Boomers' Lament

 You say tomato; I say tomahto.

You say recession; I say inflation.

You say inflation; I say degradation.

Let me explain.

You say goodbye and I say hello.

Recessive inflation or Inflated recession.

I don’t know; you?

what’s if to you? what’s it tooya

this is bound to confuse ya

that’s the point

got it? 

To whit:

you say Right; I say Left.

right is right while left is bereft?

Confusion’s an Infusion of Illusion. 

Too much of either causes contusions,

of my illusions, anyway

but hey

Oh cut the crap.

Admit it. You’re a jackass; I’m a bumbling beast.

You’re kicking up a storm; I’m throwing my weight around.

Orangutangs are skeptical of changes in there cages.

So what else is new?

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the tranche

take a  chance chance ch-ance

MBS's CDO's, CDF's, back in 08, it was

or was in '29? 

number ny-an, number ny-an

leaves me bereft. You?

Pick a card any card

don’t tell me what it is

is it black or red?

red or dead?

red or blue

what's it to you?

consider this instead

monkeys wanta rearrange the whole jungle.

whiled rightist rugbyites wanna rumble

wild lefty loopyites will likely litigate

replay of watergate?

Watergate does not bother me, said the alabama guys

even as dirty tricks undermine the amerikan mind

and pollute us who don’t give a hoot 

crowd. Loud.

Shiver me timbers said Ahab to the Starbucks but

look what happened:

meanwhile back at the ranch

ranch clotidian prime meridian

grenich village and the grinch

stealing xmas while kiddos slumber

dances of sugarplums in their dreams

hell i dont know what it means

sugarplum fairies in our memes?

plutonium in our mines; pluto in far-curved lines

but new yok times said god is dead

back in ’63

or was it ’64?

dealey plaza’s all I remember

when a grassy knoll took its toll

or somebody said . . .

or somebody spoke and i went into a dream

oh oh oh o

they blew his mind out in a car

took a cha-cha-cha- chance

meanwhile back at the mideast r-r-r-ranch

ahab the arab, sheik of the burning sands

conducts petrolands with his oily hands

as secretive cybers secrete streams of wet dreams

You’re all wet said the the well-connected sycophant

as the miller told his tale 

i read the news today oh boy

about a lucky man who made the grade

he blew his mind out in tirade

using Capitol as a stage

and as I watched them on the stage

my hands were clenched in fits of rage

stop the steal stop the steal

said the joker to the psychos, unreal!

sycophants stealing ‘cross the Mall

to upstage it All.

That’s all y’all.

Last one out  turn off the lights.

Glass half-Full

Because they could not stop for Death

 A poem in memory of . . .

US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick

US Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood 

Senior Airwoman Ashli Babbit 

Kevin Greeson 

Benjamin Philips

Roseanna Boyland

 

. . . with inspired appreciation for Emily Dickinson:

 

Although I came not here for Death

He rudely stopped for me

That trumpian trampling took my breath

and gave instead, fatality.

 

Busting through our Capitol doors!

But I was forced to stumble.

Through death’s unexpected door

I took my fatal tumble.

 

Rambling toward Rotunda

with wild trumpian intent

But suddenly was I taken under:

a fatal bending ne’er unbent.

 

In swooning sighs of sudden surprise

there it was unexpectedly

the infamous moment of eternal demise.

Now do I get the great grand prize?

Trundling past our Statuary hosts

the crowd swelled to its fatal fervor.

But I caught glimpse of stony post

where I would take my stand forever.

 

Since then . . . it’s been a year or more

‘though it seems but a day to me,

since I first caught sight of Capitol doors

Opening to Eternity.

. . . not at all what I expected!

 

Glass half-Full

Declaration of Intendedence

When in the Course of American events, it becomes necessary for the People to expose the lies which had compelled some of their  fellow-citizens to wage war against Our Congress, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should expose the untruths which had compelled the rebels to riot.

We hold these truths to be historically proven, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by our Constitution with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

To secure these Rights, our government of the United States was instituted, deriving just powers from the consent of the governed, —and that when any group of citizens among them becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Duty of the People and their Representatives to expose the lies and treasonous actions that have driven their fellow-citizens to destructive, murderous, riotous rebellion.

Our Rule of Law, indeed, indicates that our Government, long established, should not be destroyed for political and transient causes. 

So when a long train of rioting destroyers, pursuing a murderous, destructive end, attacks and attempts to destroy our Capitol, and to obstruct the due processes of governance therein, it is the Right of the People, and the Duty of their Congress, to expose the lies and the malicious intent that has compelled the rebels to their rebellion.

Such has been the patient, persistent and proficient investigation of our Congress, having appointed a Select Committee to investigate the causes of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

Now, the Select Committee, having established, through their presentation of evidence, the Lies and Rebellious intent of the Jan6 rioters, with their Insurrection having been compelled by the Lies and masterful manipulation of a Depraved Loser.

We, therefore, the People of the United States of America, virtually assembled as witnesses to the evidence brought forth by our US House of Representatives Select Committee for Jan6, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good people of this Nation, solemnly publish and declare, that this nation, represented in our Courts of Law by our Attorney General, do resolve to charge Donald J. Trump, 45th President of our fair nation, with the crime of Treason and Insurrection against our United States of America.

Glass half-Full 

The Raving

(With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe) 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a weird and querious clip of newsy lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of something rudely rapping, crudely tapping at my online door. 

“It’s just some pesky ad”, I muttered, to interrupt my American dream—

“Nothing but some cyber-scheme .”

 

Ah but, distinctly, I remember it was 2020’s weird November,

After each citizen, voting soul, had cast their vote into our poll.

Now, in mid- December, with dignity repairing and

our new President preparing an end to MAGA madness 

with renewing Lincolnian gladness.

Good government forevermore!

 

But suddenly while I looked quizzly at my phone, sitting in my pad alone,

In there slid a tweeting Raving, from the campaign days of raging.

Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;

but in an air of some bad dream, he perched upon my tweeted screen’

Perched and bragged, and nothing more.

 

But now entrapping my near-napping with his pernicious yapping 

I saw the proud and arrogant bluster of the countenance he wore, 

I swore:

“We’ve heard your mouth so loud and proud, whenever there’s a crowd, 

in demeaning those who attend not your commands. . . 

and your friggin’ groping hands.

But soon you’ll be removed, so get thee on the move, and haunt no more our White House door.   

But quoth the Raving, “Evermore!”

“Will be Wild, Forevermore!” 

So, one tweet leads to another; in the winking of an Ellipse eye . . .

Jan6 day finds us suddenly again corrupt, 

as rioting MAGA mobs our Congress murderously disrupt,

I’m like: “Stop! your MAGAmob! You’re a Loser, you Raving Abuser!”

Cuz in their Jan6 rioting,  so rudely they came a-fighting,

So rudely they were insurrecting

with criminal rage our Rule of Law infecting

cuz you so incitefully  came a-tweeting,

through your MAGAs’ obsequious a-bleeting.

Now Democracy lies here bleeding! 

Breaking bad our Capitol doors, they ranted and they riled:

 Cuz quoth the Raving: Will be Wild!

 

Deep into their riot a-peering, long I stared at screen, and fearing,

doubting, hearing f-words ne’er uttered ‘neath our Rotunda  before.

Does now our Rule of Law lie in ruins, abhorred ?

Will our Democracy be restored?

Quoth the Raving: Nevermore! But hey. Will be Wild!

Glass Chimera

Will be Wild?

 So . . .in a moment of high tension and national crisis, an outgoing President of the United States has to make a choice between two different lawyer cliques, one of which will define his legacy and confirm for posterity his destiny in the history books. 

The Groups:

1.) His official legal staff, a few highly qualified lawyers who have been advising him all along, during his 4-year term in office.

2.) A new, untested group of whacko lawyers who are dredging up, from the muck and the mire of human gullibility, a sack of pseudo-legal strategies to undermine our Constitutional Courts of Law while creeping through sub-legalian tunnels, then slithering beneath  Congress and wiggling up into the White House for another four years.

Very stable genius that he is, the president thus carves his own destiny by choosing  a wild, unprecedented path that will guarantee him a special place in the history books.

So, what does he do?

He ignores his legitimate lawyers.

Instead, he instructs his team of whacko lawyers to get ready. Then he steps aside stealthily, to summon forth, in the wee hours of December darkness, a special reserve team whom he had instructed, earlier . . . to stand back and stand by.

He releases his pet tweetie-bird to carry the message. But thank God, some of our alert lawmakers intercepted it.

“. . . . Will be wild!”  

Webster’s dictionary defines “wild”:

 adjective.  uncivilized, unconstrained by caution or convention, completely undisciplined, very angry, irrational,  uncontrolled.

And wild it was. Only a very stable desperado could have dreamed up such a wild insurrection scheme—a cutting-edge call-to-arms that would  carve out for himself a place in history.

 Congratulations, Donald, you will go down in history, subverting our Rule of Law to the same depths of Rebel fate  as Jefferson Davis: the Loser.

Stay tuned for more News from our Select House Committee, at the 11th hour of our .gov.

Glass half-Full

From the Barrel of a Gun

 In the beginning was the King and his Soldiers.

They were empowered to maintain control over the Colonists. by means of their fancy uniforms and their fancy firearms.

But the Colonists were feeling a new wind of Liberty; so they took unto themselves firearms, by which they would empower themselves to assert their fledgeling freedom and run the King’s soldiers out of America and back to their little island.

By ’n by, the Americans got it together to write a Constitution by which they would build, from the ground up, a new Republic, if they could keep. 

And they did keep it for a long time. . . just how long, remains to be seen.

But we digress.

Within the structured Law of that Constitution, the Americans had written unto themselves an Amendment, the Second, to whit: 

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

This official protection of the Right to bear arms was very effective for the Americans as they expanded their new Republic all the way across our Continent, imposing, by the force of their Guns, their high-tech industrialized hegemony over all North American natives.

And a bloody time was had by all. As time went by they made forceful use of the Firearms to subdue the native peoples and appropriate unto themselves the vast lands of the North American Continent.

       Song: Sitting Bull’s Eyes 

By ’n by, the Americans had a bloody friggin Civil War in which they killed many many thousands of themselves.

As the 20th century got cranked up, the Americans did provide massive firepower to drive the German kaiser and his soldiers back into their prussian holes.

And a few years later, the Americans did again provide massive firepower to drive the little nazi and his nazi demons back into their holes. 

By n by, the Americans did, over the course of the 20th-century manage to, sometimes make good use of their guns to settle wars that had sprung above around the world.

In some of those ventures, the Americans did ok; in others . . . not so much. 

By the time the 21st century rolled in, Americans had morphed into a very different breed from the original Patriot role model that had inspired their original impetus toward Freedom, Liberty and Justice for all, especially since our visual obsession has turned us into couch potatoes  with eyes obsessed in electronic screens that are robbing many of us of any capacity to actually think and act with responsibility, compassion, good ole common sense and liberty and justice for All.

The “Justice” for all category is one, particularly, in which we Americans have failed to maintain high standards of appropriate, consistent, lawful enforcement among our varying communities and neighborhoods.  

Sad to say, this 2nd Amendment that now enables the fascists and the  murderously compelled whackos among us to go around killing people as if they were shooting dildos at an amusement park . . . Austin, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Charleston church, Colleyville synagogue, Parkland Florida, Sacramento, NYC Subway, Uvalde, Tulsa, Philadelphia,  Highland Park . . . to name just a few,

and then there are the assassinations: Medgar Evers, President Kennedy, Dr. MLKing, Senator Bobby Kennedy, the attempt on President Reagan  and Gabby Giffords. . .

Times have changed; the world has changed; people have changed. We have lost the ability to govern ourselves. We have sacrificed our Peace and Safety on the altar of Second Amendment fantasy. 

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of our country. Take guns away from crazy people! It's time we took that "well-regulated" phrase seriously.

We need a Constitutional Amendment to impose appropriate limitations on Americans and our Right to Bear Arms.

And while we are at it, we need a Constitutional Amendment to delete the Electoral College from our Constitution and replace it with the Right of every citizen to vote for the President of the United States. That damned E.C. construct came about only because our Founders were not yet confident enough--not yet smart enough-- to forbid slavery, and not yet American enough to constitutionalize a government that is actually established by  the Voting of  We the People.

Glass half-Full

Adoption better than Abortion

 Any centrist candidate on either side should stay as far away from the controversy as possible, just as our President did, so wisely, before he was elected in 2020.

These disputes need to be worked out in the Courts, and . . . especially now, in the legislatures. As time goes by, blue states will turn bluer while red states turn redder, if women, children and fathers have the wherewithal to establish their home domiciles in any particular state according to that state's childbirth laws.

 

But I cannot see that there are enough Americans to actually choose their state of residence based upon these limitations, or liberalities, as the case may be.

Most likely to have a life that is determined by these laws and these events are: (duh) women in childbearing age, probably most of them unmarried.

This divisive issue will moderate in years ahead as women whose lives are truly affected by these laws locate their domiciles in states that are helpful in their respective attitudes and values pertaining to giving birth to children and either raising them or giving them for adoption.

Perhaps recent developments will provide some incentive for young people to get back to where they once belonged. Get back, Loretta.

 

Adoption is, by the way, a wonderful gift to be given to any child who has been placed into a loving home where childhood is valued and appreciated.

 

 

Last point, adoption should not be so doggone expensive! Perhaps money that formerly went to abortion clinics should be redirected to orphanages and adoption agencies.

 

Glass half-Full

Old Poetry Purloined

 In early 20th time

Poet Eliot wrote a line:

I grow old; I grow old;

I shall wear my trousers rolled.

 

Then what got rolled

was a 20th century that's now been told.

 

In mid 20th time

Poet Simon wrote a a line:

 

Old friends, old friends

sit on their park bench like bookends.

 

Then a newspaper blown through the grass

disappears in a MetNet morasse.

 

We burned through an Age of Oil

carbon propelling our industrial toil:

makes the Indy 500 look like the Roman chariot races.

Forests and fauna ascend in carboniferous traces. 

Suddenly it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday;

and Billy’s got us feeling allright, in a way.

 

It’s Sad and its Sweet and I knew it complete, 

when I wore a younger man’s clothes.

 

But I grow old, I still grow old.

Now I’ve watched this life unfold.

I feel old, but I grow bold.

Now I see what I was told

would happen. 

Yep. It happened; it did.

In spite of God forbid

Glass half-Full

Boston does it Best

When I was young grad back in ’70’s I had a big “entertainment center” that I used to haul around, from apartment to apartment.  It had an exterior of fancy faked wood, about five feet long, maybe three feet high. . . and as wide, front to back, as a TV console, although there was no boob tube in it. 

All of that old grandiose ’60’s-style bulk existed for one reason, and one reason only: music. This ancient lo-tech, high-bulk furniture was nothing like the smart phone with music in your 21st-century hand.

I had a collection of 33rpm records. There were a lot of them stacked in a drawer inside that furniture, but certain ones of them still linger in my mind today. 

I had a double-record set of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Handel’s Messiah. And I remember vividly the day that Dylan’s Slow Train Coming first came spinning off that old turntable. I think there were some old Beatles LPs in that stack, and a few Moody Blues, most notably, Threshold of a Dream.

But most vivid in my boomer mind was the memory of hearing the Boston Pops performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812, recorded under the baton of Arthur Fiedler. 

Last night, I and several thousands of other Americans, along with our immigrant friends, heard the live 2022 version of 1812 by the Pops, cannons and all,  now under the baton of their 20th Conductor, Keith Lockhart. 

In preparation for Tchaikovsky’s musical masterpiece, we heard the entire litany of our American patriotic songs, My Country ’tis of Thee, God bless America, Grand Ole Flag, etc, with words projected so we could all sing along. We also sang the anthems for all of our armed services, with appropriate interviews from the military personnel who were assisting Boston’s Finest and the Mass State Patrol to keep keep an appropriate handle on our covid-delayed exuberance. 

Conductor Lockhart also included a Pops’ performance of the Ukrainian National Anthem to honor those patriots in yonder Euro nation who are under the Putin gun now, as we were under King George’s muskets in 1776.

In introducing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 masterpiece, Conductor Lockhart explained its relevance here and now. The composer wrote it to commemorate the courage, resolve, and sacrifice of people who had had to defend their lands and their lives because of a dictator’s (Napolean) unprovoked attack.

Oddly enough, in these times, those Russian defenders of 1812 were the forefathers and mothers of a people group whose grand history is presently being violated by megalamaniacal dictator as he makes hitlerian war on their Ukrainian neighbors to the souuth.

So that’s something to think about on this day after Independence Day, 2022.

A good time was had, y'all, as we Southerners say. But hey, nobody does the 4th like Boston! where our Independence was born by the light of a lantern held high in the Old North Church, illuminating the midnight ride of Paul Revere!

King of Soul