Tuesday, May 30, 2006

And Now a Word from our Maker

Is George Bush the Antichrist who murders Mankind? He has set the oil wells of Mesopotamia afire, so that he might dance in their light. Moose and bear and coyote seek refuge in New York City, because Bush burns also the forest and destroys the earth. The Babe’s record has fallen, for Bush snorted white powders while drunk and fearful of Vietnam. His white house is now the Whited Sepulcher. Bush has forgotten Osama and praises Rumsfeld with whom he must groove unlawfully each night in Sodom--how else to explain that? Bush orphans children worldwide and steals from the children of America’s next thousand years. Bush boils the planet to air condition his ranch. Conceivably, if not verily, there is one God and Bush is His foe.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Republican Villainy & the Boiling Oceans

It's never been this hot. Their false religion maketh the world Hell. Is this Apocalypse Bush?

Friday, May 26, 2006

Impotent Vilification of George W. Bush

Railing against the president doesn't seem to do much good. Sean Wilentz thinks Bush may be the worst president ever. But I remember hating Johnson and Nixon during Viet Times, and Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis. Once these guys are out of office, they don't seem so bad, somehow. But back when I printed a little magazine called Unmuzzled OX, I would gather material by calling for submissions on a particular theme. Indulge yourself, I might say today; tell me how much you hate George 43. But then there are folks like Kirby Olson, part of a vast born-again Christian counter culture. 43 is their savior.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Philippe Petain and Stanley Kunitz

I’ve been reading a biography of Philippe Petain, the French commander-in-chief in World War I and the chief-of-state of Vichy in World War II. He went from hero to traitor. But the most remarkable thing about him--his life really began at 60. He was born a peasant in 1856 but with the help of an uncle who was a priest, he was able join the army. He rose slowly. At the beginning of the first World War, he was still unmarried and about to retire. Then, with his background as a peasant raised in Northern France where the great battles raged, he was able to see what his aristocratic fellow officers failed to see, namely, that great offensive battles were suicide and the soldiery were about to mutiny. Then his life became glorious. Of course, Vichy and Hitler were his undoing, and he died in 1951 in prison. But it made me think of other long-lived people who flourish at an age when most of us flounder and retire. I thought in particular of the poet, Stanley Kunitz, flourishing in his nineties. All day yesterday I kept asking myself, what qualities make Petain and Kunitz different? How did Stanley do it? Today I read on the front page of Times: Stanley Kunitz, poet, dead at 100.