Go back to One Samuel chapter eight—
That’s when the struggle that still haunts began.
The priests were running things, and doing great
For themselves—they got the loot, ran the clan.
But folks rebelled: “We want a king to rule!”
Old Sam tried his best—warned that evil kings
Would rape their daughters, draft their sons, and fuel
Their reign with nasty tax on everything.
They got their king—good looking, rich, and tall—
Along with endless stress—who really ruled?
Universal struggle, fierce, mindless brawls
Twixt clerics and their monarchs never cooled.
Solomon built his temple with corvée—
Monarchs pray, kneel to kiss the bishop’s ring—
Some foreign states collect tax, to this day,
To help those churches do their awful things.
Not hard, I guess, to understand that fling
We read about—that flash German bishop
Spent 40 million bucks to tune his digs up.
Clergy rules! The proof: our Bishop of Bling.
(10/30/13)
I sit here, determined to write
Some lyric verse
Celebrating joy
With, perhaps, a comic lilt.
I squeeze my brain
To press out juice
Sweet with cheer,
Contentment,
Spiced, perhaps, with plain
Serenity.
The stuff we yearn
To hear and taste.
But then
The daily news intrudes.
Over a hundred killed
Stampeding to a Hindu shrine.
A schoolboy shoots a teacher
And himself.
Scores of innocents killed
By careless drone strikes.
Egyptian Islamists
Raid a wedding party
At a Coptic church.
Six bombed to death
On a Russian bus.
Seven bombed to death
On a Pakistani train.
Our largest bank
Offers thirteen billion
To cure its criminality.
Twenty thousand children
Die every day
From malnutrition
And preventable disease.
Twenty thousand, every day.
All this, an iceberg’s
Puny tip.
How?
How can we heed
The happy refrain,
And just, dammit,
Just
Let the sun shine in?
(10/23/13)
For L. T.
One of the regulars down at the courts,
Larry, is eighty now famous for coifed
Hair, and immune to our mild, teasing snorts.
Educated children, grandchildren, waft
About his soul. He and his family
Have shared both mazel and tsouris enough—
Proud emotion, piqued by the awesome glee
Of birth and joy, darkened by the rebuff
Of illness and bone crushing accident.
Yet, through it all, he has remained unique—
Quietly dependable, provident,
He watches over us, cares for the bleak,
Helps even the drunk thieves who hang about,
Picks up the tab. We watch him from our bench—
He represents (we know and want to shout)
The very definition of a mensch.
(10/20/13)
Mazel = luck; Tsouris = trouble; Mensch = human in the highest sense.
Twenty-four hundred years ago a Greek
Playwright named Aristophanes produced
A comedy in which one smart woman
Ended the Peloponnesian Wars.
How did she manage that? Simple, really.
She convened a meeting of the women
From the warring states, had them all agree
There would be no sex until their foolish
Mates stopped fighting. Remarkably, that worked
Despite pleas from stiff burdened messengers.
A corollary proposal might end
Our vicious modern wars effectively.
Let us adopt a universal law
Requiring ev’ry male from sixteen
To sixty—ev’ry male in this grim world—
To get laid ev’ry day of his cold life.
(To be fair, a few medical waivers
Might be granted, if clearly justified.)
The result, pleasant and benevolent,
Leaves no testosterone to fuel those wars.
(10/16/13)
Two friends of mine,
Both over eighty,
Are flying to Rome
Next week.
They’ve been there before,
Several times.
Why, I ask myself,
Are they submitting
(First class notwithstanding),
To the anguish
Of international flights—
The searches,
The suspect shoes,
Forbidden fluids,
Interminable hours
Locked in a plane?
In my heart I know
They would prefer
The simple pleasure
Of serene routine:
A movie, a play,
A pleasant dinner out
At that amiable
Nearby restaurant.
In my heart I know
The reason.
They sublimate
Their real desires,
Submit to discomfort,
Painful foreign holidays.
The women they’re attached to
Are too young.
(10/3/13)
Each day I limp down to the courts
At nine o’clock and after noon,
Sit on a bench with aged cohorts
To tease and smile, kill time, commune.
We rant about the messy world,
Tell jokes, admire female skin,
Exhibit energy unfurled,
Expressing merriment, chagrin.
Night falls, the energy is spent.
We take to beds and lie awake,
Our aches and pains and old torments,
Plain venomous, entwine like snakes.
The dark is more than literal,
Becomes a metaphor for hope
Drowned in old age, funereal—
Our dreams a blank kaleidoscope.
(9/29/13)
