IMPOTUS

Illegally Malingering . . .

Cheers . . .

November Third: On the sonnet "Planting Garlic"

I usually prefer not to add notes to a poem, but also usually prefer not to place a poem onto my blog — unless it seems of the moment, particularly the ever-so-quickly changing political moment.

I placed my sonnet "The Winter King" here due to Forty-Five's blusterous insanity about building walls, which I thought might abruptly land him in an asylum. So I rushed it, a bit: the poem appeared on this blog, in consequence, in a version not-quite final. A few words in it remained restless, and changed themselves soon enough. As it turned out, I would have had time aplenty to collect rejections for the effort. Forty-Five, who here in my blog writings runs rampage also as Koom-Posh, hid behind presidential immunity, and successfully maintained the Gipper tradition of mentally incapacitated rule.

The poem I will post after posting this note, however, I am not rushing onto this blog. I wrote its first draft very nearly a year ago. It won its place in my morning recitations to myself, so that I reexamined it daily through the year. (Is "morning recitations to myself" at all unclear? Its nature is simple: I recite poems to myself while making breakfast, feeding birds, or gardening.) Several times, during this, I told myself that the sonnet had reached finality. A restlessness in the words would soon again reappear, however. Then, in recent weeks, in October, the words found their way to a resting place.

The sonnet had seemed odd to me, in one aspect — which I left alone, even so — for its mentioning a specific date. November third was the day last year when, at the last possible opportunity, I was planting garlic. That the date made its way into the poem was an accident of the moment. But throughout the following year I knew, thanks to this accident, the exact date when I had been out in the cold, aware of the oncoming deep freeze while also beset by the discomforting feelings of mortality that had been mine since sometime midsummer.

An autumnal pall of uncertainty had fallen over me, well before the season arrived.

By the time the poem came to its resting state in October, of course, the air here in the States blew thickly with thoughts, admonishments, incantations, and dreads concerning November third.

Until the poem was at rest I saw this as mere coincidence. After the words settled, I saw it still as a coincidence.

But as a meaningful one.

The autumnal pall of uncertainty is here, upon all the land — as it has been for nearly four years. The Winter King arrived in 2016, even though the true winter of his soul will not fully enwrap our world until, or unless, he is given chance to unfold it.

But it is cold, now. We need a fire of twigs to warm our hands.

The only possible place where I might put out my offering, my little twig, in time to meet the moment which is upon us, is on my blog.

However few my readers may be, here, they are ones whom I know to be able to place their humanity near just such a twig, to access such warmth as may be there.

May all fully and truly human beings in this country find their own inner self-assurance, as well as their reassurance, by November third.

Cheers . . .

An Open Letter to Senator Ron Johnson

To Ron Johnson, Senator from Wisconsin:

Only four years ago, you thought it fitting for a Supreme Court nomination to be postponed or negated, because it fell "only eight months before an election where the American people are going to decide the direction of the country."

You were lying — perhaps to yourself, but more certainly to the public. You were lying, that is, unless you are a weasel now. Conceivably you are liar and weasel both, since you have accommodated yourself so well to the needs of Forty-Five, the devil whose name had best go unmentioned, who has proven himself so adept at being, at one and the same time, a liar and a weasel.

If you are either or both of these things, you do not represent me, a Wisconsinite and a supposed "constituent" of yours. Wisconsin has its share of liars and two-legged weasels, admittedly; and perhaps you have an obligation to do your honorable best by them.

Many voters here seem unperturbed at your having been put into office by offensively wealthy men; at your being a toady to a bigot who boasts of offensive wealth but who opens a wallet thick only with bluster and bilgewater; or at your helping oversee the violent violation of the rights of innocents through "Homeland" heavy-handedness. You shame Wisconsin, which suggests that your supporters, too, feel no shame.

Yet now in October — only weeks before the Russian government will attempt again to decide the direction of this country — you reveal yourself as a weasel, to all. I hope that your supporters see this through your Badger disguise, and feel pride enough in the fact that they are Badgers themselves to speak out and make you realize that your blush of success in a realm awash in bluster and bilgewater is, instead, the fever-bloom of falsehood — and, I do believe, of your poverty of integrity, and of your deep-seated guilt for doing wrong against your own state and nation.

Most sincerely not yours, Mark Rich, Cashton, Wisconsin