BUFFALO-MAN OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING
(Ode to January 6, 2021, Feast-day of the Epiphany)
—Joseph Nolan
Who was Buffalo-Man,
Shirtless, under animal-skin,
Wearing a huge amulet
Under his buffalo horns?
Oh! Buffalo-Man!
I nominate thee
To be
Our Shaman of the Senate,
To cast chicken-bones
Upon the Senate floor
To summon the oracle,
The blind Goddess of Justice,
To loudly pronounce,
“I see no evil,
No evil here!
Carry on. Move along.
There’s nothing to see here, folks.”
I expected people to call
To talk about
The strangest day of all.
But they didn’t.
No-one called.
They must have been
Too appalled
To know what they should say.
I have learned
That when
Or if
The world collapses,
To not expect others to call
To discuss it,
Since they will be absorbed
In some great gravitational
Implosion
That sucks all the breath
Out of conversation.
But still,
There’s time to make a run
For pretzels and beer,
Leaving the TV behind
For a brief intermission
And wait for the next
Monumental demolition,
Resulting from duty’s dereliction,
In our strange-scape of the mind.
WE MAKE YOU AFRAID, LONGTIME!
—Joseph Nolan
We make you afraid,
Longtime!
Used to be
Fourteen days,
Now down
To ten to seven,
Like anyone
Remembers when
Any of this
Mattered
As we are all,
Jokers and mad-hatters,
Running around
In masks,
All the time,
As if we
Were fine,
But we’re not,
Not by
A long shot!
How could we
Be fine
When we’re
Wearing masks,
All the time?
ROUTE 66 IN THE SIXTIES
—Joseph Nolan
We were looking for someone
Who could stamp our book
At each stop along the way,
Across Americana
And the highway super-glade.
Descending into mystery,
Through the arc of time,
When a soda
Was a nickle
And songs were full of rhyme.
How the Beatles came
From nowhere
To our TV screens,
Covered with their hair-mops
We had never seen.
And Elvis,
Oh, poor Elvis!
It seemed we would let go
Of our beautiful bad-boy
Who shook his hips, so well!
Along the road were gas-pumps
At attention, for to fill
Our gas tanks to eternity,
From a big, yellow scallop shell.
We all just kept going,
Knowing all was well,
In our land of plenty,
Gathering scenes and stories
Later, for to tell!
THE MARKET VS. THE PEASANTS
—Joseph Nolan
Wow!
It’s a huge
Down, down!
What should I do
Today?
All my plans
Are not working,
I made just
Yesterday.
There’s a buzz-saw
In the market,
Cutting, this way
And that,
Just to make sure
We peasants
Never get
Too fat!
RESCUE ME!
—Joseph Nolan
Rescue me
From nothingness,
From barrenness,
From childlessness,
From spinsterhood,
And nothing good,
Old cold cuts
Through the years.
I am prepared
To root,
To blossom,
To seed,
To grieve,
Falling petals
From my leaves.
Life, love and loss
Are far better,
Though they come
At a huge cost,
Than emptiness
And nothingness
And living life alone.
A POEM FROM SOME AFTERNOONS
AND EVENINGS
by Michael Ceraolo, South Euclid, Ohio
May 10, 1886
"The Court does not wish to hear argument
on the question whether the provision
in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
which forbids a state to deny
to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws
applies to these corporations
We are all of the opinion it does"
As it was then, so it is now
TWO POEMS
—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento, CA
Caltrans is “evicting" bats and birds which have taken to roosting collectively under Sacramento freeway overpasses.
As, for instance, they installed “exclusion devices” during the Fix 50 project by placing hundreds of upside-down traffic cones to the underside of the W-X freeway in downtown Sacramento.
What does Caltrans have against California’s native wildlife that adapts to peacefully dwelling along with humans in their cities?
Why not, instead, respect and protect animals that don’t act as pests to human, as do rats, possums, skunks or raccoons?
Caltrans, also a government entity, apparently feels threatened and hates purple martins, white-throated swifts, black phoebes, starlings and swallows, as well as the bats that eat night-flying pesty insects such as mosquitos (Yes, bats also eat mosquitos that can carry deadly malaria and the Zika virus! And no, we don’t have any “vampire” bats who suck blood, either.)
I guess that, like there’s a “war on drugs”—which is really about being against peoples’ civil liberties in a free republic—there’s also a “war on nature” in its cities in the name of peoples’ “public safety”.
Consider that, in Southern California, there’s a city called San Juan Capistrano, with a 1700’s Spanish mission which lives along with its Cliff Swallows that migrate from South America and that inspired the 1940 song, "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano”, written by Leon René and covered by many music artists. For this Capistrano, the swallows are considered tourist attractions, not a nuisance for roosting and nesting everywhere possible, including inside the mission itself that is under historic preservation.
Perhaps there also needs to be a pop song dedicated to the birds and bats living in suburban Sacramento, so we could better appreciate them.
* * *
MY MORBID JUSTIN BIEBER PREDICTION AT WORK
Where I work at West Sacramento Vertiv Pride Industries, the radio station got switched from the 96.9 FM Eagle to 106.5 FM "The End”
A woman D.J. on The End broadcast just asked, “What’s your Justin Bieber prediction for 2021, tell me?” (she also particularly mentioned Bieber's wife is pregnant)
I just suddenly I blurted out, “Justin Bieber was found dead today, he was twenty-seven.”
At that point, out of the other ladies at my table, probably thinking I’m being freaky, came a “What??!”
For that, I responded something like, yeah he is turning twenty-seven this year, which means he better watch out that he doesn’t become a “Twenty-Seven Club Member”. Of course he doesn’t come up close to the “genius” of Jim Morison or Kurt Cobain, both of whom died at the age of 27. Anyway I do pray that a tragic ending doesn’t happen in 2021 to “The Bieber”, even if I don’t really like a lot his latest songs, like “Holy” or “Lonely”, that the media is playing a lot of.
I’LL BITE YOU LIKE AN ONION
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
just keep picking away at me
bit by bit
and you’ll get down to my core
of total irritation
I hold a bachelor’s degree
in music
which of course is easy to confuse
with a doctor of medicine
when I say there is pain in my knee
you ask, arthritis?
and in response to my blank stare, you state:
you can test it
So I pull out my trusty tuning fork
and touch it to my knee
by virtue of my degree
which sure ain’t no M.D.
TABOO TALK
—Caschwa
“Ethics” is not a particularly hard
word to spell, or pronounce, or
define, or use in a sentence, but
somehow it is excluded from
common conversation as if it is
on par with whispered, personal,
favorite sexual positions
consequently, our whole melting-
pot society congregates in discrete
social circles that make it a hard
and fast rule to never bring up the
subject of ethics, unless it is dealt
with as a scholarly, academic topic
which of course will leave out most
of the people who need to review
what ethics is and get refreshers
from time to time to avoid setting off
fires of indiscriminate disrespect,
and all that kind of stuff (i.e don’t
bring your Ph.D. in Ethics into inner-
city gang territory and expect a warm
reception)
maybe if we started putting “missing
manners” reminders on milk cartons,
like those notices of missing children….
DOWN THE WISHING WELSH
—Caschwa
turned off all the lights
got right into bed
skipped puzzles in the paper
eyelids felt like lead
weights denying thoughts
from entering my head
rain clouds between the ears,
oddities instead
of magic spells
curious atonal chords
accepted ribbons
put on awards
shows all night long
far away in some strange land
dropped straight down the wishing welsh
a pot of gold at hand
BY INVITATION ONLY
—Caschwa
who better than a docent, is it
to point out the best rooms to visit?
step carefully around broken glass
shards of our Democracy, alas
while neither of the Sergeant at Arms
took any real stand against the harms
we were warned this would be such a stew
all that was heard were doves crying “coup”
________________________
Today’s LittleNip:
TONGUE TIED
—Caschwa
a successful hip
replacement may bring out the
cheer, hip, hip, hooray!
they are still drafting
sunny, festive language for
repair to the groin
_______________________
Good morning to readers everywhere, and big thank-yous to today’s peppy contributors! Tonight, starting at 6:30pm [note earlier time], Sac. Poetry Center presents Socially Distant Verse Coast-to-Coast with Betsy Mars and Alan Walowitz online at Zoom: us04web.zoom.us/j/7638733462 (Meeting ID: 763 873 3462) Facebook info: www.facebook.com/events/388390338934939/.
This Thursday night from 7:15pm-9pm on Zoom, Frank Graham will host Frank Stanford: A Talk by John Amen at us02web.zoom.us/. Facebook info: www.facebook.com/events/1796752840489081/.
______________________
—Medusa
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