My father wounded
In the war against the
Tyranny of Hitler,
The Great Liar,
The Ultimate Cynic,
Playing on the Fears of the Masses.

Who knew?
Who knew how easily a great Nation
Could be Lost?
We cannot see the forest.
We cannot see the trees.
We can only see the bushes
And the rushes.

Lost, as a leaf that waffles in the wind,
Lost, as a steep plunge into a swimming pool
Waterless, despite the golden promises.

Plummeting from World Leader
To World Bleeder.
Leech and Destroyer of God's Green Earth.

Or....

Maybe,
Just maybe,
All is not quite lost.
Maybe,
Just maybe,
We can rekindle the real dream.
Maybe,
We can live up to
Jefferson and Franklin
Maybe,
We can live up to
Abraham Lincoln
And the patriots who died
To set us free,
To build a nation:
Of the people
(Not the special interests)
By the people
(Not by the dollar-soaked lies)
For the people
(Not the oil barons).

We might just make it,
You and I.
We might just make it
America
Once again.

Posterity,
Posterity will remember
Long after mere prosperity
Has faded into nothing.

It's worth a try,
After a long cry,
To stitch together the broken pieces
Of the lost dream.

Oh, America.
Oh, Americans.
After all, it is ours.
It is our country.
Let's reclaim it.
Let's name it
Once again:
America.

Where Have All the Ice-Scrapers Gone, Long Time A-Passing?
truthtable @ Dec. 10, 2002

I have lost the reasons
Misunderstood the seasons. Is it a job requirement that checkout counter personnel
Must cough and sneeze?
Or, merely a disideratum?

I have misled the seasons,
Forgotten all the glorious reasons
We went to VietNam.
Misplaced as well the reasons we forgot to honor
Those brave courageous multitudes who fought and died there.

I ---we -- -have lost the third alternative, apparently.
In the frosty morning,
While I run,
There seem to be two types only
In my neighborhood:
Those who drive unsafe with opaque windows
A teeny space cleared,
Like the man who hit my father’s chevy in Akron,
Insisting His Left Turn was OKAY –- his right --- because the light was Orange….
And those, those,
Who rev the engines of their SUV’s for …
A good long while….
They return inside to watch the mourning news, the ---
Growing consensus that yes, to protect
American interests we must kill
(and be killed)
Maim, and “invest” in the Middle East,
The Fount of Wisdom…or…possibly…
The Fount of Oil.

Has anyone in this strange land heard of an ice-scraper?

Or….
Do we once again once again once again
Shed blood and bone and body bag…
Friend and fiend and foe?
“In war, truth is the first casualty.”

Has anyone in this strange land heard of an ice-scraper?

Mothers Day, 2001 -- truthtable@aol.com

I only have a few days left,
The radio screams;
The television blares;
The spam-mail claims;
I only have a few days left,
To order flowers for Mother's Day.

Only Mother,
Against all the rules of the game,
I thought I knew so well,
Mother
Is dead.

Like Father,
And Grandfather,
And Grandmother,
And it makes me wonder:
How could all these characters
That made up the landscape of my childhood,
The very fabric and the backdrop of my life
Simply walk off stage forever?
Who wrote this script, anyway?

But that is just ego talking,
Ego that sits like a huge blind egg
Atop a pedestal of its own design.
That is just ego pretending
To be the end-all and the be-all of existence.

In reality, the fabric of life continues;
Rip, repair, rip, repair, rip, repair.
The river of life keeps flowing
Finding another channel where one is blocked.
The blood that ran through my parents
Flows through me and my grandchildren
As well as Sir Tulip Tree saluting the morning sun,
And those three awesome wild turkeys strolling beneath;
That humming, zipping dragonfly;
That laughing marigold.

This
Flower is for you, Mother
And
This
Moment
For you and me and all the anscestors
And all the descendants
And
The Now
Of two yellow tulips:
Bulbs brought from Amsterdam
(Where you never journeyed,
Content with my stories and pictures)
This now, I enjoy for all the world,
For Mother,
For Mother's Day.
The chaotic spiral path of earth will journey my egobody
Away some day too.

Meanwhile,
Do we not owe it to that host,
That multitude of anscestors
Stretching out behind us into the net of proto-life,
Do we not owe it to them
To watch the golden flowers glow,
As intently as we are able?
Certainly,
That is the attitude of my wise cousins:
Dragonfly, turkey and tree.
Should I do any less?

The Price of a Single Teardrop

I want;
I actually want
A tear to fall
Although
A tear, even a single

Drop

Would be:

Admission,
Acknowledgement.

Better,
A flood of tears.

Funny, how in English,
To cry a "tear"
And,
To "tear" in two
Are spelled alike,
The same,
Identically.

Of course,
We never think about
Those pecurliarities, being Native Speakers
Of English.

Did I almost say "Native Americans"?
(Well, hey, they had no oil rigs anywhere.
What use were they making really?)

My mother taught English.

Now, there's a strange concept.

But she was damned good at it.

What exactly does it mean to have a class
In "English" in an English speaking country?

I've been to:
Japan
Italy
Netherlands
Germany
France
Andora
Lichtenstein
Switzerland
Always someone speaks English.

But my mother is dead.

Where are the tears?

Or the tears?

Because,

Not one has been shed out of these dry red eyes.
But I keep thinking
Now, I have to tell Mom about that
Ask her advice
Get her opinion
Tell her of my most recent victory
Call her up
Send her a postcard
Visit.

Or defeat.

But.

I don't call.

Somewhere in the back of my mind,
I realize
No-one would answer that phone,
Don't send that postcard,
Or worse,
Someone would
Would answer
Saying,
"Who?"
Or defeat,
"What ?"
"Sorry, you must have the wrong number."

And, I wonder at our collective culture where there could be
A Right Number.

And, everyone else is a "Wrong Number"
And my mother
My mother

My

Mother

(Did you know that we "non-relatives" share over 99.9 % of our genes?)
My Mother Says
(Well, she's largely your mother too)

Nothing. But still, I ask her,
What is; who is:
A "wrong number"?
Aren't we all in this together?

And, the next time,
Though my mother,
An "English Teacher"
Cannot be the party to which I am speaking
Because my mother is dead,
Sorry, I meant to say, "Passed Away" or "No longer with us"

(And, largely, she's your mother too.)

I get a wrong number,
I may just say,
I may just be one SOB and ask,:
(Spring is definitely the mischief in me as I ask.)

"Well, hey, how in God's name
Can this be a wrong number?
I dialed it.
You answered.
My mother is dead.
We share the planet.
You breathe my air
And vice versa.
You drink my water
And vice versa.
We have to get this together or
There will be no more mothers
And not more sons or daughers."

I think
My mother
Would have liked that
Moment of Drama.
She liked Drama.

And,
I wonder,
Who exactly is dead?
We think we are Almighty
Immortal
Invincible
And seem

Stunned
Amazed
Crazed

When we are voted off the "Human Rights Commission" now,
There's the sort of thing I could have discussed with my

Mother,

Now deceased,
And yet,

And yet,

My eyes are sand dry, salt dry. And yet,
The world shakes it head,
Sighs,
Thinks we have forgotten our heritage
Our destiny
Our revolution
Our fellow planetiers.

Hey, you want a revolution?

My mom is dead.
Well, what do you care?
Really?

In the Congo
Two Million people died
Thank God it wasn't our fault
Or at least traceably so.

And

Do you care?
Really?

My mother would have cared.
But, hey,
She is dead.
Oh, well,
What the hell.

Sorry.
I must have dialed the right number.
But I love you anyway.
Siblinghood of Humanity?
This ain't no revival tent jive talk, we talkin,
This be certified scientific factuality.

And so
My mother is dead=
Your mother is dead;
Your mother is alive=
My mother is alive.
But can we please work together now,
Forget the alpha male craphead stuff
That made a lot of sense a million years ago
And get on with it?

Mom would have liked that.
Who knows?
Maybe she's smiling now.

And, who knows?
Maybe some day I may just call you up
To discuss this.

Don't tell me it's the wrong number.
Don't quote me the price of a single tear-

Drop.

The Appropriate Price for One Nuclear Bomb.

@ truthtable, 2001.

"What's an appropriate price for one nuclear bomb?"
I happened to wonder and couldn't quite see. "
There's the cost of materials dug deep from the ground, "
Refined and refurbished to splendiferous radioactivity. "
There's the cost of the labor, the tedium and danger. "
Shipping and handling? Now, there's another complexity. "
But the appropriate price for one nuclear bomb, "
Should probably be reckoned in dollar-worths of dead humanity. "
If not dollars, maybe Yen would be more telling, more fit. "
When the blast wave hits, you can't hide behind bush or tree --"

No siree! "
It's melt and perish. "
No more cherish, "
Little child, "
Lame old man, "
Squirrel and flower, "
Tumble brick tower, "
Ashes to ashes, we all fall down. "
But smile, smile, let's see no frown. "
Let's ring the world with bombs, you see, "
Then we can ransom humanity, "
Why, what have we gained "
Surely you jest, "
We're not only be best, "
We're nucleo-blessed! "
We'll be the only, "
Perhaps a little lonely, "
Perhaps a little broke, "
But that's the whole point of the joke. "
What's the appropriate price "
Of one nuclear device "
It's the gift that keeps on giving! "
Replaces with rubble all that's living! "
Like bringing a bit of sun to our earth, "
Absolutely priceless is its worth. "
So get back to the office and fill out that form, "
Pay your high taxes and smile and conform; "
Be assured that your future is in the right hands. "
Listen! You can hear the distant drumming of the big brass bands! "
Look! You can see the distant glowing of dead despoiled lands! "