This site has labored in obscurity for a long time. No linkbacks, no sausage links, no winks or looking the other way. We've been beating the mad cow skin drum from the time the British ate too much beef and began looking like their animals or, as the skinheads might say, the French. Yes, this site labored and kept the faith when billionaire Oprah caved to the Texas beef association and said on air that bad beef is not the carrier of mad cow even though in her heart she knew we were right.
We labored still when mad cow made a species leap and jumped into the general population, particularly the American body politic and landed in the hearts, minds and souls of the Bush leaguers who took the poisoned cow meat and poisoned the American heart by finding a terrorist under every bed and a lobbyist in every pocket.
These have been dark days indeed but now the cow has been brought forcefully out the the closet by a television show, Boston Legal that has a character, from Starburst or Stars Wars or the good ship lollipop, named Denny Crane or Crain or Krane and all of these names because he is everywhere, as a doorman, a scuba diver, an IRS clerk making money and telling the world he has mad cow disease and that is why he points a gun at everyone and kills a few. This doorman has announced to the world that he has the disease that brought the British Empire to its knees and informed 60 million Baby Boomers that their President has the same disease and, after he is impeached should be pitied and prayed for by that vast right wing conspiracy called the religious right.
We now know why our government made so many mistakes. It was not due to arrogance, hubris, stupidity but to mad cow. As the saying goes, when disease infects the king his subjects must get it too. So he brought this disease into the white house, probably on his shoes, and like bird flu, it spread. Otherwise reasonable men and women got a dose and suddently saw mushroom clouds, uranium cakes, and trailer parks with low-IQ bio-chem types. They saw Hitler in Saddam, Mojo in Baghdad Bob, and Mussolini in Chemical Alley. They all went down the same cow-widened street, cooking the books, manufacturing research, and lying to the American public. It was not their fault, as Denny Crane or Crain has made clear. They are hopeless victims of a Texas-grade mad cow disease that invades the synapse like cheap vodka. Now they are circling the wagons and claiming any criticism of them is a plot--a terrorist plot. There is good medical evidence that mad cow diseasea eliminates all parts of the brain except the terror cell. So this is the reason the president and his lame duck shooting vice president gives so many speeches about terrorism, calls everything, even high gas prices, terrorism; they simply have no other working parts of their brains. This is all they can talk about. They don't understand that their own terrorist-centered brains have created a safe haven in Iraq for terrorists. This is an inevitable symptom of mad cow disease. So when they mention terror cell, they are really talking about their own wasting disease. We should forgive them for killing and maiming so many people.
But all is not lost. Denny Crane or Crain, the bellhop and Starwish fantasy player, announced recently on Boston Legal that he was running for President as a republican with the campaign promises: everyone must own and shoot a gun. While this might be a problem the real benefit is that he will go on the Larry Caine or Kane or Cane Show to talk about mad cow disease. Millions of people will see a famous lawyer--his name's on the door--who is running for president and is not reluctant to admit his own weaknesses. He will finally bring mad cow from the bedroom to the kitchen table where family members can talk about the subject over crackers. He will likely bring the white house back to some level of sobriety and normalcy by sneaking hookers in through the back door. Ands he'll shoot everyone he doesn't like.
On a Bethesda Lawn
His stump is not like the bloody
arm Jack Palance left under a German
tank in that '50s movie.
This young man knows he left his right
leg, somewhere below the knee, in his Humvee
outside of Baghdad. He remembers
the Navy corpsman, the tourniquet
the surgeon and then the letting go.
He woke to a titanium leg
with computer chips and memory
that collects his first and last falls.
The Marine has done the sure-footed
dance from dot to dot on exercise
mats. He can now assemble his legs
as quickly as he can breakdown his gun.
He will run a marathon some day.
Today on the Bethesday Hospital lawn
he walks, parents at his side, feeling
through his brilliant circuitry
every tuff. every blade of grass, every crater
assuming all that lies before him
is alive and deadly.
Thinking of Hiroshima
The USS Mount Baker
rockets in its hull
fire in its belly
peace on its lips
steams up Japan's Inland
Sea, that sinuous Bungo Suido
past red-right-returning
buoys bringing us home
through the initial BLAST
which will crack our mizzen
mast, HEAT which will cook
our ships metallic skin
and RADIATION that leaves
fingerprints on our souls
and on the faces of those who
wave on the Hiroshima pier
miniature Americna flags
a half-hearted Noh, a pantomine
a mask we sailors will gladly
exchange for a pint of our expiation blood.
This War
The forsythia are not the flaming yellow
we have come to expect.
No one would be surprised
if the tulip tree bloomed
straight to vegetable ash.
The blue jays in my garden should
not wait the ripe September
cherry tree to feed their young.
This war has sucked the spirit
out of life.
I can open my window
up to the knuckle joint.
The last soldier to die
was from Smalltown, Pennsylvania.
His dying was quicker
than saying his town
His last breath
nearly as short as his life.