Between the Pit of Our Fears and the Summit of Our Knowledge . . .

Submitted for your consideration:

That for over two generations The United States America has let itself be bought and sold by a tiny idiot elite (0.1%)

That this tiny group of greedy, ignorant individuals through stupidity, institutional pressures, and the hubris of great wealth were able to use their obscene wealth to gain more and more power over the institutions of government which has continued to enable them to enrich themselves ever more at the expense of the 99.9%

That the 99.9% of Americans instead of seeing a common interest and making a common cause against a common enemy have allowed themselves to be deluded, manipulated, and divided so that they would inevitably descend to ever new lows and ever more frantic frustration.

That this tiny (0.1%) group of malefactors of great wealth, a cabal that Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew so well and warned the nation against, was successful in inducing large numbers of citizens to blame their sad plight on government, politics, and democracy.

And that in 2016, popular anger, division, confusion, and mischievous despair (along with systemic voter suppression, and calculated interventions by both the Kremlin and the FBI) enabled a pathological liar, lunatic, pervert, bully, ignoramus, cheater, abuser, and buffoon to win an electoral college majority - and thus be "electorated" president - even though he (a stubby fingered orange tufted twit of cheap downtown grift) lost the popular vote by a huge and decisive margin.

Thus America crossed over the threshold into a new and horrifying dimension. A dimension where information entropy has reached a near maximum. Where there is no difference between fact and opinion, empiricism and fantasy, evidence-based assertions and malicious lies. Where America has, through our gullibility, prejudice, ignorance, laziness, and arrogance . . . crossed spastically over into "The trimpShite Zone."



But is there no hope?

Is it our most likely fate to be crushed by a fascist repression supported by the most frightened, irresponsible, angry, brutal and brutalized ruffians?

Will we merely sink into a pathetic despond, begging and grateful for the privilege of being allowed to serve humbly in the corporate echelons of our benevolent but dread Masters?

Will we be whipped into a revolutionary frenzy and tear down the House of Capital only to be subjugated by newer, less sophisticated forms of Masters, now slouching expectantly in the shadows?

Or will we follow the example of FDR (also a scion of great wealth) who showed us how to check and contain the idiot elite (0.1%) - and even partially tame and domesticate them so we can muddle through to face fresh challenges?

The future, dear friends, is (as always) in our own hands.

A Mighty Fortress Is Our trimp

Staring manfully at his manly shoes, in the sterile utilitarian basement of trimp tower, the man Michael Pense, manned himself momentarily erect before sternly pressing the "U.P." button of the presidential express elevator.

“Have Thine own way, Lord, Have Thine own way;

Thou art the Potter; I am the clay.

Mould me and make me After Thy will,

While I am waiting, Yielded and still.

I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them"

He lifted his eyes commandingly up to the SS stooge and then to Karen, as prim and composed as she had been on their hoary wedding night so long ago and so very far away.

Sadly and sternly man Pense addressed the SS lackey, “He hath permitted me to elevate in solitude, and you may followeth presently after a mere twenty minutes - but no less.”

The earphoned SS servant nodded solemnly.   Karen, to all ten of his trembling finger pads ever so gently pressed plumply her soft lips, silently sending him soulfully her best blessings with sad and soulful eyes.

“When the Bridegroom cometh, will your robes be white?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,

And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?”

Richard, the manful Pense, stepped manfully into the chamber of uplift.  As the strong doors silently slid shut, he cast down his eyes and cast off his garments.  With the upward surge that seemed to press his heart into his bowels, Pense, the man, remembered Luther’s words:  

“The Devil hates music because he cannot stand gaiety.” and “Satan can smirk but he cannot laugh; he can sneer but he cannot sing.”

And then his own brave utterance for which he now accepted twice daily ordeals of penitential mortification:

“I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them”

In haste he struggled to don the shrowdly gown of penitence, slipping sinewy arms into the black and scarlet robe that drooped from shoulders to floor.  Over his head he pulled the flowing pointed hood and strove to stand his manbody forward - far frontally from the gaping back opening, slit deeply down from cowl to heel in the rear.

The moody garment and the express uplift of the uplifting lift combined to cause an upsurge in his manly loins which he manfully attempted to suppress with emetic imaginings.  

But he could not conjure away his favorite phantasm.  I Vankh El trimp, clad only in a titanium Princess Leah bikini bottom with WonderWoman boots and peppermint pillbox hat (both Pepto-Bismol pink) sat behind in an open convertible coldly cuddling the Beast Master.  He, Pense under his Connolly white locks, perched expectantly upfront with Karen - waving Popelike to the jeering blackfaced crowds whose misunderstanding contempt they whisked presidentially past. 

Until, from high above in the sexbook annex, the gatlings opened up.

This time there would be no spazmatic grasping after scattering manbrainstuff since the first semi-incestuouscouple were simultaneously Bonnie and Clyded into unrecognizable bits of pulverized - in a very updated 21st century North Korean sort of way.  And, he man Pense, bloodspattered but steady, would coldly stiffarm away the panicking SS men - taking cool control of the God ordained situation while Karen, reddrenched like Carrie after the prom would send him soulful support form her upturned soulful eyes.   And all of that would be photographically registered for TimeLife discount coffeetable books as well as for all the Mandatory Community Bible Study Guides to come.

"Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,

And be washed in the blood of the Beast;

There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,

O be washed in the blood of the Beast!"

The uprocketing car stopped short at the penthouse level.  Manly Pense stepped manfully through the slideopening doors silently slipping apart and into the plush surroundings of the Beast’s gilded abode.

Stopped (even more shortly) by the the Master’s cracked private security team as SS men stood impotently by (pretending to attend to live voices in their earpieces), Pense peered into the luxurious residence of the Beast. Finally he spied him, "He Who Cannot Be Shamed" - and the Master himself generously smirked a gleeful grin in godless greeting. 

Pense manfully pulled a paper service number from the delicatessen turn-dispenser He saw, by comparing his mark with the bloodred LED display, that for now he must patiently endure the mortification of two antecedents as the Beast imposed his nubby but dread Beastliness on the Massachusetts delegation.  

Willard Romney (wearing what was once a shroud similar to man Pense’s though quite hoodless now and cut short above the hips to suggest a jaunty pinafore-like neglige ruffed with cottony puffs at the hem, sleeves, and collar) bent to receive the rough, but rather nublike impositions of the gyrating trimp.  The MasterBeast was being rah-rahed on by Gubner Chumly Barker, pantyless in a perky cheerleader get up who pom-pomed and split quite sportily while lustally chanting “Take it Once More for the BayState Some More!” as spiritedly as he could manage - which was fairly spirited after all since everyone in trimp circles were obliged to gobble speedballs at regular and merciful intervals.

Merciful indeed was trimp the Master Beast, godchosen to wreak vengeful havoc on all the nations of men.

Did we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side,

The Man of God's own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Merciful indeed was trimp, Godchosen Beast of Reckoning, sent to humble the high and mighty liberal likes of Rosie O’Donaldless and Jewnathon Jewart son of Leibewitz bar Leibewitz.  Soon all such would be cast down low to gnash their teeth in the agony of those forsaken by GodJeeber’s dollarsigned symbols of lifesaving grace.  Roil in bitter agony would they among those cast off of Medicaid a whoremongering program that bore the Satanic mark of 66 though passed by a Godless Congress one deceitful whore-ful year before.

"Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His name,

From age to age the same,

And He must win the battle"

Merciful indeed was he trimp, sent to despoil the ungodly harlotry of willful women and womanly men, who had graciously granted man Pense’s humble request that Karen no longer need witness his twice daily mortifications.   And gratefully did manlike Pense remember how the beast Master had SO kindly offered to conduct these ritual mortifications in a private chamber hidden away from the vulgar eyes of lessers. 

“After all, Little Mike, you’re gonna be my second, but I don’t want you to feel sloppy!” had been the masterful words of beastlike trimp.

But manful Pense had declined that mercy.  A mortification from god was a mortification from god, and manly men did not shrink away from god-ordained ordeals and risk losing future incarnations of divine favor in the form of dollars and pense.

"That word above all earthly pow'rs,

No thanks to them, abideth;

The Spirit and the gifts are ours

Thro' Him who with us sideth.

Let goods and kindred go,

This mortal life also;

The body they may kill:

God's truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever"

Then a buzzer - and a chime.   Man Pense looked up and saw his number blood red glowing.

"Be thou, O God, exalted high;

And, as thy glory fill the sky,

So let it be on earth display'd,

Till thou are here, as there, obey'd."

X Missed on trimp Tower

It was early one recent Christmas morning, high atop the cloudpiercing pinnacle of trimp Tower.  

SadMan, the cuckhold of Maralago, sat snuffling with all three illegitimate spalpeen: Udeh, Cuedeh, and Hootchie Cootchay.  As was their wont in every season, they were all together merrily defrauding their way through a shady game of MoneyPlay laid shiftily out on a warped and crooked board.

Hootchie Cootchay whooped and clapped with glee, bouncing giddily up and down on her gilded Louie Quartorze.  "Papa (as if)," she crowed.  "Choove stumbled onto der Boardvalk again.  Und now choo mus pay der vent!"  

Her long slender fingers smoothly hoovered more colored counterfeits from the short stubby digits of her presumptive pater who gripped the gamegelt tightly with gritty stumpy pads that were never no match for the goldenhaired girlchild who, steely eyed, reminded him, "Vremember Papa (as if), Vhatever I Vonk, I Getz!"

"Das eez true," agreed the unpaternal old skinflint as he leered down her unfamiliar décolletage.  Then indignantly, he grabbed a tightly wrapped roll of the hated Times, soaked overnight in chilled Napoleon Brandy, and smartly smacked the chortling pates of both da boyz, each of whom were still too drunk to duck.  "Ref any von's gonna date your seizeter, let eet be me!

"Yavohl mein Daddy-O (as if)" replied the two dumkuffs numbly in practiced unison.  But emergently, Cuedeh, out of some sullen pique, just had to mutter outloud, "Too Badz on choo, ders no vey to declare der bankruptcy een deese game o' skill, eh Daddy-O (as if)?"

The Dunvald of Downtown Grift cooly transfixed the miscreant spawn (of some unknown interloper) with his best Mussolini glare.  "Jest don't forget who's da electored vun here!", he growled Himmleresque. 

But before the smirk could wither on the japing juvenile's (delinquent) face, and even after the caitiff had downcast his watery eyes, the orange tufted twit of a tycoon had a start of a stuporous kind.  Why did chinless Cuedeh look (si all of a suddenly) so much like Vlad?  

It didn't help when all three krazy kidz grabbed top hats and canes and pranced into their well worn musical routine "Putin on der Reetz".

"Ah vell," sighed old Sadman trimp.  "I vunder vhat Pense duz weed heez leetle basturds?"

The Long and Tiring Road

"But a fundamental truth of history is that change comes slowly and is often recognizable only in retrospect."

Some "fundamental truths" are also glib ripostes from rhetorical arsenals of those satisfied with whatever state of injustice currently exists.

The Times is part of the establishment and so, in many ways, part of the problem. The same can be said of Obama and Hillary too.

But think.

Last night Obama, passing a torch, alluded to his many failures and mistakes. History, though, is not a marathon with a designated finish line. Nor is it some lonely sprint through rocky terrains of endless night, the hero guided by his own torch of truth - a Right Libertarian archetype.

It's a breathless race through chaotic urban nightscapes.  Any flickering torchlight can be suddenly extinguished by ferocious backdrafts of hulking trucks hurtling by in all directions.  Blinding headlights and sweeping kliegs eclipse the faltering glim you grip.  Bystanders cheer, but also jeer. They give bad directions, sometimes intentionally.  Some offer water, some whiskey, some gall, and some  . . . hemlock, urine, or bleach.

Call me naive, but Obama's speech was no glib scam.  Nor is this Times editorial.  (At least not completely.)

Leaders are not just to be trusted and admired. The final "jihad" may be to remove leaders from the core of our common projects.    . . . A long road - and not a paved highway (warning: silly link).

We don't have to trust or admire Hillary.  That may not even be the best way to support her.  But her faults and failures reflect our own. And so should her courage and resilience.

Trump too, is our reflection.  And our gaze, just as blank and pitiless.

Torches aren't always passed. They can be snuffed - or feebly dropped by exhausted runners - traumatized enough to succumb to the grim allure of night's darkest pockets.

Firm Footed Finally

When you're old and creaky
and never learned to swim
it could be good to get to run
in water deep
treading where
no bottom's touched
no guarantee of calm
no immunity from sudden cough
or some wrong breath.

That black water holds one up
is no more mystery than light
no more doubtful miracle
than waves from
chancy stars can
carry clearly imaged portraits
and crisp record beats
of cheeky rolling rock
royalty would rattle to.

If it's good air's you gasp
there's no need to touch
as one learns to accept
but never
understand
no beginnings and no ends
and creation's the sole force
why nothing's ever lost.
Nothing's ever really

turtles all the way down
they're all and everything
and swim through around
every slit
double quick
and nowhere fast all the way
up and every one filled
with the same shifting stacks

twisting in and twisting out
spinning spins entangled
reflecting holographic wholes
creating new non boundaries
between new wavers
and what waves

and you might wave
to everyone
on your third wave down
beatituding
and sputtering.
Deep again.

Dwight’s Red Eye Day

Dwight did not feel well.  His two eyes were both red.


He looked in the red can. “I can make coffee,” he said.


He had three cups.  He still did not feel well.  His two eyes were still red.


“I can go outside,” said Dwight.  “I can go find someone to help.”


He went down the road.  He saw Joe.  Joe was working.


“Can I help?” said Dwight.


“Come help me,” said Joe.


Dwight helped Joe.  Joe felt better.  So did Dwight.  His two eyes were not red now.


Dwight and Joe had beer.


Dwight felt even better, but now his two eyes were red again.

Get Dee-Wite

Finn, the big blue bass, was mad. 

In the fall Finn had been sad, but now Finn was mad. 

Finn was mad because of a man named Dee-Wite. 
Dee-Wite had caught his big brother Sam on a hook. 
Then Dee-Wite let Fred cook Sam on the grill. 
Then Dee-Wite ate Sam. 

Sam had tasted good.


Finn spoke to the other bass in the lake. 

He spoke to the large mouth bass. 
He spoke to the small mouth bass. 
He spoke to the striped bass. 
He spoke to the white bass. 
He even spoke to the Australian bass who was there on vacation.


Finn also spoke to the trout. 

He spoke to the lake trout. (There were a lot of lake trout.) 
He spoke to the rainbow trout. 
He spoke to the brook trout and the brown trout too. 
He spoke to the golden trout. 
He even spoke to the cutthroat trout.


Finn spoke to the suckers.  
He spoke to the pike. 
He spoke to the pickerel, and he spoke to the pumpkinseed. 

Finn spoke to all of the fish except the catfish. 
Finn did not like catfish, and catfish did not like Finn.


All the fish except the catfish agreed. They would get Dee-Wite.


They waited for Dee-Wite to come out on the ice. 
They waited for Dee-Wite to cut a hole in the ice. 
They waited for Dee-Wite to sit down in his camp chair. 
When Dee-Wite sat down in his camp chair, the cutthroat trout went to work. 
He cut a hole around Dee-Wite’s camp chair.


Dee-Wite fell into the water. 
The water was cold. 
The cutthroat trout tried to get Dee-Wite, and Dee-Wite cried for help.


Marbles and Chisel heard Dee-Wite. 
They ran out on the ice. 
Chisel pulled Dee-Wite out of the water and on to the ice. 
Marbles caught the cutthroat trout with her teeth. 


Dee-Wite took the cutthroat trout home and cooked it with maple syrup.


Dee-Wite ate the cutthroat trout. 
It did not taste good. 
But it was good brain food, and Dee-Wite did his homework. 
He did a good job.


But Finn the big blue bass still wants to get Dee-Wite.

Betwixt

Somewhere between Craig Santos Perez and Noam Chomsky
Somewhere between Care and the Costs of Violence
is a no mindplace where no one can be forced
if it even exists

but we're pushed to find it
and pushed to press others ahead
into its faint glim
that might not even be.


It's not just long leaps across false seas
it's not just bootcamped bulked realities
it's not just multi mirrored urgencies
it's not just precision pressed accountancies

it's not just we're blurs of time we think we're in
it's not just the words we think we swim in

it's not just reminders twist in larger mind against our strained consilience
it's not just converging epiphanies that melt and dim immune to imaged sense
and spread apart oily fast across unknown surfaces roiled by dimensions undetectable.


All we think we have is word

All we think we have is image

All we think we have is link

All we think we have is is just what makes us


whether it's blurs or points or lines or shapes that upfold
or twisting interactions that didn't start and never stop
and cannot be contained because they contain itself
which is not just us but all there is.



So we tie the the braying donkey where il padrone points
and walk away to distant sleep
far from howling cries we helped contrive
or wait for wolves.

We stand somewhere between.
and somewhere behind
the wide wild eyes
are ours as well.

Country Dwight and City Jim (second version)

City Jim came to the country to find maple syrup.

City Jim found Country Dwight fishing on the ice.

“Where can I find maple syrup?” asked City Jim.

“In the trees,” laughed Country Dwight.

“What trees?” asked City Jim.

“Maple trees!” answered Country Dwight, dropping another fish into his pail.

“What trees are maple trees?” asked City Jim. “They have no maple leaves now!”

Country Dwight showed City Jim how a maple tree makes buds and branches.

Country Dwight showed City Jim how to tap a tree.

Country Dwight showed City Jim how to pour the sap.

Country Dwight showed City Jim how to boil the sap.

Then Thelma made waffles for City Jim and Country Dwight.

“Waffles are good with maple syrup," said City Dwight.

“They certainly are,” said Country Dwight.  “Please come back next year!”

City Jim and Country Dwight (Version 1)

Sitting, fishing through fat ice, Country Dwight spied City Jim. Gripping his circling pail of perch and bass, soon to be stew, Dwight dragged his camp chair, quick shuffling, toward the frozen shore.  Then their backs to the lake, they stood together, eying twisting treetops on windy hills.

Dwight pushed his face into the damp pulses rocking and tossing highpointing twigs. His eyes scrunched up to the late February sun, too soft today for drawing up rootwaters, up behind rough grey bark, up through dancing black branches, up toward calling tightcoiled buds.

"Sap tomorrow," Dwight spoke. City Jim nodded friendlydoubtful seeing straining webs of branching boughs like networks linking white skylight to dark rootworks twisting under snows through jagged rocks crushed under by weighty glaciers long since gone.  He saw those weblines underground unfurl to their fishfull lake sealed shut beneath its fair cap of flat ice - and up to the greengrey hills rippling south and east toward roads and cities, spreading and mingling and developing and filling with divergent ramifications, fertile or dead ending.

Country Dwight stood shouldered to City Jim, fatherly but cigarless and without the bottle sway or whiskey breath. Shouldered to greypated Jim, Dwight felt again being taken small to hunt, to fish, to trap, to kill. . . to tap and drill flat frozen lakes or tall sumping trees.  When City Jim moved in with books and pans and tools and plans, Country Dwight, ever seeking ways to help, fell in.  And Jim fell too into ways first worked by ice-following tribes long before they were stifled under poxy spreads.

Trudging down trails, they found right trees by sighting shoot patterns shared by sugars, reds, and other maple breeds.  All through three Marches they drilled and tapped, hanging buckets, and Dwight would say "We want warm days and cold nights," and Jim would laugh and say Dwight was alright.

City Jim let Country Dwight check buckets and help pour them to containers for taking home.  And at Jim's house, they'd ladle sap into pans they'd boil on wood fires while they watched and drank coffee all day.  It took all day, but then there was syrup to put in plastic bottles and glass jugs.  And then, with more coffee and City Jim, Dwight would eat hot waffles made by Thelma, but today the February sun was not enough.

Spring Break

Dwight asked Dave if he was selling the house.

Dave looked at the big lettered sign and then back at Dwight.

Coughing and clearing his throat, Dave sighed and nodded slowly. "Yes, Dwight. Pam and I have had enough snow. We're getting a place down in Florida."

Dwight was sad. Dave and Pam were the first neighbors to look out for him.  Who would move into their house when they were gone?

"Alligators?" he asked softly, partially out of friendly concern, but mostly to keep things lighthearted. This meant a big change on the road.

It took some tries for Dwight to make himself understood, but Dave eventually grinned and told him not to worry. "They have these newfangled types of gator-repellent now," he explained. "One squirt on Maggy's tail makes her safe from everything 'cept sea sharks and land sharks!"

Dwight sadly spread the news. Everyone on the road was surprised, though not everyone completely understood.  Dwight was used to this kind of uncertainty.  Friendliness and help, mutually given, were what was important.

It took Sharon and Marbles to figure it all out. They'd been walking and had read the sign whose big letters spelled "Town Meeting". They let Dwight know.

After a week Fred agreed to take Dwight shopping. "Only if it's less than $50.00," he said firmly.

In the city they had to go to many stores. Finally they had almost everything for $67.89.

They drove back and unloaded Fred's truck on Dave's front yard.  Before they were done, Dave came out with Maggie and stood watching. Then he went inside to soon return wearing sandals, Bermuda shorts, and large sunglasses with lime bright green frames.  He did not own a Hawaiian shirt, but an old yellowed wife-beater seemed good enough.

Dave pulled some lawn chairs out of the shed.  They sat around, but it was cool enough to drag over the firepot and get it going.  Pam, after laughing from the window, brought out some beers.  She brought Dwight's kind too.

Joe and Chisel almost walked by. Seeing the pink flamingo facing down an inflatable alligator under a plastic palm tree, they reversed course and brought back some tiki torches which they took time to set up: three around the party area and one on each side of Dwight's lawnchair.

Julie from across the street remembered three plaster crocodile parts stacked behind the woodpile. Dwight helped her arrange them on the brown grass. "It looks like it's swimming," he said. And when they could hear him, everyone laughed.

Through the trees, between Dwight's little house and their very big one, Bob and Louise saw the torch glows. They brought over their granddaughter, and everyone vacationed on Miami Beach until it was just too chilly.

Pam brought out a cooler filled with ice and cans of soda and more beer.

She pointed a stern finger at Dwight and told him, "If Dave ever puts up another sign, let me be the one that reads it to you." She looked at Dave for a few seconds and walked back into the house.

Dave snapped open another beer. "Dwight," he said, "You are quite the feller! Ya know that?"

Dwight chuckled and nodded. Yes, he did.