Some, they were beguiled...(a limerick)

Some, they were beguiled by his wanton lies,
His clumsy words shaped for political prize,
.     His Karl Rovian prose,
.     His "compassionate" pose,
His vision fit for his pissant poor eyes.

"Bush Earned Trouble"

[That was the title under which the Raleigh News & Observer ran this my letter to the editor on November 13, 2005]

The Q question, “Why do second terms go wrong?” strikes me as fundamentally misleading. It presupposes that Bush's second term can be compared to other presidents' second terms. Not so. Bush's presidency was ill-fated from Day One.

First, his selection by the Supreme Court reeked of illegitimacy.

Second, his path to the White House was already strewn with the bodies of political opponents savaged according to the Karl Rove playbook (former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and Arizona Sen. John McCain), so that Bush was already set up, ethically, to be the victim of “what goes around comes around.”

Third, look at what has happened since Bush obtained the power of the presidency: the deception of Congress and the country into a tragic, unnecessary war in Iraq, the use of taxpayers' money to plant administration stooges as journalists, the holding up of Fox “News” (essentially a propaganda arm of the administration) as an objective source of information, the ascension of unqualified cronies to important government posts, the dismantling of federal regulations hard won over years to protect consumers, employees, and citizens generally from greed and powerful self-interest...the list goes on and on.

Bush is only getting, at last, what he has long deserved. Unfortunately, we the people are suffering from his downfall, too, but not so much as we have already suffered from the man himself, and not so much as we would suffer if he could continue to control public opinion through deception and distraction. It's all coming home to roost for Bush, Cheney and cronies. About time!

“I’ll want you to slant your poetry...”

A.F. Flogger wrote again:

“You know, if you come with me at flogger.com, I’ll want you to slant your poetry along political lines. For example:

“There is a throw-up word—it rhymes with ‘whoosh’—
That I want never ever hear...so shush!
    The throw-up word—first letter ‘B’
    Followed by a different three—
That I want never ever hear is ‘----’.

“I titled that ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ and submitted it to Carl Kasell by way of Peter Sagal. He didn’t use it, so it’s okay if you do. I’m still looking for some fellow floggers.”

George W. B--- does bring up the verst in some people.

Homage to Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) (a poem)

The world's just motley enough
.     —in its many-colored coat of ideological representations—
.                 to have been made

By a committee of the beings
.     —Allah, Brahma, Ishvara, Khuda, Yahweh,
.     Mazda, Theos, Chaos, Deus, Zeus, Mind—
.                 whose beings into being prayed.

And are you, woman, trembly too? (a poem)

And are you, woman, trembly too,
And are you out of breath,
And do your limbs feel heavy too,
.     Our blood confused by scent of no-ing death?

And do my eyes look strickened too,
And do I seem to gasp,
And has my voice now quickened too,
.     Afraid what I might say or dare to ask?

And is your hearing muffled too,
And do you want me much,
And is your heart unwilling too
.     To leave me now and go that we not touch?

Comment from "a Fellow Flogger"

I found a comment here this morning from a man (he said) who identified himself only as "a fellow flogger" and the creator of a website (not yet launched) whose domain address he has registered as flogger.com. Frankly, he admitted, he wanted me to quit blogger.com and come with him. He'd give me a "flogspot," he said.

To show his goodwill, he gave me his most recent political joke and said I was free to use it (anyway, he could use the publicity), so long as I would consider his proposal.

Okay, I'll consider it.

"What's the difference between a Texas pissant and 'President' George W. Bush?...A pissant doesn't need quotation marks."

Will and Testament (a sonnet)

Time was, we carved the cello’s Venus mound, 

Composed the music for the melody, 

And aged the ocher wood to free the sound 

To sing the cello’s heart from memory. 

And now with your two sons and mine we breathe 

The honey’s forest fragrance tongued by bees 

From flowers’ lips, and to our sons bequeath 

The living golden sweet of our heartsease. 

Let’s share the sun-ripe orange of our mind, 

And show our boys to bite as we have done 

The dulcet fruit within its gilded rind, 

To taste the world our friendly knowing won. 

Music, when soft our honeyed voices die, 

Will vibrate in their liquid memory’s eye. 

 [1986]

A Chinese View of Our "Bush Business"

A Chinese friend (a post-doc in Physics in North Carolina from Beijing) visited my blog yesterday and sent me an e-mail. I'd like to share his comment on American politics, which he introduces with the observation that I am "a very nice and kind person"--despite the vitriol, I guess, that I am capable of pouring on George W. Bush....

He continues: "As to the politics, it is very complicated for you, for me, and for common people like us. So, politicians deal with it for us. Actually, they make a living on this. I feel most American people are well-educated and open-minded. They know what is right and what is wrong. So, let's hope for the best. Anyway, the United States is a democratic society."

I'd like to be encouraged by my friend's assurance, but under the Busheviks it's a lot more than politicians who are making a living off politics. And I'm not sure that the Busheviks are dealing with things "for us" (the People). In fact, its obvious that, for the most part, they are not.

And I question whether enough American people are "well-educated and open-minded," since a large number of the people who voted for Bush in 2000 seem to have made the ill-informed decision to do so again in 2004¹. (I suspect they might have watched too much Fox Noise programming.)

Finally, are we still a "democratic society"? Is your vote equal to that of a person who will save millions of dollars in taxes if the Bushevik Party succeeds in killing the estate tax? Or equal to the vote that is not deleted through election tampering?

It isn't clear that "hoping for the best" can yet ensure an untroubled sleep.
___________________
1. Not that their voting for him in 2000 had been well-informed either. They certainly hadn't heeded Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose's Shrub: The Short [sic] but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, published early enough in 2000 for them to have read.

Distress over "the Bush Business"

Isn't it just like a friend who has known you for many years? He or she can sometimes tell better than you can that you're distressed. One of my Yale roommates wrote yesterday, "I am a little worried that you are taking the Bush business so much to heart, because it seems to me to be making you very unhappy." I thought of that this morning while reading a few more pages of Toni Morrison's Beloved and became aware that I was comparing myself to the character Sethe, who carried a huge burden of suffering out of her past as a slave.

I'm embarrassed to have compared my suffering (and the suffering of other Americans through these intolerable "Bush years") to the terrible suffering of American slaves in the nineteenth century. But who knows? Maybe the total amount of suffering now even surpasses that of those slaves. Think of the millions of Americans trying to live today on the minimum wage that the Bushevik Party resists increasing while fighting to free the wealthy from the estate tax. Think of the thousands of American servicemen and women who have died or been seriously injured in Iraq....

My roommate went on: "Obviously, the country made a mistake in electing Bush the first time¹ and even more so the second time² in light of the track record of the first term. The good thing about all this, I think, is that at this point Bush is relatively powerless and will have even less power as time goes on."

While I hope that this "good thing" is true, Bush is still in place, soiling our White House, worsening the terrorist situation, channeling contracts to greedy incompetents, favoring wealthy campaign contributors, perhaps putting another anti-progressive justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention the relatively minor matter of embarrassing us almost every time he opens his mouth and tries to remember just how it was Karl told him to word what he was supposed to say...For two and a half more years he can (and surely will to the extent that he has any power at all) exacerbate the mess that we already have to clean up after him.
___________________
1. But did the country elect Bush in 2000? If the Bushevik Party hadn't disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in Florida, then Bush, instead of defeating Al Gore by 5 electoral votes, would have lost by 45.
2. And in 2004, if the Bushevik Party hadn't disenfranchised even more voters in Ohio (possibly 350,000, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his article, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" in a recent issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, including stealing thousands of votes by electronic tampering), Bush would not have defeated John Kerry by 34 electoral votes, but would have lost by 6.

Voice on the Phone (a poem)

The hoarse, close breathiness
.             of your voice on the phone

.     Makes me long to hear
.     your voice in my ear

.                     When we're alone.

Happy 230st Anniversary of American Independence

I've been dwelling lately on the fact that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson lived long enough to celebrate the 50th, dying on the same day, July 4, 1826. My longing for leaders of their caliber might be a reaction to today's reality that our government has fallen into the hands of the party of a man who is able to pretend that he is the legitimate President of the United States only because enough Americans have been cowed and self-deluded into pretending the same thing. So help us God.

We Slept with Windows Open (a poem)

We slept with windows open all the night
The day I sold or gave my books away.

Was it the sound of the lusty tree frogs
Or the lightening of the burden of all
Those books never to read again (or read at all)
That made me lie awake, compose these lines,
And bade my body hum the song “Alive, Alive”?

[October 2001]

Youie Summer

[Youie Summer came along two years after I wrote the sonnet posted yesterday.]

During weeks of manic inspiration in the summer of 1989, I received spiritual revelations so striking that I began to keep a journal to record them. Their significance seemed to demand that I share them with others. But a sad technical job at a large corporation felt at odds with that calling, leaving me only an hour or two out of each day at home with my wife to inscribe my insights.

Early in July, I entered the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes and regularly chanted affirmations that I would win. Something told me that my entry number contained a sign that the prize money would be mine, so I translated the number according to a pairing of digits and consonants that I used as a mnemonic device, and indeed it turned out that the entry number signified that the ten million dollars would be a grant-in-aid for me to write full-time for Youie.

Youie. A couple of weeks earlier I had been playing around with Einstein’s E=mc² to try to find a similar formula for spiritual energy, which I abbreviated UIE, for Universal Intelligent Energy. Pronounced as a word, UIE sounded like “Youie,” which I soon noticed contained not only “you,” but also “I” (Spanish “yo), “we” (the sound of French “oui”—also “wee”) and “yes” (literal “oui”). The name was thus revealed to me to be a mystical invitation to affirm joyously that we are one. My son had already pointed out the name’s similarity to “Yahweh,” the name revealed in the passage in The Second Book of Moses where the burning bush tells Moses that he will lead his people out of bondage in Egypt, and Moses asks who he should say told him so, if the people should ask. (I thought that I may even have discovered the secret pronunciation of Yahweh’s name.)

Unfortunately, simply winning the sweepstakes wouldn’t guarantee that everybody was going to read about these wondrous revelations. But what if I could prove that I had known in advance? Then I would no doubt appear on Oprah and people would flock to bookstores to own the story.

On July 26, one week before the winner would be announced on television, I had the manuscript notarized and I posted it to myself by certified mail. Earlier that same day, I had seen a neurologist about recent dizziness and muscular fatigue. The neurologist seemed to be someone I could talk to, so I told him about my journal and of a fantasy I’d had about needing surgery and being excused from my job for a few weeks. He asked me whether I might be “trying to do too much” and whether my “thoughts seemed to race.” He told me that my symptoms probably stemmed from “all that was going on” and would clear up by themselves “after this gets resolved.”

The manuscript arrived in the mail on Tuesday, August 1. On Thursday, the day of the announcement on The NBC Nightly News, I packed up all of my personal belongings at work so I could flee quickly after quitting my job the next day. My wife didn’t know about my entering the sweepstakes—it wasn’t something I could tell her about it until after I had won. Later that night, I could at least be glad that she hadn’t been in the room to see my reaction to the revelation that there would be nothing to tell her.

The following summer I fell asleep on Interstate-40 while driving home from work and spent the next five and a half months on medical leave with chronic fatigue syndrome. In January 1996, during a hard freeze, I fell down twice playing in the forest with Ruffy, our golden retriever. That evening, about to go for a walk with Ruffy, I slipped and sat down hard on an icy step. I got up and we went for our walk, but I returned to the house speaking incoherently. The neurosurgeon later surmised that the jolt to my spine had caused an ancient, slow-growing tumor in my pineal gland to start bleeding. After a six-month leave for brain surgery and rehabilitation, I was informed by my manager that I hadn’t been very productive during that time, and he advised me to take early retirement to avoid an unfavorable performance evaluation.

I felt relieved but also angry that it had taken something stronger than my own volition to deliver me out of the land of Egypt.

Vocational Change (a sonnet)

Last year I voided the business blather,
Let go what the company calls profession:
The grind for promotion, the schizo stress on
The rotten rungs of the corporate ladder.

They flung my human skills like cannon fodder
Into product wars for market conquest and
I gave them free my overtime, no question,
Even brought their work home, for my own slaughter.

When people ask me now, What do you do?
I tell them that I loafe, invite my soul,
Court wind and sun, and in the garden woo
The muse that sings my child of Adam whole.
Now the only business that I pursue
Is to keep my number on the payroll.

[1987]

Third Reply from Yale (June 29, 2006)

You write well. And the bite of your passion comes through. I understand and admire the fierceness of your belief, and the gumption that doesn't allow you to quit. I think you know that I will not take the action you ask. But I have registered the depth of your feeling, and I won't forget it.

.             Sincerely yours,
.             [signed]
.             [The President of Yale University]