1.)Why does it take a Republican twice as long to shave?
They're two faced.
2.)The radical right is trying to pretend there isn't much difference between Pres. candidates; however, what is George Bush Jr.'s nickname? TweedleDUM.
3.)How did George Bush Jr. get to be such a big shot (like his dad) in the Republican Party? All the fertilizer he's shoveled.
4.) During the Republican convention the term "boob tube" has taken on added meaning, because of all the boobs found there.
That's the end of beating around the "bush" for now.
ESSAY COL. REVISITED
Rumor Mill suggests that the propaganda machine has stated that
the massacre in Columbia, on the day President Clinton signed the 1.5 billion
aid package, is the result of a 35 yr. old civil war.
The Rumor Mill wonders:
1.) 20 yrs. ago when Reagon and Bush took over the white house
there were 2 drug cartels controlling the cocaine trade form Columbia.
Both were intensely anti- Communistic, and, the Communists were not in
Columbia at that time anyway.
2.) Secret legal proceedings were initiated, where accused were
tried and convicted without ever seeing either the judge or witnesses.
It was highly effective and destroyed both cartels.
3.) The drug trade did not stop. It was taken over by the
radical right led CIA.
4.) Columbia stopped the secret legal procedures regardless of
the presence of a new cartel which is more powerful and violent than the
one's before.
5.) One drug cartel controls all the drug trade, which now branches
out into heroin. It is supposedly supported by a "leftist" army who
can kill anyone anywhere anytime in Columbia. The radical right organized
and backed this group channeling large amounts of the drug trade through
Noreiga in Panama.
6.)During this era the Reagon and Bush administration instituted
a policy of covering up its terrorists activities under the disguise of
Communism.
7.) Radical right candidate promises to eliminate the Columbia
drug trade and all Communists. The so called "leftist" armies response
is to declare a cease fire thereby providing critical help to the party
and candidate sworn to destroy them. The destructive irrational nature
of this act makes it impossible if it were truly a Communist show.
8.) Suddenly, right wing paramilitary groups spring up everywhere
with well over 1,000 members. The so called "leftist" inexplicably
do nothing to stop them. This mind you is a group that has all pervasive
power.
9.) A bogus civil war breaks out that is just like the one backed
by the radical right in Guatemala, with only peasants murdered. The
paramilitary groups are in collusion with the MILITARY.
10.) Columbia claims a civil war battle broke out on the day
of the foreign aid signing; but, no radical right paramilitary casualties
let alone fatalities. Contradicting the Columbia government's story
are several independent eye witness reports that all collaborate each other
stating that while the Columbian government set up road blocks and held
out witnesses and help the right wing paramilitary groups descended on
a village with a list of names who they executed in the village square
including a 6 yr. old little girl and elderly women. All was done
while the paramilitary drank, danced, destroyed private property, raped
and murdered defenseless citizens, and displaced them from their homes.
11.) President Clinton was set up. He is, after all, only
cleaning up after the radical right- again!
12.) We are supposed to oppose the Democratic administration
for involving the U.S. in a Vietnam like conflict: one that the radical
right created!!!!!!!!!!
13.) It is claimed that certain right wing interests have purchased
large amounts of land in Eastern Columbia that has large natural gas energy
reserves.
Rumor Mill wonders:
1.)Why spend 1.5 billion on a social phenomenon that only effects
1% of the U.S. population?
2.) Why not license people who use the hard drugs and treat them
as a health care issue?
a.) the program would be self-funding.
b.) it would stop crimes associated with drugs
i.e. robberies and burglaries
i.e. acts of violence
c.) it would reduce the prison population by 70% to 75%
d.) expands the labor market, to be in the program you would
have to work.
e.) reduces government spending
f.) changes revenue drain to a revenue gain
g.) eliminates a source of corruption in the radical right
h.) protects civil rights while controlling drug consumption
i.) maintains integrity of democratic institutions
We would achieve all this:
WHILE NOT ENCOURAGING CONSUMPTION!
RUMOR MILL: IN & OUT
Rumor Mill thinks that the Radical Right is entering a new phase
in manipulating public opinion. Before, they would target a city
and saturate it with field operatives supported by back up services that
included financial and political aid. The region would then be overwhelmed
after years of intensive effort i.e, New York and Portland. However,
the public started waking up in Portland after 2 serial rapist and 1 serial
murder in 1/2 a year and 3 instances of gang rape in a little over 1 week.
The public began to wake up to 1) interstate homo and hetero sexual prostitution
rings 2) artificially increased crime rates involving a) violent youth
crimes, b) systematic sexual abuse of children - the Radical Right children
were recruited and trained to be sexual lures including even prepubescent
children, c) robberies, d) murder, e) certain high profile sex crimes i.e.
gang rape and serial rape, f) riots and bombing attempts usually associated
with bogus groups designed to set people up and discredit movements i.e.
environmentalist and so called "anarchists" 3) the obvious monopoly on
the hard drug trade (heroin and cocaine) and using it to murder the user
population, 4) crimes involving more than one participants = larger payoffs
for the radical right field operatives, 5) increased incidents of sexual
perversions, 6) increased adultery 7) increased use of the soft drugs marijuana,
beer and wine during election years.
The consumption of hard drugs is only 1% which is not enough
to support a large populist movement. The Radical Right are expanding
into marijuana (first, they are now conditioned into thinking that they
have the right to deny others civil rights and second, their Presidential
candidate used cocaine so they have to pretend using cocaine is the same
as smoking pot which their political opponent used) beer and wine which
will include about 10% of the population, which is still not a large enough
population base to support their populist movement. The result is
their becoming involved in youth crime, the young are easily victimized
and create an annual cash crop for the radical right field operatives.
By targeting on crimes with young victims i.e. statutory rape they can
more readily vilify the people they target and pretend that those people
are the evil ones i.e. create a false impression with negative associations.
However, when the radical right stay in any given area too long
the good citizens become aware of the corruption and moral degeneration
that the radical right behaviors inexorably result in. Rather than
admit that their behaviors are bad, and represent the warping of morals
to base advantage and the corruption of power,
the radical right has decided to deceive the public, which according
to the beliefs of Christ is the worst form of stealing that there is.
The radical right plan to target a city and hit it quick and
hit it hard. It is hoped by the radical right that this will enable
them to clear out before the citizens of the community know what has hit
them. But, the radical right's self-serving and self-delusional mind
set refuses to admit what is obvious to all: there actions designed to
deceive the public and extend their pay days are a clear admission that
WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS WRONG!
It hurts to see this fate happening to what otherwise would be
good people. It hurts the communities blighted by their presence;
and, it hurts themselves in every way except financially. So contends
the Rumor Mill.
WORRIED HOURS
Worried hours
pour between these vain, clutching fingers;
unfettered events,
a squirrel darts behind a tree
and out flies a butterfly,
a confusion of clouds, trembling leaves.
Today, among the harassed moments,
I am the fir
whose roots burrow
into the warm moist Earth,
and the water
evaporating into the sky,
and the city
that opens its jaws
and mouths the West Hills.
And in the distilled essence
of each unique instant,
I escape the mosquito,
who sinks another shaft
looking for the mother load,
and disappear in the sky
alive with a thousand blue tints.
MIDNIGHT REVERIES
Twilight had finally
finished dying,
the night was
warm, wonderful and alive.
The dark canvas
was rent by the moon,
whose slow path was lit
by a broad band
of flickering gold
that expansively spread
over the black waters'
impenetrable face.
In the garden
of an old house,
startling flashes
illuminated silent walls of vegetation,
your eyelashes
hurl lightening bolts....
A tree walks
across the lawn,
and the fountain
starts running in revers....
midnight reveries
muted mysterious
TWILIGHT ALWAYS DISTURBS
Twilight always disturbs
whether in technicolor or muted;
its the last desperate grasp
that accompanies the dying glow
when in the valley everything vanishes
the daily parade, the riot of Sunset.
How difficult holding
on to the vertiginous instant,
so taunt and diffused with light
that illusion
which our fear of the dark
imprints on space.
Isn't it funny
how it stops moving us
the moment we know-
its a lie,
like an audience
who discovers the conjurer's trick.
THE UNIVERSE
The universe is plastic and obedient
to the Divine reason of God,
which provides the laws for its working.
It being the author of all
has neither reason nor motive
to bring injury to anything.
Being made good,
evil is not in its nature
and thus God hurts nothing;
but, rather, it establishes
the divine order of the universe
that bestows its blessings to all.
God commits no evil - ever!
And, those that do (even through others)
have cut themselves off from God.
NOW
Now the tension of anxiety
oppresses the heart like Summer's heat
and the vast teeming mass of matter,
whose translucent inertia
turns on itself and dies.
Now an iron fist pounds hallucinations,
rends the Earth, uproots trees
and lacerates the river's rough mirror surface
with a thousand splinters of light.
Each illusionary form
shudders at the primitive brutality;
its all one immense cry,
an annihilations of alienated people:
Time, the executioner dispatches
everything in its wake:
fields, or lovers, or perhaps
cloud columns crossing the sky-
vanished in an instant in the void.
And you, buffeted by fate
like Titian's Cupid,
carefully caressing
you in your embrace,
pregnant with stillborn moments;
And how, Nature's
appalling indifference
is only our own Narcisist reflection
obscuring God's loving effort
to regenerate
the ravaged Earth,
my scarred years,
and your great heart.
IN THE PARK
Walking around in the park
among the vague background noise-
the woods, the fresh air,
the cool green grass to sit on.
In the filtered light beneath a tree,
the blurred playground heroics,
transpiring nearby, fade into oblivion;
far from fashionably dressed mothers,
who unctuously court social status
by ostentatious displays of parenting skills:
to vainly pursue the opinion of fools
is like asking a blind person
if they think you're beautiful;
where, I rest beside great banks of sunshine,
ensconced in shadows, and start to doze:
I enter the Twilight Zone of human consciousness.
What is a dream, what is real?
The empty form of my feet have become detached
and sit beside me, my listless shirt
hangs hollow from a limb-
it is the collapsed shape of my torso,
whose yellow color cheerfully calls out
to a small wren in the tree.
Watching, I am filled with wonder,
when I wake to a Nightmare, and dive in:
like a corpse being absorbed by the Earth.
GOD ON HIGH
If I deliberately caused others
to ruthlessly murder their mothers,
or fathers: aren't I that most heinous thing-
a patricide, or a matricide?
Absolutely, oh immortal God, yes!
Why else would I experience such shame,
such disgrace? Why else would I try,
like Cain, to hide my misery?
The life I lead is as respectable as death,
everything I own belongs to another,
it is all stolen goods - except, perhaps
a perverse sense of pleasure, blasphemously wielding God's power.
If only I could catch a plane and run away,
to hide like a terrorist -
in the Middle East, and die
under the dark branches of a weeping willow, and never emerge.
Black would lay me down to rest
in some abandoned nest of velvet;
the moon, pale as death,
would wash my cold corpse with silver dew.
And, maybe, God willing,
the wind and shadows will learn to forget
the sound of my name and the terrible things I do,
even though I wear a suite and work in an office.
JAMES McCLARTY
James McCarty is my father's name,
an empty name whose world I only vaguely know;
he died when I was a baby.
Standing beside his grave-
a mystery looms before me,
whose reality is beyond my comprehension-
on a hillside on the East side
drenched with sun and rain, as familiar to me
as my own face, which I visit four times a year;
but, this afternoon with its wakeful dream-
a city lies prostrate before me,
a wreckage wasted by evil events,
its smoldering ruins are all that remains
of its fine reality - Oh, "City that works".
I come here this afternoon
through streets plain as pain,
through memories pure with plenitude
where laughter echoes from a green Paradise
transformed into today's Hell of dark deeds,
wickedness and cruelties practiced by brutal people
with diabolical designs of power and privilege,
vigilantes who cruise in their cars guarding darkness.
In my measured step, in my earnest respect
I look at the rain, the valley, and the grave
I've come to see; past the people
whose deformed destinies are tributaries of fate.
The landscaped grounds are starting to look worn,
grounds where shadows silently stretch Eastward:
and I think of the little things that make up life,
reality here becomes exaggerated,
and in the afternoon's reflection we are apparent and apathetic,
and share the appalling feeling of useless time.
I sorrow at the loss inherent
in everyone's death-
their manner of smiling, their favorite show,
the qualities unique to themselves-
irretrievably lost patterns that for them
make the warmth of the World.
I know that every mundane moment
makes the most wonderful miracle,
no matter how obscure. I know
that this instant is a great miracle, too;
I finish cleaning up his grave, and paying my respect
to someone time has forgotten.
What is his reality like now, is it alien
to all that we know? His hospitality,
though grave, gives me and eternity
one more memory to savor; as I drive home,
among the city's self-serving delusions and perversions,
a creeping darkness spreads over the valley,
and the chill of Sunset fore shadowing
the freedom from today's torture,
the rounded routines that is called real.
I HELP MY WIFE
I help my wife
stack the soft white diapers,
we go to the store
and buy the smallest clothes imaginable,
we want everything to be natural.
Our baby will know,
they come from the depths of our souls.
Cotton, gladly gave its soft tufts:
in Autumn it was harvested for our baby
and made into many things.
It had hung like an ornament
gaily waiting to be picked,
bleached by the Summer Sun,
and soft as my wife's flesh,
where our baby patiently sleeps.
Wool, the swollen fleece of sheep,
is sheared, washed, and processed;
until, it is gentle,
and doesn't contain a single burr;
then, it too, will be made into many things,
like a pretty blanket to caress and protect our baby.
My wife buys perfumed powder
and fragrant lotions and pot-pourri
to go in with the baby's tiny clothes,
and when I ask why:
she laughs and says,
"Its so the baby will remember
its first days and think how sweet I smell."
Such small clothes,
they're bright as a rainbow.
Soon the baby will look at them
through his mother's frank, beautiful eyes
and it will laugh and think
that they are something to play with.
AGAIN
Again my face is painted black and white,
and I'm thrust into a chiaroscuro photograph- a miserable caricature!
Again barricaded behind a mask,
my shot misses its mystic mark.
I see through the threadbare souls
worn out with dismal schemes,
who even now don't know the monster of their minds
that buries their hearts in sadness and sorrow.
Most will never realize the golden Idol
of their beleaguered souls;
like lost artists damned and disgraced
who mutilate their faces and breasts,
the poor, pathetic souls-
they only have one hope left!
That death will dawn a black hole,
and bring to blossom the thistles of their thoughts.
ONE
I take your little hand in mine
and gently give it a squeeze.
This is a hard time. Be patient.
We will pleasantly endure it.
We will feel all of life,
its joys, its sorrows ,
we will be happy.
We are one, and have lived
during brutal periods,
in huge columns of silence.
This is a hard time.
Be patient my wife,
my lover, my friend,
not only for the sake of roses,
not only for the sake of Spring.
In this uncertain hour,
we need each other,
now more than ever,
to share our meals,
to share the setting Sun.
So, while our terrible time
blushes before infinity,
we will stand together
blessed to be as one.