Clean Noses. (Prose Poem)

Mount Pinky. Felbish Range. Wootland.

In Tuesday’s debate, Warren and Buttigieg both said their personal mottos come from scripture. Buttigieg cited a theme that appears in multiple parts of the Bible: “If you would be a leader, you must first be a servant.” Warren cited Matthew 25, which says, in part: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Biden appeared in a CNN town hall Wednesday — Ash Wednesday — with ashes on his forehead.

Michelle Boorstein. Washington Post. 

I've enjoyed many different religions over a long and graveled lifetime.

As a child I worshiped the Mississippi River. 

It's brown, smelly waters spoke to my soul of churning hope.

Whenever I caught a carp with my cane pole I would rip its heart out and eat it raw. Hoping, I guess, to gain its sang-froid in the face of living in such a polluted environment. 

As a teenager I joined the Church of Surliness -- taking a vow of silence as far as my parents were concerned. But my tongue began to fuse to the roof of my mouth, so I became a dairy advocate instead. We built a mountain of cottage cheese in Nebraska that would still be there if it weren't for the Anti-Lactosites. 

As a religious refugee I found shelter with the Umish in Pennsylvania. They don't really believe in much, so they go around saying "Um . . . " a lot. I was so impressed with their lack of fanaticism that I asked to join their community. 

That would have been it for me, religiously speaking, except that I met a Grumbletonian from Oxford and fell in love with her. We eloped one moon-lit night and lived like Hobbits for many happy years. When she died I decided there was no real system of faith to which my allegiance could be given, so I moved to Utah and became a Jack Mormon. I made so many friends who wanted to reform me that eventually I started my own political party and became Governor. I was later thrown out of office for giving candy to babies. 

Today I relax on my ant farm and never give the afterlife any thought at all. Like Voltaire, I tend my garden and keep my nose clean.

And clean noses, as we all know, are next to godliness. 

Destroyed by Pestilence.

And they that believe not in him shall be destroyed . . . by pestilence . . .  And they shall know that the Lord is God, the Holy One of Israel.
2 Nephi 6:15

Master over life and death,

we beseech thee for our breath

in this time of plague and woe --

lead us not to overthrow!

Please forgive our doubts and fears;

we pray this epidemic clears.

Help us to obey, despite

dread at the approaching night.

All our courage comes from thee;

thou art our security!

Largely Indifferent. (Prose Poem)

Canadians have been largely indifferent to the arrival of the royal couple. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has faced repeated questions about who will foot the bill for the family’s security.

Amanda Coletta.  Washington Post.

I have spent my life largely indifferent to the shifts and upheavals around me. As a small boy I fell down a badger hole and tumbled in front of a wise man dressed in velveteen fog; he waited for me to stop crying and then said "Nothing is real, except the last potato chip."
Somehow, that comforted me. I managed to claw my way out of the badger hole to begin a life of shabbiness and irrelevance -- but that wise old man's words stuck with me like pills on a sweater.
My first job out of college was in a warehouse, counting off yards of bubble wrap with a gadget that eventually gave me carpal tunnel syndrome. I took Workman's Comp and traveled the country by bus. I wasn't seeking anything in particular, just rambling around to see how other people dealt with the mundane idiocy of everyday life.
I took a job for a while as a dishwasher in a greasy spoon-slash-gas station up in the high Sierras, where Warner Brother logos had proliferated back in the 1940's. The denizens of the cafe were all beat up looking specimens that scratched themselves constantly and spouted weary platitudes while they drank coffee and snacked on fried bandanas. The waitress' name was Trixie. She had a heart of gold, and long loopy earrings to match. She kept bringing me coffee and stale donuts, to 'build you up -- you're so scrawny' -- even though I told her I didn't drink coffee and stale pastry nauseated me. I finally threw her in a cactus patch, and she seemed to finally get the message.
When I'd had my fill of drippings and drips, I got back on the next bus and headed up to Canada.
You have probably noticed by now, from my grammar and syntax, that I am not a native English speaker. I did not come to America until I was fifteen. That explains why I still have three eyebrows.
On the bus to Canada I met a charming couple, the Pawlty-Drawboats. They're related to the Royal Family in Great Britain somehow, but they were completely down-to-earth.
"Have a potato chip, old boy" said Sir Pawlty-Drawboats to me as we sped through the boglands of Saskatchewan.
"Don't mind if I do, old chap" I replied lightly. "What brings you and the Duchess to moose country?"
"Oh, I dunno . . . bit of a tiff back home and all that" he replied, burbling through his mustache. "These provincials treat us like equals, not paper dolls, y'know. We can get away with wearing polyester and eating crisps in public -- potato chips, you bounders call them, what?"
We sat in companionable silence, sharing his bag of crisps, until I took the last one, bowed my head to him in mock deference, and popped it in my mouth.
Then, as the wise old man had predicted so many years before, reality set in.
"You two are pretentious bores" I told him, "and I'm a luftmensch."
I got off the bus in Burnaby and began a new purpose-driven life as an artisan saddle soaper.
I take great pride in my product and have funded a local bowling team. Because thinking small makes me feel large.

Let another man praise thee

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.
Proverbs 27:2

How often have I spoken up

to laud my own designs,

boasting that my cunning hand

is sure to make headlines.

O foolish man, O blade of grass,

so soon to fade away;

already into ashes

turns each temporary day.

Seal my lips, kind Father,

until I have learned to praise

not my own dull actions

but only thine great ways!

The Dancing Lynch Mob. (Prose Poem)

As Carnival celebrations occupied streets around the world this week, a Spanish parade troupe featured Nazis dancing with guns, scantily clad concentration-camp inmates waving Israel’s flag and a float with two crematorium chimneys.

Marisia Iati. Washington Post. 

The dancing lynch mob boogied up to my front yard, pitch forks pumping, torches flaring, and nooses swinging. I heard their music a block away, so I was waiting for them on my front porch.

"What gives?" I asked the crowd in general.

A young man waltzed up to me and said:

"We know you hire illegal immigrants and keep Coronavirus patients in your basement. Plus we have it on good authority that a Coven of Witches is working out of your garage to turn crows into zombies. You gonna hang for that, man!"

I piroueretted down the steps and began a fox trot with a young women who wore a tie-dyed blouse and skirt. She smelled of lemon grass.

"That's ridiculous" I told her, as we went into a frenzied version of the Black Bottom. "Those are all rumors spread by my ex to embarrass me. Nothing more!"

"Not my problem" she replied breezily. "We come to do rough justice to someone -- and it looks like  you're it!"

We formed a line for the Bunny Hop and snaked away to Main Street, where a dance troupe did a postmodern number around a tar barrel and a pile of pillow feathers. I was forced to first jump into the tar barrel and then jump into the pile of feathers. The only reason I escaped with my life was because I began the pas de deux from Swan Lake. The mob liked that so much they all began toe dancing. I fled back to my home, packed a suitcase, kicked the Coronavirus patients out of my basement, and got to the airport for a flight to Marmalade City.

Once there I went to work as a pole dancer under an assumed name -- Dishy Foxy. 

But lately I've been afflicted with St. Vitus' Dance. So I found a local Coven of Witches to cure me by turning me into a crow zombie. 

It's a ridiculous way to live, I must say, but my mother taught me to live righteous and live strong, and don't wear tight fitting clothes, and everything will turn out all right.

I hope she's right, cuz my beak just fell off. 

My Foolishness

 O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee.
Psalm. 69:5

How can I veil my sins from thee,

who views all vast eternity?

But when I try to crawl away,

with leaden heart and feet of clay,

thy loving kindness reaches out --

so constant and so very stout!

And thus, though fool my part remains,

my cap and bells don't feel like chains!

Sewer Gators (Prose Poem)

I began raising alligators in the city sewers after I was passed over for the big promotion at work.
I worked hard for that big promotion, coming in early and staying late, but the boss gave it to some gal with an MBA who was still wet behind the ears. That disgusted me so much I decided to explore the gig economy for a way to be my own boss and quit my now-disappointing day job.
First I tried rhubarb-based meat products -- rhubarb salami, rhubarb hamburgers, rhubarb roasts. But it didn't catch on. Mostly because you have to add too much gluten starch to the cooked rhubarb to keep it from turning into mush.
Besides, rhubarb is actually pretty expensive -- not a lot of people grow it commercially anymore. My rhubarb steaks were running around twenty-dollars a pound.
Then I took some time off from work (I had accrued lots of vacation time cuz I never took any time off when I was aiming for that promotion I never got) to lead a team of intrepid explorers into the teeth of the Pacific Trash Vortex. We outfitted an old banana boat and sailed into the middle of the Western Gyre, looking for discarded currency and jewelry. We didn't find squat. And I lost four good men to treacherous plastic six pack rings.
Need I mention I also lost all of my 401(K), which I had cashed out to finance the expedition? So now I was desperate to try anything at all to escape my horrible 9 to 5 job.
That's when I read about alligators in the sewer. Reporters and scientists pooh-poohed the idea, saying the city's sewers were too cold and too toxic for reptiles like alligators. But I wondered if they had factored in Global Warming -- it stands to reason, I told myself, that the waste water going into the sewer was warmer now than ever before, and what with efforts to clean up local pollution, perhaps those subterranean waters were now more hospitable to crocodilians. I was betting that if I used the A. mississippiensis type, which was used to colder weather, I might succeed in breeding them successfully.
And I was right!
All I had to do was flush baby alligators down the toilet, and in six month's time the little buggers had begun to breed and were soon big enough to harvest for leather and for meat.
I got my old gang back together, what was left of them, from the Pacific Trash Vortex venture, and we hunted them down easily enough by dangling pieces of cow liver on hooked lines. They reeled in just like carp.
And let me tell you something, despite PETA and all the other animal huggers, people are crazy about alligator leather shoes and alligator bisque! I trucked the gutted gators to an abattoir just across the line in Canada, and back came beautiful sheets of shiny alligator leather and succulent frozen chunks of alligator meat. (It tastes pretty much like chicken.) Artisan leather workers in New Orleans made purses and luggage for me, while famous Creole chefs turned the alligator meat into canned gumbos and exotic pates. 
Once the money started coming in I made sure the families of those four brave men who died in the Pacific were well-compensated for their loss, and then instead of quitting my daytime job I simply bought the whole dang company outright and fired that MBA gal. 
Now I am running for President on a Platform of Free Rhubarb for Everyone. 

Listen to the voice of your Redeemer.

President Russell M. Nelson.

"Our Father loves us and yearns for each one of us to choose to return to His holy presence. He pleads with us to listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, whom the Father anointed and appointed as our Mediator, Savior, and Redeemer."

President Russell M. Nelson.

Forgive my errant wayward feet

that to distraction run so fleet;

my heart unconstant oft does beat,

my passions beget too much heat.

The constant voice of Christ I crave;

his words alone my soul can save.

O make my ears attuned and keen,

so holy words are all I glean!

Zombie Debt. (Prose Poem)

I borrowed fifty cents from my best friend Wayne to get a Hershey bar. That was sixty years ago, when we were both eight years old.
So I forgot to repay him, and we both went on living and finally lost track of each other.

Until last year. When a lawyer came down my chimney on Christmas Eve to deliver a subpoena, demanding payment of said fifty cents, plus penalty and interest.

It came to just over fifty thousand dollars. I gave the lawyer a glass of milk and some ginger snaps and told him no way would I be paying anything. It was ridiculous.

He merely smiled and went back up the chimney. Lawyers can sneak in and out of anything. 

I looked Wayne up on Facebook and sent him a friend request. He accepted and I asked him 'What the hell?' He replied he really needed the money, because he was unemployed and losing his home. Plus his two daughters needed braces.

So I sent him fifty thousand dollars. I could afford it. From my patent on bacon topped doughnuts. He thanked me, but then stopped communicating with me.

But because of that legal action my friend had started, my credit rating went into the toilet. And I couldn't get a crucial loan when I needed to expand into tofu-stuffed long johns. The new tariff on powdered sugar didn't help things, either. 

I lost my company, my home, and my bank accounts were seized by Mitch McConnell -- for some reason I never learned. I moved into a friend's garage and slept on a cardboard refrigerator box. 

In desperation I reached out to Wayne on Facebook, telling him what had happened and asking him to send some of the money back that I had sent to him. 

The next day while I was stuffing my sleeping bag into my refrigerator box a helicopter landed behind the garage and my friend Wayne jumped out to embrace me.

"It was all just a test!" he told me. "I never needed your money. I've always been rich. And it was me who forced your company into bankruptcy. I needed to test your moral fiber, to see if you gave  up or kept fighting. Because, old friend, I wanted to make you a partner in my stupendously profitable corporate empire."

Then he broke down weeping. My emotions were very strong, too. 

I finally managed to ask him what was his stupendously profitable business.

"Scented eyeglasses" he quavered, still overcome with emotion. "But you failed the test, old friend. You gave up too easily and sit around all day on an old refrigerator box. So I can't use you."

"That" I said simply, "is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. Your business empire will crumble before the snowdrops come up this year." 

And that's exactly what happened to Wayne's business empire. As for me, I've started a line of cardboard refrigerator box furniture, without any startup funds, just using social media. And I'm becoming rich again.

My next step is to create a line of scented cardboard refrigerator box furniture. 

When thou hast eaten and art full

When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.
Deuteronomy 8:10

In this goodly land, we bless

God above for our success;

for the golden harvest days

and the fullness of our ways.

Keep us from false pride, that we

may prosper in humility --

We, thy children, celebrate

thy bounty, Lord, without debate!