THANKSGIVING SONNET 2022

What am I thankful for? I'm thankful for
Those who put up with me, for I can be
Hard to endure. I just wish there'd been more
Who endured me, because it seems to me
That, if people had been a bit better 
At enduring me, I surely would have been
A better person. I am a debtor
To kindness, to forgiveness of sin,
For surely rejection brings out my worst.
Rather than flattered, calmer and clearer,
I am afflicted by anger, and cursed
For the world looks ugly, as does my mirror.
Acceptance heals us. We need such cures.
Thanks be to God, who all of us endures.

DAY OF REST SONNET

Tired of the tedium, I want to quit
All my quitting: My desire to be free
From desire. All I want to do is sit
At the Father's feet, and hear the things He
Wants to talk about, or, if it should be
Silence, to just sit and hear the silence.
The racket of this world's racket I must flee
And duck into the down of His warm presence
Like a duckling. Responsibility
Can go cluck. One hour spent in His house
Is worth more than all profits I could see
Through years of worldly work. So, I'll douse
My ambition and do what is deemed best:
On the seventh day sit down, shut up, and rest.

PENETRATING THE CALLOUSNESS

The bald-faced lying in the media and in politics has gotten to me. Anyone with half a brain knows the entire Global Warming scenario is politically correct balderdash. I first became sure of this ten years ago when He-who-I-will-not-dignify-by-naming spoke of Global Warming during a State of the Union, and did so with a sort of wink and a shrug, and an audible murmur of soft laughter passed through the hallowed halls of congress, and I knew every person there knew Global Warming was balderdash. They knew but figured they were in-the-know, above the unwashed masses. I think that was when I first felt a sort of despair creep in: One cannot have confidence in leaders who hold you in contempt.

No longer do elected officials seem to feel any need to explain what they are doing, or to convince voters that what they do is a good thing to do. They do not need to convince voters because they can win elections even if out-voted. Their voting machines have a crooked way of counting, and if politicians pay the “machine”, they can ignore the voters.

Rather than Love-thy-neighbor, politics has instead taken a turn towards Utterly-ignore-thy-neighbor. What else can you call it, when you ignore the voters? To some this seems an expediency, for if you can ignore objections, you can get things done. However, the Founding Fathers of the United States did not believe the common man should be utterly ignored, nor that the common man’s objections were always unwise. Therefore, in essence, the turn politics has taken is against the Founding Fathers and towards tyranny.

This will not come to a good end. Tyranny never does.

But what I think bothers me most is the callousness of certain “Useful Idiots” who play their small part in various dishonest schemes, and who tee-hee together like adolescents who have gotten away with some small crime committed against a schoolteacher. They deliver phony votes in an election, utterly unaware the crime they commit is enormous. It is treason, in fact; treason against the United States of America, but they’d be flabbergasted if they faced hanging. To them it is just a lark.

If I was allowed to escape shadow-banning and censorship and deliver a single sermon, I’d like to shame such lamebrains. I don’t want to win votes. I don’t want to be popular. I just want to deliver one hell of a tongue-lashing, to put such people to shame.

If you skip class, it should be for glory,
Not for corruption you call a "foible".
Your homework's undone; you think your lame story
Will undo your want and make life be joyful,
But your teacher's long gone. The chore you skipped
Was bailing the boat you've been gliding in
And it's wallowing now. It seems you've shipped
In a leaky scow, are residing in
Dangerous sloshing, and had best start bailing
Because excuses won't save your tanned hide
And you'd best not quit the sweat of sailing
If Safe-Harbors you hope to duck inside.
It's a lark to skip homework, classes, work
But no fun seeing it has made you a jerk.

POST-ELECTION SONNET

The round, yellow moon is slowly rolling
Down the purple west, as in the orange east
A spark of flame blinks. Calm is consoling
My bitter mood where all things I like least
Are on my list, and the senseless polling
Of politics jangles my nerves. Why pretend
You care when votes are rigged? The sad, tolling
Death knell of democracy's feeble end
Is in the air, but still the planet turns.
You cannot make the dawn go down, nor bring
The setting moon back up. Kings dream their fire burns
Without balms, their virus wins through suffering,
And their poison knows no antidotes
But the Greatest Power heals without votes.

THE RED GRAVE

Unless I am mistaken, we are not hearing the usual cheering which follows an election victory by a majority. A few of the usual suspects, Hollywood hacks, are preening and triumphantly clucking, but there is a strange sullenness on the streets. One might even go so far as to suggest the majority lost.

Perhaps I am merely turning into a cantankerous old coot, but I suspect the voting machines were turned up full blast, when it comes to altering the correct count of the vote. It would be easy to check. If it is true that we, “Trust, but verify”, we need only hand-count a few, select machines, in unannounced precincts, and see if they match the given results. But of course, this is the very thing the “winners” will scrupulously avoid.

In any case, the hoped for “Red Wave” has seemingly turned into a “Red Grave.” Even Donald Trump seems especially bad tempered. One can hardly blame him. Trump has endured an onslaught from the “Swamp” for six years, attempted to fight fairly midst cheaters, and it is difficult to win elections when even the voting machines are rigged. He now says we should do away with the machines and hand-count ballots, but it seems a bit late for that advice.

Again, I may seem like a sore loser, and to be indulging in a “conspiracy theory”, when I suggest the voting machines were rigged. However, it worked in Venezuela, so why not try it here? To be honest, in my bones I feel the machines were rigged. The public is simply not behaving as one would expect, if the majority won.

It is said, “cheaters never prosper”, however at the moment they certainly must feel smug, if the voting machines were indeed tampered with.

In fact, this may be the darkest moment for the United States since the infant American army was booted out of New York City in 1776, and Washington suffered defeat after defeat as he was chased clear across New Jersy and the Delaware River, until he only had a few thousand troops left, and many of those few remaining soldiers would be leaving in a few weeks when their enlistments were up. The survival of the United States balanced on the point of a hair, only a few months after the Declaration of Independance was publicized, and then, right at that critical time, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet beginning,

These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

At this point I suppose it is good to remember historical times when might did not make right.

At the height of Assyrian Power, King Sennacherib had defeated all powers but a small city-state with its capital in Jerusalem, and he marched a huge army up to its walls. According to his history, he forced them to pay tribute and marched away. According to the people of Jerusalem, on a single night 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers died, “slain by an angel of the Lord”, just outside the city walls. (Cholera? Poison in the well water?)

More recently, things looked bleak for Russia when Napoleon marched towards Moscow with an army of 450,000. Only 28,000 made it back from that debacle alive and fit to fight another day.

Cheaters never prosper.

However, this is not to say we are not about to endure a bitter winter, like Washington’s troops did in December 1776, and in Valley Forge in 1777, and following winters as well, before the sunshine of victory shone.

In God We Trust.

INDEPENDENTLY ENSLAVED

My mother, who saw the stock market crash of 1929 (or how it ruined her father) and who then experienced the hardship of the Great Depression, had no illusions about poverty being a good thing. She knew what it was like to appreciate something as simple as having warm feet in the winter. Therefore, she had a great fondness for the song, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly”, in “My Fair Lady”.

The desire to escape the misery of cold and hunger, and of needing to choose between heating and eating, is innocent, natural, and often commendable. It has led to the advancements which have allowed the poor in America to face the problem of, (of all things!) obesity. To a certain degree it has been possible to forget the hardships which people who no longer walk with us once told us about. However, those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

This winter could see us again facing a choice between heating or eating, largely due to the insanity of an “energy policy” which seeks to replace what works with what doesn’t work, in order to combat a fictitious bugaboo called “Global Warming.”

The coming election will likely be a statement by we, the people, that we do not feel this “energy policy” is a good idea. It is as simple as that. However, it will cause a shuddering to run through the establishment called “the Swamp”, for the “energy policy” provides them with their paychecks. If they can’t tax the poor to “save the planet”, how can they remain rich?

At this point it is necessary to admit that not all of our desires to escape discomfort are innocent, natural, or even commendable, as was so well pointed out in the song by the Eagles called, “Lying Eyes”.

The song is basically a reproach to all who “sell out” to avoid discomfort, especially women who marry for money. It’s most brilliant line, in my view, is, “Every form of refuge has its price.”

In a sense the coming election is likely to be a rebuke to a minority, the so-called “Swamp”, and a simple statement by a majority that the “price” for their form of “refuge” is too high.

The question, in my mind, is whether or not the “Swamp” will be able to accept this rebuke. If they believe in the United States and what we stand for they will humbly step aside, however there are some indications they feel the majority is merely “riffraff getting uppity.”

In which case they are proclaiming themselves tyrants. They are crowning themselves emperor, like Napoleon did. They are placing the crown on their own head, as Napoleon did, and displaying contempt towards what the United States stands for.

Up until Napoleon crowned himself, he was a hero of Beethoven, and the rough draft of Beethoven’s Third Symphony was initially dedicated to Napoleon. However as soon as Beethoven learned Napoleon had crowned himself, he scribbled out the dedication, and he did so so savagely the quill gouged the page.

In like manner, many people in the “Swamp” may lose the dedication of admirers, even followers, if they ignore the majority. It is the price they’ll pay, for “every form of refuge has its price.”

Despite the evil the Swamp is entangled in, one feels a sort of pity for them, for in a way they too just want to have enough to eat, and warm feet in the winter. However, security is not insanity, and they have lost touch with the down to earth.

Wealth should not be measured by bread alone, or by other low and material “indicators”. One needs to take a hard look at what they call “wealth” and ask themself whether or not it is actually an addiction.

Has one become Independently Wealthy, or Independently Enslaved?

Oh, how sad it is that those who dreamed they’d rise so high sank down to the depths of such a Swamp!

ROLLING WITH THE MOON

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When we arise on voting day a “blood moon” will be setting in the west, which seems a sort of ominous start to things.

As I recall, a blood moon occurs at the start of “Hamlet”, (or perhaps it is in the scene where Hamlet sees his father’s ghost). I tend to consult Shakespeare more than I consult astrologers, but I thought it would be fun to see what astrologers were saying, so I included the above “chart”.

Not only is a multi-planet opposition occurring, but Saturn, (“discipline”) is “squaring” the opposition. Oppositions and squares tend to be “challenging” in the world of astrology, so there are all sorts of doom and gloom forecasts, floating about. Yawn. I am perfectly able to forecast doom and gloom without any help from experts. What I also notice is Jupiter (“optimism”) is “trining” and “sextling” (harmonious angles) the conflict, but no one is in the mood to be optimistic.

Fortunately, I was traveling through the dusk tonight in a car with a four-year-old and two-year-old grandchild, and they live in a world blissfully free of politics. They were talking about how the moon was traveling through the trees beside us.

Here is a poem they triggered, written (I hope) as Tom O, (who disapproves of many of my sonnets), likes them.

The moon looks strangely jaunty,
Tilting through the trees,
And I've run out of alibies
For why the branches weave.

I have no clue why shadows
Elude my headlight's eyes
Nor why the street is curving,
Nor why the asphalt sighs.

Moon shadows crisscross clapboards
Of churches none attend
And cobalt sky is starless
Without end.

I'm steering towards my pillow
Past the graveyard's willow
Dreary on a moonlit stone,
As rolling right beside me
Golden moon confides we
Go alone.

I find her words consoling
For what child feels alone
When holding the hand
Of a moon that's so big,
So gold, and so grand?

Don’t tell my friend Tom, but the above poem is secretly a sonnet. Can you see the hidden sonnet? (Before looking at the answer below?)

The moon looks strangely jaunty, tilting through
The trees, and I've run out of alibies
For why the branches weave. I have no clue
Why shadows elude my headlight's eyes
Nor why the street is curving, nor why
The asphalt sighs. Moon shadows crisscross clapboards
Of churches none attend, and cobalt sky
Is starless without end. I'm steering towards 
My pillow, past the graveyard's willow
Dreary on a moonlit stone, as rolling
Right beside me golden moon confides we go
Alone. I find her words consoling,
For what child feels alone when holding the hand
Of a moon that's so big, so gold and so grand?

Most sonnets have a certain rhythm hidden in them that casual readers miss. When young I used to become very upset when I heard others read a poem I’d written, and completely mangle it, but now I am more resigned, and even amused. The fact of the matter is that there is beauty all around us, but we tend to be blind. Sometimes I think a person has to be as deaf as Beethoven to hear it.

Either that, or two years old. Remember that, on election day.

BRAZEN IMPUNITY

The sheer dishonesty rampant in the media these days reminds me of a prophecy in the seventh chapter of Book of Daniel, where an evil power in the future is described as attempting “to change the set times and laws.” In other words, such an evil power would disregard Truth. It would have the audacity to believe it has come up with a “better idea” than Truth.

One “set time and law” I’ve enjoyed the ups-and-downs of is: An old-fashioned marriage. Call me a fuddy-duddy if you will; I am not an admirer of the “alternative lifestyle”, I state this even though, as a gullible young hippy, I did dabble in the apparent escape-from-responsibility called “free love.” I quickly saw it wasn’t free, nor was it love. How did I escape from the escapism?

I’m not sure. I think it in part had to do with the examples set by my elders, which struck me as potent symbols long before I was capable of intellectually digesting or describing what the symbols meant.

On one hand I had a set of grandparents who met in second grade and, at age eight, announced they would marry, which seemed cute but absurd to their elders, because they were from very socially different backgrounds, yet eighty years later they were still together and apparently still in love. On the other hand, I had my parents, who were like a god and goddess the first ten years of my life, but then who shocked me with a very antagonistic divorce.

It may sound a bit audacious, but in my boyish view my parents suddenly acted very immature. They were embarrassing, whereas my grandparents were not. I could not have justified my impressions, but they were what they were. Only now, as an old man, can I see what the differences were.

The difference between marriage and divorce transcends they being mere opposites. They exist on (or in) utterly different dimensions, in different worlds. The love involved in marriage is so different from the selfishness involved in divorce the two subjects are themselves divorced, as the heavens are from the ocean’s depths, and as oil is from water.

I have recently had to endure the breakup of one of my children’s marriages, and the difference between love and selfishness was made blatant by the lawyers involved. I could remember when the young couple, in love, overlooked differences. They even found differences “cute”. Now, abruptly, those same differences became, “evidence.” What love had forgiven abruptly became “grounds for divorce”, and every slightest error was used to “build the case.” (Thank you very much, you bleeping lawyers.)

In Truth there is no better idea than love, but divorce thinks it has come up with a “better idea”. Wrong. But in my time, I have been guilty of turning away from love, so it is not like I am up on a high horse and looking down a long nose. I have seen myself put my selfishness ahead of others, and selfishness is seldom a friend of Love.

How is it Love has the power to overlook differences which selfishness finds intolerable? It is because Love operates from a separate universe than our worldly desires. Love utilizes the so-called “heart” which the “head” tends to brush aside. Yet the heart solves problems the head calls utterly unsurmountable.

The most unsurmountable difference humanity is faced with, greater than racial differences, greater than all religious differences, (even the differences between Isaac and Ishmael), greater than differences between capitalists and communists, between winners and losers, between haves and have-nots, between old and young, is the difference between men and woman. Nothing is more different, yet nothing is more natural than men and women coming together in a thing called “marriage.” It happens worldwide, often against considerable odds, and makes mincemeat of divisive powers who say we can’t get along.

I think divisive powers strongly disapprove of marriage, for they dislike anything which mocks their divisiveness. Nazis are mocked when one of their children loves a Jew, and Jews are mocked when one of their children loves a Nazi. But Love, as a power, could care less for our silly hatreds. On the cross Jesus had every reason to say, “Father, screw these bastards for what they’ve done to me,” but instead his amazing Love had him say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

I try to say the same thing about the mainstream media, but I think many of them do know what they do. They are like a spouse ‘midst divorce proceedings, urged by lawyers to never confess a mistake and never forgive an error.

However, the “marriage” they are part of “breaking up” is the United States, which long was a two-party system where the two sides were married by Love. Yes. Love.

One of the aspects of a marriage is the humor both sides bring to their non-stop disagreements. For example, I recently heard a husband pretend to pompously announce, in a barrister voice, “A marriage cannot possibly succeed unless the wife, in ALL arguments, grants the husband the final word; in fact, grants the last TWO words; and they should be, (pause), ‘Yes, dear.'” Such humor walks hand in hand with love.

The unlikely survival of the United States through over two hundred years of tumultuous history has been largely due to the fact we are led by a marriage, not a despot. The debates in congress have involved the sharpest minds, able to split hairs, with plenty of humor. We are led by Love, not selfishness. I could drag you through example after example, but some find history boring. So, I’ll just shove the Truth in your face.

The mainstream media is controlled by an invisible despot who does not believe in a two-party system. Whoever this arrogant idiot is, he does not believe in marriage. He does not believe in Love. What this means is that, because God is Love, this despot is picking a fight with almighty Truth. (The despot is not as smart as he thinks.)

The election we are about to experience shows many signs of being a repudiation of this invisible idiot, this one-party-system which feels it is superior to the marriage called the United States. The one-party-system will likely be unable to accept such a repudiation. It will likely resort to altering the election’s results through voter fraud. Why not? It worked once, so why not again? However, the American people are far more on guard, concerning fraud, and there is likely to be greater push-back.

The brazen impunity with which “fake news” has been doled out is reaching a crisis point, where it may self-destruct, crumbling because it is rotten to begin with, and rot cannot replace the wholesome structures it usurps with anything wholesome, but only with further rot.

Into my mind’s eye comes this analogy: A thief steals a ladder, and uses it to climb to great heights, but removes rungs of the ladder to discourage pursuit, (and also to discourage copy-cats), and eventually reaches a point where the ladder has so few rungs left the two sides of the ladder start to wobble and shift, and the remaining rungs start to creak and crack, and then suddenly the thief is not standing on a ladder, but two very tall stilts. Because the thief has no idea how to walk on stilts, he goes wobbling out of control, and exits stage left, followed by a long descending howl and a crash.

In “Hamlet” Shakespeare used the phrase, “hoist with his own petard”, to create the ironic image of a bombmaker “lifted” by his own bomb’s explosive charge. (In the sly world of London slang which Shakespeare was so adept at using, the phrase could also mean being “lifted” by one’s own especially-loud fart.) It was not a fate one desired.

In like manner, the “better idea” which proponents of divorce always dangle as lures never result in the “freedom” they originally promised. I got to study my parents, who both got to live over thirty-five years “free” of each other after their separation, and they never were really free. Not that they didn’t live productive lives, and not that they didn’t meet new people who loved them and nursed them towards maturity. However, they never achieved complete amnesia, and never forgot the loops and nooses of their initial entanglement. If marriage is a battle, then those who think they escape the battle find they are haunted by ghosts and experience “flash backs” and “traumatic stress disorder.” The undealt-with must be dealt with. Often a second marriage sees the exact same problems that appeared in the first marriage reappear, and the second marriage becomes a second chance to “deal with it”.

In like manner, in the world of governance, any attempt to replace the marriage of a two-party-system with the divorce of a one-party dictatorship always seems like a “better idea” in a time of confusion, but over and over history shows us that society suffers when it resorts to such tyranny. The confusion and terror of the French Revolution turned to Napoleon, who seemed like a hero at first, but eventually led to the death of a million Frenchmen, and a France with fewer than nine men left alive for each ten women.

The lesson is there in history for those with eyes that see. The problem is that when you try to teach Truth to a tyrant, they censor it. Love is a dimension they refuse to allow to govern their lives. They are all head without heart, or, if they have a heart, they only allow it in places utterly removed from their workplace. In the dark of a movie theatre they may weep, but not at their bank as they foreclose on a widow.

The world of governance is currently seeing the idea of “globalism” arise as a sort of vast, one-party dictatorship, with only a single view allowed and all other views censored. The sanity of Truth is affronted by all sorts of attempts to “change the set times and laws”, with even the-sex-one-was-born-as called into question. This creates chaos and confusion, and also the tendency for people to long for a powerful leader to “make things right.” A globalist dictator likely will soon step forward and say, “I am your Napoleon.”

The world does not need a Napoleon. What the world needs now is Love, sweet Love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

In terms bankers understand, power involves control of material items, and this winter we may even see power asserted through materially forcing people to choose between heating and eating, and perhaps even see unnecessary starvation, and people unnecessarily freezing to death. However, the rescue will come. The bankers will not see it coming, for they do not accept the dimension the Rescuer exists on. It is not a material reality.

I can’t predict the way the cards will play out, or how and when Love will manifest. My guess is that “heart” will not likely come from centers of power, but from heartlands. Also, I guess the three nations most likely to resist the globalist Napoleon are the United States, India, and the tiny state of Israel. Lastly, in my own small way I hope to make a last stand and go down fighting for the magic of Love and of marriage, in this invisible war against brazen impunity.

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