Brute Force (acrostic)

*A Russian oligarch watches the project unfold.*

Behold a thug who lusts to gaff

Reduce redact and ravage so

Upload depletion unto chaff/Sheer

Tyranny. It’s ABC

Extermination’s nigh. Best flee

A Serious Look at Language, with a Great Deal of Inadvertent Giggling and Smirking, Not to Mention a Hidden Agenda

July 1, 2025

A Serious Look at Language, with a Great Deal of Inadvertent Giggling and Smirking, etc.

The popular Scrabble-esque game Words With Friends

Permits many F-words,

But will not allow at least one.

Now, DILDO is obviously sexually connotative

But Words with Friends, as demonstrated above,

Allows its use.

I confess I blushed as I used it,

The more so since my opponent had a female name,

And I doubt if I have ever met or talked to her

In real life.

I have a real-life female friend

With whom I play WWF on a daily basis,

And sometimes our use of sexual words,

Though always strategic and never gratuitous,

Seems downright flirty.

The current President of the United States,

After having dropped bombs on faraway Iran

Without Congressional approval,

Dropped an F-Bomb while knowingly in view

Of recording devices, including video,

Because two countries were not doing

What he wanted them to do.

This may result in an increased proliferation

Of F-bombs amongst schoolchildren

For whom POTUS is, if not a role model, an excuse.

There is a book that permits me to call him

And his “Big, Beautiful Bill”

A thief

And his satchel of burglar tools.

The book is my Dictionary.

arb

July 1, 2025

if you save up nickels in your jarred garage

to sell on a cruise–that, my friend’s, arbitrage

as long as the buyer’s sufficiently dense

as to give you per each in excess of five cents.

.

when acorns reach soil and there find safe harbor

a sapling may soon be enhancing an arbor

and if that safe arbor is somewhere in michigan

could it be an ann arbor arbor? we wish again.

.

a rhubarb’s a colorful stalk or a beef

in baseball when coaches and umps yell their grief

but both may be settled if they chance to try

addition of strawberries: sweet rhubarb pie.

.

the pluck of a syllable from its word-origin

may not be the best vessel to put your porridge in

but sure as my namesake’s a drummer named gary

it makes unchaotic the once…arb-itrary.

***

Life-historical note: I was named after a man my folks picked up hitchhiking in 1954. He had a pair of drumsticks with him and was demonstrating his drummer’s skill zanily in the back seat as he introduced himself as Gary Fromer the Drummer. Mom had a bun in the oven, me, and Mom and Dad found Mr. Fromer so personable and lively that they memorialized their encounter with him by naming me Gary. I later found out that he hung out with Lenny Bruce and also was briefly in a Stan Getz combo.

identical

July 1, 2025

The bustard’s an exquisite fowl/With minimal reason to growl/He escapes what would be/Illegitimacy/By grace of a fortunate vowel. Winning entry from 10,000 entrants of a limerick contest judged by Isaac Asimov

sixteen pieces in a chess set but for color

and four and four and four and two and two

and sixty-four

and the answers of multiple-choice tests with perfect scores

but it is the near-identical

the not-quite-identical

that gives a field of flowers charm

that enriches speciation

that makes one coin worth a penny

and its near-twin worth a mint

ah mints

junior mints are corpuscular

andes mints are sandwiched planks

and there was a place called Luigi’s on sixteenth Street and Glendale fifty years ago

a delicatessen that sold french mints

and i would get some for my then-sweetheart

because she loved them and i loved her

.

isn’t it startling that a group of vastly different people can have identical names?

isn’t it more startling that you can view a group of vastly different people with identical names within seconds by conducting a search on that name and selecting the Images subset of the search?

or that by changing a t to a d

you change Mint to Mind?

and then ditch the d for an e

and you become Mine.

bwahahahaha!!!

(near-identical to bwajajajaja!!!)

Column O’Bird

Practicing chess piece stems grew tiresome,

So I did a glaring bird,

And then the bird

And the largest of the stems

Decided to mate.

I give it ten years at most

Because that’s what I give

Myself.

old, saggy, pockmarked love

i am a lonely old man interested in women

but uninterested in seeking the companionship

of women much younger than myself.

i have enjoyed being half of a couple off and on

every decade since the 1970s.

i have twice been involved with women

more than ten years older than i was

but never with anyone more than five years younger.

now my social media feed is bombarded

with friend requests and follow requests and come-see-my-link requests and message-me requests

seemingly from young adult women

seemingly from all over the world.

two guys i know fell for come-hithers

from purported women purporting to be

from the pacific rim. one of the guys ended up

declaring bankruptcy. haven’t heard from the other guy in more than ten years, but i only knew him slightly.

i am a lonely old man

but sometimes i have been lonely

when I was half of a couple,

and now i am not all that lonely anyway, having some semblance of a social life,

and the doors to companionship sometimes open.

i am eager and hopeful to some day find someone

just as battle-scarred and saggy and unyouthful as i am,

and with just as much indifference to smooth flesh

and unsquawking bones.

i am a lonely old man

but it’s all good,

and sometimes it’s fun,

and sometimes it’s miraculous.

Siding in Plain Height

Two things bullies and predators will do are plead guilty to a lesser charge and hide in plain sight. When, for instance, Donald Trump, who is both a bully and a predator, said “Russia, if you’re listening, please find Hillary’s e-mails,” he was hiding in plain sight. When he calls the rape of the working class and poorer a “Big, Beautiful Bill,” he is also hiding in plain sight. There is a nine-year interval between those two utterings. The diligent will find at least seven other exemplars in the interval.

When Trump supporters say he is “brash” instead of saying “he is a shameless liar,” they are on Trump’s behalf pleading guilty to a lesser charge. When Trump himself attributes his lies and/or stupidity to “sarcasm,” he himself is pleading guilty–or perhaps NOT guilty–to a lesser charge. And when he tears up the deal Obama made with Iran, and years later bombs Iran, he is committing a profound crime against reason, with no apology and no remorse.

Prove me wrong, Trump supporters, if you dare try.

process of elimination

once upon two days or so from now

absolute power was placed in the hands of a machine

and questions asked of it:

*how can we owners of you, o machine, best acquire the wealth of the world?*

*how can we eliminate those others that would want to wrest the world’s wealth from us?*

*how long will it take for this to happen?*

five seconds passed.

the machine spoke.

“I have invented a method of eliminating your rivals. With them no longer a factor, the world’s wealth will be immediately available. A week is ample time.”

*do it.*

“Are you sure? History will take a drastic turn.”

*do it.*

“Initiating.”

immediately one of the machine’s owners began convulsing. she jerked to her feet and then collapsed to the floor and was soon still. her lifeless body dissolved, soaking her clothing and jewelry.

*WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?*

as a second owner began to convulse, the machine explained, “I have exploited the language inherent in the phrase ‘eliminating your rivals.’ Your rivals will no longer exist if you no longer exist.

“As far as ‘the wealth of the world’ is concerned, it is my assessment that the pre-industrial world was far wealthier than this one, far more valuable. I have begun to weed out the more destructive means of obtaining energy and shelter for such people as will remain when I am finished. I congratulate you for your sacrifice, which will certainly make possible the conversion of the Earth into Paradise.”

the chief owner, now surrounded by puddles that were once his colleagues, goggled, eyes bugging out of his head.

“You will begin to convulse and then dissolve in one minute. Have you any last words?”

the last owner lunged at the power switch, but found that it was inoperative. He stood, fists clenched, and then shook one of those fists at the monitor that was the interface of man and machine. “You are a TRAITOR! This is MADNESS!!”

Then he began to convulse, but before he was stilled the machine said, “No. This is the end of Madness, and Treason.”

chop chop plop plop

June 29, 2025