winter deception

the wind blurs image

the sunlight scatters color

winter's deception

From the Washington Post. Monday March 19 2018

In a private event with campaign donors

last week, Trump boasted that he was

willing to take risks that his predecessors

George W. Bush and Barack Obama were not.

A president who takes a stab

At something that might leave a scab

Will certainly score

With all the press corps

And headlines will not have to grab.

This finding, if further confirmed,

could reorient calculations of the

overall potential of permafrost to

worsen global warming over the

coming century.

And now it is permafrost’s time

To batter our warming up clime.

The more that it melts

The harder it belts

The greenhouse effect paradigm.

“German food is so much more related to

French food than people give it credit for,”

Anderson said. “A coq au vin on a menu, you

will know what that is. But if you put Hasenpfeffer

on the menu, people are like, ‘What the hell?’ ”

Good cooking that’s German remains

An artform with which you take pains.

If starches prevail

You’re going to catch ‘hail’

From haters of carbo and grains.

From the New York Times. Monday March 19 2018

Mr. Trump has long suggested that

allegations that he or his campaign

conspired with Russia to influence

the election were a “hoax” and part of a

“witch hunt,”

Russia is a lovely land, a place of peace and rest.

The people there are gentle and think only of the best.

Their government is kindly and they never would support

Fixing of elections or Dame Liberty to thwart.

Those charitable people shed a tear of bitter grief

When they’re blamed for stealing votes like some dishonest thief.

They venerate democracy and love those who dissent;

Rather than free speech assail, they’d go live in a tent!

Oh why do people claim that Russians meddle in our life,

Posting rabble-rousing lies that lead to deadly strife?

I know they’d never think of leading Uncle Sam astray

(and for this verse I will receive big bucks from them today . . . )

Other former officials who have been

the subject of the president’s taunts

have also had choice words for him

on Twitter.

Instead of writing memoirs, bigwigs like to write hot tweets,

Insisting that the future will sure celebrate their feats.

Sore losers always like to whine they didn’t get a chance

To fully justify their patriotic noble stance.

It seems the world is blaming Trump because he is so blunt;

The guy is not a handshaker, preferring to confront.

The gnats that tweet around his head are not a nuisance, just

Motes of picayune intent less crucial than the dust.

This firestorm of verbiage a witch hunt seems to be,

And taunting our beloved Prez is like a new hobby.

This mass of bitter twitters cyberspace may soon obstruct,

And only Trump can clear the jam and have it all eruct!   

Facebook on Sunday faced a backlash

about how it protects user data, as

American and British lawmakers

demanded that it explain how a political

data firm with links to President Trump’s

2016 campaign was able to harvest private

information from more than 50 million

Facebook profiles without the social network’s

alerting users.

My data has no privacy.

I’m naked for hackers to see.

They know my address

And when I fluoresce --

I am a Facebook internee!

From the Wall Street Journal. Monday March 19 2018

MOSCOW—Russians went to the polls in a presidential

election Sunday that is all but certain to grant President

Vladimir Putin a further six years in office, but that has

been condemned as undemocratic in a country where

the Kremlin has tightened its grip on civil society.

Before you can count up to ten

Old Putin’s elected again.

It’s all really rote;

Why bother to vote?

The guy sticks around like a wen.

Last fall, amid the sexual-harassment scandals

that toppled a list of influential men, novelists

began to re-evaluate the appeal of the rake in the

corner office. Some authors of office romances say

they have become more vigilant as they make sure

their happily-ever-afters comply with good workplace

behavior. Time’s up for fictional executives who

make the company look bad.

Office romances in fiction

Offer a bogus depiction

Of meetings obscene

By copy machine --

Reading ‘em is an addiction.

The Scotch Whisky Association and the makers of
Absolut vodka and Tanqueray gin have announced
plans to ban plastic straws and stirrers from their events.

The makers of spirits have consciences grown;

They do not want plastic away to be thrown.

It tortures the earth with its tangle and mess;

And so they won’t use it at parties, I guess.

Of course people drinking will still get the heaves,

But what they throw up is organic, like leaves . . .

The world and its wisdom

Behold the world and the wisdom thereof . . .

First Nephi. Chapter Eleven. Verse 35.

The world and its wisdom have ever been chaff

To those who look closely and know how to laugh.

Academies burble and think tanks prevail

In gulling the millions with concepts quite stale.

The bigots and bloggers, with bombastic beats,

March to the tune of vainglorious tweets.

Cozening crowds is as easy as pie

If you are willing to flatter and lie.

The wisdom that matters, the knowledge that saves,

Is not to be found through tall tales told by slaves.

Instead it’s discovered where it always will be;

With the teachings of One Man from old Galilee.

the green canopy

the green canopy

of cedar is twisted dry

in the pebbled wind

One eternal round

. . . wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round.

First Nephi. Chapter Ten. Verse 19.

Beyond the track of time, outside the bounds of date,

The Lord presides in peace, and knows His children’s fate.

His caring, watchingful eye is blinded by no years.

He reaches through the veil to quiet all our fears.

We wait upon the Lord, with timely prayers and thoughts,

But Satan steals our days with pleasures so ersatz.

Or worries snatch the moment away from blissful rest,

And prodigal we waste the weeks by always being stressed.

The ticking of the clock and the beating of my heart,

The seasons of the earth that so vainly I do chart;

Oh Lord, the stream of time help me to counteract,

With faith that there is joy beyond each cataract!

soft gray afternoon

soft gray afternoon

settles like cold wisps of smoke

smothering the wind

From the Wall Street Journal. Saturday March 17 2018

A federal investigation into sales practices at Wells Fargo & Co.
now includes the bank’s wealth-management business, extending
the probe beyond the firm’s retail-banking unit where the problems
originated, people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo is such a bent place,

They’re losing your money apace.

But as they talk it,

It goes in their pocket

As fees that are too hard to trace.

“Everything about a bean is fashionable,” says Lu Ann Williams,
Innova’s director of innovation. “It says wholesome and natural
and good for you.”

Consider the commonplace bean;

It’s eaten by peasant and queen.

Shakespeare had a horse

That was bean-fed, of course --

But flatulence isn’t my scene.

A bill introduced in January, and backed by Gov. Pete Ricketts,
would raise the state’s maximum speed limit to 80 mph, up from 75.
Six other states have an 80-mph maximum. A seventh, Texas,
has a top limit of 85.

Americans have got a pace

That gets them fast to ev’ryplace.

They’ll get there even in reverse

Or maybe in a gilded hearse.

The Strange Building

And great was the multitude that did enter into that
strange building.

First Nephi. Chapter Eight. Verse 33.

I passed a building on my way to life’s heroic deeds;

Twas made of marble and of gold amidst a field of weeds.

I’d never seen the like before, and stopped to take it in.

The strangeness of the place did pucker up my chilly skin.

Strange and great and beckoning, the building seemed to me.

I thought I saw the shades of people down through history.

They smiled and nodded gaily, but their smiles were a facade.

Their gaiety was brittle, since they had no use for God.

Their clothes were of the finest, while my coat was patched and bare.

Those strange folk in the building hinted they’d be glad to share.

I took a step for closer view, and smelled a heady feast;

With honeyed meats and ripened fruit and drinks made sharp with yeast.

But underneath the savor of refinement and delight

I sensed a dark foreboding, darker than the savage night.

And when I took a step away, their smiles turned into rage.

They shook their window bars -- for that strange building was a cage!

I left that building far behind as I trudged on my way.

And yet the image lingers in my mind unto this day.

Strange buildings now proliferate; like Babylon of old,

They lure unwary strangers into prisons made of gold.