Baby Boom Blues

Part 1: Purple Haze

In the beginning was the weed and the weed was he,

Like a dead fish floating in the middle of the sea,

Blinded by the light, divided by the sight of a burning weed in the dying light.

Dreams were made of nights like these:

Stale tobacco blowing in the breeze,

Beer spills left from the night before,

Giggling faces flowing out the door,

Cigarettes, whisky and wild crazy women

Through the purple haze ever dancing and singing,

Singing sex and drugs and rock and roll --

They kept on dancing so they'd never grow old.

They were dancing shadows against the wall,

Dark shadows in a flashing hall

Where crimson and horizon blue

Pressed against a starker view.

They were pulsing beats that shook the floor

And rattled the windows evermore.

The ceiling ached from their refrain,

Shrieking echoes of a primal brain.

They were disembodied troglodytes,

Walking fish, stromatolites,

Carbonated fire and ice,

Permutations from the roll of the dice.

Part II: Rising Son

Dead dinosaurs fueled their rise

From migrant shores to starry skies.

Children of the Greatest Generation,

Conquering heroes declared,

Democracy a revelation.

Truths, self-evident.

All men created equal.

All stood during the National Anthem.

Everybody watched the Greatest Show on Turf.

The fathers stormed the beaches at Normandy,

Held trials at Nuremberg, championed human rights.

Hanged Nazis from gallows, charged crimes against humanity.

Every son decried melting face insanity.

How could an entire nation simply follow orders,

Drink beer, and eat schnitzel while millions were gassed?

Hello? Is anybody home?

Ding, dong the witch was dead.

Dorothy awoke from her bed in Kansas.

The children joined hands and sang Kumbaya.

Bodies and baby shoe Towers of Babel,

Captured on camera.

The Berlin Wall rose, the DMZ flashed,

Fire hoses blasted protesters, dogs of war released, a Federal Presence unleashed.

Mississippi, burned.

All captured on camera, narrated by Walter Cronkite.

On the nightly news, bridges crossed.

Martyrs chanted:

"Jim Crow must go, Jim Crow must go."

Martyrs, shot in the back,

Shot during parades,

Shot in the back of their heads like Lincoln, watching Julius Caesar,

Assassinated by Boothe who was hanged.

E tú Brutus? The audience gasped.

With malice to none, and charity to all,

Emancipation promised, liberty to all.

Truman dropped atomic bombs twice,

Truman signed the Marshall Plan.

America transformed the globe from Germany to Japan.

Baseball and apple pie,

John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Cher

Star Trek and Get Smart, everybody shared.

Everybody knew about the cone of silence.

Mopar mysticism, Mustangs, and Chevy trucks

Across interstates, country roads, and suburban sprawl.

From the Big Sur to West Virginia to Niagara Falls, big blocks, Harleys, and 18 wheelers suddenly came to a crawl.

On the radio Bob Dylan crooned "Everybody must get Stoned."

Why did so many feel so alone?

From Mustang Sally to the British Invasion,

Coca Cola became the taste of a generation.

To teach the world to sing in perfect harmony

Segued to Bye, Bye, American Pie.

From a rising tide to lift all ships,

To Electric Kool-Aid Acid trips. 

From Sputnik to a decade on the rise,

To footprints in the dust of the moon and an American flag planted

Miles and miles across an untamed sea.

On black and white televisions children watched from the couch

While in the mud of the jungle forgotten soldiers crouched.

From the moon, a single blue ball, 

The Earth seemed incredibly small.

With Mutual Assured Destruction, Apocalypse waited,

Kruschev and Kennedy debated

How would the Earth end? In fire or ice?

A King declared, "I have a dream." 

Part 3: Orange Apocalypse

He left a bag of baby carrots

In the kitchen drawer,

Muttering profanities,

Sleepwalking out the door.

Children blankly stared at equations that laid inequalities bare.

Melting icebergs and rising seas,

Legacies of the anthropocene.

Why fractions? Why bother?

Every dollar disappears.

Reading, a mystery for many who can't decode.

Educational torture.

Who really cares?

With nothing to count and nobody to count on.

"I'll take the F" becomes written in stone.

"Some will always be dinosaur food."

Quoth the ancient mariner.

To the Who's of Whoville whom nobody hears,

While about to be boiled in Beezelnut Oil by the Wickersham Brothers,

A Horton with elephant ears, Disney magic?

No heroes?

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,

Reads the sign above the door.

Nobody answers the knocking at the door.

Hello, anybody home?

"Will nobody dine and sup with me?" the Son inquires?

Children, separated at the border, caged like dogs,

"Build the Wall,'' an orange chorus howls

"Jews will not replace us," the chorus scowls

Bearing tiki torches like crosses, in khakis all.

Part IV: Four Horsemen

Russians came and Russians went, talking of search engines and artificial intelligence.

They came bearing free Kaspersky, installed Trojan Horses with impunity.

 

They paid cash for entire floors in the Tower of Babel using shell corporations.

Paid above Market prices, served black caviar and exotic spices.

They made straw man donations through the NRA,

Paid Evangelicals to look the other way.

They installed cameras in vases, cameras in kitchens, cameras in bedrooms, cameras in the ceiling, hacked into servers, pushed people out of windows.

Putin rode a white horse.

The president rode a golf cart.

Manchin drove his Maserati to a Riverboat mansion

The fourth, he rode a donkey.

Nobody cared.

Ooh la, la, the MAGA nation drawled.

He's incredible, it's inevitable.

He can grab women by the pussy, because when you're a star you can do anything.

Captured on tape.

Nobody can stop a president credibly accused of rape.

When you can shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, all bend their knee.

Anything's possible with prosperity gospel, Anthony Robbins and neuro linguistic programming.

An AR-15 for every child.

A pardon for paid polluters.

Who needs to read when the Second Coming of Christ is incarnate?

He tosses paper towels to Puerto Ricans to sop up a hurricane?

Hallelujah!

On Twitter, scenes from Wuhan emerge:

Apartment dwellers, welded inside apartment complexes.

Trucks spray aerosols onto streets and sidewalks,

Officials in hazmat suits spray factories while people work.

Captured on tape.

Ships on the West Coast, quarantined.

Scenes from Italian hospitals flood the airwaves.

Fake virus, the president declares.

Nothing to worry about, just the Wu Flu.

Americans die.

Requests for mask mandates, refused by red state governors.

The MAGA chorus calls for Dr. Faucci's head for shutting down businesses and shutting down schools.

Fake news, the president declares, by the spring it will all simply fade away.

Can we shove a light bulb up the ass?

I'm a stable genius, it might work.

I know about such things.

Dr. Birx, wearing colorful scarfs, feigns.

Hydroxychloroquin, and Ivermectin, shilled by OAN, Newsmax, and FOX,

Superspreader events, coordinated on Facebook and FOX.

Nearly a million people die, mostly the old and infirm.

Just an accounting trick Tucker Carlson chirps.

"I alone can fix it," 45 declares.

Part V: Out, Out Brief Candle

Whole cities have burned in flames like these

Cold ashes long scattered by the breeze.

In fading coals crackle memories of

Empires crumbled to dust.

Helen and Paris crossed the sea,

Fled to Troy, hid behind a big, beautiful wall.

Cassandra wailed, her family called her crazy.

She cried, beware Greeks who come bearing gifts.

Nobody listened.

The wall, undefeated.

The war, unrelenting.

Odysseus alone saw possibility.

The wily Greek spread rumors of

Signs from the Gods.

Greek ships sailed over the horizon.

Confirmation.

The rosy fingered dawn arrived,

A wooden horse, glistened with pride.

The Trojans swung the gates wide open

And feasted.

The fathers stormed the beaches at Normandy.

The sons stormed The US Capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence."

 Part 6: 30 Silver Coins

45, he lashed out, serpentine.

"Indicated" by the New York Attorney General on 30 counts of financial fraud after 30 minutes of testimony by a single witness.

(3+3)+(1+2+3) + (3 + 3) = 666

"The greatest witch hunt," blasted on Truth Social.

A crucifixion.

33% agreed.

MTG, whore of the AR-15 and the NRA , made Civil War her battle cry.

A View From The Cheap Seats

Whatever I write will fall short, fall flat, short change how I feel after finishing A View From The Cheap Seats. I wish I had read it when I was in my 20's, because in these pages Neil Gaiman has provided the code I needed to become a writer, when I made the unfortunate decision to take the safe route and work for a lumber company, not because I knew anything about the building industry or cabinets, or about kitchens and baths, or windows and doors, or about logistics, or credit, purchasing, or sales, but because I was afraid of being poor.

Neil Gaiman did exactly the opposite. He became a master of comic book writing, journalist, best selling author, world traveler, friend of artists, writer of introductions, whose novels and comics have been woven into the very fabric of American culture via audio & cinematic productions, not because he was afraid of being poor, but because he so loved the process of creating stories, he was willing to risk it all and live on the edge.

Ironically, as I write, my life is consumed with debt, despite the riches I amassed when I was young, because I hitched my wagon to a declining industry, where talent was seem as a commodity, and later made the decision to become a teacher, foolishly believing it would be easy and profitable, around the age of 40, after 9-11. Meanwhile, Neil became the proverbial honest man who started with financial insecurity but who now truly writes with no fear of financial ruin, like his friend, Stephen King.

Today, I am fearless, because I work with a population of students who need models of fearlessness, and because I view education as a pathway to opportunity, and many middle school students do not yet see the urgency of needing to learn how to think for themselves and unlearn learned helplessness, because I have come out on the good side of so many impossible situations that I know I live a charmed life and I always win eventually, and because I am no longer afraid of losing everything, or dying, because I've become comfortable living on the edge.

One page per day. Figure it out. Be honest while telling fiction.

Carpe Diem

Birds riot in the breath of Dawn embraced by the crimson fingers of horizon blues. Bones emerge from the shadows in percussion shot battles under a Holloween moon. I arise to howls, w/mad syncopation, Twitter alliteration, to cries of Revelation. Bring it on. Bring it on. IDGAF.

Rising Son Update.

Rising Son in the West: I stopped writing because I was so angry & bitter about what had happened to Grandpa. The 1983-1984 holiday I spent in the Library of Congress reading old newspapers was difficult to process, & I didn't know where to go with it, so I went silent, decided not to say anything.

I used to think Rising Son was about the men until I realized that the women in the family were the strong ones: Grandma, Pepe, you, Dawn. Need to fill in gaps, find the story, get something going. July.

As you once said, "Summer is short. Winter is long and dreary."

Really intend to write that book. Now.

RS is a story about the story we are writing. Our voice, our message. Gamän. We take a little poetic license for the sake of telling a good story, because that's what story tellers do.

History is made by historians.

RS is no longer an angry book. Instead, RS now channels anger & frustration to beautify and maintain order, to educate a family, to serve others.

There are stories to be told. The details matter. You are an incredible story teller.

Explain why we weren't allowed to bring that dog home we won at the Burgundy Farm fair. I want to get your animal stories on tape. All of them.

Tell me about that boat ride you & Grandma took to the mainland in a storm. I want your stories on tape.

I want your stories about Joe. Why did you chase a 3 year old the House with Hop on Pop?

Collaborate with me.

Superintelligence: I need to purchase a hard copy ...

I had been meaning to read Superintelligence  for years. There it sat in my Audible cue, after it had sat in my suggested reads. Finally, after we went back to in-person instruction in March & I had to drive again,cI began to dig in. As comprehensive in scope as it is in addressing "The Control Problem," it's probably best if I purchase a hard copy and take better notes. Whether or not Superintelligence ever comes to fruition or not, the questions the author explores are worthy of deeper reflection.

Superintelligence is not a fun speculative read like Max Tegmark's  Life 3.0, or some of Ray Kurzweill's works. It reads more like a mechanic's  trouble shooting guide, following what if scenarios relentlessly.

Therein lies its value. Nick Bostrum has outlined the scope of the AI / Superintelligence  control problem & charted possible solutions to prevent a superintelligebce from turning on its human creators.

I will find a hard copy. I will take better notes. These questions simply are not going away anytime soon.

The Force by Don Winslow: a Tragedy

It's late and I should be asleep, but I could not peel myself away from the poignant, bitter end of Denny Malone. I will pay for my indulgence, but the price was worth it. It's been decades since I've polished off a novel.

After the prologue, which begins near the conclusion, the reader is left wondering how a heroic officer ended  up in jaill. From there, the action throbs like a heart on adrenaline, pauses, & builds to a crescendo. The Force is about a well-intentioned cop who is chewed up by a corrupt system, and by his own choices. As in a classic tragedy, nearly everybody dies or has their lives destroyed. The entire House crashes.

Who's good? Who's bad? What's the right thing to  do? None of these have simple answers.

Gratitude Letter

At GU. I was introduced to allusions, images, & concepts, without which, the voices of history's greatest western authors would have fallen on deaf ears. How this relates to the kid who is struggling in math, who is taking virtual classes from a closet to get away from the noise of siblings under his care may seem like a stretch.

In my own quiet way, I try to impart a sense of wonder, a hunger that can never be quenched, a sense of enduring purpose, like a Faulkner character, that have led me to places I would never have imagined. An English Degree at GU is not about the money, not about the degrees, it's about a depth of understanding, clarity in these confusing times. As a GU Alum, I often anticipate events before they are manifested, sort of like "second sight" from Njal's saga.

It took me over 2 decades before I realized the value of my GU education, because I was looking at it the wrong way. At first, I was cocky, because I viewed my degree as a status symbol. Then, I was humbled. Later, I was able to draw upon the examples I had studied to claw my way back from difficult times.

Now, I appreciate every day as Boethius might. Every day, the intersection of time & timelessness. Carpe Diem.

We hold our pain

We hold our pain while walking in the rain. When nobody’s around we can hear the sounds: the percussion of the patter, the rumble and the rattle of the gutters in the rain; the jingle and the jangle of the harness of the dog, who trudges in the snow, to the snow foot crunches. The January wind braces faces to the blow. Tears don’t matter when the years flow past. Traces of the faces in the solitude of paces in the darkness glow, hopeful lights before everyone awakens. Steam rises from the coffee, cinnamon embraces. All that matters is the intersection of time and timelessness and the cinnamon aftertaste of black coffee.