could record **** Trump's lunacy. But we still have The New York Times and The Washington Post.

What a Greek tragedy we are living through! But where is the deus ex machina?

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I, too, saw God through mud, -
       The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
       War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
       And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.


Merry it was to laugh there -
       Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
       For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
       Not to feel sickness or remorse of ******.


I, too, have dropped off Fear -
       Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
       And sailed my spirit surging light and clear
       Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;


And witnessed exultation -
       Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
       Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
       Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.


I have made fellowships -
       Untold of happy lovers in old song.
       For love is not the binding of fair lips
       With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,


By Joy, whose ribbon slips, -
       But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
       Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
       Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong.


I have perceived much beauty
       In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
       Heard music in the silentness of duty;
       Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.


Nevertheless, except you share
       With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
       Whose world is but the trembling of a flare
       And heaven but as the highway for a shell,


You shall not hear their mirth:
       You shall not come to think them well content
       By any jest of mine. These men are worth
       Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—
That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

Perchance it may be better so—at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,

Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,
To where some steep untrodden mountain height
Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.

Or how the little flower he trod upon,
The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,
Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

But surely it is something to have been
The best beloved for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

Ay! though the gorged asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!

Call us perverted,
But read on first,
Then, by the end,
After our verse,
Call us your worst:
***** old men, gutter snipes,
Lecherous gawkers,
Cause we gaze in wonder and awe
At girls from eighteen to ninety-five.
Don't step back and feign aghast,
Whisper covert tsks, and gasp,
What? Oh such ***** old men!
But we are most the same.

We don't ogle or use a scope
Waiting behind a bush at night,
Til the lights go on
Through windows known to be undrawn.

We don't visit public pools
With goggles and a snorkel,
That's just sick, that's not us,
Our admiration's not so twisted,
We grew up to respect the sisters.

We wonder at the parade of beauty,
So pleasing to our eyes,
They dress to allure
Younger looks,
They swagger, tilt and sashay past
With legs as long as trees,
No VPL to interrupt
The curving imagination.
Compare it to one window-shopping,
Admiring wares and worth;
But please, read every line I wrote
Before bellowing, Pervert.

If we were eighteen years again,
We're lads out plowing fields,
Sowing wild grains,
Reaping refrains of They're boys just being boys.

We had our ancient pleasures,
Still comparable to now;
The lushness of the ripened fruit
Hanging on the bough,
Is for younger hands, not ours.

The columned temples of runway models
With flying buttress thighs,
And the bull-frog fronts and volleyball stunts
Please, but we don't pry.

          (We're not a ***** grabbing lot,
          That's not how we usually talk,
          In fact I haven't shared these thoughts,
          I'm reluctant to do so now).

You know you can't blame us
For what a blind man sees;
The cleavage, high-slits and commando style,
The augmentations meant to beguile
Has caught us in crossfire.

The soft unbleached skin,
The ***** and the neck,
The falling, twirling tresses,
Grace the backs of backless dresses.
Wear grotesques to dissuade us,
To disapprove our ageless looks.

Our eyes don't linger on the bust,
We don't display old men's lust,
In fact we're rather obsequious,
To the point where we're air,
You'd not notice that we're there.
But we are, and we look;
And I remember what it took
To be young and on the hunt
For the Yeti, Loch Ness, or alien jump.

Don't tell your friends we're perverted,
Scurrilous id-focused men;
We're neither. We're average fellows
Watching from the stands.

Yes, our daughters are older than
The babes seen on the screens,
But that has naught to do with us,
We still think like eighteen.

We watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore,
Drink tepid tea with toast and jam
To the credits of The Golden Girls;
But when the grandkids come to visit,
We take them for ice-cream,
Or if I take poodle to walk,
They pool like thirsty fleas.
It isn't my intent to bait, but I have eyes to see,
Those girls somewhat eighteen,
Like to please by teasing:
     I really like your wire rims.
Their eyes grip, the wind flips,
Their hands soft and supple...
I'm at a loss-
What's a man to do-
Between forty and forever?

This reaper's aged,
The harvest's in.
The grain that bowed the straw
Has now been threshed,
And milled to flour.
Add heat to rise again.

When the surgeon closes the blinds
When the plane shakes
When your kid is late
When another voice answers your lover’s phone
When you wake up and can’t move
When your team is losing
When you can’t reach their hand
When the baby has a fever
When the train rattles
When the doctor talks to your family
When entering a dark room
When your lover forgets
When class won’t end
When someone falls
When you can’t afford milk
When class won’t end
When the car slides
When breath slides
When                     When
             When.

…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.

-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars

The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his

Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first

The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham

Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit

El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales

The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria

The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost

And far, far more.

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?

On being ask why I waste my time writing poetry.*

A poet lives three times:
once remembering,
once writing,
once being read.

Three lives unfolding
the genetic code
of the soul.

Not such easy
lives to create,
but they produce
a map of memory
that vindicates
your existence
and may lead strangers
to small, keen joys
they never imagined.

Modest delights
keep hearts alive.

  ~mce

When I was a child, I drew maps. As did my father, and his father before him. As to their reasons, I can further a guess but no more. Even my own were vague at the time, much more so now. At first it was mere fun, something I was good at and enjoyed. The simplicity of the things I drew reflected that. There is a book out there about a teen who draws maps of Manhattan, and that is his link into community with the people he's institutionalized with. An interesting parallel, but not an end that I share with him. If one could take all of the maps I drew and place them side by side in chronological order, one could chart the dissolution of one self, and the evolution of another. The first, probably a quick game I played with my dad, dots for soldiers and little tanks, thin pencil streaks delinating fire. And the last I think, was an overview of the Krak de Chevaliers, drawn from the memory of a lost book on the Crusades. A nine year period between the two. At some point was born the concept that as disordered and chaotic as my life and feelings were, as beautiful things ended around me, I could create order and purpose on a piece of paper. I could shape a city or a fortification to my will or whimsy, could garner accolades with a craft. Writing began that way also. And at some point, the visual precision of cartography gave way to prose, and then to poetry, and finally to apology. But the skills remained, and the practical eye that governed them. I've always been able to see maps and translate them to first person imagery. Been able to inhale a document and ingest the contents like food and drink. Today, if asked, I could tell you of the seven great walls of Constantinople, of the how and why they finally fell in 1453 to the Ottomans. I could describe in detail the failure of Charlemagne to reconquer the Iberian, and of the disintegration of the great man's realm after his death. Dead history to some, but not to me.

Show me a map of Afghanistan and I see more than ISAF and Taliban. I think that was one of the many reasons I was good at what the Army asked of me. The job itself, not the lifestyle. An excellent addition to the S-2, but a terrible Soldier. I thought too deeply about things, saw too far behind our infant of a nation to really believe in our mission. There are some children playing soccer in Paktika today with green eyes, passed down from Macedonian soldiers during Alexander's conquest and the subsequent Wars of the Diadochi. Dig a few feet into the walls of Herat and you will find musket ***** from Tarmelane's devastation alongside shrapnel from Soviet mortars. Some villages so old that they were inhabited when merchants from the great plateau of Iran brought the first tales of Rustam. All this behind a map, with soldiers far tougher and experienced than I wondering why goatherds with small arms were able to resist the most expensive military machine in history. Don't mistake me, the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Hiz-bi Islami Gulbuddin and the Haqqani Network, to say nothing of Al-Qaeda and the Khorasan Group, are people who perform evil deeds. But those tactics, beheadings and hangings, public stonings and burning, are tried and tested methods. European armies and commanders from 1632 would have approved heartily, recognized all of it as a matter of course. 1632.....A mere second ago in terms of the history of the Human species.

And so, I no longer make maps. Not for the Army, not for myself. I only write now. For many reasons, but primarily only two. As explanation, apologia more precisely, to describe and justify why I am the way I am. And for the joy of creation, the mystery of reaching into a soul with mere words. No map can ever accomplish that.

A garden
of Dioscorides
here hibiscus
with a
mural or
statue as
sigh for
apologia if
now herb
enchanted destiny
has claim
in riverbed
with tomorrow's
news when
long ago
a remedy
of civility.

Nothing other than,
he was hearing―
screams!

**** was not au
naturel, like
a new born chick.

Half-mumbling,
half-clad,
he walked bare foot.

Giving away the
canvas, you are
blissfully happy.

I must apologize. I'm sorry, man.
Let me go out on a limb here, Jack.
On behalf of all Senators,
Republican and Democrat;
On behalf of every congressional rep,
Every government worker,
Whatever the jurisdiction,
For every student council,
For the clerk stamping the seal,
For every department...
I apologize on your behalf
For the slanders hurled
And flung like dung
At the men and women who weeped
At the bedsides of the lonely and dying.
Oh the shame.
I apologize for him,
Who will never apologize.
I apologize to the medical profession,
And to all First Responders and Essentials.
Oh the horror... the horror...
Believe me,
We don't believe him.

Hail, Nero,
Friend of Piso;
Welcome to the villa

Agrippina at Mar-a-Lago
Ivanka in her tower
A Melania apologia.

Left we are all stumped
Under water and in ruins;
Unfortunately *******.

Yes it would remain
incomplete, my story―
my poem.

The henna speaks today
against unadulterated lies,
against the rage of
losing path.

No more the wrens
will sing, till the clouds don't send
apologia for not
sending the rains―

of blueberries. If I
were you I will turn the
bees into butterflies.

I hear again your voice
after injury pause.

An apologia.
It is still kempt,
the mist scented, milk bath
by moon, in dark.

In legendary night, everything was legitimate.
The licit kiss of death too.

One by one the faces
were missing. The snake bites,
of love.

The embroidered memories are
hanged to dry up in rain.

The eyes like moths, flicker around
the dark candle of another childhood.

Finding Out About Yourself

Who am I?
Who are you?
It will be asked till time is through.
In fact, it may be
Life’s key issue we pursue;
Extro- intro-, odd man out;
A coverall for all the doubt.

Who are you, you the total real?
Finding out will skål the soul,
Give skill to soul,,
Transform the budding soul/you whole,
Give vision of capacities you’ d no idea,
Where life’s no more apologia.

It’s a game of Treasure Chest,
One where you must persevere:.
And in the end you are the measure of the treasure
And your best.

How, you ask, can little me be all in one:
Human, angel, paragon?  
In a nutshell, a nice person!
Remember too, it’s only ever you
Who knows exactly who you are,
All others are interpreters, projecters
Of who they are.
Far
From who you are at any moment.
So,
While you are there observing,
Being altered and improved
Finding out about yourself, you cannot waiver.
It’s a trip demanding courage
Into superannuated age,
Its pointers in the right direction never over.

Skål - Swedish: drink (to) the health of, drink to, salute, honour; archaic pledge.

Finding Out About Yourself 9.20.2018 Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small;

Grab for all the gusto you can
Because TV and beer are all I need, man!
Weltanschauung? Yes, it is one
Not a real complex decision
So, let us for a moment, and as we are able
Look at what hedonism brings to the table
Epicurean hedonism of the quantitative type
It’s what I mean to be more precise

If all there is, is pleasure,
And that’s what’s buried in your heart as treasure
Then you can't turn and be indignant
About anyone else who is just as ig’nant
After all they are just grabbing gusto
Maybe in a different form
But who is the hedonist?
To expect others to conform
        to non-rationality
        to being arbitrary

So what are we left with
When we look and see?
You can’t go beyond and seek a conception
When all is physiology,
      and empiricism
      and behavioral biology
And it can't be psychological
Because psychology is not made of matter
But these things do matter
How do we get to the ding an sich?
After all we don’t all share the same brain-ium
In fact, many don’t even use their cranium
So, we must challenge all the gusto grabbers,
Who’ll get upset
When others don’t live up to their double standards
Special pleading may sound valid
But if all there is, is motion and matter
Then it’s melancholy salad you’ll be served on a platter

So, let me say there’s nothing wrong with TV and beer
But that won’t lead you to the ding an sich
Or from the phenomena to the noumena
You need a Weltanschauung where the abstract can fit
      and that helps us make sense
To have an apologia (a coherent defense)
How do we do it?
We intuit
As God expects us to think thoughts after Him
As the Father of lights enlightens a world so terribly dim