The Lions of Nairobi are Escaping to the Suburbs

Washington Post Headline, September 8, 2016:

 

The Lions of Nairobi National Park Are Escaping to the Suburbs

 

Suburban lions, in a mere two score of years

will regret their move and wallow in nostalgia

for their former state of wildness. On instruments

not yet invented they will play and roar laments,

“Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end

when we hunted and killed instead of sauntering

through supermarket aisles tossing frozen brisket

into carts. In our glory days we stalked our prey

for hundreds of miles, tawny, sleek, and ripped, so fit.”

 

Mark my words, the day will come when the lioness

can’t take it anymore. As she recalls the joy

of killing, chuckling at the way the little boy

runs to his mama when the lioness turns her

hungry gaze on him and lets slip a rumbling growl,

she remembers the taste of blood and crunch of bone

and the soft pleasure of swallowing tender flesh.

she says, “Forget these steaks measured in mere ounces,

hell with political correctness,” and pounces.

 

They Call It Bunny Hunting

Washington Post Headline:

“They Call It Bunny Hunting”

 

Agile as Mowgli,

Bounding through the forest

Barefoot over rocks and creeks

Swinging on vines from tree to tree

Our little digital natives

Run free through the digital forest

Carefree as Baloo

Innocent as bunnies

Hopping under the canopy of illusion

That their agility removes

Their vulnerability to

The eyes of the King Cobra

Who waits in the branches above.

We Need New Plan

“U.S. Agencies Investigating Covert Russian Plan to Disrupt 2016 Elections.

The Kremlin may be sowing public distrust through a cyber- and disinformation campaign.”

–Headline, The Washington Post, September 5, 2016

 

To: Boris

From: Natasha

Re: We Need New Plan

 

Our old plan to disrupt ze election

Has been uncovered by Amerikan spies.

New better scheme is midcourse correction

At last, zey ask Natasha to advise.

Forget computers. Zey are onto us.

Cyber-attacks are passé (to turn phrase).

New plan is old school: greed, drunkenness, lust.

Zey never expect what worked in old days.

We flood U.S. with vodka, best in world.

Make cheap to appeal to their greed; and then,

We really knock out boys with Ukraine girls.

But, what we do for those who like ze men?

Shirtless pics of Putin put me in mood . . .

I know! Statues of Donald in ze nude!

 

 

September 11 in Newfoundland

September Eleventh in Newfoundland

 

This story of kindness, almost buried

Beneath the ash and the smoking rubble

Born of hate, suspicion, and fear, carried

Light, a defiant fist of grace doubled

Against the blinding darkness of the day.

Today is just one decade and a half

Since seven thousand airline refugees

Landed in Gander, and she wears her myth

Of gracious hospitality with ease,

With far more ease than I can make it real

As I spin the yarn to a child too small

To have lived through that day, too young to feel

The horror of watching the towers fall.

The darkness she believes. She, too, knows grief.

But mass kindness? She says, “now that beats all.

Such hospitality defies belief.”

“Think of an anti-matter barroom brawl,”

I say, “a fit of contagious kindness

where instead of mirrors shattering, walls

of fear and hate tumble down around us.”

She grinned slyly before we parted, said,

“Then who would mind hearing, ‘You started it.’”

Texas In Dead Heat

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-new-50-state-poll-shows-exactly-why-clinton-holds-the-advantage-over-trump/2016/09/05/13458832-7152-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_50statepoll-720a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

 

Headline, September 6, 2016:

Washington Post 50-State Poll:

“Texas in Dead Heat”

 

Just as the deadly heat of summer

Gives a subtle indication

That it will soon be lifted,

A new dead heat descends:

Polls have shifted.

After one or two bearable mornings,

When a walk around the block

No longer wilts and drenches us,

We hear this news: “Dead Heat.”

Only recently we licked the pencil point

And added up the body count

From summer’s deadly heat.

Now we learn it may extend

In a different kind of misery:

Mud-slinging. Phones ringing. Door bells dinging.

After forty years of straight red line dancing,

Will Texas return to a state

Of Western Swinging?

Paz no mas. Viva Bob Wills.

The Dividing Line

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Washington Post Headline, September 10, 2016

Who will Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ comment actually alienate?

                        The Dividing Line

I’m thinking of three thinkers, Clinton, Romney, Solzhenitsyn.

In the basket of deplorables, what percentage fits in?

Forty-seven, Romney said, are slackers, takers from the rest

Half of Hillary’s opponents are someone-phobic, at best.

If we rounded up the slackers, put phobics in a basket,

Put slackers on a moon-bound ship, and shot the basket past it,

Would the left-behind be better, more humble and productive?

It’s not a plan, just a thought, if not good, at least seductive.

But what if Solzhenitsyn got it right about our race?

We’d all be left with half a heart, the other half in space.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/10/who-will-hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables-comment-actually-alienate/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fix-47percent-1038am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory