Thanksgiving 2014

Recently, I’ve pondered on

A curious phenomenon

As we acquire more and more

We find less to be thankful for

 

My iPhone 5 is really great

I wish that it was up to date

Somehow I feel that I deserve

To own a flat-screen with a curve

Or get what’s bigger, faster, better

Oh how I need another sweater!

 

That’s why I think in each November

We pause a moment to remember

How, with each breath our blessings mount

And how we should our blessings count

 

And in that moment of reflection

Resolve to seek a new direction

Before we face another Fall

To do our best and give our all

That by our labors and our arts

We upgrade what’s within our hearts

 

Oh Lord, allow to be renewed

Our undiminished gratitude

To cherish life each time we pray

On this and every other day

Please remember that the best stocking stuffer for the poetry lover in your life is

“It Only Hurts When I Rhyme” (Tarzana Joe, collected!)  It is available in paperback from xlibris and in print or Kindle version from amazon.

 

Buy at Amazon

 

 

A Tapestry of Contradictions

I didn’t think it’d get this bad
I’d laugh, except it’s all so sad
In fact, I think it’s quite as bad as it could ever get
A promise is no promise
And a threat is not a threat

Instead it’s gloom that’s spreading

When he swore he’d spread the wealth
And now it’s gone so far,
He’s even lying to himself

He told us we could keep the plan and doctor that we liked

But soon it was the promise not a football that got spiked

He told the world at large there was a line that couldn’t be crossed

It must have slipped his mind or else the paperwork got lost

He had a plan for peace
That he assured us wouldn’t fail
He put aside the hammer
“Because not ever job’s a nail”
He swore before cadets
But he couldn’t even keep that vow
For even he agrees
We kind of need that hammer now

He said he had no power to erase or change a law

Something must have happened; he don’t think that way no more

Those who give the notion there’s a God the shortest shrift

Say, “Could God create a stone so big that even he couldn’t lift?”

Now I’ll make a prediction and so here’s what I predict.

The man can’t make a statement even he won’t contradict.

A Poem for the Moment

I say let’s send them all to France

This flood of new Obamagrants

Today, he calls for fresh migration

To build a new Obamanation

Had I the standing, I’d be suing

Poor man, he knows not what he’s doing

To those who think that I’m not fair.

May I present…Obamacare

King v. Burwell

The justices will now convene

Debate and then concur well
Petitioner is David King
Respondent is Ms. Burwell

The question that’s before the court

The matter that’s “in res”
Is simply if the blinking law
Means the things it says

I’m glad the court took up the bill

For clarity, we need it
Now someone back in Washington
Will have to sit and read it

They need to parse each paragraph
There’s so much that’s at stake
I hope there’s Red Bull in reserve
To keep the bench awake

I’m no Supreme Court Justice

But there can’t be much debate
The law says plans are subsidized
If purchased through “a State”

Though, as they’ve now admitted

The plan was just a trick
Subsidies were carrots
All the rest…a stick

They thing they hadn’t counted on

The outcome that’s so strange is
Some governors could not be fooled
And didn’t set up exchanges

But that didn’t stop the IRS

(I think they’re off their meds)
They said that they could subsidize
Exchanges run by Feds

Opponents quickly pointed out

The law says no such thing
Ms. Burwell, though, consented.
Then enter, Mr. King.

And now the Court has granted “cert.”

Who thought it’d come so far?
Here’s hoping Mr. Gruber learns
How clever judges are.

Non-Poetry 2

Warning, Will Robinson

Of all the wonderful words in Mark Steyn’s new book, the ones that made the greatest impression on me are on the cover.  It’s the subtitle, “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned”.  It struck me that literature and history are full of warnings.  Some are heeded and some are ignored.  Warnings that are not heeded make good drama but bad history.   Oedipus was warned.   So was Neville Chamberlain.  The familiar phrase, “Beware the Ides of March,” illustrates both outcomes.  Dismissed by Caesar, it led to his death and a civil war.  Employed by Shakespeare, it gave his little play on the affair a bit of tension.

The Canadian Cassandra also brought to mind another drama.  “Biedermann and the Firebugs” was written by Max Frisch in 1953.  It opens with Herr Biedermann reading a newspaper story about an epidemic of arson fires in his city.  No sooner does he put his paper down than a man with a can of gasoline arrives and asks Biedermann if he has a room for the night.  What will Biedermann do?

Likewise, I recall an episode of the 1965 TV series, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” based on Jean Kerr’s book of the same name.  Please don’t ask me how I remember this when I don’t remember my dentist’s last name…but I do.  In the story, the family dog has a cavity filled which somehow turns his head into a radio receiver.  I know, it’s not quite Shakespeare.  On the rover-radio, the family overhears the conversation of two crooks planning to swindle them out of their home or the gold buried in the basement or something else of significance (I can’t remember everything).  What does this average American family do with the amazing information?

Not every prophesy comes true.  The failure of most predictions is predictable.  But every decision should be made with an appreciation of consequences easily foreseen.

A vote is a decision and we have been reminded that not voting is a decision too. 

Steyn and others have warned us of the danger to our freedom, our lives and liberty, and the advance of human civilization that is the clear, coming result of looking for ways to cooperate with those that have announced their plans to kill you.  When the leader of ISIS says he will see us in New York, he means it.  The words are not talking points scribbled that morning by a consultant. 

 

But we don’t want to hear or heed al-Baghdadi or Steyn.  We won’t believe or appreciate that our enemies (we have enemies?) have not adopted the obvious benefits of diversity and gender equality.  Or if we do or suspect, our current administration doesn’t.  They keep telling us everything will be alright and who doesn’t want to hear that?  The wonderful Jaime Gorelick insists it was better that the CIA and FBI couldn’t collaborate and the warning was never given.  What’s a couple of buildings compared to your progressive suspicion of American institutions?

In 1965, that sitcom family, led by the incredibly feminine and wonderfully strong Pat Crowley, got the warning from the dog, called the cops, set up a sting, and bagged the bad guys.  How quaint.

Will Robinson listened to Robot and Dr. Smith didn’t.

Biedermann was certain that no arsonist could outsmart him.  He couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  There was no point in setting fires anyway.  What would be the purpose?  And his houseguests filled the attic with cans of gasoline.  In the end, he helps measure the fuse and hands them the matches.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Non-Poetry

Your Tuition is Due

In the 2012 campaign, President Obama promised to work tirelessly to cut the growth of college costs in half during the next ten years.  Perhaps he hoped his audience would only hear, “I promise to blah-blah cut college costs blah-blah in half.”  Nope.  He was only pledging to cut the “growth”.  Between 2003 and 2013 college tuition grew at almost 80%.  So this presidential promise (out six years beyond his impeach-by date, mind you) was to work a Washington miracle and cut the growth in tuition to 40%.  That’s like JFK vowing to get us half-way to the moon (sometime soon).  Oh, and by the way, the cost of textbooks has increased at almost the same rate—nearly double the rate of growth for health care costs.  Got to go write me one of them there textbooks.

As a parent of a college student, the President’s promise hit me like a puck to the pocket.  But I searched and Googled to no avail.  I couldn’t find anyone that had commented on this pathetic response to a very real problem facing the beleaguered and beloved middle class.  Then I looked at the proposal with the liberal mind-set.  If the Education Department budget grew 10% in fiscal 2006 but only 9% in fiscal 2007, George Bush had actually CUT the education budget, insuring the nation would produce generations of dolts for years to come.  So by promising to cut the rate of growth in half, President Obama was being more than ambitious; he was being, as usual, audacious.

College debt is devastating for today’s graduating classes.  But excusing the debt is not the answer.  A lunch you don’t pay for is rarely free. A house that you don’t pay for is rarely maintained.  An education you don’t pay for is hardly worth it.  And student debt is not the only problem. 

Most parents I know don’t want to see their kids in deep debt-debt at 23.  So they look for other ways to cut college costs.  One attractive avenue is the athletic scholarship.  For a young woman who likes soccer or softball or volleyball, it’s a great opportunity.  But just like with academics, the competition for the athletic scholarship is getting fierce.  Enter professional coaches, year-round training and performance enhancing drugs.  We may not be raising dolts, but we will soon have a generation of women without any cartilage in their knees.

Now, here come the anecdotes, so be careful.  I know parents of high school water polo players who have spent more time in emergency rooms than by the pool as their sons are treated for concussions, severe trauma, and underwater abuse to their private parts—all part of a compelling desire to win and get noticed by college scouts.  I know hockey moms who have been rehabbing multiple knees on multiple sons.  No one talks about “Roid Rage” any more but I have to think something chemical is causing normal sporting competition to become cut-throat.  And it isn’t only athletics.  I know parents who pushed their son so relentlessly to become a virtuoso and win a college band scholarship, he ended up leaving school and hating both the French horn and his parents.

So where is all this money going?  I will say that the amenities on my son’s campus are quite nice.  The University of Quantitative Easing is, at least, putting my hard earned poem payments into new dormitories with clothes dryers that send out a text message when the cool-down cycle is done.  The furniture in Room 585 is new and clean.  After I left college it was discovered that what I had been sleeping on was actually a pre-Columbian artifact.

I am not sure how to solve this problem.  But I do know that cutting the rate of growth in half is silly.  If the Republicans want to meet their constituents where they live and learn, this is an issue they should be looking at.