Category Archives: Poems

Poems, Songs

Welcome to Slippery Slope, Mr. AutoPresident!

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There has been some tooth gnashing over President Obama’s authorization of the signing of the Patriot Act extension with an autopen. This machine long ago took the place of the chief executive’s hand in dealing with routine correspondence, but apparently this is the first time a mechanical device has been used to turn a bill into a law.

A legal opinion written by lawyers with the Bush (2) administration was used to justify the move.

Even so, Obama will be criticized, but that’s not the greatest risk. The greatest risk, as anyone who has worked in a factory knows, is allowing a machine to get a metal and plastic toe in the door when it comes to doing an essential part of your job. History tells us where that leads – sometime in the future our President (whoever it may be) and the autopen are bound to have their John Henry Moment.

When John Henry got into the White House
Famous ‘cause he worked so hard,
He arrived with much renown, he had people all ‘round.
He was popular and held in high regard, Lord Lord.
Popular and held in high regard.

When John Henry reached the Oval Office
Surrounded by women and men
He said, “Now I’m feelin’ fine, I got papers here to sign”
They said, “All of that is done by auto pen” Lord Lord,
“We don’t need you with the auto pen.”

John Henry said to his people
“While it’s true my arms are sore,
I won’t let them wires and wheels fix my presidential seals,
Bring us bills and I will sign them all and more, Lord Lord.
Bills to sign and more and more and more.

So John Henry signed with his left hand
Autopen signed with the right
Though it didn’t have no arm or no presidential charm,
It signed every bill that he did through the night, Lord Lord
Both of them signed bills all through the night.

When they found them there in the morning,
It was dark and cold and damp.
Just a gizmo and a bloke, blood and oil and sweat and smoke.
One was broken and one died of writer’s cramp, Lord Lord.
What a way to go, from writer’s cramp.

The moral to this story
Is to do all you can do.
But there ain’t a man alive who can challenge and survive
when machines arrive to take the place of you, Lord Lord.
When machines arrive to sign then you are through!

The John Henry song sure comes in handy at a time like this. I love to re-write it – some of you may recall I’ve done it before. But why not take advantage of every opportunity while I can? Because it’s a repetitive activity, I’m sure someday there will be an app to do it for me.

What arts and crafts project could you do over and over and over without tiring of it?

Poems

One That Got Away

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It was a blustery fishing opener again this year, but at least Minnesota’s Democratic Governor (Mark Dayton) and the Republican leaders of the House (Kurt Zellers) and Senate (Matt Dean) got together to support the state’s tourism effort by going out just after midnight to not catch any fish.

I haven’t seen any reports that put the three alone in the same small boat, though that would be an ideal situation to promote a settlement of the state’s 5 billion dollar budget shortfall. Or it could start an all out war. It would make a great scene in a movie, anyway.

The whole idea of three in a boat reminded me of the classic children’s poem by Edward Field, Wynken, Blynken and Nod. Offered here with sincere apologies to the author and everyone else. (Including Eugene Field, the real author of the original poem – Thanks for the correction, Verrily Sherrilee)

Dayton, Zellers and Dean one night
sailed off on a big pontoon –
Sailed on a lake in a mid may gale
By the light of a northern moon.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish and to accomplish
what they said could never be.
At least not under Pawlenty!”
Said Dayton,
Zellers
And Dean.

The old moon laughed and winked an eye
as they rocked on the frothy lake,
And the wind picked up as the three did try
to do some give and take.
The little stars, worth a billion each
they sparkled the whole night through.
But never enough could just one reach,
without the other two.
So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
Dayton,
Zellers
And Dean.

One said “taxes,” two said “cuts!”
To the stars as the waves did rise.
They barked and they howled, as would three old mutts
Avoiding compromise;
‘Twas such a predictable path they sailed
To get come round to where they’d be
At the very same spot from whence they’d sailed
Way back in January —
And I shall name you the fishermen three:
Dayton
Zellers
And Dean.

There’s a fourth verse which I didn’t have time to attempt, so you’re welcome to give it a try. Or tell us about your favorite childhood poem.

Poems

Vast Wasteland

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Fifty years ago today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow spoke to the National Association of Broadcasters and told them it was time for television to “grow up”.

The bigwigs of broadcasting were not delighted by this dressing down from a bureaucrat. The most benign (and delightful) reaction to Minow from the TV industry came when the producers of Gilligan’s Island named the cast’s ill-fated boat after him.

You can listen to the whole thing if you want, but here’s the famous quote (the long form):

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

Newton Minow is still with us today at age 85, and last month wrote a commentary for The Atlantic about the anniversary of his famous speech. He bemoans the fact that so much emphasis was placed on the words “Vast Wasteland” when he thinks the most important word pair in the talk was “Public Interest”.

But there you go. The result proves his argument. Regardless of what you think you mean to say, opportunistic interpreters will find the most provocative and lucrative part of your statement, and that is what we will peddle. And by “we”, I mean the bazillions of us who make up what some call “the media” of 2011. Minow’s original critique focused mainly on the offerings of three measly networks. Big deal.

Here at Trail Baboon, my preferred method of trivializing significant things is to celebrate them with a silly, sing-songy poem. Why should Newton Minow be spared?

Newton Minow watched TV
and said he was appalled it
did not deserve its public, and
a wasteland’s what he called it.

A two-word slam. A snide remark.
A snotty little slight
That for 50 years has stung
And made us wonder – was he right?

A scolding seldom wins the day.
A snob is just a snob.
And to wag his finger at the box
was Newton Minow’s job.

He did his part. He turned his phrase.
He sang his little song.
But seeing how the landscape changed
We know he got it wrong.

Because Minow didn’t know about
“Apprentice”. The poor guy!
He had not beheld a Hasselhoff
Or seen a CSI

In ’61 no one had watched
Mob Wives or Jersey Shore.
But today we gladly take these shows
To have and to abhor.

The ‘wasteland’ part is accurate
today as in the past
but he blew it when he called
his paltry ‘60’s circus “vast”.

What’s the worst TV show you’ve ever seen?

Poems

Pothole Poetry

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We may be broke dollar-wise, but we’re rich in potholes!
Let’s celebrate our wealth with some appropriate limericks.

There was a pothole in Cloquet
That was always, somehow, in the way.
When your car took its pounding
The noise was astounding
And bolts were seen rolling away.

A pothole in Inver Grove Heights
Was replete with suburban delights.
It had flora and fauna
A dock and a sauna
And mini-golf under the lights.

In an ancient pothole in St. Paul
Hieroglyphics were found on one wall
But their worth was debunked
by each car that ka-chunked
and the water that blasted them all.

Got a pothole story? A limerick of your own? Share the pain!

Poems

A Donald Serves The Nation

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I can’t help it!

I know the Donald doesn’t deserve any more attention, but he is SO beguiling!
The extreme look is Seussian, and his mission – absurd!
His self-congratulation as a reaction to being proven wrong could have been written up for one of the good Doctor’s bizarre clump-haired characters.

I’ve done what no one else could do!
I proved that One plus One is Two.
I forced the issue on this sum
By talking loud and playing dumb.

Whenever I was sternly told
“The answer’s ‘two’”, I’d glare and scold,
Then turn and ask them on the spot
“But what if? Just suppose it’s not!”

They’d give me something, then one more,
then count them both and like before
They’d say “That’s two, and it’s a fact.”
And that’s when I’d begin my act.

“I cannot see the thing you show!
It’s something I choose not to know.”
I’d stamp my feet and flip my hair
And claim their ‘two’ just wasn’t there.

I’d bluster some, then bloviate.
I’d act offended and irate.
They let me do it, as a famous,
celebrated ignoramus!

I spewed so much wild talk about it,
Some others soon began to doubt it!
“Suppose the answer’s cherry pie?”
“Could be!” I said! “If so, they lie!”

At last, alas the thing became
a rally built around my name.
And I became a great forsoother.
The “One Plus One Might Not Be Two-ther!”

That is, until they had to show
the documents that say it’s so.
And I received what was my due
Attention paid, by all of you.

I got my way through agitation
and supplied a grateful nation
proof at last, with wiles and art
That playing stupid can be smart.

When have you played dumb?

Poems

Watson Hears A Hallooo

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This is the anniversary of the day in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson conducted a significant experiment in Boston.

Technology has advanced so much since then, you can now sit in your pajamas and with a computer and some phone wire, read an account of the historic events as written in Bell’s own hand. Amazing. But each time I’ve heard this story, there has been one particular aspect that troubles my Midwestern sensibility.

It’s a small detail, and it seems trite to bring it up. Such a big advance and such a tiny complaint!

Fortunately, by running Bell’s notebook through the Seussifier, I was able to distill my problem down to three verses.

On the tenth day of March in a lab by the bay,
Mr. Bell said a First in the History of Say.
When he called his assistant as scientists do:
“Mr. Watson come here – I want to see you!”

Mr. Watson came running to be seen, of course.
Both to help Mr. Bell and upset Mr. Morse.
For the call that he answered went not through the air
but through vibrating wires as thin as your hair.

So hats off to Bell, so inventive and bold
And Watson, who did everything he was told.
But good children know that in times such as these
One should never say ‘come here’ without saying ‘please’!

Would it have been terribly difficult to say “Watson, PLEASE come here. I want to see you, if it’s not too much trouble”? They say brilliant people lack social skills. Maybe so.

Jim Ed Poole always likes to point out that Alexander Graham Bell’s idea for how we would answer this new invention was NOT to say “Hello”, but rather, “Ahoy”, as they do at sea. Too bad it never caught on. Maybe in recognition of the importance of this anniversary we should all answer our calls with “Ahoy” today.

It might even sound better than “hello”, especially if you answer the phone for a business that sells comforting, egg shaped playthings made from impure metals.

Ahoy! Boyd’s Ovoid Alloyed Toys! Avoid being paranoid. Enjoy an ovoid toy today! How may I help you?

When has an unlikely personal experiment succeeded?

Poems

Let’s Not See All The Same Hands …

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Supreme Court observers have noted that Justice Clarence Thomas is about to reach the five-year anniversary of the last time he asked a question during oral arguments before the court. No other justice has gone that long without raising his hand.

What does this mean? It means that Supreme Court observers are desperate people who need hobbies.

I was a kid who didn’t ask questions in class, in part because all the other kids were so gabby. I thought I was doing a public service by keeping mum. Somehow I got it in my head that we’d get to go to lunch before Mr. Sinclair’s room if we got done with algebra first. Maybe that’s what Justice Thomas is doing.

Oh, and I also didn’t want to get laughed at. I never bought the line about their being ‘no dumb questions,’ because I knew my head was full of them.

For some unexplainable reason, the odd notion of a consistently mum member of the black robed Supreme Court made me think of Edgar Allen Poe.

Once into a court Supremely strode a man some call unseemly
Whether he is that or something else I cannot say for sure.
As he sat among his brethren, criticism he’d been weatherin’
Harsh words, like balloons untetherin’, floated upwards from the floor.
“I’ve no questions,” Thomas muttered. “Like so many times before.”
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

“Surely some things make you wonder as you sit, be-robed, to ponder,”
said a counselor whose well-wrought argument had been a bore.
Thomas gazed up at the ceiling, noticed that the paint was peeling
Feeling an un-curious feeling. A feeling he had felt before.
And for years and years and years and years and years before and more.
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

All the others on the panel – all three women and each man’ll
have at least one query every session, say those who keep score.
Roberts. Kennedy. Scalia. Each of them, in turn, will be a
questioner. Some repeat. Scalia. Scalia. And, of course, Sotomayor.
Only Thomas remains silent as the Sphinx of ancient lore.
Listening, and nothing more.

In they come, their black gowns sweeping. One of them is, maybe, sleeping.
Justices, like angry birds, are poised to pounce on those before.
All their intellect is pooling with each new, successive ruling.
Reasoned judgments come unspooling out the giant courtroom door.
Only one is known for what we know he does not have in store –
Questions, Clarence? Nevermore!

Did you participate in the class discussion?

Poems

Re-writing History

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Protesters challenging entrenched governments in Tunisia and Egypt gained early momentum thanks to social media. That Facebook and Twitter could play such a role in modern insurrections was unimagined by the founders of these social websites, and the whole notion of a website would be incomprehensible to Our Founding Fathers.

Where current events will lead is unclear, but if you transport these latest devices back 236 years, it’s not hard to imagine that earlier revolutions might have started in the same way.

Friend me, children, and you shall hear
Of the Twitterstream of Paul Revere.
In April of 1775
Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers the web was already here.

He said to his friend, “When the Brits intrude,
If by land or sea from the town they lurch,
Send a message to me from your iPhone, dude
I’ve got coverage up by the old North Church.

One tweet if by land and two tweets if by sea
And I on the opposite shore will be
Already connected to Facebook and Twitter
I’ll rally each farmer and rancher and knitter.
Assuming they all can arrange for a sitter.

Later, impatient and holding his cell,
All jumpy from Starbucks and eager as hell
on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he’s tested his ringtone’s knell
Now five bars, his reception clear.
Checked his battery. It was charged.
His pounding heart was twice enlarged.

He searched for hashtags to hasten speed
#British, #man-o-war, #redcoats and #steed
The network was up, but was it corrupted?
Then quickly to life the device erupted.
“Brits go 4 #man-o-war, coming by sea
Revolution is here, P. Revere OMG!”
He copied this message, not missing a beat.
Proceeded it with an “RT” for “re-tweet”
And then closed up the phone. Revolution complete.

You know the rest. It was blogged. It was posted.
The Redcoats, defeated, were routed and toasted.
For social connections can work with a power
as potent as lanterns hung in a church tower.
A people, aggrieved, can now push for redress
in one hundred forty quick keystrokes or less.

Longfellow’s poem (which actually does include the word “twitter”), is as famous today for it’s inaccuracies as its narrative – evidence that a memorable simplicity must eventually succumb to a more complex truth.

Ever been part of an uprising?

Poems

Yet Another Visit From St. Nick

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Yes, he comes every year. If we’re lucky, this year will be a lot like last year, and the year before and the year before. I know I always expected to find some Silly Putty and Chap Stick in my stocking every Christmas morning, and as long as I was patient and believed in Santa, I was never disappointed.

In the great tradition of tradition-keeping, I’ll reprise an old bit of holiday doggerel from 1994. This is intended to keep the spirit of Clement Moore alive through sheer spite. Wherever he’s buried, the ground above is warm – the result of friction from a body spinning in its grave and the heat generated by the large amounts of psychic energy that it takes for a dead man to plot revenge.

I would not be surprised some midnight when mama’s in her kerchief and I’m in my cap, to find Clement Moore shaking his fist and railing at me from the front lawn. I picture him rising from his long winter’s nap to spend a single night plaguing everyone who has ever mocked him. But given the number of times his old poem has been parodied, he’d have a very, very busy time of it.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
every door had been locked by myself or my spouse.
I shut off the lights and proceeded to arm
our state-of-the-art infrared burglar alarm.

I thought not of peace though it was Christmas Eve.
For the nighttime brings anger, or so I perceive.
A regular, permanent case of the blues
I contracted from watching the 10 o’clock news.

When out in the yard there arose such a din
I jumped up real quick (for the shape that I’m in).
First to the window I flew at a run
And then to the phone to dial 9-1-1.

For what I had seen was so very bizarre
Should I call out the cops or the state DNR?
A musher and dogs from some marathon race
were lost and had somehow wound up at my place.

Eight dogs in the snow – they were icy and furry.
They must have been racing … they looked in a hurry.
And the guy in the sled was a sight in himself.
I expected Will Steger … He looked like an elf!

I opened my mouth to say, “Buddy, move on
before all your animals ruin my lawn!”
When all of a sudden … this plump little guy
called out to his dogs and they started to fly.

“Now Lassie, now Fido, now Benji and Bowser!
On Beethoven, Petey and Pluto and Towser!
Pull back your ears and put down your tails!”
And they took to the wind as though they had sails!

And then I could hear it … the physical proof.
The dogs and that sled were destroying my roof!
He came down the chimney! I swear this is true.
He grunted and struggled to squeeze through the flue.

His eyes were so jolly, his beard white like cream.
He stepped into the infrared burglar beam.
The place just erupted. The siren went wild.
St. Nicholas chuckled. He winked and then smiled.

“You’re crazy!” I told him. “The cops will be here!”
He just shook his head. St. ick felt o fear.
“I know eery cop between here and beyond.
I trip every alarm and they never respond.”

“I used to just enter wherever I please,
But I got tired of hearing ‘POLICE, Fasto. FREEZE!”
And so to avoid an embarrassing mess
I get legal search warrants for every address.

He showed me his papers, then emptied his pack.
“Some homeonwers fire. I never shoot back.
These days the generous have to be brave.”
Then back up the chimney he went with a wave.

On the roof I heard scraping, the tearing of shingles,
then running and barking and shouting and jingles.
And I heard him exclaim as they started to soar …
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALLLLLLLL!”
Then they landed next door.

If you could visit every home on earth tonight for the purpose of leaving a gift – the very same one in each house – what would it be?

Poems

Metrodome Deflation Haiku

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Minnesota was making some progress, reputation-wise. We used to be known for miserable weather, but thanks to the efforts of many thousands of stalwart, politically active, civic minded citizens, we were well on the way to becoming famous for election recounts.

Now it’s back to weather.

This weekend’s snowstorm put the upper Midwest front and center on many news summaries coast-to-coast. Apocalypse in the Heartland! We could have withstood that negative publicity by sharing the weight with Iowa and Wisconsin, but Sunday morning’s deflation of the Metrodome re-reminded the rest of the nation that Minnesota is part of the upper Midwest. Dang. And as the repairs are made over the next few days, it will be bitterly cold. Double dang. They were just starting to forget!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuxNLf87_Y

All we can do is graciously embrace the climate we were given with a zen-like acceptance. Toward that end, I suggest you consider writing a Metrodome Deflation Haiku. It’s fun. And once you’ve done it you can read your work of artsy genius out loud, using a breathy, downward vocal trajectory. Just like all the air rushing out of something.

The Americanized version of haiku uses three unrhymed lines a 5 – 7 – 5 syllable sequence.

My bumpy pillow
Feels as cold as a blizzard.
White sand fills my dreams.

Fully inflated
They call me impervious
But I don’t like snow.

Brett Farve’s shoulder must
hurt like torn fabric panels
waving in the breeze.

See? Easy cheesy.

Write your own!