Trump Rage in Ohio

Okay, people. I can’t even listen to this anger festival in Cleveland called the Republican Convention. Trump supporters are pulling out every plug now, they’ve been building up to it for the past year. Dr. Carson comparing Secretary Clinton to Lucifer tonight. How is that helpful? I’m naming names:

Rudolph Giuliani.

During the past three decades the hate and lies have ramped up, tumbling over each other day after day, month after month, year after year:

Fox News.

There are people who believe Trump is a viable candidate for the presidency. His own ghostwriter has called him a sociopath.

Chris Christie.

Matt Drudge.

All these people safely rich, behind their gated compounds, what are they so all fired up about?

Brent Barker.

Why does someone like him, who supported Romney only 4 years ago, support Trump now, who even Romney doesn’t support? Rhetorical question, I know.

I have to admit one thing - it would be so easy, right now, to start name-calling, throwing shit and shade that has nothing but shit and shade to back it up but, what good would that do? And would it really be that easy?

I remember when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were shot to death just two months apart in 1968. I was 13 years old, living in a home with a stepfather filled with hate and a world filled with hate.

Hate. Hate.

Has created, what?

War. Assassinations.

But, oh boy. Nothing like today.

Not one bone in my body, not one artery pumping blood into my heart, believes that anyone at the Trump Rage Convention in Cleveland wants to make the world a better place.

And that, people, is a crying shame.

Orlando 

Hide the children.  Cover the tomato plants.  Here is what I’ve been thinking about since Orlando.
 

ALFALFA SURFER
 

there is nothing
like
the scent of a man after a day in the hayfield
sweet corn
and
freshly cut grass
a teenage man
who doesn’t own a shirt

at his peak
muscles moving in places

he doesn’t know he has
tanned arms pitching bales of hay
onto the flatbed truck.
 

I am 13

learning to drive

the flatbed truck in my grandfather’s hayfields.

I bury my face
into Alfalfa Surfer’s armpit
when we get back in the
the flatbed truck.
 

The scent of a man
the underside of a man -
I rub my face against
his chest
my nose
across his forearms
 

he doesn’t stop me
from getting aroused by his body 

he doesn’t take advantage of me
Alfalfa Surfer.
 

I’m where I want to be

between a man’s arms
my ear against his chest
listening
to the sound of his heartbeat.
 

Close to the barn
Alfalfa Surfer
places my hands on the
steering wheel and lets me
back up
the flatbed truck
to the base of the
hay elevator
my grandfather
standing 

in the barn loft

yelling orders.
 

“I hate him,”
I say.
 

“He’s your granddaddy, buddy,”
Alfalfa Surfer says.
 

He opens the door and lifts me out.
 

“I swear,”
he yells up to my grandfather,
“this boy’s grown an inch this month.”
 

I
land on the ground
with a boner
not a “boy” boner either
and
I don’t bother to hide it

I am proud

to be a man

well maybe on the cusp

with a boner

for another man

in 1968.

+=+

for my husband

Luke,

my very own Alfalfa Surfer
33 years together
loving
living
laughing.

We are lucky boyz.  

I spoke on the phone tonight to one of my historical friends. His mother and my mother got into so much trouble back in the day, flying with stock car racer Curtis Turner in his private plane all over the southeast, playing golf and meeting my Dad, who was Mr. Turner’s attorney.

Billy and I go back to my earliest memories. He’s 8 years older than I am which, when we were young, seemed like a vast crevasse I could not cross because, well, he was 8 years older. But tonight on the phone the 8 year difference in our ages didn’t matter one whit.

Billy lives 3000 miles away.

Recently, several close friends of mine have suddenly vanished, left my life, my orbit, on purpose. At least I thought they were friends. I was wrong. Obviously. They vanished of their own accord, I did not want them to leave. It has hurt me to the core, mainly because I don’t like that many people so when I make a friend I always think it is forever. I believe that I am a good friend, that I was a good friend to these people.

I don’t think anything like this has ever happened to me, not even in high school, if then.

Whatever happened to talking shit through?

Billy has known me all my life. He remembers my father and mother and my sister and brother, all from the beginning. He is my historical friend. I can count on him.

And because he is not, shall we say, a self-obsessed dried up piece of petty bullshit SHIT who, well… they are not worth the effort of my anger all these many months later…

“That she forgot me was the least
I felt it second pain
That I was worthy to forget
Was most I thought upon.

Faithful was all that I could boast
But Constancy became
To her, by her innominate,
A something like a shame.”

– Emily Dickinson, 1914

Julius Lester. Sue Monk Kidd. Donald Trump.

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”

– Julius Lester, Professor.

A Parable

The Angry and Hateful Christians

I am so fucking sick and tired of state legislatures passing laws that discriminate against gay people. (I can’t speak to the transgender bathroom issues that seem to be the most recent excuse for these laws but I will admit to using women’s restrooms when the men’s bathrooms are occupied - I live in California! They have always been one stall affairs so that I can lock the door. Why does a florist need a men’s bathroom with a bank of 5 urinals or why does a bakery need a 5 private stall women’s bathroom?)

Why are all these anti-gay discrimination laws that are sweeping the southern states based on Christian beliefs? Short answer, they are not. This is about continuing the anti-gay fight ever since the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is legal, and these restless politicians who spout hate in the name of love of God and Jesus have no idea what they’re talking about. How, pray tell, is my gay marriage infringing on religious freedom? Don’t bake me a fucking cake, so what? I’ll eat a damn apple which falls from the tree unless it turns out be a religiously protected tree.

I realize that you realize that I’m angry but underneath my anger is hurt because I have never in my life persecuted a religious person or called anyone’s God a name. So why, tell me, how Christian people, when they get an abundance of hate in their bloated hearts, always seem to find willing politicians hateful enough to pass policies that they say protect them for their beliefs. What are those beliefs?

It always seems to be bakeries or florists that are behind these laws - “I love you but I cannot bake a wedding cake for your wedding because it goes against my beliefs.” Pu lease.

Let’s say a murderer walks into a florist and asks for 12 white roses so he can make up with his wife after their latest fight.

“Here’s your, bouquet, sir,” the florist says. “I hope you can straighten things out with your wife.” The two men nod at each other.

In less than an hour the murderer has shot his wife through the heart and then blown his own brains out. The white roses are scattered across the floor like prayers, soaking up the sea of blood.

You get my point.

How, in the name of God, does that murderer get 12 white roses from a Christian florist when one of the 10 commandments is about to be violated?

Is there a commandment that states two loving gay people getting married do not deserve a giant wedding cake or is there a commandment that states that the death of a gay spouse does not deserve a floral arrangement?

Trump: Republicans Get What They Deserve - so they need to stop the Pissin’ and Moanin’

Seems fitting that since the rise of Reagan’s Moral Majority in the 80s, and Limbaugh’s lies and his rising hatred of the American political system in the 90s along with Starr’s and the Republican Congress’ obsession with Clinton’s impeachment, and then the ramp up of Fox News in the early 00s and the Fox network’s fire breathing during Obama’s Presidency in spite of the disaster of his predecessor, Bush II, that the Republican party would finally end up with someone like Trump - a xenophobe, a coward and a bully.

Be careful of overheating the pot unless you are prepared for it to stink and bubble over.

Scalia.

Antonin Scalia.

Is dead.

Absolutely and of course,

President Obama

should nominate Scalia’s replacement

and the Senate should vote

on the nominee.

All this talk of waiting until

the next President

takes office,

close to a year from now,

before nominating

Scalia’s replacement

is unconstitutional.

Scalia was nothing

if not a stickler

for the Constitution.

I was 21 years-old when I attended my first Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York - Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale were the nominees and they won the Presidency in 1976.

Tonight, forty years later, I’m listening to Donald Trump speaking, after winning the New Hampshire primary. My brain is exploding from his narcoleptic narcissism and nonsensical hubris about making America great again. We are great, right now. There have been no outside terrorist attacks since Obama became President, all the shootings have been homegrown American citizens killing other Americans. Sure, I’m pissed about the banks, they took my bank-account-ass for a spin during the real estate boom/bust and I criticized Obama endlessly on this Blog (check it out) for the lack of accountability on the the Bank’s parts. But I was eager enough and money hungry enough to participate so I accept my responsibility in the big sucking sound that was my credit score.

I do not think it is a good idea to trash the USA while running for President. Trash the President, sure. Trash your opponents without calling them schoolyard names. But do not trash the country. WE are the COUNTRY.

Sanders won in New Hampshire by 20 points over Clinton. He and Clinton, together, make a great candidate…

… More to come.

Tatiana Mislany
“Orphan Black”

In order to understand Ms. Maslany’s talent, all you have to do is watch her award-winning television series, Orphan Black. She portrays 5 or 6 characters, at one time it was up to 7 or 9. It’s not trick acting. Ms. Maslany plays her clone sisters independently - each one has her own tics, gestures, smiles, eyes and stances. She’s one of those actors who can get under your skin just so you have a good reason to scratch her itch.

Ms. Maslany has a part in DANCING ON THE CELLAR DOOR if she wants it.

Jessica Lange
“Blue Sky”

When Tommy Lee Jones helicopters over the beach and sees his wife, Jessica Lange, spinning across the sand in a thread bare dress - if you have an ounce of passion in your heart you stop breathing. Or gasp. Or both. And you say to yourself, ‘I will follow her anywhere’.

Ms. Lange has a part in DANCING ON THE CELLAR DOOR if she wants it.

OSCAR WILDE
and PARIS
and ME
and Colm Toibin

I was sweating
breathing hot-wired rage
once again
at the Jihadists
the Muslim terrorists and
their knee-slapping stupidity
their blither and blather chatter
their tweeting-hash-tagging-sputtering
blow-harding murdering mouths
freed from their brains
free, I say,
from their BRAINS
until,
UNTIL

After the Paris attacks
I was shaking my head in disbelief
at the spectacle at home
spit-balling candidates running
for the Republican nomination for
President of America
not the United States
but America
candidates who,
too,
are separated
from their brains
their BRAINS
yes their brains.

I was wrecked
surrounded by fools and
fool hards
at home
and abroad

until,
UNTIL

I discovered
in
Colm Toibin’s
passionate and honest book,
LOVE IN A DARK TIME,
the following quote
from Oscar Wilde
written sometime
during the final three years
of his life:

“I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant
who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid and entirely lacking
in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed,
are simple beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than
one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world,
for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.”