The second poem of the year is due today; the prompt was "slip." I usually prefer writing structured poetry with rhyme and rhythm, but this free verse almost wrote itself. 

Hear Me!

Silent I stand, the secrets of my heart aching for birth.

Tears slip from my eyes with the pain of yearning.

Until, mustering the last of my hoarded strength,

My thoughts, in paltry words too frail to bear the heft,

Pour from my mouth

And linger,

Hanging,

Floating,

Dissolving…

 

You tilt your head in puzzlement

Wondering what my words mean

And why they came dressed in tears.

“Hmmm,” you nod in feigned contemplation.

 

Then you lift your hand as if to dismiss the heavy words,

Now stale in the air between us.

Your eyes, and your heart, drift away,

Carrying you to another shore,

While I stand alone.

 

My heart’s message, still locked within,

Remains unheard -

An exile in want of an understanding ear. 

The Hard Life in 2019 America

When did stating observable facts and holding public figures accountable for doing their jobs become "racist"?

When did upholding our immigration laws become "anti-immigrant?"

When did disagreement become "hate?"

When did it become not only acceptable but desirable for our government to establish entitlements and privileges for certain groups of people and withhold those entitlements and privileges from other groups of people based on ethnicity or race?

When did our government get the right to use taxpayers' hard-earned money to support organizations that serve only small selected portions (identity groups) of the population?

Intelligent (and not-so-intelligent) people have learned to use our eyes to discern observable features of others, such as what sex, ethnicity, etc they are, so that we can use pronouns and other language cues to facilitate communication. Must we now begin every communication with a new acquaintance with inquiries about their "gender" or "gender identity" before we can begin meaningful conversation and avoid using "offensive" pronouns?

We are making life unnecessarily hard!

Reading, Reviewing, and Ruminating

Nobody likes for others to cut in front of them in line. Nobody likes those that get promoted ahead of them at work through deceit and/or false documentation. Who doesn’t resent that lazy kid who gets a A just because his/her parent terrorizes the school and teachers — while his/her hard-working classmates get the grades they earned? Who likes to sit on the bench while the kid who missed most of the practices carries the ball? Nothing hurts morale and destroys a sense of togetherness more than such unfair situations. 

Unity, morale, progress, civility- 

(1) For the individual, these come from one’s personal moral standards. (2) On a relationship and small-group level, these come from mutual respect and mutually-established “rules of engagement” or stated regulations. (3) on a national level, unity, morale, progress, and civility are achieved by universal adherence to legally-made regulations (laws) and established common goals (a constitution.)

I think this explains (at least partially) the low morale, disunity, and incivility in current American society.  It is fundamentally “unfair” to establish sanctuary cities to protect lawbreakers, to provide freebies for some while others have to work and pay for the “free” stuff that others enjoy, to give rewards to those who break the law (illegal immigrants with voting rights, etc.) 

Just reading, reviewing, and ruminating this morning...

Alternatives for the "S word"

I wrote a few months ago about the "S word" and its un-PC nature. Regardless of how unacceptable the word itself remains, unfortunately there are those among us (or the actions of any of us at identifiable times) that can best be described with the word or one of its more acceptable alternatives.

Of course there are unimaginative descriptive alternatives such as: dumb, dense, brainless, slow, foolish, imbecilic, moronic, senseless, or backward.

We could go the Charlie Brown route and call the person in question a block-head!

Some of the possibilities make the S-condition sound almost loveable. For example, "Bless his heart, he's just goosey." Or "You little numbskull!" Or "She is such a nitwit!" Or What a dunce!" Or "He's just a big ol' oaf."

Some choices have other unrelated meanings or are unfamiliar and might be misunderstood. The use of these would then fail to accomplish one's purpose: simple, doltish, insensate, witless, fatuous, thick, or dull might fall into this category.

I can think of at least one that is even less acceptable than the S-word (shhhhhhh -- it's retarded. shhhhhh)

You didn't read that one here.

Some folks have tried to compare the wits of the S-word-infected persons with expressions such as: slow-witted, thick-witted, beef-witted, dim-witted, half-witted, or some-other-kind-of-witted.

Some describe the mind instead of the wit and use the same adjectives: feeble-minded, weak-minded, or simple-minded, for example.

Some go whole hog and describe the whole head as infected with the deficiency: The person in question might be a beetle-head, a chuckle-head, a fathead, or a pinhead. She/he could be described as sheep-headed, thick-headed, or beetle-headed.


I like the more colorful options: Dead between the ears has a ring to it. "There's a dim light in the attic" is picturesque. How do you like "The elevator doesn't go to the top floor" or "not playing with a full deck," "a couple of blocks behind the parade," "doesn't have the sense God gave an animal cracker," or "has the IQ of a salad bar."?

I personally find myself using "doesn't have the sense God gave a goose" when I am pressed for this description, although I have been known to use "has it floored in neutral," "must have been dropped on his head," or "his clutch is slipping."

My current favorite would require a long explanation involving a misunderstanding of one of my daughter's students a few years ago. She could give you the background much better than I could. However suffice it for the time being to say: "That person is just an E-Word."

See #2 of my last Sunday Seven if you wonder why I keep thinking about this subject. Ol' CC (who is all of the above) just won't let us relegate him to the realm of memory. He has reared his UGLY E-Word head again today.