Dear Abby

on my facebook  page:

someone dear to me

keeps posting links to scandals:

shady bagmen making claims

about hush money paid

to secret lovers

slush funds funneled

to criminal foundations

murders disguised as suicide

trysts with twisted

fallen women

in hollywood hotels

arranged by perverted moguls 

with a hidden sharia agenda

hatched out in plots

stretching back for years.

the seamy details whispered

into the unsuspecting ears

of dupes and drugged up acolytes,

puppets in the shadow world.

dark hordes subservient

to dark lords,

smears and lies,

mysterious chemicals

in the water and the skies.......

I've pleaded with him to stop

the begged the question why,

-Dear Abby,

tell me, how can I, should I,

unfriend my brother?

If I'd been a professor of dinosaurs

The autumn sun lit up the smudges

on the window of my office.

I was staring through the glare

at the last few pale leaves

drooping from the tangled branches

of the wisteria that framed the view.

The nests of April's starlings

now as exposed and empty

as foreclosed suburban homes.

It was a struggle to focus

on the notes for my lecture

on last summer's visit

to Hell Creek Montana, where

a team of university students

and paleontologists

were excitedly excavating

a nearly complete fossil

of a giant tyranosaur.

Instead I'm slogging

through the fallout and hysteria

in the blogs and papers

and the millions who lust

for a self aggrandizing

would be tyrant.

Would it be too much to wish for,

for an asteroid, the size of a small hand,

to strike the Manhattan tower

where that egomaniacal hemorrhoid

takes a 24 caret dump

on his 24 caret gold-plated commode.

Soon enough I trust

I can return to my ruminations

on the fate of the terrible lizards

who must have been God's darlings

for two hundred million years

and the PR wizard

returns to his gold encrusted

penthouse to brood on

how his brand has failed.

proper use of the subjunctive

would that it were

so simple,

as popping the present

political pustulence

like a pimple.

and this acme

of sleaze and bigotry

cleansed and micro-scrubbed

off our national face

like a case of acne.

if we could but

open the spigot

and wash away the rot,

would that it were

so simple, but it's not.