Rumsfeld Endorses Donald Trump

Former Donald endorsed The Donald this week, saying he never met a Donald he didn't like. Former Secretary of Defense to Former President George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, endorsed the embattled Republican nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying, "Pooh, pooh, this wasn't even a hard decision."  He likened Trump, who he said he'd never met, to an "unknown unknown," while Hillary Clinton is a "known known," and we all know perfectly well that means, as well as how irrefutably it decides the matter.

  

As Trump's semi-official Poet Laureate, it is my obligation to provide a poem to commemorate this unquantifiable occasion. I have rendered my verse in Mr. Trump's favorite feet and meter. Please hold hands and sway gently from side to side:    

The Twenty-second of June, In the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Sixteen

by M.W. Thomas

Did Rumsfeld endorse Mr. Trump pertinently?

Or was it perhaps inadvertently?

That far could he pass

His head up his ass?

Possibly, probably, certaintly!

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Second Morning

A Mother's Day Poem by M.W. Thomas

My second morning is sweet, simple peace.

The man of the house showers and shaves and leaves wet towels crumpled on the floor.

I watch without judgment as the rays of the sun grow longer.

I draw my legs in when the rays reach my toes,

For my second morning shall not end too soon.

Second mornings are before the hours of loneliness to come.

It is the time before the tireless waiting

For morning to become afternoon, and then afternoon to become evening.

Me and my mistress paint the night on a large soft canvass.

I keep her near as we sleep, near in my dreams, nearer still in wakefulness.

I follow her when she rises and we greet the crisp morning dew and foraging birds.

Our breakfast is simple and sparse.

When she has to leave me, I go and find the man.

My second morning extends the day

It is my parachute into a peaceful garden of quiet meditation.

When bad memories are forgotten and I can believe at last in happy portents.

My second morning is the breathing emblem of my new life:  the time after.

I am mother to many, to broods of souls I have not seen for many years.

Sometimes I dream about their sighs and whistles, but it is easy to forget.

How they have fared I do not know;

But I have my divine mistress now.

Second mornings extend the dream

Before the long wait in the afternoon shadows,

While the man increases the pile of laundry and I lose myself in the scent of home.

A single morning would satisfy most waking creatures, but not me.

I have two souls to feed and two lives to put to rest.

The warm feel of cloth and safe harbor in filtered light

Chase away those awful sticks and old hunger pangs,

Oh! Those things I barely remember now and yet can never forget.

My second morning is my refuge

Today will vanquish yesterday

It just takes a little extra time.

My second morning brings my truest rest and allows me time to think

I’ve seen my mistress cry; I’ve seen my master cry; but I understand only fear.

Fight or run is all that I know:  Still their tears have moved me.

In the soft glow of home, my trembling is steadied.

Home! Home at last!

Second mornings calm the bad thoughts.

There is no reason to run and nowhere to run to.

Still I must be patient and wait, though I hate to be alone.

I do not mark time, I do not know how,

Except in broad fuzzy strokes that divide misery from joy.

But hear this!  The power of tongues has been given to me for this one day only:

“Happy Mother’s Day dear mistress!

Happy Father’s Day dear man!”

My Breakfast is Splattered On My Tie

A Poem by M.W. Thomas

My breakfast is splattered on my tie,

My unwashed driveway smears my shoe.

I’m afraid I’ll miss the train again,

How fast my woes accrue!

There’s pebbles in my sock again,

There’s pollen in my hair;

Why is my office door ajar?

Who’s sitting in my chair?

“Your old computer does not comply

“With the ISP of the CIO.

“It must be brought IAW

“The IA E-I-E-I-O.”

I put his words in a bowl of broth

And microwaved on high;

Now my lunch is on my shirt

And I’ll have no other ‘till July.

My zipper’s stuck, my Hanes show through;

My boss just read my blog.

The questions lurk unanswered yet,

Like pirates hiding in the fog.

At Days’ End I’m well-adorned

With food, debris, and scorn;

But of this tritely true affair

A New Day shall be born.

My breakfast is splattered on my tie.

At least I made my train.

But I should have checked my calendar:

I was supposed to be on a plane!

Sleep, You Abandoned Me

A Poem by M.W. Thomas

Sleep, you abandoned me.  Why?

For whose sake?

For what temptation of wine or song?

What misdemeanor did I commit against slumber?

Was it the slip of light that I allowed to escape the sash?

Was it the squeaky weathercock I refused to oil last Autumn?

Was it the Sartre I read past my bedtime?

A Neanderthal entered my cave, a brute

He demanded my ration of your elixir

And laid across from me

A stone knife carefully placed across his chest

Yes, it will be 200,000 years before

I adorn myself with my own talisman of plastic insomnia

Pythagoras!  Do not even you have a theorem for my nocturnal bliss?

Scholars!  Academics!  Shall my slumbers be Form, Universal, or Substance?

Michael, Gabriel, Rafael, bring me your heavenly wisdom!

I fought on the savanah

Against lions

Against hyenas

Against the other apes

But mostly against the women

They tamed me and commanded that I toil in the light and sleep in the dark.

With broken back and broken dreams, I do neither

The King has a City with Great Walls

Twelve feet high and six miles long

He demands husbanded animals and great yield;

He demands fields of grain and great yield.

The City fails

The King from the North arrives with a great army

No one sleeps.  Many die

Where is my blanket?  I am cold

My limbs seize hard and I cry from my toes

My fingers drag at the fabric and do no better work by night than by day

I smell like rotten eggs

A little dog comes; she paws and nests, then settles in beside me

Her nap is unlabored and sweet

Awake!

Shall we go to the middens and see what we can find?

The Philosopher laughs and calls me a Pauper

The Poet laughs and calls me a Pretender

My little dog heels and follows and wonders what we are getting to eat

I wish for soup

I wish for soup too hot to eat

I wish I could have slept through his politics

His boorishness; his wars

We are uniquely loved by God says he

Yet he makes me toss and turn at night

In fits of fear

And in the miasma of my own farts

I was once a bright lad

Now everyone is smarter than me

Who are you?  Who are you that now push me aside?

Go away sweet little dog.  Find another home.  I can no longer care for you.

If only Laughter were my Insomnia!

Though a joke, this misadventure nevertheless a nightmare

And for all its humor, the punchline unfit for children:

Cursed be life, and blessed be death!

My pharmacist is a good counter

A-One, A-Two, A-Three!

He sings as he spoons out my pills

Like Lawrence Welk counting down the start of Autumn Leaves

My capsulated victuals come in all colors of the rainbow

And fill my cabinets

I feast on them according to directions

They do not bring sleep

The Interpretation of My Dreams is the Decay of Humanity

Sleep is a wicked mistress

Sleep, you abandoned me

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Argument

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

.

This 1834 epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of my hands down favorites.  The tale is bold, the telling is spooky, and the language is close to the heart.  It is best to read it aloud in your best rendition of a Scottish accent.  Don’t be shy.  Recite it as though you have a toothache and so that the neighbors can hear you.  Let ‘em know you’re a grey-beard loon!

Admittedly, the poem gets off to a slow start.  Our passive narrator meets the Ancient Mariner at a wedding, and is somewhat man-handled into hearing his story.  That’s the first twelve or so stanzas, really all of Part I, but if you can get past that, you’re in for some real action.  Also, the words rhyme, so this is an actual poem (unlike my poems, which not only don’t rhyme, but also have total contempt for structure and meter.)

Oh, and keep a dictionary handy.  Words such as “eftsoons,” “uprist,” “wist,” “gramercy,” “gossameres,” and “clomb,”will intrude.  Okay, and “countree” rhymes with “see.”  That may be outright cheating.

Be sure to keep up with the ALBATROSS.  The albatross is what we would today call a meme on the intertubes.  It is from Coleridge’s Rime that we get the saying, “albatross around one’s neck,” which connotes a heavy burden.

Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

The Ancient Mariner, as it happens, shot the albatross with a crossbow, and it turns out there is a price to be paid for that infraction.  So you cannot skip Part I, as dull as it is.

Among accounts payable for killing the bird is a sailing ship being subjected to an evil wind.  Between the bad wind and the doldrums, the ship goes badly off course.  They encounter a ghost ship (“spectre-bark”), which is a mixed blessing.  The encounter with the dead is evidently miserable, but our mariner is freed of the albatross:

The albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

Thus ends Part IV.  At last they gain a more favorable breeze.  Or do they?  The ship careens toward the southern latitudes “without wave or wind.”  Is the ship’s company alive or dead?  Things have gotten pretty weird by Part VI.

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze –

On me alone it blew.

Our mariner finds himself in what appears to be safe harbor and is met by the harbor pilot’s boat.  The pilot’s boy is a bit of a loon, and he has to take over the rowing.  Upon landing, he is met by a hermit, to whom he recites his tale.  Who’s crazy now?

h/t Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org

Autumn Sighs, A Poem by M.W. Thomas

Autumn sneaks in

Indifferent to my greeting

I look out the window

At the dog chasing the blowing leaves

How many leaves

Can the old gal gather in her mouth at once?

How many leaves in the forest?

More than the threads of my summer memories

I open the door

And brace myself against the October breeze

How hard will the wind blow?

How hard do I breathe?

Harder than the blacksmith's bellows

Restless now, winter peeks over my shoulder

I take a walk in the woods

And gaze up into the canopy

How many colors are there?

How many dreams unfulfilled?

The day ends too early

I'm frumpy and weary

In my pajamas and slippers

As Autumn sighs

To when else shall I flee?

Never Say Yes, A Poem by M.W. Thomas

Jim Plunkett of Ewell’s Landing, Missouri said “Yes”

And ended up poling a piano across the lake on a homemade raft

To his brother’s cabin

When the raft and the piano sunk to the bottom

And he spit and gurgled and swore in a language Missourians know well

Then all he could think was “Oh, no!”

Miss Lulu Simon of National City, California said “Yes”

To a sailor at the Acey-Deucy Club after two Miller Lites, an umbrella drink,

And a shot of Cuervo

After a bouncy romp in the back seat of a ’72 Camaro with loose shocks

He broke her poor little drunk heart into five way-too-easy-pieces

And all she could think was “Oh, no!”

Let me explain you something:  Say “No” to “Yes”

Por ejemplo, Raul Montegon of San Juan, Puerto Rico said “Yes”

He would rid the city of all its feral cats (for a fee and a throw with an exclusive puta)

But the cats were smarter than Raul

And they ambushed him at the Castillo de San Cristobal with medical instruments

They extracted his eyeballs, cut out his tongue, and amputated his thumbs

And all Raul could say was “Oh, bo!”

Yusif and Hammad of St. Paul, Minnesota said “Yes”

And that is how they started campaigning door to door for Hubert Humphrey

(Remember Hubert Humphrey?)

One particular Sunday was their best ever afternoon of Persuasion

Hammad said “Praise Jesus!” Yusif praised Allah

And they punched each other in the face and mailed all the checks to Reverend Moon(Oh no!)

Busbee Irwin of Brisbane, Australia said “Yes”

And commenced to kickboxing with a kangaroo and he played defense

Well at first

And almost rope-a-doped a roo until he found

A kangaroo has a third foot tucked under his tail, a fourth

That pops out of his right eye, a fifth out of his left

And has a Bruce Lee fist for a tongue… Oh, no!

Donna May of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania finally said “Yes”

And agreed to change into her gym clothes with all the other girls

In the change room

They all said, “Eww!” and began picking off the scabs that covered her whole body

Until the pus ran out of her and her body shrank to the size of a dried pea and ran down the shower drain

And when the plumber arrived all he could say was “Oh, no!”

Yes-People you’re going down

You know that “No means no”

But “Yes” does not mean “No”

And that is a problem.

Jim Watkinson of Ketchikan, Alaska said “Yes”

And leaped from the dock of the salmon processing plant

Into the inner passage

And though it was July, it was a scrotum-shrinking swim

An otter floated by and thinking Jim was after his clams beat him with his feet

Until Jim thought he would drown, but his friends pulled him out and paid him his five dollars.

His sister posted the video on YouTube.

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