Litmus Test
This poem questions the wisdom of allowing a single test to divide us into opposing camps of red and blue.
politics
False Equivalencies
This poem lists pairs of things that seem alike but could not be more different. And it begs us not to conflate them.
Deja Vu
This poem compares the aftermath of the US 2020 election and the election in 2000, and wonders whether this is really a case of deja vu.
The Lawman
This poem reminds me of the Lewis Carroll classic, The Walrus and the Carpenter. Especially the stanza that begins, “The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things…” Like that poem, this one is filled with absurdity and euphemisms and wishful thinking. And crocodile tears, about leading the gullible astray. Thanks for …
Flies
I came up with this idea while thinking about the news of the week. –Capitol police, testifying about a mob, who voted the same way some of them did. A mob, who attacked the Capitol Police, even as they carried Blue Lives Matter flags. And while the Capitol Police testified about their harrowing, near-death …
Frat Boy
I first saw the connection to fraternities in a tweet by Robert Morro (@bmorro44) on July 27, 2021, calling Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida “CEO of The Delta House.” This is my extrapolation on the theme. As many of you know, I live in Florida. I have found little more infuriating, than the positions …
Foul Ball
I was appalled, yet somehow inspired–“shocked, but not surprised” as I so often hear people say, without any sense of self-contradiction– by a news item this morning. The news said, that Rudy Giuliani, the former President’s attorney, came up with the idea of losing the election, but then saying, that they won. This idea …
Burning Flags
I remember long ago reading about a case, where a man burnt an American flag in protest. It took place outside Dallas City Hall, during Reagan’s Republican National Convention in Dallas in 1984. The man was arrested for desecrating the American flag, and appealed his case up to the Supreme Court. The case was …
The Racket
This poem complains about the constant noise of modern life, and the incessant and often trivial demands for our attention. Sometimes, we just need to turn it all off. Wishing you relief, in this time of noise and bluster! For those who don’t know, Walter Cronkite was a news anchor on CBS in the …
Public Square
Perhaps I have watched too many episodes of Murdoch, a detective series set in the 1890s and early 1900’s. But I find myself yearning for a nineteenth-century point of view, where (I imagine) there would be no confusing good and bad, or wrong and right. In my high school days, we spoke with reverence …
Public Servant
This poem is about our attitudes toward those who work for the government, and how these attitudes have changed since the mid-twentieth century. Like everything else in life, the trend seems to be, to careen toward the extremes. Entropy, I guess. But this loudly-proclaimed assumption–that government workers are incompetents and are full of mercenary …
Liberal Wish-List
I wrote this poem upon reading, that the infrastructure bill had been mockingly referred to as a “Liberal wish-list” by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (This page is from the Senate Republican Leader’s own office, fair warning.) This is not the first time he has used this turn of phrase. Googling the term, I …
A Vote (Senator Raphael Warnock’s First Senate Floor Address, March 17, 2021)
Yesterday the news–at least the news I watch–was full of the new Senator from Georgia. The Reverend Raphael Warnock made his maiden speech to the Senate floor. And it was a doozy. The speech took place on a busy news day: A possible hate crime had taken place, killing eight Asian women in Warnock’s …
Minor Edits
March 11, 2021 was the one-year anniversary of the date when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. I woke up, bleary-eyed, to the news. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the US Senate, had made the following statement. For weeks, every indicator has suggested our economy poised to come roaring back, with …
Round Two
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. –Voltaire quoted by Senator James Raskin (Maryland), Impeachment Manager I wrote this poem as the House Democrats’ case for Impeachment, Round Two, drew to a close. You may recall that President Trump was impeached once before, in early 2019, for calling the President …
The Mighty (In memory of Brian Sicknick, Capitol Policeman)
I wrote this poem while watching on TV the memorial service at the Capitol where Brian Sicknick lay in state. He was apparently one of the few civilians ever to be afforded that honor. Brian Sicknick was a Capitol Policeman, charged with guarding the Capitol building, and was injured when he was attacked by …
Waste
This poem takes an historical approach, describing how different periods of time have collected and then discarded different things. Thanks for coming by to read! Each age has its own. Open sewers running free. Smoke-choked skies and shipwrecked seas. Each age has its own. Letters, piled up to the sky. …
Q & A
Every blog has a Q & A page but this one may be a little different from some you’ve seen. The letter “Q” has come to mean some pretty strange things in recent days. I am trying to answer its use as a rabble-rouser, with the “A” being our reaction, as responsible citizens of …
Interregnum
An Oxford Languages entry comes up, when I Google the title to this poem. It defines interregnum as one of two things: a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes, or an interval or pause between two periods of office or other things. In either case, a fitting …
Great Patriots 1/6/21
Like many Americans, I saw the events of last night unfold on live TV. Watching, aghast, from my comfortable couch. While the electoral votes were in the process of being certified by Congress, while the ridiculous question of whether they should be certified was being debated, Trump supporters, who were gathered outside, suddenly mounted …
Electoral
On this day, when the electoral college voted at last, and gave us an official President Elect, we had other news as well. A new vaccine punctured the arms of health workers across the country, even while the death toll from COVID-19 hit the 300,000 mark. Our attorney general resigned. And still the lawsuits continue …
All Made Up
This poem talks of cakes and circus clowns, but its mood is anything but celebratory. I am sure there are those out there besides me, longing for truth in this age of prevarication and bait and switch. If only we knew what lay under all that frosting. Thanks for coming by to read! …
Beyond
This poem has to do with the unbelievable situation many of us seem to find ourselves in, where up is down and left is right, where very little in life is predictable or easy. We find we are wide awake, but we cannot believe what we are seeing. The expression “Beyond the Pale” in …
Debatable
I said in my last post, that this is not the time for satire. But if you can’t laugh now, how can you cope? I used the image above, that of a window, to illustrate my point. The broken window above no longer functions as a window. So if I described it as …