Late last evening

"Uh...Mr....uh...Upstum, this is Obviously Phony Name at Market Research Interminable with a short survey about your political opinions."

"I'm not an Anarcho-Syndicalist."

"So are you planning on voting in the upcoming mayoral election?"

"I'm not an Anarcho-Syndicalist. I'm not even a Wobbly. And I can't spell Czolgosz."

"All right. Well, Mr....uh...Ippstern, how would you rate the possibility you will be voting for Chris Romer in the upcoming mayoral election--absolutely certain, probably absolutely certain, or maybe absolutely certain?"

"If I can't vote for Baxter B. Stiles, I'm not voting. Goodbye."

Waiting for Monday

He rose, but he did not feel resurrected.
He wasn’t doing Easter any more,
Just Sunday morning. If they wanted eggs,
He’d scramble; if they needed chocolate,
No problem; but what sermonizing dead
Itinerants had to do with plastic grass
And chicks collapsed in marshmallow--well, he

Knew, he really did. Osiris was
His middle name, practically, he wore
A golden sprig upon his sleeve and let
Sleeping gods lie, if that helped them advance,
Kings for a day in topiary groves.
Okay, he saw the sunrise--prairie light
Again this year. No matter where you are,
There always is an east. It’s over there,
East for a day. It’s always over there.

The children flexed their sugar-ridden thews
And made the windows clamor, all those panes
So light could be admitted and diffused.
It would move west. Perhaps the children, too.
And all of them would run out at the sea,
Awaiting new gods, who’d rise up from behind,
Out of the desert where the gods are born,
Into a heartland, where the gods subside.

From the mailbag:

RHE, you write like a dead guy. When you wake up, let me know.


Dear Unknown Correspondent,

That's just creepy. That would make me...what? Jesus? Osiris? Whitney Houston? A zombie?