Tag Archives: Political commentary

Info Overload

Info Overload

Contemporary culture is one I dread to contemplate—
much more prone to outcry than to logical debate.
Folks bury fact with fiction misleading and irrelevant,
quelling truth and logic in favor of their rave and rant.

Who can deal with all the various sorts of messaging,
let alone absorb events rarely less than harrowing?
Lately my delete button has become my dearest friend
as I limit messages mostly to ones I send!!!

 

Prompts today are bury, outcry, contemporary, contemplate, absorb and irrelevant.

Fake News

Fake News

Soon enough real journalism
will become anachronism.
Cretins overly ambitious
will decide that it’s propitious
to forever go online
quoting “truths” most asinine,
overlooking elemental
wisdom that is fundamental,
adding to the whole tableau
with things they “think” but do not “know,”
and God have mercy on the masses
who vote to reelect these asses.

Prompt words today are anachronism, fundamental, propitious, asinine, mercy and tableau. Image by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash.

Flipped

Flipped

Do you feel a bit off-kilter,
like your life has lost its filter,
friends are either crass or boring,
same old stories leave you snoring,
news from north, east, west and south
has you foaming at the mouth?

What politicians have to say
more like folklore every day?
The world more than you can abide
now that our heroes all have died?
How do you sift the lies from fact—
determine how you should react?

Ladies and gents, I have to say
that I do not know the way
to save a world that’s in a pickle.
Best that we just toss a nickel
and see what way the flipped coin goes.
Heads are yesses, tails are noes!!!!

Prompt words today are filter, boring, foaming, react, folklore and lady. Image from Unsplash.

Trump Card

Trump Card

Spin your web. Enact your plan.
Insist you’re of the common man.
Hang a pendant on a chain
Sway it forth and back again
just a dozen times or so,
mesmerizing in its flow.

If you mollify their fears
with promises placed in their ears,
you need give them little proof.
Just call the liberals aloof
and assure them that you’re not.
They’ll overlook your sins and yacht.

Call black white and call white black.
Blame others for what they lack.
Forbid care for the halt and lame.
Point a finger, blame the blame.
Soon they’ll have you in their head.
Certain folks like to be led.

Monkey see and monkey do.
The gullible will follow you

Prompt words today are follow, mollify, monkey,  dozen and gullible.

Illegals Need Not Apply

Illegals Need Not Apply

We’ve established a mandate to clean up our town—
evict all the illegals, tear their shacks down.
Any esculent foodstuff we find in their digs,
we’ll put in a trough and feed to the pigs,
but our lawyer has issued strong words of advisement
that we must buy a one-week advertisement

telling them where they can pick up their things
before they take off to spread out their wings
to head out for another gullible city
so naive, as we once were, that they will take pity
on these ignorant folks with no backing or dough
who claim that they all have no place to go.

If they’d displayed gumption and shown their compliance
by earning our favor and conquered reliance
(we suspect) on whiskey or illegal drugs,
become steadfast citizens, not (alleged) thugs,
things might have been different, the outcome more pleasant,
but as it is, affairs at the present

have favored their ouster. The townfolks’ conviction
is that they warrant immediate eviction.
We’re God-fearing folks here. We know one-and-all
that when God sees the smallest of sparrows to fall,
he doesn’t mean illegal immigrants or
any of the other indigent poor

who come from the south or the east or the west
trying to find out the place that is best.
What of the jobs that they took cleaning houses,
picking our fruit, ironing our blouses,
cooking our hamburgers, watching our kids,
tending our gardens and getting rid

of our garbage? I’m pretty sure we can find
others to fill them of our own kind.
What college graduate or spoiled kid
of indulgent parents would not want to bid
on a menial job at minimum wage?
I’m sure our “want” ads will be all the rage.

Prompt words today are esculent (fit to be eaten), advertisement, mandate, gumption, reliance and outcome.

Rich Folk, Poor Folk

Rich Folk, Poor Folk

Just because you are loquacious

doesn’t mean that you’re sagacious.
Those who form lucrative pacts
to try to contradict the facts

may wage a campaign national
to promote thoughts irrational,
creating facts out of pure fiction
by making use of fancy diction.

In higher circles, they make jokes
about the gullible simple folks
who hand over all their earnings
forgetting all their earlier learnings

and write their own obituary,
trading futures for cash-and-carry.
Better odds that comets destroy Earth
than that we reclaim their worth,

yet those who bilk and deserve blame, 
wrestle not with guilt and shame.
They buy their Guccis and parade
in decorations for which we’ve paid.

 

 

Prompt words today are obituary, decorate, comet, sagacious, wrestle, circle and irrational. Image by Melissa Walker on Unsplash.

 

Reality Redefined

Reality Redefined

(From Reality Shows to Reality Politicians, the meaning

of the word seems to have shifted to its opposite.)

Your underwhelming comments on my photographs should shame me,
but if they foster apathy, you really cannot blame me.
Timeless snapshots can’t be made of subjects that are boring,
and ordinary truth, it seems, leaves viewers merely snoring.

“What seems to be” has turned into the new truth that we seek—
reality  becoming something we can tweak.
A pantomimed emotion, sadly, I must confess,

if one is good enough at it, is good enough, I guess.

So bring on the kitschy actor, the reality show clown.
Their entertainment value will bring them wide renown.

They are what is called for in this modern cyber world.
“Reality’s” new meaning therein has been unfurled.

 

Prompt words are snapshot, underwhelming, timeless, kitschy, foster and pantomime.

Guess Who?

Guess Who?

He deserves a place of residence
less lofty than the president’s.
I vote we lodge this evil clown
in a place of less renown.
Some hole with bars would suit him well.
No waver to escape this hell,
for there’s no cure medicinal
that his craziness can quell.

Prompt words today are: medicinal, waver, clown, presidential and hole. Image by Grant Durr on Unsplash.

Is This a Joke? If So, Not A Very Funny One!!!

I received this email today. If meant as a joke, not the least bit funny. If not a joke, scary as Hell:  I received this in an email. How can it even be legal to put such a threatening message on the Internet? SICK SICK SICK!!!!!

Cultivate Your Own Garden (CBWC Photos and Quotes)

 


‘One Must Cultivate One’s Own Garden’…Voltaire

In 1759, Voltaire wrote his most famous novel, Candide, in just three days. It was a satire on the hopes that were pinned to science and technology, which instead of improving the world, he was sure would destroy it by giving more power to tyrants. Better, he said in his parting message, to till our own gardens and leave the rest of the world alone. What an appropriate message that has turned out to be.

I took Voltaire’s advice, and this is the new garden I created during the first year of Covid, transforming an overgrown lot next door full of twelve-foot high castor bean plants, garbage and castoff boulders and leftover construction supplies from surrounding houses into what is a garden in progress. This is the photo I took yesterday through a space in the fence that protects it from further dumping.

Below are “before” and “during” photos. Click to increase size of photos:

But, forgive me, Cee, I just have to show it in color as well!!!! More to come.

For CBWC: Photos and Quotes