THE LONG CUT

Hey Man-

You happen to see that thing?

You had to have passed it between there and here

Two days ago, middle of the day

Hot

Old truck in the church lot- all bed springs and bicycle frames and bits of rebar

A little man draggin' a doe from the ditch

Face and arms so damn dirty it wern't clear if he was black or white or somethin' else

That gray man and that skinny old woman:  All bent up

Shooin' away birds 

You know:  Those birds

Did you see it?

C'mon!  Damn hard to miss, that

So, when did you last get to town?

Guy in front of the liquor store as I went in

Yesterday

Front pockets full of finish nails

I know, 'cause I stopped for a second, watchin' as he drew out palmfuls 

Focused

Pickin' through like he was lookin' for somethin'

Fingers all bloody

I went on in, got me some beers

As I passed, asked if I could help

"No," he said  

"I got a dollar in my shoe"

Did you go past that day?  

I expect he'd been there for a while

You ain't gotta answer  

I get it

Hey Man-

Don't you live out past me?  

You told me once

I remember

Then you know the back way

The "Long Cut"

Bottom of the ramp, very first right

You know it

Don't bullshit me

Then you've seen him:  the guy with the sign 

You know:

Cardboard.  Thick, brown, letters in black majic marker

All lower case, which is stupid

Bettin' he stole that marker  

Duct tape on his shoes

Remember that sign?  What it said?

"insert your favorite form of personal disdain here"

Did you make eye contact?  

That was stupid 

Bettin' now he knows where you live

Figured you to be smarter

And today:

That dog on the side of the road

Just past the spot where the guy stood the day before

Only the regular way, no right turn

Some mixed breed mutt, all bloody

Legs like tobacco stick,s pointin' back toward the paint

Head wrenched 'round, eyes shinin' off into the woods

I seen his collar:  All sparklin', lookin' like diamonds

Shit

No way in Hell you missed that

I had to swerve else I was to hit it

Now, I gotta ask:

Did you come the regular way?  

You did, right?

You saw it, right?  

I already know

Of course you did

I know you did

You stopped, got outta your truck

You looked at the dog, then up and down the road

But you didn't see me

You stole from a dead dog, right?

I know it was you  

No sense in lyin'

Ain't intendin' to tell nobody

But you know I know

Fish~

GIMME SOME SUGAR

So, there have been quite a few grand pronouncements in the days since the passage of the Republican tax overhaul, with a great many of those includin' the ever-positive word, "bonus."  Corporate giants from AT&T to Walmart have been blowin' their own horns through press releases and friendly media about their "sharin' of the wealth" with those at the bottom of the food chain.

(Note:  Both AT&T and Walmart, among other bonus-awardin' companies, followed their Corporate Charity proclamations with announcements of layoffs and closing, but with far less fanfare.  Look it up.)

Another corporation to announce bonuses was Hostess.  Yep, that Hostess.

Hostess unveiled their intentions to award around a thousand of its hourly employees a one-time $500 contribution to those employees' 401(k) accounts, as well as a one-time cash bonus of $750.  But that's not all:  Hostess has also announced that it will begin selectin' a "product of the week", which will be given to each employee in a "multi-pack."  (To date, I've been unable to find information as to whether a box of snacks will be considered "taxable compensation" awarded the Employee or a "charitable contribution" claimed by the Company.)

Anyway:  On its face, and in the form of a simple sentence, the Hostess thing seems not-too-bad.  The Company is gettin' a very generous tax break, in perpetuity, and have decided to spread a little bit around.  (Once.)  But it ain't like they had to.  They chose to.  

The reduction in the corporate tax rate didn't come with stipulations, with any form of a bindin' legal contract that would require corporations to create more jobs or increase compensation to its employees or even keep jobs in this country under penalty of  forfeiture of their right to operate under the starkly lower corporate tax rate.  Nope.  Nothin' like that in place.  (Although the generous corporate tax break has been constantly touted as somethin' that would absolutely do all these things, and more.). Out of the goodness of their hearts, (and possibly  as a really cheap public relations gimmick,) the Foks at the Top at Hostess chose to do this.

And seein' as how the numbers per company, per employee with the Hostess bonuses are a fairly typical example of what's been takin' place the past couple weeks, I thought theirs' would serve as a good opportunity to look more closely, see just what somethin' like this might actually mean in terms of genuine impact in the lives of the Regular Guy.  Or Gal.  (You know what I mean...)

So, gonna apply a little math here, as well as some real life analogies, and see how this shakes out. 

Since it’s a one-time thing, I chose to consider the Hostess bonuses in the context of what it would mean in real terms if spread over a single year, just to get a clearer understandin' of impact were it in the form of hourly compensation.  I realize it's a one time cash bonus.

$1250 divided by the 52 week’s in a year comes to $24 a week. Based on a 40 hour week, that comes to 60 cents an hour. Not too bad!

But, those employees won't be gettin' $24 extra a week on their paychecks, though. Forty percent of that $1250 goes directly into your 401K where, it may stand to actually make a little more money.
Even if it’s tax-deferred, you’ll still be payin’ taxes on that $500, and any money it might earn.
But it’s tied to the Stock Market with no guarantee that it’ll make any additional money or even still be there when Hostess folks choose to retire, and who knows when they’ll be able to do that, if at all? (You work at a cupcake factory, so I doubt you’re packin’ away cash by the bucketload for your retirement villa in Florida, anyway.)

So, not really gettin’ a 60 cents an hour raise for a year.

Keep hammerin'...

The cash bonus of $750, divided by the 52 week’s, comes to a little less than $14.50 a week.  Let’s just call it $14.50, anyway. Divide that $14.50 a week by the 40 hours per... that comes to almost exactly 36 cents per hour. A decent raise, I figure. But it ain’t a raise. It's tantamount to 36 cents an hour, but only for a year.  Consider taxes of about 25%, and the gracious gift bestowed upon Hostess' hard-workin' folks by Republicans and Hostess turns out to be somethin' closer to 27 cents per hour, for only one year.

So, 27 cents times 40 hours a week means that, for one year, you’ll have $10.80 additional money in your pocket per week, or $2.16 additional cash flow per day. should be able to get couple cups of cheap coffee a day with that.

But, they'll all get maybe somethin’ like one Twinkie or cupcake or Ding-Dong, or half of a delicious fruit pie with each cup of Tax Cut Bonus Java for free!
Even after a year and you have to go back to payin’ for your couple cups of coffee a day, you’re still gonna get some free snacks!

Boy!  This whole New Tax Plan thing is gonna absolutely bury us all in Untold Riches!

Fish~

Correction:  Looks like the free snacks thing will also go away after one year.  F~

OSAGE BLACK

Just outside the wall at Fort Harrod stands what is arguably the oldest living osage orange (hedge apple) tree in the country.  It's trunk, split in two, keeps this beautiful, complicated thing out of the record books.  The possibility that this may be two separate, distinctly unrelated things, with only their incidental physical closeness as a connection, doesn't change my perception: That of a single thing interrupted.  Set apart by weight, a fleetin' difference of direction not even recognized.

I captured this image a couple years ago- late in the day, late in the year-  while visitin’ with a long-ago lover and grandchildren. 

I cropped it square ‘cause this worked best for me.  

I put it in a box.

As the kids played and climbed, squealin’ and fussin’, their Mimi shoutin' words of caution as I “spotted”, I looked up, the bare branches silhouetted against the gray sky.  I drew in the cool air.  Lonely.

I was overwhelmed.  I realized my heart was broken and there was no repair.

I think about that day often.  This image, the split of the trunk, the continuin' branches, everything movin' further and further away.  It all seems to mirror so many of the feelings of that day, and the things I feel when I remember...

That thing: "It's complicated"...?  That falls so far short of what this has me recall. 

Better the image.  

Clearer the sadness, my failure.  My mistakes that now stand irreparable.  

A crime with many victims, for which the blame is ultimately mine to bear.

Please forgive me.

Fish~

BREATH

Summer

I stayed with my friend

No longer kids, far from grown

You were her sidekick

Horses and motorbikes

"She can ride with you"

You pressed against me

Your slender arms around my waist

Your head turned, pressed against my shoulders

I held my breath

A high school crowd

My friend leaned close, whispered:

"She likes you, she told me"

"No-" I said

Flattered and embarrassed 

"Yes!"

I looked at you across the room

I watched you smile, laugh

Something happened

I held my breath

"Can I come over?"

"Yes"

We lay in the floor

Ate popcorn and watched tv

Your folks on the couch

I wanted to be closer

"Perhaps a movie, a ballgame?"

"Perhaps"

Time all but stopped

I held my breath

Another summer

Your father drove

Your mother rattled

We sat in the back seat

Pressed close together

Our shoulders, our hips, our thighs touching

Fingers laced so tight

Our gaze only for one another

The warm air crossed through the windows

I held my breath

Time passed, so much happened

Here we sat together

You held my hand across the table

But for only a moment

You told me how things were

I closed my eyes tight, head down

My mind began to burn

Then you left me

I drew in deeply from the room

The air that had just moved past you

Then, I held my breath

Summertime...

  Sittin' here, basically alone.  There are other people in the room, but I don't exactly know any of 'em.  Not countin' the gal behind the bar, but I don't really know her, other than that her name is Lori.             

   (Me?  Apparently my name at this particular point in time is "Hon'".  Good with that.)

  It's a young, budding relationship- hour, hour and twenty minutes, maybe- but we've already found we have somethin' in common:  Lori used to live in Kansas.  I've been to Kansas.

  (Did you know that if you order a "double" that the entire process is streamlined for all involved?  It is, in a number of ways, but it's just me and Lori.  Lori and Hon'.  But we're friends.  Friends look out for one another.)

  Lori's workin' today, so I'm gettin' the occasional moment to myself to just think.  Just to think.  Consider.  Even reflect.          

  (Reflection is always a big damn deal.  It's a personal favorite of mine, even when it breaks me into tiny, tiny pieces.  Little, tiny pieces.  Some so small that somethin' like a door held open or someone walkin' past can scatter 'em like so much dust or pollen or bug shit.)

  But, I digress.  (That's pretentious ass speak for ramblin', but it sounds cool.  Cool in that pretentious ass kinda way.)

  I am really havin' trouble gettin' rollin'.  Apologies.  Gonna just go:

  Bein' the creatures we are, we all carry somewhere between a preoccupation and an obsession with the Passage of Time.  It ain't our fault, it's basically unavoidable.  Just like Time itself: Unavoidable. 

  For the average cog we're most familiar with, or happen to be, it's typically driven by a schedule over which we have little or no control- shit like work or kids or maybe even vices.  Or a million other things.  It's complicated.

  For the tiny pockets of folks that have somehow managed to hold on to and strictly live by the genuinely necessary shit- eatin', sleepin', not dyin' if you can avoid it- the Passage of Time may be as simple as Day and Night.  Dark versus Light.  Live or Die.  Beautiful in its Simplicity.  

  These are the Lucky Ones.  The People that Time Forgot.  Or, perhaps better described as the People that Everybody Else Forgot and Could Give a Right Goddamn About.  Yep.  That's a better description, that.  

  (Distill that down to "Fuck 'em.")

  Shit.  Did it again.

  Most of us tend to mark time with the common conventions: minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, blah, blah, blah.  But, I've come to realize that, for me, I've always tended to gauge the Passage of Time mostly in relation to the Change of Seasons.

  I've tried to trace this back, relative to myself, and I believe it began, again: for me, with the association of the season of Summer with the break between school years, beginnin', obviously, with grade school.

  It was somethin' like this:

  Kindergarten?!  Are you jokin'?  You expect me to trade an absolutely perfect Life of Leisure for this dumb shit?  Colorin'?  Learnin' how to use those shitty, cartoon scissors and the friggin' limited pallett afforded by those chunky crayons that were flat on one side 'cause me and my fellow inmates couldn't be trusted to keep that shit from rollin' off the desk?  

  I had a theory back then:  Why can't my desktop be flat, level, not unlike the kitchen tabletop or the coffee table or even the friggin' floor at my house?  Then you knotheads could just give me access to a crayon with a point more acute than my thumb!

  But that ain't most of us.  Most of us tend not to measure Time by the Seasons.

  I expect that I tend to use that as my guide, my gauge, mostly because of that- that first measure that was forced upon me- the "School Year".  And that was, for a kid, not about the Task, but about the Break.  Summer Break.  Single-Digit Salvation.

  After that, it was ingrained in me.

  As a relatively-speakin' grown man, I spent a decade or so wonderin' why I got the Blues on toward the end of Summer.  There were the obvious reasons:  Cold weather comin' and all the restrictive shit and what came with that.  Basic End-of- Good-Weather shit.  Everybody experiences that stuff, right?

  That ain't me.  Not my thing.

  I've come to realize that, since I was apparently about five years old, my personal primary marker in regard to Time has been Summer.  Not exactly a clock or calendar thing.  Not quite.

  Clearly, I ain't had to go back to school for a while.  But I still, every August, I get that feelin', that sick-to-my-stomach, every-day-is-friggin' Sunday feelin'.  Hurt me more than it hurt my boys durin' that sixteen years of school thing they endured.  Never quite got how they were able to move through it like they did.  Stronger than me in some way.

  Days, weeks, hours, moments, all that shit- finite.  You can count days or years or whatever device you've settled upon to make you feel better, lighten you condemnin' load, maybe even fool yourself into thinkin' you got more than you got comin'.  Maybe just color it all with fat crayons, flat on one side so they don't roll away, screw you out of a particular shade of somethin'.  Press really, really hard.  Perhaps even tear the paper in your effort to cover somethin' up, obscure it with a coat of thick, colored wax.

  Or just count Summers, or the End of Summers.

  Apparently, that's what I've been doin'.  

  There's worse things.

Fish~

  

  

  

ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS...?

*Note:  Another thing started months ago in a different place.  The topic, however, should make plain the point in time.  I personally don't consider this rant to be a political one, but I can see where many would be quick to color it as such.  It's a reasonin', acknowledgin' kinda thing for me.

Gonna go over this in a deliberate fashion in the hope that it helps me get my head around it.

Go!

Okay... the President of the United States is admonishin' people for their opposition to another group?  Oh, sure- he's waggin' a finger at the other guys, too.  He's givin' everybody shit, apparently in some kinda bizarre attempt to spare somebody's feelings.

Anyone else remember anything from History class about a Bigass War that claimed the lives of millions?  What was it that a lotta people called it?  World War II, the "Big One"???

From what I can recall, our enemy was pretty damn clear cut.  What was the name a big part of those monsters called themselves...?

"Nazis!"  That's it!  "Nazis"!

Seems like they were easily distinguished by their flag, their special salute to their psychopath leader, their claim of racial superiority.  Even made a pretty good run at Global Conquest, I'm thinkin'.  

Yep.  I remember somethin' like that.  Anybody else remember any of that shit?  Anybody?  Anybody seen anything similar to any of that shit lately, especially over the past couple days?  Sure, smaller in scale, even amateurish, but somethin' a whole lot like all that other.  

Yep.  All comin' back to me...

War.  Intolerance.  Hate.  The extermination of the Infirm and the Indigent, even the Handicapped.  Even among their own Citizenry.  Murder in the Name of God.  Genocide.

But the President of Our Country...?

Why would an American President  lump Americans standin'against the resurgence of such a Bone Deep Evil in with the very Traitors that embrace and would resurrect the Aberrant Ideology of Nazism?

Seems to me, in this particular instance, that it's pretty damn easy to distinguish who the bad guys are.  It ain't even some kinda new threat- we actually have the advantage of havin' access to an incredibly detailed Historical Record.  It ain't even that old.  There are still people alive today that were alive then. (Hell- Some even have tattoos as reminders.)

This is major serious , and we can't just stare at our shoes or, even worse, make up ridiculous excuses for this kinda dangerous shit.  To do so is not just to slip backwards a few generations, but to slip back centuries, even eons.  The ever-childish deflection or comparison to someone else's prior acts, be they factual, exaggerated, or pure fabrication, changes nothing about the immediate, the current.  That's just some infantile excuse that's worth absolutely nothin', changes nothin'.  Grade school shit.

Remember that "two wrongs" thing?  

Yeah...

Fish~

COLOSSAL FAIL

*Note:  Written back in the Summer.  Contains mature themes and strong language.  And some just plain sorry shit.

Amendments voted down in the early AM today, in the Senate, nearly entirely along party lines:

Allowing young people up to 26 to stay on insurance.

 

Lowering prescription drug cost by allowing importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada.

Guaranteeing that women do not pay more for insurance than men because of their gender.

 

Guaranteeing that rural hospitals will stay open.

 

Guaranteeing that those with pre-existing conditions will not be charged more and will be protected.

So, everybody pleased?  Gonna throw a big party and cheer about the Poor and the Sick and the Indigent, the families that will go bankrupt- lose homes, possessions, dignity, the people whose lives now will end sooner?  How about sick children born into Poverty through no fault of their own?  Is this really your idea of "making America great again"?  Or does something like this now qualify as some Glorious Christian Act to some of you?

Y'know, contrary to what you've allowed yourself to believe, what so many of you seem so damn desperate to believe, in direct opposition to the Truth, (remember that?  The Truth?), everyone that needs help ain't a Piece of Shit.  And this Country wasn't founded on the principles of "Every Man for Himself" and "Tough Shit" and "Too Fuckin' Bad, Loser".

Nor are those things present in the minds of genuinely Christian People, or in the minds of Compassionate Atheists, Agnostics, or Hebrews, Muslims, or good people of any other religion.

Here's the thing, or things:

Nobody's perfect.

And no one subset of humans has an exclusive claim to virtues such as Honesty, Empathy, Kindness, Humility, Grace.  These are the traits of an individual, not of a clique or a club or a race or religion.  Just like other traits:  Hate.  Pride.  Greed.  Pettiness.  Cruelty.

So, tonight.  If you're scared, worried about the fate of loved ones, even concerned about the futures of strangers, I can bring you no solace or comfort.  Not without pretending or just plain making shit up.  Not within my scope.

But if you're kicked back wearin' your best shit-eatin' grin, nice and snug in your home and your knowledge of the desperation of others, have another cocktail.  No skin off your nose, huh?  Fuck 'em, right?  Probably Trash, anyway, right?  That's how things work now, right?

Fish~

From the plaque mounted at the Statue of Liberty, in its entirety:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus  

November 7, 1883