You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
she was pregnant
but which of the three
brothers was the father
she was all heartbreak
and sorrow
~*~
an acid-tripping Lutheran seminarian
argued “religion is for today”
as he walked in on his roommate
still atop Pia
~*~
the long-haired blonde with the deep voice
had already been had twice
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Copyright 2015
I picked up the receiver
“is your wife around?” pause
“what number did you want”
pause
“I’m sorry . I must have the wrong number”
she sounded so married
I wished there was a wife to answer
~*~
“God-damn idiots, afraid to dirty their hands”
the old woman reiterated
“real work would kill ’em”
~*~
“I want to stop smoking
but I’m a very negative person”
so just recast the proposition
if you really want to stop puffing
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Copyright 2015
from the heart of the building in the night
“I hate your ass!”
countered by
“do I look like somebody who’d put you away”
and then she just screamed
~*~
behind the scenes at the fancy restaurant
a cook got shot
the maitre d’ was in the hospital with food poisoning
and the chief dishwasher overdosed on something
how many knives went missing
~*~
with all the Freudian potential
“Daddy, I LOVE you!”
drawing the twisted
“I want you out of here”
oh, boy, what a mess
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Copyright 2015
there was something cozy
in Isabel’s phrase
dark roasted coffee
after dinner
~*~
North Amigo
South Amigo
– not Americans, but Amigos!
the United States of Amigos!
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Copyright 2015
In the congregation of pleasure:
Some are fat; some, skinny.
Some cute; a few, beautiful.
They smile, frown, dimple, blink.
Hair short, curled, long and free.
They come from anywhere.
~*~
“Roger was in my room again till five
telling me he didn’t want to sleep alone again,”
she said, glancing at her lover
while he simply smiled, facing away.
~*~
One votive burns
twice as fast
as the other.
Both, invoking
departed honeybees.
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Copyright 2015
“Those aren’t bulls, they’re steers”
she corrected from the passenger seat.
Now a waitress at the country club.
“I bet you get some pretty far-out passes.”
“More than that!” She giggled.
Here she was living with a man
in a hotel in town. He was a Mohawk
who raised horses and died
two days after landing a paying job.
“I guess I’ll never go back”
– to the farm, to the city –
it didn’t matter.
~*~
Sometimes it’s the Baptist upbringing.
~*~
She couldn’t understand why her parents
were still together. Thought her mother
once had a lover. She’d hear kissing
after being sent to bed, after her father’s
best friend had come over. Now
he couldn’t stand him.
There was a big waterfall on their farm
which they had to sell.
And she told me
she had laryngitis the previous week,
making me wonder
if I should have kissed her good-night
so much.
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Copyright 2015
“Jim’s one of our young flashes,”
a production chief told his wife
when all three paths crossed in the grocery.
To which, you might add, “in the pan.”
~*~
“I wish I could have gone to college.
I wanted to be an engineer.”
said the unshaved man in a Salvation Army pullover.
There are a lot of older people in college classes,
his nephew tried coaxing.
“I have no money,” came closing in like a curtain.
~*~
An elderly mother and middle-aged daughter
argument escalated in the sedan
in the doughnut shop parking lot.
They’d no doubt discussed this before.
At last, opening her door, the daughter repeated:
“Let’s go in and drop the subject.”
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Copyright 2015
Reflecting on the set of queries read to our Quaker Meeting during worship one Sunday morning, I was struck by a fresh interpretation. That set opens
“Do you ‘live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion for all wars’? Do you faithfully maintain Friends’ testimony against military preparations and all participation in war, as inconsistent with the teaching and spirit of Christ?”
Initially, my mind considered ongoing conflicts around the world and the underlying conditions that fuel them. But to my surprise, as my thoughts turned to home, it was not the Pentagon that held my attention but the rising sales of guns sold for no other purpose but to maim or kill people – something quite different than hunting wildlife. Is this not “military preparations” of a more stealthy sort than we’d observe in the political arena? And what are the underlying conditions here? Hatred and racism, for sure, along with greed, lust, untruth, injustice, ignorance, fear, and much more, for certain. Turning these requires repentance, compassion, forgiveness, mutual respect, equality. Guns have no place in this equation.
New England Yearly Meeting’s queries on peace and reconciliation continue by urging an alternative action:
“Do you strive to increase understanding and use of nonviolent methods of resolving conflicts? Do you take your part in the ministry of reconciliation between individuals, groups, and nations? When discouraged, do you remember what Jesus said, ‘Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears.’ John 14:27 NEB”
As I noted at the time …
How do we deal with a segment of the public that has no interest in factual reality? Where belief, unsupported by critical reasoning, crosses into outright superstition? Too often, alas, it’s even wrapped in religious trappings – tainting both church and state with irrational fervor or madness.
And that’s what we have in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s campaign. The lies and half-truths will be hard to wash clean. The stench will remain even longer.
Yes, the underlying hurt runs deep, but Bernie Sanders tagged the causes of the problems accurately and pointed to joint collective action to repair the damage and heal the common good. Not so Trump or his legions.
There was nothing pragmatic or even logical in Trump’s babbling, no matter how many were deluded by his initial snake-oil charm. He was not telling it like it was but rather how they imagined life that might have been had they not been passed by. And then, toward the end, he was denying so much of what he’d told them in the first place or that his words had been just a joke. Locker room banter, as he claimed, not that many of us white guys recognized anything of the sort.
Now, no matter the outcome of the election, the nation’s divided by what he’s encouraged.
It’s not just racism, though those who think it’s fine for police to murder unarmed citizens is justifiable go about stealing Black Lives Matter lawn signs and then are alarmed if blacks take up the right-wing’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in self-defense. Folks, what would you do in that situation?
I’ll return to Bernie’s to-do list. I don’t think he was the administrator to push the goals through, but he certainly did an admirable job in articulating them. May he continue, building a base to take both houses of Congress in 2018.
Meanwhile, I’ll lament for what passes for national debate these days in all the tumult. We need honest dialogue to advance. And that will include admission of fault where it’s dues, rather than more blaming others.
