Birthday speech

Everybody is whispering 

No

Everybody is screaming but my hearing is bad

and their screams reach me as whispers.

I don’t know what their problems are

I don’t understand what is going on over there 

Over there over there

Why don’t they speak up?

My creeping deafness annoys me.

Their muted cries anger me

Why don’t they speak up?

Why can’t they plainly articulate 

Step by step a reasonable explanation of the situation 

because 

I can’t see through the flames that engulf them

And their cries are buried in the roar of the collapsing structure 

And I leap out of the way of the fleeing refugees.

Hey everybody, Cool out!

Brothers and sisters, Cool out!

I want to go back to bed and put the pillows over my head

and turn on the old music

Turn it up real loud 

Country Joe

Well come on all you big strong men

Uncle Don needs your help again 

Got himself in a terrible jam 

Way down yonder in

Where the hell are we?

Uncle Don is confused and stupid 

but the explainers try to explain what is plain

idiocy.

It’s not a war, it’s an excursion, he said 

Did someone suggest he use the word “incursion”

but that was an unfamiliar word and he confused it with the familiar word?

Tourists on excursions came to his casino

and to him Iran is another big casino 

where Desperate Don can try his luck

and bet the nation’s wealth on a spin of the 

Wheel of Misfortune 

And the wheel’s still in spin 

and there’s no telling whose number is up 

when it comes to a stop.

“Incursion”

That word triggered my elderly memory machine.

Incursion was the word Nixon found to name the bombing of Cambodia 

I’m sorry to bore you with ancient history and old man memories, but once I get to gabbing I can’t help myself,

and Nixon’s Incursion — nobody knew what the word meant, 

and as Clean Gene McCarthy helpfully pointed out, it has no verb form that makes grammatical sense.

You can incur a debt, but not a military operation.

So incursion was the perfect word for his purpose,

which was to obscure his purpose which was to

Invade and Attack and Expand the war he was elected to end and beat Southeast Asia into submission until he achieved Peace With Honor.

Kids who were supposed to fight this shit weren’t buying it and maybe their parents were less eager to have their boys come home in a box. A dignified transfer, they call it now.

The expansion of the war wasn’t too many months after the story of the My Lai Massacre went public. The military tried to cover it up. I read about it in Reader’s Digest and began to realize all the Truth Justice American Way propaganda was bullshit. Our Manifest Destiny was powered by slavery and genocide. My Lai Wounded Knee Corlear’s Hook — ever hear of that? On and on —

Rape! Murder!

Come on all you big strong men.

Look what’s happening out in the streets,

Marching charging feet, boy, 

but not in Palm Beach Gardens, where I sat on the living room floor, sixteen years old, sick with mononucleosis, in front of the stereo,

listening to WMUM, the underground radio station, play songs of revolution and the Revolution was in our heads for a little while — can you feel the rumblings as your head comes crumbling down and you know what I mean? 

I’m sorry I’m sorry, inflicting the boomer soundtrack on you and I’m and I’m rambling and ranting, I know.

But it’s my birthday and you insisted I make a speech

and this is all I’ve got 

War

The wrathful deity is a projection of the soul.

The Republic is the soul writ large, says Plato.

“Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” says the Secretary of War.

The Party is concerned that the war could harm its chances in the midterm elections. The Other Party hopes the war’s unpopularity could work for them in the elections.

The President plans to attend the dignified transfer of the dead bodies.

The President does not make decisions in a vacuum, says his spokeswoman.

You only want to talk about the dead to make the President look bad.

We consult the scribes and priests and look at the New York Times and FOX and the Revelation of St John

Recall the stories you have heard all your life about Armageddon 

Stories about the sky falling down. Stories about the Great Pumpkin, or The Revolution, or The Last Days.

This is one of those critical times when certain archetypes return.

Such as Nero, memorably portrayed as 666 by John the Revelator, returning as Napoleon to Pierre in War and Peace. When Pierre thinks he has decoded a prophecy he feels called to assassinate Napoleon. He fell for the fallacy of taking apocalyptic literature literally.

Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple and warned his followers to be prepared to become refugees.

I don’t remember the stories telling us exactly what to do when the sky is falling down. 

Watch out for falling debris.

Watch out for falling empire.

Know where the exits are when your castle is burning.

Don’t panic 

Pay attention 

Update your Go bag 

Help your neighbor 

Love your enemies 

Breathe 

See? I got nothing 

I’m an empty handed painter drawing crazy patterns on your sheets 

I steal words from old songs because I don’t know what to say 

A hard rain is gonna fall all day every day for five or six or seven weeks or years or whatever it takes to achieve the objectives we haven’t yet identified 

Gimme Shelter

War is just a drone strike away

Instant karma is gonna get us

People Get Ready

I’m planning to participate in the March 28 No Kings Day events whatever they are. 

Release all the Trump/Epstein files before he bombs another elementary school 

Thoughts and Prayers and Actions and Revolution 

We need to become a crisis intervention movement

Decapitate the regime, I think and pray. 

If my thoughtdreams could be seen.

Better free your mind as well.

Watch your step

 

The winter wonderland is melting away and there is dog shit everywhere.

Yesterday I slipped on some ice, but wasn’t hurt. Only my sense of well being was damaged. By “sense of well being” I mean, the confidence in my ability to walk without falling down .

Today my toaster oven would not toast. Am I supposed to eat my English muffin raw? Hard times.

I’m an old man.

On the way to work I stop at the Marketplace to get something to eat and the big TV screen says that 33 years ago today the World Trade Center was bombed.

A flash of confusion— How old am I? — No, the first attack. 1993. I lived in Kansas City. I knew my way around KC. I was a delivery driver. Car radio on the highway. Nirvana, Beck, Golden Oldies, NPR. Everywhere I went I could smell barbecue and people had Rush Limbaugh on, stirring up fake scandals. Bill and Hillary. I try to remember what was going on around then. When was the Ruby Ridge incident? And David Koresh at Apocalypse Ranch or whatever it was in Waco. 

I think of my friends in Kansas City. That was over thirty years ago. How old am I?

Don’t worry. I remember. I pass the cognitive test, just like our President.

Every year seems apocalyptic.

Waco was April 19 and the Oklahoma City bombing was April 19 because the Battle of Concord was April 19 and here the embattled farmer stood and fired the shot heard around the world and I began reading about the mythology of the militia movement and the World Trade Center bombing killed six people and the Oklahoma bombing killed how many again? 167. Still the worst domestic terrorist attack unless you believe 9/11 was an inside job then don’t talk to me. Truthers trigger me.

Five years after the 93 bombing I’m working at the World Trade Center and receiving deliveries in the same underground loading dock where the truck bomb was detonated.

Tread carefully on this ice but especially where you don’t see ice because that is the trap set for you. I’m fortunate I’m not sore from the fall and that I didn’t break, didn’t shatter like that mirror I broke on Friday 13.

I get off the J train at Broad Street, same as I did from 1998 to 2001. Now I walk South, very carefully toward the harbor at the center of the world.

 

Stand!

 A couple of years ago one of my nieces, the one who lives in Minnesota, was visiting her mother’s church in Alabama. The pastor of this church claims to operate in the realm of prophecy. He has long hair and wears a long leather coat and plays electric guitar in the church band. His interpretation of scripture is strange, often surreal, and focused on a combination of prosperity gospel and apocalypse. The church is a family business much like the church I was raised in, in that the whole family is involved in the preaching and singing, only they are reportedly raking in millions, unlike First Baptist of Palm Beach Gardens. My mother had a job at Pratt and Whitney and was the principal breadwinner. My sister played piano. Taught Sunday school. 

And my parents were lifelong Democrats. This other church is of the pro-Trump faith, comparing him to King David because he is anointed and somehow fulfilling the End Times prophecies of the pastor. 

Such is their confusion.

When my niece visited, one of the self proclaimed prophets was behind the pulpit, alarming the congrégation with scary stories about children becoming transgender furries due to satanic plots in public schools, repeating stories our President tells at his rallies and in the Oval Office and  in bed on his phone and talking in his sleep, constantly rehearsing and revising a mythology that explains the universe to his followers, a universe with Donald Jesus Christofascist Trump at the center.

The person who was teaching that day told a story about a man whose child said he identified with a cat, so the father supposedly commanded his child to sleep in the barn and eat mice. This must have got a laugh from the congregation but my niece was horrified. She jumped up and shouted Bullshit! She accused them of condoning child abuse. She told them she is both a mother and a schoolteacher and what these fake prophets were saying about public schools was false. Then gave the church a two fisted double bird flip and left the building.

I heard about this incident from her, her brother, and her mother. The family was in disagreement about it, but I thought she did the right thing. My sister said she was proud of her for taking a stand. She told me that she and her husband raised their kids to think independently.  But my sister still believed in Trump.

I think her church gave her a sense of community and belonging.

When Betty was in her last days we didn’t argue about Trump anymore. I postponed visiting her because I don’t like flying and we’d seen each other in Chautauqua a few years ago (I took a bus). I knew if I went to her church the Holy Spirit might demand I make an even bigger scene. Betty and I said our goodbyes on the phone.

Betty died before she could vote to re-elect Trump. She admired Marjorie Taylor Green. MTG’s rethinking of her opinion of Trump over the Epstein Files helps me to wonder if my sister might have also had a change of heart about some things. Would she have listened to the survivors? Green said that the President told her if he released all the files unredacted his friends would be hurt. His friends in the Epstein class. I want to believe that at some point in the last year some line was crossed, some hearts changed, but I don’t know if the spell will soon be broken. He still has supporters.

It is no oversight that some of the President’s friends´ names were redacted from the files released so far. And I am certain that it was no accident that the names of some of the Epstein/Trump survivors were not redacted. It is a deliberate act of retaliation by Trump. He is punishing the accusers and intimidating any witnesses who have not yet spoken.

If you don’t understand why those girls let themselves be dominated and degraded by the creep in the White House you need to understand that we are all letting ourselves be dominated and degraded by a corrupt and cruel system. The Epstein/Trump crimes and the continued coverup disgraces the nation.

I thought what my niece did was comparable to the Gospel story of Jesus acting up in The Temple. Jesus warned he would divide families and start intergenerational warfare. Maybe God chose her to do a necessary prophetic action because I chickened out.  I thought of her when the protest in a church in St. Paul was in the news and Don Lemon was arrested for committing an act of journalism.  If Jesus of Nazareth walked into that Trump cult church and started to teach about loving the stranger and loving your neighbors, actual Bible teaching, that ICE preacher would’ve had him killed or deported. 

Cruelty is the style of the Trump Cult. They have no good ideas. No New Deal. No New Frontier. No Morning in America. Just the political equivalent of a low budget exploitation movie, a splatter flick. Just cheap shocks to fill the screens of our information devices. Fascist porn.

America is a disgrace. We need to change. In evangelical terms, we need to repent. The people of Minneapolis are doing what they can. My niece has been participating in the resistance and bearing witness. Many people are doing what they can.

Where do you draw the line ?

When will you change your mind?

When will you stand up?

When will I?

Liberty on ice.