Setting your heart upon riches
will not gain you much in return;
true prospering comes to the kindly,
who for other's welfare do yearn.
For when you are walking with heaven
by giving as much as you can
you find that you need but a little
to feel like the richest oilman.
People do a lot of work
with bargains as their goal.
They shop for ev'rything in sight,
except their precious soul.
I, too, need some reminding
that my life's already bought
and gifted back to me by One
I have not always sought.
I'm making spaghetti today,
the good old American way;
cans of red sauce,
some herbs and some moss,
and noodles I boil till they fray.
McConnell continues to chuckle
insisting he still will not buckle
to Biden as champ;
he's still in the camp
that thinks of Trump as honeysuckle.
No hospital beds in L.A.
So where will new patients all stay?
Since there are no rooms,
the parking lot looms --
a great place for clients to stray!
When leaders are slow to select
a course all their folk to protect
their folly provokes
both hatred and jokes;
they throw away love and respect.
Who's buying Xmas trees this year?
They're priced beyond the stratosphere.
Better a menorah, nu?
The price won't turn your face dark blue!
Journalists now get their news
from Twitter and short Facebook cues.
No need for messy interviews,
cuz innuendo is their muse.
Knowledge from heaven will pour
upon those who learn to adore
the Lord's revelation
without hesitation,
and folly will lead us no more!
Charity towards all men is the tocsin we should heed;
whether they are black or white, in wealth or dire need.
Do not judge another when you see they need support;
one day you and I may have to in their shoes cavort!
It was at Van Cleve Park where they
held Hobo Days each summer.
I went with my sister Sue Ellen
every year from 1959 until 1965.
Our hobo costumes were judged
and awarded prizes.
I never won an award,
but Sue Ellen did every year.
Mom dressed her up as a 'cute'
hobo, with long eyelashes,
dirty white gloves, and a
long empty plastic cigarette holder --
a la Phyllis Diller --
and put a black soot beard on her, too.
I got to chomp on a stale pink bubblegum cigar;
which was pretty good compensation
for never winning anything.
Even better,
I was allowed to wave around
an empty whiskey bottle,
courtesy of Aarone's Bar & Grill
where my dad worked.
We each had a sawed off broomstick
with a red bandana bundle tied to the
end, to heft over our shoulders.
The bundle held a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich to tide us over
until dinner.
The mirror cracked in half
when it came to hoboes
and others grouped with them
sixty years ago in America.
There was Weary Willie and
lovable and comic characters.
But then there were the cutthroat
demented dark figures under the viaduct
that mom warned us about --
if they caught you wandering
around the railyard
they would remove an arm to
roast over a kerosene drum fire.
They were filthy, crawling with lice.
I was never to take the bus to Nicollet Island,
in the middle of the Mississippi River;
it was a land where men drank Cold Duck
in one gulp while sitting on dirty stone stoops
in front of flop houses.
My parents barely escaped the Depression,
and their message to me was clear:
the homeless and disenfranchised,
who didn't make it out of the Depression,
were not human enough for compassion.
Either laugh at them or keep them far away.
I'm still dealing with that cruel falsehood today.
**************************
This piece so offended @markgmaurer of the Wall Street Journal
that he requested to be removed from my poetry
email list.
I walked down a street that was not a street
to enter a shop that wasn't there
and asked the clerk who didn't exist
for a lottery ticket that was already expired.
It is marvelous to be so empty.
But that very contentment
escapes me like water in a sieve.
So I will tell you a story
that illustrates nothing:
Not long ago
there lived a man and his daughter.
They were too poor to cook and eat
so they went door to door to
smell the frying and baking of others.
The aromas sustained them for a long time.
But people began to resent their great pleasure
in something they had no hand in providing or
preparing.
So they were taken to a high cliff and shoved off.
The man and his daughter weighed so little
after so many years of not eating
that they floated gently to the ground,
unharmed.
And the site of this great miracle became
a gathering place for many rich and dyspeptic
people. Eventually a great temple was built
on the site, using slave labor and decorated
with looted gold and gems from around the world.
But the man and his daughter
who started the whole thing
were never permitted to see the inside of it.
They couldn't afford the entry fee.
Besides, none of this ever happened
and you didn't read about it.
So it doesn't register as anything
and won't be remembered,
like smoke meeting fog.
