Love at a Reasonable Price

A book of his evil.
It’s not slander.
Just a gentle call to his heart and mind
that they might remember his soul in kind.
It’s not a rambling.
But a careful song to bring him home again.

Why he has he done these things?
And how has he spun this web of lies
within which he catches his own wings
within whose sticky threads he hides
his own deeper heart and wiser mind
?
How has he turned away from an active
search for God’s churning fire
that his own gear works might conspire
to spin him out in linked cadence
with the Love that has made us
all
everyone
in Its image
bright as sun
kind beyond limits
?

He travels the wide paths
on a wooden horse whose belly holds sneak attacks
He fights for the Lord but the Lord shares his prejudices
He fights for the Good but the Good’s not what he alleges

I’m sorry I cannot be a rudder to his hull
I’m sorry I cannot be an anchor ‘gainst the pull
of every ancient nick and tear
strange wounds his chest must bear
strange tales his heart must tell
in the cage where spring feeds the well

He’s better than me in his person
He moves with more discipline and less sin
He’s wiser than me in his habits
Why should he harken my yaps yips?

But this is crime this lie
A crime deep and wide enough to swallow a nation
to loose a people from the prize

sovereign over their own fate they alone say when
a leader steps aside
and another gives it a try

Unless he win
and we lose
He will realize that he is we
but
too late

To twist the constitution
into sleazy scissors for to cut out
those parts that comprise the heart
of a government by for and of the people
So evil
so bleak
so cynical
such nihilism
in the name of God’s grand plan
A forced faith is no faith at all
The end of people-rule for the sake of forced faith
is a crime against God and man

I need a cigarette
or three
I need a bottle of wine
you’ll see
Give me that and I’ll be fine
not just for the moment
but for all the moments to come
and not only that but even more
Give me music videos and wine
And I promise I will slip to the sublime
I’ll stay there I’ll pray there
I’ll be a saint today and later
an angel in heaven’s host
I just need another toast
with cheese and an eighty’s hit
yes please I’m sure that’s exactly it
the piece I’ve been missing
The nails are bent in, too garbled for kissing
but if I could just drink past my gut
why then I should slink into what
is love and Love is God and wife
is everything whole, sweet and nice
oh yes I’m sure
Just a little something
all answers to learn
and the bells of heaven to ring
that’s why I so much yearn
for a drink
not for my own sake
but just to think
past my own model and make
beyond myself
this time it’s bound to work!
if not, then, well
I’ll lower the glass, stand with a jerk
and march right out that door
into the open air the sprawling moor
into freedom
yes I swear
even if I here falter
I will surely tear
myself from the alter
of creature comfort
and ego tripping
I’ll move past dumb hurt
And prides-on-shames slippings
you’ll see

Author: Glug Glug
Editor: What Tut
Production staff: Bartleby “the pouting whale” Willard & Amble “drunk on tainted loves” Whistletown
Copryight: Andy “I haven’t existed in years and years!” Watson

What can we do that’s any good?
What’s the poetry that halts this evil?
What’s the song that mirrors them to themselves
In time

Lest they sin against God and man
As they must if cast they do their votes for crime
Praying beseeching the God of violence
To pulverize their estranged brothers and sisters
Into a soft and mealy pulp with no bounce to oppose block or dodge
their righteous fists

What perfect essay
What surgically precise and spiritually explosive
Advertisement for the gentler wiser way
Might we perform
To save them from themselves

Lest they
bow Cain to jeer piddle shit upon poor Able
Supposed to be their brother
Supposed to be cosigner and joint administrator and heir
Of the fertile meadows, deep forests, sprawling homestead, meandering river, silverware and crockery

If they so continue
Their immortal souls will surely suffer

If they so waltz on
They’ll join the fools the rabid dogs they spittle-spilling hyenas
They’ll quaking shake at the gates of Hell
To learn
From God always mild as a summer breeze
how they were
what they did
how they cut
the bellies of their brothers sisters and own howling selves
how they
Exulted in fantasies, bunching scrunching mutilating and otherwise forcing Reality
(so infinite clear true and kind)
to fit their wildest conspiracy theories (doggedly contemptuous of truth, reason, clarity, and the gentle Truth that guides these careful, soul-respecting arts)
Not content with a reality of madcap lies
They needed to knead the soul of things
up into their bundle of desperate perversions —
false, hollow, cruelly proud, and maniacally certain tales
of God, self, other,
and all the gears and levers
connecting us to our little times and larger timelesses.

Where is the miracle?
A poetry so pure
So fair and just
To gently their souls stir
‘Til catch they must
Themselves in the act
Of hacking the cords
That keep the monsters back
The boring old demon hoards
Of might makes right
Of “true” and “false” as weapons
Of power held through fright
A government incompetent
For governing’s not really the goal
When rulers break the people’s hold
On their shared nation

How to show them themselves?
Sharing’s become such a pain
They’ll trade a momentary spell
of pushing our faces in the mud
for their future and their children’s too
Anything, anything to tell us screw you screw you fuck you you losers you

I’m out of breath
I’m out of ideas
I’m out my depth
My mind’s a freeze
Of too much root beer float
Gulped in a mindless rush
As crinkle-crisp leaves wrote
Scathing symphonies so lush
Rich in imagery, those limpid tunes
Full of counterpoint and musical irony
Leaves scratching invisible sound-wounds
Upon cement road’s rough conformity

I’m panting and feeling dumb
Around the climbing tree I swung
For minutes out of time I flung
My fool self around the hallowed trunk
To think to feel to move past this clunk
This empty sordid boring hatful junk
I wanted to help
In a way that wasn’t mean
I hear them as they yelp
Roving in packs to strip clean
Our bones and our dreams
Which they say are but schemes
And perverse acts child sacrifice
Drunken orgies to the gods of vice

What went wrong?
It got stressful.
We stopped talking it out
The myths grew on and on
And the truth got lost in shouts
About who sullied the song
We used to share
Who first it was that quit the love
Who first no longer cares
And who has failed our God above
And what rules God commands
And what rules are just the other side’s demands

Now what?
Tired
Too tired
Can’t think
No ideas
Out of my depths
Drowning in this riddle
That my time and place have posed
Like a drunk face down in his own spittle
He was trying to go beyond the boasts
That clinking glasses drew from boisterous youth
But now he wakens to a nauseous earthy hollow disappointing truth

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: Andy Watson

You know what?
Donald Trump worked against democratic norms, rules, institutions, and balances of power in his presidency.
Then in 2020 he spent months trying to lie and cheat the American people out of their sovereign decision in the 2020 presidential election.
Then we had these four years for the country to say that that behavior is not Okay.
And the GOP took that time to not repudiate Donald Trump’s actions, but to at every level bow to him, excuse and/or echo his crimes.

What you GOP have done is say, “Oh, exchange democracy for a system in which the president is a dictator who uses law to perform crimes against the law and the citizens of the nation?? Hmmmm, well, and we’d get to win and shove the democrats faces into the dirt, make them bleed a little or maybe even a lot — not sure how much, guess we’ll all find out together — ? Hmmmm. You know what: Okay, sure! I’m in!”
That’s what you’ve done.

How is that not a knife in my gut?
How is that not a crime against both of us and against the human spirit?
How is that not a crime against God and man?
It is.
It very much is.

What am I to do?
What am I to do with what you have done?
You’ve lined up with political evil.
What is the logical result of your submission to political evil?
If you win, political crime’s primed and ready to go: a government turned against its own citizens, using the tools of law to suppress freedom, justice, and competency in the name of “I WIN FOREVER, SUCKERS!”

What you are doing is agreeing to crime, to evil.

What am I to do?
You have hurt me so much.

Now we gently stop you, or you cruelly oppress first us, and then yourselves.
Because once you put crime in charge, crime and nothing and no one else, is in charge.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

A wife floats in on butterfly wings
A loving family parachutes to the ground
A vocation’s carried by elephant caravan
And dancing deer share insights profound

Her dew-wet wings enfold your nakedness
Their well-placed faith restores your own
Its clear necessity: a blessedness
Their prancing speaks like God on the phone

It’s great how all now falls right into place
Even Michael Johnson apologizes
for lies about the presidential race!
All’s well, and everyone wises up
Because your wife finally floated in
on beautiful gossamer butterfly wings.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copryright: AMW

They are so wrong.
Whose madness exceeds whose?
They are so wrong; doesn’t make him so right.

Oh the project so vital

Except the project is a waste
And without the project he’s a ghost
For there was only ever this work
And now the work seems like noise
And all he ever does is waste
time energy effort passion

The project is done
But without the project, there’s nothing
that matters, nothing that counts
It’s been lonely, but there was a purpose
It’s gotten grim, but there was a solace
It’s worn boring, but there was a point
Now it’s jut lonely, grim, boring, no point

The project is lost
But without the project, there’s only work
not the worthy work of the project, but the empty work of treading water
Without the project, there’s only effort
but not the breathing effort of Beatuy, but only the gasping effort of organizing your things as you wait to die

The project meant something
Jobs and paying rent meant nothing
The project meant something
Paying US$ to a touch a woman’s shoulder
meant
means
is
leftover confetti
water in hull the pumps ringing and orders too

The water rises slowly
He says he’s sorry to the wall still facing the wall in timeout forever
The water rises gently
But drowning makes you struggle, thrashing about, disturbing the slow and gentle movement of the cold salty sea
The water rises slowly
He tells them it’s a mix-up, but he’s not sure who he’s talking to or exactly what about or why everyone’s allowed to know except him
The water rises quietly
He remembers nothing except for trying to remember and for trying to tell them what he feels and what kind of memories those feelings seem to contain even as they constrain them, swallow them, leave him only with a cut they don’t want to hear about he doesn’t want to talk about but in time it wears you through more than just loneliness and frustration something deeper hollower more consumingly exhausting

Different people on different slopes
with different ideas and different jokes
But all altogether wrong, almost as wrong as they are indifferent to the truth of this faltering pirouette
Because they don’t care, not near nor far is there a glance that wants to while
long enough to know

What slices your gut
What twists the blade ever deeper
What laughs you down into shag rug on plywood floor
what wins by making you always lose
what wins like Trump wins like crime wins like abuse wins like lies win like might-makes-right wins like meanness wins like cruelty wins
what wins like that, with such violence that win-lose inevitably becomes lose-lose, that calls win-win just a loser’s whine

Whatever
The project will stand again
or it won’t
His wife will float in on butterfly wings to rescue him from the lonely hurt and dogging frustration
or she won’t
He will stand upright within himself
or he won’t
The country will choose to share or thuggery will choose itself more and more, with evermore insistent dishonesty and cruelly violent certainty
And these strange trickling sounds that he’s been told are just the vapors of his own madness will either invent real reasons to justify real harm or will fade away into the silence some say they already are
So whatever
It’s not as if
He’s done a great job
dressing the wound and returning nobly and effectively to the holy wars
It’s not like that
It’s more like
a gray squirrel
flinch-flickering his bushy tail
as he bounds across the grass
at the sure-bark of a fatold darkbrown proudround oak tree
with the worms
mindlessly
(or, if his bio-theology’s correct, almost but not quite completely mindlessly)
chugging dirt
in every possible direction
through the soft pitchblack earth below
and some child
crosslegged on the soft bending grasses
picking dandelions
late now in the season
dandelions turned white and puffy
dandelions you can blow into the wind
a wind to carry the tiny fluff-tipped, seed-ballasted sticks
here and there
this way and that
eager to go and never you mind

I’ve heard of a birthday ledger
where I can move a few dollars
to make you a little richer
I guess that’s what’s called for

Here in the bee-loud glen,
where our cartwheels kick the sun,
and we with flowers laugh, to remember when
the world was new and all was one —
a giddy churning joy.
But God giggles deeper than the noise,
so nothing’s ever changing —
just Laughter rearranging.

Copyright: AMW

Weird is not the problem

The problem is not weird people or nasty people or deplorable people
The problem is embracing lying as a political tool, might-makes-right as a value system, autocracy as a form of government, and bowing to an autocratic regime (where talking back means risking the safety of you and your loved ones) as our new way of life.
That is the problem here.

Mean is the problem
Dishonest and manipulative is the problem
Forcing your will on others is the problem
Pretending your will is God’s will is the problem
Choosing autocracy over democracy is the problem

Imagining you can trust a thugocracy to do your bidding is the problem.
Governments of the Donald for the Donald and by the Donald don’t serve anyone except Donald.
Their only question is: How to keep Donald important, powerful, wealthy, fawned over?
Such a government cannot govern well for the simple reason that governing well is not even a goal.
And such a tyrannical temper-tantrum and face-stuff of a government will do whatever Donald thinks will help Donald consolidate power: maybe today abortion is illegal; maybe tomorrow there’s a one-child rule, and after that you have to have abortions — whatever it takes to keep the power in one tiny little place, in one hot little hand!

Not that if Donald succeeds in turning We-the-People into We-the-Donald, this nation will always remain We-the-Donald
Not even the great* Donald Trump can abide forever
However, We-the-Donald becomes We-the-Vance (or whoever hangs on long enough) much more easily and naturally than it goes back to being We-the-People

*[“He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” the US president reportedly told Republican donors.

“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day,” Trump added, according to CNN which obtained a recording of what it described as an upbeat, joke-filled speech.]
[‘Maybe we’ll give that a shot’: Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping’s power grab from The Guardian, published March 3, 2018]

Weird is not the problem today
Just like deplorable Trump supporters weren’t the problem in 2016

The problem existed somewhat in 2016; but is much worse today — now that these eight years have taught Donald that his style is more dictator than democratic president; and now that the Republican Party has managed to sideline those willing to stand up to Donald lying about the 2020 election and trying to steal the 2020 election, while also elevating those most willing to embrace Donald’s lying and cheating.

The problem is that Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president of the United States — largely because he’s never learned to value serving anything except his own greeds and ego-trips

The problem is that Donald Trump is a conman conning us all — no matter how we vote — out of the democratic process.
He is a selfish fool and systems that reward selfish foolishness are corrupt systems.
A healthy system rewards selfless service and wise speech and action.

A healthy system does not seriously consider handing power over to a man who worked to undermine democratic norms, rules, procedures, and institutions in his first term of office; who blatantly for months tried to steal the last presidential election; who continues to lie about that election and everything else; who routinely warms us up to the idea that he’s going to weaponize the DOJ to go after political rivals, punish the media for criticizing him, fix everything so his supporters won’t ever have to vote again, and otherwise
— as abusers do —
slowly make his way to our shoulders, down our backs, around to our bellies, then back again but now to the lower back, then caressing the tops of our buttocks, then …

Please let’s all here and now stop Trump
And then continue to work together to demand that our representatives in government
tell the truth
(Donald’s lying is off the [previous norm’s] charts; if that becomes the new norm, how will democracy survive?)
and put the democratic process, checks and balances, and the universal rule of law ahead of their own power.

Please let’s together gently but firmly say
No! to the GOP
until the GOP says
No! to Donald and
No! to those who would tag along with Donald and risk our shared democracy for the power to force their will on the rest of us.

The problem is not weird people or nasty people
The problem is embracing lying as a political tool, might-makes-right as a value system, autocracy as a form of government, and bowing to an autocratic regime (where talking back means risking the safety of you and your loved ones) as our new way of life.
That is the problem here.

We’re trying to win the hearts and minds of the nation
We’re fighting for the soul of the nation

“Weird” “nasty” “deplorable” are put-downs
And put-downs are never the whole truth

How can we fight for the whole truth unless we stick with
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God?

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

…

By 2016, four decades of neoliberal governance had created inequalities of income and wealth not seen since the 1920s. Labor unions were in decline. Workers received a smaller and smaller share of the profits they produced. Finance claimed a growing share of the economy but flowed more into speculative assets (like risky derivatives) than into productive assets (factories, homes, roads, schools) in the real economy.

…

Mr. Biden’s ambitious public investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, jobs and clean energy recalled the muscular role of government during the New Deal. So did his support for collective bargaining and the revival of antitrust law. It made him one of the most consequential presidents of modern times.

…

When he [Biden] broke with the era of neoliberal globalization, reasserting government’s role in regulating markets for the common good, he did so with little fanfare or explanation. He did not acknowledge that his own party had been complicit in the policies that had deepened the divide between winners and losers. Perhaps he was guided more by political instinct than thematic vision; perhaps he did not want to highlight his break with the market-friendly philosophy of the president he had served. His American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act — in the end, it all made for impressive policy but themeless politics. His presidency was a legislative triumph but an evocative failure.

[From How Harris Can Win, guest essay by political philosophy professor Michael J. Sandel, published in The NY Times July 27, 2024]

“The bird upon the wing
Will never give his power
To the man who would be King”
[John Stewart, “The Man Who Would Be King”,
From his 1992 album Bullets in the Hourglass]

“Ah, once
We were dreamers on the rise
We were the sun
Where the sun never shines
And we were gold
Where the night bird only flies
Oh, that’s a long time you know
For that kind of wind to blow
A long time ago
We were dreamers on the rise”
[John Stewart, “Dreamers on the Rise”,
From his 1985 album The Last Campaign]

“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
[Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”,
Written 1833, published in his 1842 collection Poems]

What would we?
Lucky folk who share the keys
to a people-led land
Gripped not so well as we’d please
But here yet, still in our hands.

Here, oh magic spell,
rare and precious well
where human hearts combine
beyond pomp or empty swell
to together sound and find
Our path ourselves to tell
Needn’t be an oligarch to keep one’s children safe
Don’t have to swallow lies and crime for their sakes
Why, here a president’s a temporary assistant
to us all — to what we all together are!
Here while we yet listen well and only assent
to those ready to serve this brittle star,
that we might soonday know
a yet wider wiser glow

What form we?
A poem, a thought?
Ah let it
Coalesce around
A Beauty
that answers only
to the Love
that chooses all.
Help us
together sing

Kamala and us all are
Not heroes saints or saviors
Just people
With jobs to do

Before the Civil War
Before the great depression
And lately again
So much money at the top
So many feeling squashed

Maybe this time
No great calamity
Merely a shared vision
Maybe this time
A shared heart song
could be enough
to stir the pot
share the wealth
with meaningful work
and a safety net
that complements
work thought democracy community

Don’t worry, Mr. Big Shot!
It’s always way better
to be a billionaire
In our free USA
Than an oligarch
Wrapped in Putin
and his bloody fingernails
You can still be so rich
as to do whatever
You ever want
Just not quite so rich
so as to
buy our government

Besides
People who rule for power
Don’t govern well
!It’s not their goal!
And so in the long run
(even setting aside
having always to decide
between abetting political crime and looking after your loved ones)
everyone does better in a country
where the leaders know they are working for their countrymen,
and that just for a time — just for a time lending a hand

How to work together
For ourselves and each other?
Our job is to listen well
And act with great care
Gently the truth to tell
Gently this treasure share
and expand,
that all in the land
might better stand,
might better lend a hand

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

What sneaky sleuth slays what mystery and dream
What rascal truth hollows sympathy and fame
?
Whose violence rings the heaping hills, where gleams
The red swollen setting sun, ‘midst a song of blame and shame
?

Who wakens slow to the stench of crime embraced?
How repeated lies, blessed by fear disdain ambition lust
So swelter swell so muddling mix in the caged-rat haste
of a people lost from each other and from their sacred trust
?

Who slipped into the keep with guard and judge asleep
Who turned the wheel to raise the gate, that sword might steal
Round our ramparts steep, might stroll across our moat so deep
To hack our joyous order — ballots-anchored in the commonweal
?

For what?
For power’s draw you serve power’s worm
For shared sureness you bow to lies
To splice sliced scripture to law, you turn
away the Light that makes a smile wise.

And so your grin grows jagged, cruel and coarse
I watch from afar yet feel the blade twist my gut
You think me such shit it’s not crime to force
Your will on me, no sin to choose lies over what
You’ve made me out to be.

But this our compass ship
Compact and delicate
Not invincible nor inviolate
Held together by nought
But honest speech,
careful effort,
good intention

This is all we have,
The both of us
To keep us safe
From might makes right
From “real” and “true” as empty weapons
From “God” as human will stealing human law

Come back to me, broke down though I be
Come back to us; remember, and again see:

We already share a culture and a purpose:

Aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent,
loving-kind, joyfully-sharing:

Together sharing
the rights and responsibilities
of a free people.
we nudge our speech and government
gently
carefully
lovingly
towards the better
and away the worse —
Never sacrificing
what we already all share
for what we tell ourselves we are

We are one in the Love that chooses all
We will not
— No matter the lurching certainties —
sacrifice the
rules, laws, institutions, norms and bounds
that keep we the people in power
and our leaders
serving honestly, with good will,
accuracy, competency,
within limits appropriate
temporary rulers and lifelong citizens
— equals under the law, partners in the joy.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: Andy Watson