BYRD filddles in Purgatory

Byrd fiddles in Purgatory

Byrd awakens in Purgatory,
to him, anywhere outside
The District or WVA

His old fiddle's in his hands.
“I don’t know who this fiddle's
su-post to punish, Re-publicans
or white niggers!” he quips.

Instantly, a black angel pops him
to the black Byrds' slave quarters
where he’s told to play for them.

He pleads: “I was born
Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.;
get me some Sale niggers.”
Black Sales appear in quarters
they’ve built for themselves.

Byrd sees no way in Purgatory
to fluff his KKK past & admits
“Yes, I was. The Klan a-woke
my ambition to run for office.”
Opaque admission fails as
Klan ghosts rise in sheets.

Byrd sees Purgatory-time
won't be as comfortable as
5 decades in U.S. Congress.
“This old fiddle's jest for me,”
he admits ruefully, re-tuning.


(28 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v8
a variant appears on p.93 of GARGOYLE 57 (2011)

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Bedtime stories

My Scottish dad told bedtime stories of
The Spanish (crab-) Apple & his sons
riding bareback in Spain (not California)

but never told me why this idea
in the mid-‘40s; once I heard about
The Spanish Apple, Superman was absurd;

Wonder Woman’s golden bustier & lasso,
transparent plane, soon enchanted me
& still do, 6 decades later.

(27 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA.)v10

CHENEY laughs

(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military's top officer assured Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday that the new NATO commander will pursue the same war strategy crafted by Gen. Stanley McChrystal — the ousted general whom Karzai warmly praised for training Afghan security forces and reducing civilian casualties.

CHENEY laughs when he reads that
Karzai “warmly praised” McChrystal.
“F’n right he did. That lame-ass s.o.b.
is right out of the CHENEY playbook!”
"Can it get any better?” (he thinks), I
own'm all, coming & going. I make'm
all say & do just what I want, when.”
CHENEY's the dramaturg of oil wars,
(but not oil-accidents; those he avoids.)
“I want that oil to flow & burn, I want
to see those columns of black smoke
rising on the desert & the battlefield.”

(26 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA) v3

CHENEY spits as

CHENEY spits as the AM-radio
says Crist polls 42%, Rubio 31%.
“Where the f’r all those greasy
ex-Cubans?” forgetting it’s only
angloradio, not radioespanol
where Rubio polls a cool 110%.
“I’m told Rosie Ruiz is 100% for
that greasy bag of plantain chips!”.
2 bar-flies stare blankly as he raves;
neither understands English, both
are (indeterminate) war escapees.

(25 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

CHENEY feels for

CHENEY feels for his balls
in his sleep, thinking: how they
were once as hard as pool-balls
when he racked the WH baize.

“It doesn’t really matter @ all!
I have lots of new balls in play
now that Scooter’s boxed, &
Petraeus replaces McChrystal.

I still have my own 2Q balls!”

(23 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Afghan minerals

Once gold, iron & copper were
Afghanistan’s fabled minerals;
then rare earth elements,

now niobium, lithium
for the world’s batteries;
soon: depleted uranium.

(06 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)3

Silicon Val$

Don’t confuse the
Silicon-Vallization
of the desparate

California Republican Party
with the Technology Party
of the ‘30s; it was leftish;

today’s ex-hi-tech CEOs
Meg Whitman (ex-eBay)
& Carly Fiorina (ex-HP)

are millionaire Silicon Val$.

(09 JUN 10, SantaClara CA)v6

~ Bill

BP mineral oil!

"If I cain't see it, I don't swayt it;
them oil-balls're as natural as
our great American Guff, heah?"

Barbour justifies oil as natural
'cuz it comes up frum The Earff:
"It's done us a lot of good sofuh.
Just let it do it, bubba Guffuhs."

He rubs himself down all ovuh
& unduh with BP mineral oil.
"There's nothin' lahk it! Nothin'!"

(06 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v8

THE MORE ON

The more on AM- radio you listen to,
the more you don’t. The more on the
comment threads you read, the more
you won’t. Suie Generis isn’t generous;
the same old same old is old already.

All this is lost on the Perps who listen
only to themselves day & night as tho
they carried the day. They don’t now.

Somewhere I hear a breeze blowing;
it blows away chaff & leaves grain.
I leave it for all of you to glean.

(05 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

O, Voilcanoes!

Will it break, or it is broken?
is no longer the Q; Who?
broke it, Why? & Who?
can fix it are the Conundra.

Obama inspects & re-inspects
one of our modern Dilemmas:
BP constantly trying & failing
as voilcanoes keep popping

while Tony the Tuna (in beret
& dark glasses) beats his bongoes.
V/O: "It's not if you have good
taste, Tony, it's if you taste good!"

(04 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v8

V/O: TWIN TIERS DEPORT

all of their Canadian snow geese:
“They gave us the goosey creeps,”
says T. Win, a Tea Party activist,
“their big golden goslings do, too”
complaining about their honking,
oversized slippery green turds
“Everywhere!” Defenders assure
“they only use the Tiers as a flyway,
not a home.” Tiers TeaPartiers insist
they know better: “Once they're
here, in the Twin Tiers, they just
won't go away. Who wouldn't?
- Did I get it right on the 1st-take?"

(04 JUN 10, Santa Clara CA)v8

Could Parrish?

for Ginny

Beside a cement replica
of an antique Japanese lantern
a dedicatory placque reads:

“Cupertino City and Toyokawa City
commemorating the 10^th anniversary
of Cupertino and Toyokawa’s
sister city relations, presented
in 1988 from the city of Toyokawa ”

2 Chinese girls in sandals laugh
in the Victorian gingerbread gazebo
built in June1994 from burnt chunks
of the Enoch J. Parrish homestead
set in the lagoon of the artificial
pond of Cupertino Memorial Park .

Could Parrish have imagined this

on his arrval in 1883?

Behind us, a V-formation squadron
of 11 Canadian geese float across
the lagoon towards us to eat the
scattered hulled millet we’d bought
at the all-asian 99 Ranch Market.
No longer Canadian, the geese are
less & less migratory, we’re told;
it looks like they're here to stay.

Could Parrish have imagined this?

(Cupertino Memorial Park, 3 JUN 10)v6