Will Extremes End The GOP Control Of The House?

I'm going to take a little time and a little space here to veer a bit from poetry. I owe this juncture to the likes of Representative John Duncan (R-Tenn) and Representative John Fleming (R-La) in the House and Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (T-TX) who have been hell bent on playing blackmail with the health care of Americans and risking the stability of a fragile American economy.  

The question I have to ask is this... Are the House Republicans about to go the way of the dinosaur?  As easy as it would be for me to say what do I care...  the bigger question is why do these Republicans wish to crash the stability of this nation's economy or play with the health of millions of Americans. These are the two options they are sending to the President. 

I realize that not all Republicans are happy with that extremes have been brought to the table by those who make up the Tea Party members of congress, but the House GOP leaders have failed to show any sign of leadership in this instance. We are talking about members of Congress that should well recall that impact the last government shut down had on their own party.. The obvious is that the Tea Party members of Congress want something that has nothing to do with keeping the government funding and they are willing  to piss on everyone else to get what they want. They really are the Pee Party... and they just want to piss on the Affordable Health Care Act. 

In this weekend's actions the Republican House added these extremes to a straight up and down government funding bill:

• de-fund the Affordable Care Act
• repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law until December 15 in order to delay Affordable Health Care Act
• to allow employers to opt out of women's preventative health care coverage including contraceptives

Quite frankly I'm tired of people in government that are acting like spoiled children.If they want to act like spoiled children within the parameters of their own family life that's up to them, but imposing this behavior on the rest of our lives has no place our government. 

The Pee Party Republicans have a one track mind. Stopping "Obamacare" as they like to refer to it. This nation had this debate and it is over. I have been fortunate to have health care coverage for many years now. Delay or repeal is not going to directly impact me,  but I remember the days when my  family and I did not have health coverage. This country has come a long way to get to this point and I seriously am tire of the lies and efforts to stop this from happening. I've heard some members of Congress encourage people not to sign up for coverage. What self-centered assholes. 

Removing Obstacles - September 2013

anticipation contains an element of doubt
they agreed not to shake hands
agreement is good - right?

some will always want failure
act quickly - but not too fast
it seems peace often is left
to some degree of chance

Tuesday Confession on Wednesday

Dear Reader:

It's been 3,657 coughs (more or less) one dysfunctional DVR, another child out of the nest, 2 1/2 boxes of Kleenex, one Minsky's Pizza, another season of 24, and two new light bulbs since my last confession.

I confess that I've driven myself over the edge coughing and blowing my nose this week and very likely others around me at the office as well. I'm so ready for this to be over, especially since I have a GI scope next week and I don't want to have to delay it.

We had Minsky's Pizza tonight. Usually I would really enjoy a Minsky pizza. I confess I was so-so about it tonight. Cathy felt the same. She felt there was not quite enough hamburger on it, I felt it was too limp. I confess I do not care for limp pizza.

If I sound cranky, I might be. I mean feeling crappy has been the order of the day since oh, Friday afternoon. I'm thinking that tomorrow when I get up I am going to disavow this sinus crude. I confess that this approach is an exercise of mind over matter (or mucus) but I'm ready to try a fresh approach... a positive one.

Our DVR is not working tonight. it actually stopped doing what a DVR does yesterday. I need to get to Comcast tomorrow to replace it.( New season of Glee starts tomorrow night.)

I'm looking for a positive charge all-around. I'm coming into the blue season. The time when I often feel down even if I'm not feeling sick. It's time to do a head check and try and move forward with a positive frame of mind no matter how things are going. So here's to a upbeat week ahead!

Weekend Postmortem

Thursday and Friday were especially grueling days at work. As a result I was so looking froward to the weekend to relax and recharge my batteries. But Friday, my work day was so intense I was only vaguely aware how lousy I felt till I arrived home and the rest of the world  stopped moving a warp speed.

Friday evening it became crystalline that I was being held prisoner by a sinus-mucus-drainage-headache-burning chest, loss of appetite thingy that kicked my ass into bed.

Saturday came, more of the same. Lots of fluids, medicine, Kleenex, hacking (I know, we are getting a little too graphic) but my weekend that I needed to be normal was anything but normal.

By Saturday evening I attempted to work on an essay that I had due but my eyes hurt so much that reading was simply too frustrating and I gave up on the essay that was due by 6AM Sunday morning eastern time.
This left me sick and in a bad mood.

Mid-day Sunday I was feeling better but not especially steady or energetic but I ventured out to help load a trailer with varying furnishings of my daughter Shannon and my wife and I drove them to her new house where the two of them mostly unloaded. We returned and a second load was taken over by Shannon and my wife. I again crashed.

Of course the better part of the weekend is over. My eyes are able to read with out adding to a headache and although my nose is now running like a faucet, I am setting up and able to do this post on my laptop. Clearly the weekend is a lost cause and emotionally I will head off to work tomorrow mostly feeling like no weekend ever happened, of if it did it wasn't  one worth remembering.

 Also lost on this weekend was my submission Saturday. I've been so diligent about it for so many months it feels like another something important is unresolved. I suppose I could try and crank out something yet tonight but I really have been giving a lot of thought to these submissions and I don't want to do something half-assed just for the sake of doing it. Perhaps I can do something during the week to catch up.

I'm nursing a 52 ounce diet coke (which is half gone) and thinking I need to stop and do a breathing treatment. Maybe tackle a little reading before I go to bed and see what the world looks like on the other side.

Confession Tuesday - An Emotional Knot

Tuesday night... It's time to confess again and it's getting late so let's head to the confessional.

Dear Readers:

It's been a long seven days, an emotional seven days, a worrisome seven days. It's also been a week in which I had two poems accepted for publication and another poem hanging next to an awesome painting at the Albrecht-Kemper Museam of Art that inspired the work of art.

I've just come from a Royals - Indians baseball game. I was a bit conflicted because both teams are within reach of the wild-card for post season and the Indians are my second favorite baseball team behind the San Francisco Giants. But the home town Royals have not had a winning season like forever. I wanted to see a good game and confess that I kinda was pulling for the Tribe but wanted it to be a good game - not some blow-out. The Indians came from behind and won 5 to 3. Wahoo!

Some weeks from one Tuesday to the next seem to zoom by and I wonder where it all went. A week ago we were saying goodbye to our beloved dog Moe. I confess this continues to be hard for me to deal with but I'm somewhat sobered by the fact that our long hared dachshund Berry is sick as well. He has been shedding weight like crazy and after some blood tests it appears he suffers from EPI or Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency. I confess that the emotions related to Moe's death and the decline of Berry offer a very rocky emotional ride. The loss, the fear of losing another, coupled with cautious optimism  that there is something that can be done for Berry and yet the ongoing struggles to get him eating again and keeping food down. It's this mixture of emotions that has stretched this week like taffy, and me at times to a breaking point.

Friday two good things came my way and I confess that they have helped keep me sane.  The opening of the Jennifer Rivera Exhibit "Between the Lines" Pictures with poetry at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. A poem of mine shares wall space next to one of Jennifer's pieces of art. I am honored to have a poem that is part of this exhibit.  The other positive note is that I heard on Friday that two of my poems were accepted for publication in January in a venue that I've never been in before. This offsets the rejection I received this week.

I confess that sometimes I have be open to looking for the little things. Just as I will be looking for little signs of improvement in Berry this coming week.

Miss You Mo-Mo

Moe Cooling Down 

In Loving Memory September 9, 2013

The Poet Prism

Always a poet, always searching in wonder.  To me, some things can only be seen through the prism of a poet's mind.

 

Its seems to me that much of my life has been an internal dialogue which in the past twenty years has manifested itself in written word. The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas has remarked that "All people talk to themselves. Some are overheard, and they are the poets." I suppose this is so, and I was trapped in this path long ago.

 

Maybe there are more people that are on the cusp of becoming poets and don't quite realize it. I've always felt that there are people I know that express disdain for poetry and yet I feel they don't really know what it is they don't like. It's more of a idea that they are arguing with themselves over they any concrete purpose. They just haven't quite figured out how or to whom to express it. If they did, maybe they world cross over the line and become one of us. 



Confession Tuesday.. Er Wednesday

Dear Friends & Readers:

Another Tuesday has come and gone. This one slipped through my fingers and I didn't realize it because being off Labor Day made it feel like a Monday. That’s my story and I’m sticking by it. So here I am heading to the Confessional a day late. At least there is no line.

I confess that it is hard to believe that it’s September. Hard to believe because it seems like the first pitch of spring training was just thrown out yesterday. Hard to believe too, because I usually make some provision for coaching/mentoring in the fall and I've done nothing towards that end this year. This I just realized today.

I've been so busy writing and submitting that I confess that I have in some ways been less aware of the world around me. Oh, I’m not neglecting to interact with my family. I’m not hold up in a room writing and forgetting to eat (though that might be a way to shed a few pounds) and I know about Syria, I know about sequester, and I’m aware that poetry & the world lost Seamus Heaney. It’s perhaps the more subtle things around me that are racing by.

I confess that days seem long and months seem fast. Does that make sense? Is this what getting older is like?    

True, time is an arbitrary measurement created by man but I confess that I wish it were more arbitrary to me personally. I’d like to stop the clock at times or at lease slow it down. True, I’d probably speed it up weekdays between 8 and 5 but I’m sure that as soon as I realized that I couldn't get all my work done I’d be more responsible or judicious in how I allocated it. At least I could make sure I got my confession done on Tuesday and not Wednesday.

Amen!

Slipped Out Of Her Jeans - Liquid Imagination

LIQUID IMAGINATION Issue 18 is live and I am fortunate to have one of my poems with so many other really outstanding works.

You can catch Slipped Out of Her Jeans HERE and an additional treat is that there is an audio read of the poem by the vary talented Nic Sebastian. Here voice gives depth to the poem and I was thrilled to have her share in this publication with me.