The everywhere comments

From people who are STILL

Cheerleaders on his team

Say all kinds of variations

On “He gets so much stuff done.”

They say it

Because a propagandist, maybe AI,

Figured out it was both easy to repeat

And undeniable,

And put it out there,

And his lackeys picked it up

And ran with it,

And now his parrots repeat it endlessly.

He gets a lot done, all right.

He used a drug-addled billionaire

To fire thousands of people

Who were doing good work, then did a Whoops

When it turned out

That some of those folks

Were vital to National Security.

He sent planeloads of brown people

To an El Salvador prison

In blatant violation of the Constitution

He swore to protect and defend,

Then brought in some white folks

From South Africa

To balance it all out.

He sold pardons to deep-pocket contributors.

He manipulated the stock market,

Letting some of his pals in on it beforehand.

He sold cryptocurrency in a scam he had set up

Just before he was inaugurated.

And he played a ton of golf, and denounced a lot of judges, and called half his fellow citizens “SCUM.”

Busy as a beaver, this guy,

Digging our Liberty and Justice for All

Graves.

“My brain is playing tricks on me”

We say. But, you know, the older we get,

The more body parts get involved

In the trickery. One trick stirs

Another. The skin

Decides we need new constellations

In the form of deflated-balloon skin tags, and

Then the hair, the skin’s epithelial partner,

Says “New fashion statement coming up:

Recessional Follies

Featuring Silverthread Sadie

And Thinny Minnie!”

Then the Gout Beast quiesces

For three days after that naughty  McFlurry

Chased with three-sigar coffee,

And on the fourth day chooses a new home,

The Pinky-Toe joint, alchemizing humility

Into agony…

Whoa. What was I just saying?

My brain is laying bricks on me . . .

june

june is a month just begun

june is powerhouse poet june powers

june is the month billy joe jumped

june is amazing arizona comics superhero june monsoon

june is a member of the thirty-day club

june was june pinchback, beloved friend of my mother jane

june has flag day and the life-changing flag day in 1971 when i met my first real love

june foray was the voice of rocket j. squirrel and natasha fatale and tweety bird and talking tina and chatty cathy and lucifer the cat and dudley do-right’s nell

june includes juneteenth, also known as freedom day; if you don’t know why, tsk tsk

june is pride month

june is usually a scorcher from day first

but today she decided to rain right here in the so-called valley of the sun

she decided the usher herself in with 71° F temp in mid-afternoon

so today i love june in all their aspects

with bones that crepitate and ache

with flesh of crepe and fissures

it may be time to ponder and make

my peace with Fategirl’s scissors

it may be time to tally and settle

my modest life’s affairs

let not that last-plucked calendar-petal

send me off unawares

.

the wind’s no longer bracing

the birdsong does not cheer

the passing hours are racing

the cliffedge draws so near

so out go final messages

forgiveness of all debtors

eradicating vestiges

of jealousy of betters

.

the deathbed’s warm and cozy

and ringed with weeping friends

the media are nosy

and love to mark our ends…

so

fuck it!! time to rally;

throw off the bedclothes! RISE!!

EMERGE from shadowed valley–

it’s Party Time, you guys!!!!

help me live say organisms

to the oxygen and cee oh two of the air

and to the soils and nutrients of the earth

help me become say babies

to the elders who feed and umbrella them

help me eat say the holders of signs

and the exchangers of money for foodstuffs

.

they are the needers of Help

and it is curious that needer and nadir

are so phonetically similar

.

help me reap say the movers and shapers

to the law-twisters they buy

and otherwise control

.and it is curious that reap and rape

are so phonetically similar

id: The That in id est, Latin for That Is.

Id: Ole Brain-Beast.

ID: A credential of existence.

we wrestle our bestial selves/our impulse selves/the worser devils of our nature/salivate at the sight of a steak/engorge at the sight of a gorgeous woman

i.e. fred astaire’s dance partner rita hayworth/marlon brando’s lover rita moreno

and the truth is most of us want passion to be an integral part of our identities

but some of us grapple with the either-or for which there seems no in-between:

either Leash

or Unleash

My Social Media feed has been filled with thoughtful, quietly proud remembrances of family members who were honoring their fallen loved ones. It was a reminder to me, who never served in the armed forces, of the measureless courage and selflessness that is at the heart of the America I have cherished and respected.

I believe that at core this America still exists and I harbor some optimism that this altruistic spirit might be resurrected. Yet the Memorial Day post made by the sitting President of the United States of America reveals what that Spirit is up against. He began with HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, which is evidence that he either does not know or does not care that Memorial Day was established not for fun and games, but for thoughtfulness, remembrance, and honoring our fallen soldiers; and he heaped more evidence onto the remainder of his text, which said not one word about the heroes who gave their last full measure of devotion to the defense of our country’s ideals, and to the furtherance of the protection of our country. Instead he used the occasion to malign and demean basically everyone who disagrees with his agenda.

Part of his agenda is the erasure of contributions that people of color have made to the defense of our country. So many of the Memorial Day posts had to do with heroic efforts of African American soldiers whose sacrifices went unacknowledged. Just one example is of a soldier who died valorously in World War I and was not awarded the Medal of Honor he absolutely earned…until 1991. There are numberless other examples of this, and the current President would, if allowed, see to it that there will be many, many more.

Also, astonishingly, he is trying to enact a suspension of habeus corpus, a fundamental means of guaranteeing due process by requiring firsthand evidence of guilt before detaining an individual accused of a crime. (That is a reductive and crude approximation of habeus corpus and I invite more legal-minded readers to comment with a better description.) To be against habeus corpus is to be against “liberty and justice for all.”

My gratitude for the fallen soldiers we honor on Memorial Day extends to those who are fighting for the principles and ideals that have in actuality made America as great as it has been in its finest hours. To all those who oppose the corrupt regime conducted by Donald Trump, my profound and enduring thanks.