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Monthly Archives: December 2025

giftie gie us

December 23, 2025
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“O wad some power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!” Robert Burns, from “To a Louse”

“giftie noun/Scottish/gift; faculty” Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary

it is a season to trade gifts/to show appreciation/to bring a one that fair uplifts/and brightens an occasion

my lovely donna waits for me/in faraway toledo/which is excruciatingly/like penguins in a speedo

i bought her something just today/a tiny bonsai tree/placed in a vessel made of clay/made recently by me

the man will take my pot and then/with elbow grease, good people/contrive to drill and grind and spend/himself to make a weep-hole

so keep your fingers crossed, good friends/in hopes there is no cracking/and that this venture hap’ly ends/in joy and fun unlacking

and that we follow well the rules/and keep the wee tree healthy

and with the years contentment fuels/a trove that’s truly wealthy.

..

Afterword: There is a Donna in Toledo, Ohio, waiting for me, whom I am immensely proud to call my Sweetheart. I will be uprooting myself from Phoenix and going cross-country to live with her, we hope forever, some months from now; but much sooner I am flying to Toledo to be with her for a few days, and we will exchange gifts. The bonsai merchant will have, by this time tomorrow, used a masonry drill and a grinder to put a weep-hole in the bottom of the triangular vessel I made some weeks ago. It is unlikely that I will be able to present the bonsai to Donna before I make the move, but it is already hers.

Esso Open Mic Poetry feat. Bill Campana

December 22, 2025
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Every third Sunday, except in the brutally hot summer months, the Valley’s own Esso Coffeehouse is the venue for a poetry event. Event host Russ Kasmierczak and Esso proprietor Sharon Kroger have decreed that every year, spoken word superstar Bill Campana, whose birthday is in December, shall be the December feature.

It was my honor and pleasure to fill in as host for Russ last night, he being needed in faraway Iowa. Here’s what I looked like as I hosted:

A dozen quite distinct poetic voices signed up for the open mic. Here is the list, and the mic, and the pen that was used to sign up:

And here all the open mic performers except the brilliant Roxanne Doty, who was so mesmerizing that I forgot to take her picture:

After a refreshment break, I introduced Bill, and he amazed us all with dozens of displays of verbal pyrotechnics.

After the enthusiastic applause died down, I went to the mic to wrap up, which, per long-standing tradition, included handing out a commemorative zine published by Russ prior to his departure.

I am proud to have hosted this December 2025 incarnation of the event. Big thanks to Russ and Sharon and all participants and helpers!

I Want My Country Back

December 20, 2025
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O how I want The Ed Sullivan Show

I want good cheer and decency

James Stewart and Donna Reed (and The Donna Reed Show)

I want civil rights and equal opportunity

Double-feature movies

Bazooka Joe gum for a penny and you got a tiny comic strip too

I want moms yelling for their kids for supper from the front porch

Hide-And-Go-Seek

John F. Kennedy after the Cuban missile crisis and before his assassination

..

For the record America has always been deeply flawed

There has never not been racism

Never not been corruption in high places

But there has always been a beating, striving heart

And now all the strings are being pulled by the heartless

And in the Oval Office is a megalomaniac who makes Alexander the Great almost look like a shrinking violet

It is not the country I grew up believing we could have

It is the country worse than my nightmares

..

Good people are fighting tooth and nail to get my country back

Bad people are threatening them with death

And have in fact killed some of them

We The People includes saints and murderers

And You The Person have the power to fight the evil

Please fight

Be decent and good and stand up to bullying

Be thoughtful and kind and march and pray and vote

Be heroic

It is not too late

winterkus

December 20, 2025
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an early sundown/a protracted sense of doom/to steal a soul’s heat

when a dog shivers/huddling in a bitter wind/your home is her home

holiday lights twink/and hot cider makes you think/cheer is a good brink

footprints in the snow/so you look up and fog breath/shows some exertion

electric blankets/make you feel like toasted bread/better turn it down

somehow meteors/despite incineration/look frightfully cold

you are a furnace/and it is your duty now/to provide your warmth

fugue in slightly minor key/sea

December 19, 2025
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we need not fight

but sometimes we chide and throw shade and diss

which are microfights

subfights

slight fights

slights

..

we need not curse

but jeeminy crickets do we euphemise

and there are even schisms

in our euphemisms

..

still

life

beckons

we have days that are nice

a dais spiced with mischief

and daisies shifting in a breeze

suitable for a bucolic frieze

zephyr-shifted

in that slight wind

on our slightly-tilted earth

with a yellow dwarf of a sun

convecting our splendiferous atmosphere

beguiling us to preening

as we’re here

gilgamesh is gone

December 18, 2025
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“Whence Came We? What Are We? Whither Go We?” –Title to one of Paul Gauguin’s most mysterious paintings

about four thousand days ago

plus or minus an order of magnitude or two

there was a great local flood

and people have remembered it in myths

because myths inspire and drive us

(just ask tolkien or campbell)

..

meanwhile it is with great sadness that we note

that just this week raw tragedy occurred

two deaths

a father and mother done in by a berserker son

and all kinds of wounds are fresh

in millions of souls

wounds inflicted by the stark wrongness

of loving parents slain

by a son who would not be helped

..

surely new myths are already being wrought

because we like stories

and what a story premise we have here

but the problem with myths

is that they act as baffles to understanding

they act to mislead us from wisdom

..

now it is especially important

for us to discard our love for a juicy narrative

and try to arrive at understanding of this nihilistic act

and with that understanding

however minuscule

arrive at a means of coping

..

gilgamesh of legend

survivor of the flood

is gone

if he ever was here

and make-believe is good for some things

horrendous for others

rude rage

December 17, 2025
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some time in the last fifty years

“quality control” became “quality assurance”

and more recently

“problems” became “issues”

but, marketing aside, rage turns people with weapons

into murderers

and free-floating rage

is on the rise

hatred has waxed and lightheartedness waned

..

some time after rodney king got his meat tenderized

by a gang of cops with their handheld hitting devices

he asked “can’t we all just get along?”

but all of us getting along would be catastrophic

for the manufacturers of weapons

so no, rodney, we won’t be getting along

any time soon

..

a man with fruit cart placed himself in harm’s way

to keep a gunman from making holes in some folks

not of his faith

and the gunman made two holes in his arm

..

frustration makes us ruder

and may make us enraged

and abraham zapruder

our smartphone use presaged.

Still Life with Choppers, Burrito, and Salsa Bowl

December 16, 2025
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Still Life with Choppers, Burrito, and Salsa Bowl

Attention K-Mart Shoppers¹

The Blue-Light Special², Choppers,

Is Aisle Five–and Neat-O³

We throw in a Burrito⁴

With bowl of Salsa Rojo⁵

Très chic⁶, Tré Cool⁷, très Boho⁸

A feast of contrariety

In Southwest High Society⁹.

..

¹ Kmart was a supermarket chain popular in the 20th Century. It still has an online presence but aside from Miami and Guam the brick&mortar empire it once was is gone.

² The Blue Light Special was a Kmart flash sale that lasted as long as a rotating blue light shone and twirled.

³ When I was ten in 1964 “Neat-O” meant fun, groovy,desirable. Its etymology might owe something to the Beatnik era.–“Daddy-O” for instance.

⁴ A Burrito is a tortilla encasing anything from beans and cheese to chile-marinated meat. Spanish for “little donkey.”

⁵ The two major salsas are salsa rojo (red) and salsa verde (green).

⁶ French for “quite fashionable.”

⁷ Nom de guerre of Frank Edwin Wright III of Green Day fame.

⁸ Short for Bohemian, loosely meaning “unconventional.”

⁹ Needed a phrase to rhyme with Contrariety.

..

Endnote: the “Choppers” in the photo are a 3D-printed cast of my upper and lower left back teeth, made to enable casting of a molar crown in the upper.An oblong scanning device was manipulated around that sector of my mouth by a dental tech.

Hail and Farewell, Rob Reiner

December 15, 2025
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News of the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer this weekend fills me with sorrow. They were a loving and powerful couple, a voice and force for good. Their deaths are, tragically, symptomatic of the horribly irrational, delusional culture that has poisoned the American spirit.

Mr. Reiner has made more movies in my Top Ten favorite list than any other filmmaker. Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, Misery, A Few Good Men, This Is Spinal Tap–there’s half the list right there. And in those masterworks may be found a full spectrum of the light and the dark side of humanity: True Love, obsession, sacrifice, artifice, nostalgia, kindness, absurdity, loyalty, and Magic. Rob Reiner wore his love and fascination with his fellow beings on his sleeve.

Mr. Reiner, wherever you are or aren’t or have transcended, the world owes you and your Michele an enormous debt of gratitude. Very best regards and wishes to you, sir.