From Here?

My little grand daughter

Almost waved to me from the computer screen.

Too soon we may discuss Harry Potter.

Such are the gifts of this Age.

I have not, to date, been the subject

Of an inquisition perpetrated 

By the information gatherers and their partners.

Such are the gifts of this Age.

We understand how to make fire,

And what is useful in war.

We have seven billion people and nuclear power.

Such are the gifts of this Age.

Would anyone except me enjoy hearing The Weavers

Singing Irene Goodnight?

Maybe looking through our rearview mirror

We’ll see this time as America’s greatest.

Revolutions can start

Because the software is available.

Boundary lines are routinely pushed and prodded,

And yesterdays shibboleths are dust.

What was a many lifetime’s evolution

Is this morning’s breakfast.

A bottom line for the seven billion is absurd

For the game is eternal, and we are not the only players.

Donald Trump Was Made Here

Some do not believe in global warming,

Others have grave doubts about evolution.

After careful review of the evidence,

I have concluded Donald Trump was made by Mattel.

When I looked at his eyes

Suspicion set in.

It is not the color that unsettled me.

It’s the absence of color.

Donald’s eyes seem small,

But on close inspection they’re just strange.

Of course his hair is a dead give-a-way.

No mortal would tolerate his comb-over.

When we add to the growing suspicion,

His obviously programmed utterances,

Could not be made by a human,

Without causing his balder to implode.

Surely only a defective robot could say:

“A certificate of live birth is not the same thing,

by any stretch of the imagination, as a birth certificate.”

Or, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by 

focusing exclusively on the present.” 

I once watched his TV program where he fired people.

Only a automaton could offer,

With no hesitation, life altering wisdom...

That could not be understood by earthlings. 

Dead

Don’t hang with my neighbors.

No fault, just the way it is.

This guy has the big house,

And is not especially humble.

Police just left.

Girl friend murdered at his house.

Sobering, but not my problem.

Probably a family affair.

I should be feeling something.

Maybe just sympathy

For someone I didn’t know?

Perhaps it’s “ask not for whom the bell tolls”?

There is nothing

Beyond a little concern for our safety.

Woman dead thirty feet from my yard.

While I watered the plants someone called the police.

My disconnect is cultural.

Does the computer operator

A thousand miles from the drone

Feel it is more than a board game?

Local paper said deceased 

Was charged with attempted store theft in 2009.

Nice epitaph. Thirty-two year old murdered,

Once charged with shoplifting.

15 Ends Here

Highway 15 does not resemble route 66,

And is not likely to breed other Jack Kerouac’s,

Exhausting itself  just shy of the Pacific in San Diego.

Like a river that disappears into a sea,

It mergers into 5,

Carrying hopes and cargo

Down from Great Falls, Montana, and points Southwest.

U.S. 15 is a road of dreams,

Not all of them inspirational.

From snow to surfboard and back,

Passing through Nevada’s ugliest city

Nothing ceremonial at the bottom of the line

No fairwell or welcome signs

Announce your arrival or departure.

Going west past Vegas

You pass lost Denny’s, 

Which sits between 15 and a long distance railroad spur.

Sand, wind and highway noise mark its location.

It should have bright florescence,

Thereby completing its rural incarnation

Of a Dennis Hopper painting.

It defies hope.

The New Yorkers

Penn State’s Joe Paterno was resigning.

Ray felt Joe had done all that was required.

I felt Joe had not done what he should.

With that the New York boys club lunch ended.

I left certain that had Ray

Been in Paterno’s place,

He would have demanded the University act.

Keeping quiet on the student rape issue would not be Ray’s way.

We, three New York transplants, 

Had covered national politics,

(With Dick representing the right .. sort of)

Our local NFL team, and religion.

No one had ordered dessert,

An act of no small contrition, 

Deciding that since it is was not free

We had better show dietetic restraint.

Leaving our table, each with a posture

That suggested a losing battle with age,

Ray and I headed to our cars,

Dick made his mandatory trip to the john.

Wilma

Is it possible for a dog to be a yenta?

If so Wilma meets the description.

She can talk your ear off,

When she isn’t busy eating.

Part Pit-bull, with the disposition 

Of your favorite visiting aunt,

Who commented on your house and the weather

Before entering your home.

Not especially graceful. To have her land on your bed

Is to suggest the arrival of an 8.9 earthquake.

A good deal larger than our Rosie,

They are the best of friends.

I lack the skill to convey the relationship

Willie has with her life partners: Pablo, Sonia and Fred.

New family cars are subject to her veto: 

Too big a step up-No car. 

With Pablo assuming responsibility for Fred,

Sonia will run/walk Willie in whatever direction

Willie wants to go...

Including nowhere.

Dinner at their home is set for three.

Fred does not find it necessary to sit at the table.

Perhaps it is the care Pablo takes in the meal preparation,

But whatever the reason, Willie dines quietly.

Hate

We give subsidies to the needy.

Corn, oil, corporate farmers, come to mind.

Given the time and place I would kill them all.

It is in the nature of revolution; mercy killings.

I have not gotten mellow.

There is no point in expecting improvement.

Sorry, I failed to include five members of the Supremes.

They really should be first, and I apologize for my oversight.

To be willingly law-abiding finally requires belief,

Or recognition that the price of noncompliance can be high.

I suppose the church fathers took the same view.

No doubt they support the evil they created.

Does your burden feel too heavy.

Do you envy the man who steals your bread?

Not enough: You must cut his tongue out

And rewrite the law he has thrust upon you.

I don’t expect the revolution to succeed,

It probably is nothing more than 

Hoping to end a very boring show

That has gone on endlessly.

How to start:

Do not pay your taxes.

When the nice looking lady in the back seat of the limousine 

That, with indifference, blocks your path

Open the back door, pull her out & smash her face

Only then should you shoot the driver.

Stop traffic. crash your wreck into the Mercedes.

BUT Where’s the love?

Dead for lack of oxygen, crushed under the wheels of the private jet.

Oscar

Oscar died yesterday,

A belated victim of agent Orange.

You remember agent Orange,

It was designed to kill Vietnamese.

Not the good Vietnamese,

They were the people we were defending.

Viet Cong: those were the enemies

Who believed in just one Vietnam.

We certainly didn’t want to injure or kill Americans.

This was 1969, not 1942.

We no longer used black Americans to test products

Designed for enemy combatants.

Oscar and I will never have our racquet-ball game.

He wont be part of the monthly poker party.

Tall and straight, a handsome man.

Services will be held Saturday.

Traffic Control

Why would the man place himself in harms’ way?

He is not saving a damsel in distress,

Merely seconds off his bike ride.

Perhaps somewhere a drawbridge is lifting?

The intersection is clear,

No cars coming from my right, down the one-way street.

Easing off the brake, moving forward by inches,

I gently step on the gas pedal.

A cyclist coming from the left

Pedals a foot in front of me,

I stop moving 

As he cycles past my car.

In that instant, when I saw him,

There was a not unpleasant thought:

I could hit and crush bike and rider,

Preventing him from completing his ride.

His was an audacious move,

It would work often.

But, what if I stood as judge

And risked my being late?

There would be forms to complete,

Questions to answer.

I would be inconvenienced.

Would it be worth it?

Of course there would be blood

And the man might not be dead.

On the other hand he will have learned...

Nothing.

The Call

No point in protesting and no one to protest to.

And spare me the homilies,

I’d rather it were someone else's dead son.

I’ve few clear recollections 

But the images that emerge,

Fanciful and pungent, are overwhelming:

Faced with another little boy

Who, like him, had just begun walking,

Michael started crying: the other kid was wearing shoes.

At five he and I had books to read and stories to create,

Marching chocolate puddings 

Leading a parade of Dr. Seuss characters.

He was seven when, 

After spending a boring day at my base,

He announced he was going home...  a 15 mile walk?

If I search there will be times of stress...

I wasn’t there for most of them,

So my guilt is amorphous but genuine.

Where’s the love?

Present.

Every Strip Mall Has A Drugstore

With warm winters, no State Income Tax

And innumerable discounts for seniors,

Southern Florida has been a magnet 

For retirees from the northeast.

They come here to wait,

And write emails to friends

Who are yet to concede

To golf and Mahjong.

Some of the friends who lured

Them south are gone

While others seem to have constricted 

Their lives to health concerns.

If the plan is to wait to die

It makes sense to find a comfortable chair.