Godwin’s law was recently suspended.

Can gravity be very far behind?

Once our first amendment gets upended,

And libel laws amended, redefined,

We will read sweet things on the internet

From journalists afraid of getting sued

If they dare use a certain sobriquet

To point out how the president’s unglued

From civility and democratic practice.

With comment sections thoroughly censored

We’ll never dare to use the word “fascist”

Once we’ve obediently surrendered.

We will all spend our writing time outside

Floating, while watching pigs fly, mystified.

Sonnet Before the End of Days

November 5, 2016

 

All the things that matter trigger madness

In a nation gulping anxiety

As an addict guzzles against sadness,

Emptiness, and haunting mortality.

 

Will the sun rise? Will all the planets track

Their normal orbits on November nine?

Or will they wobble, travel out of whack

If the Evil One (whether yours or mine)

 

Receives the title President-elect?

Will these fault lines in our democracy

Heal with time, or prove, by their effect,

Our ruler now is named Insanity?

 

Let’s all take a breath, let our anger wilt

Lest we destroy all our ancestors built.

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.

 

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 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