bloomsday

A DREAM, UNINTERPRETED

I am in an exam setting with a hundred or so other test takers. The exam is about to begin and people are taking their seats. My beloved Molly is also taking the test. I notice her moving from seat to seat, getting closer to where I am sitting, and she is asking me questions even though the proctor has told the...
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THE PLAN:

1) Cheney resigns (health problems)
2) Bush appoints McCain as V.P.
3) House impeaches Bush
4) Bush resigns
5) McCain becomes President, pardons Bush, et al.
6) 2008: McCain v. Clinton
7) McClain wins, Dems keep Congress
8) We bury the 20th Century, face down in the dirt
9) The 21st Century begins

"Run a carbon black test on my jaw and you...
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Welcome Back, Ohio

You've disappointed me, you've infuriated me, you've made me ashamed to live here. Now, you seem to be waking from that groggy delirium that has kept you from rational decision-making for so long. It is not about Democrat or Republican, red/blue, left/right. All that simplistic biniary continuum is as dead as the 20th Century. It's the final acknowledgment that you could no...
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I write this on the passing of a hero. I will attend the funeral of a cop killed in the line of duty. I knew him. I cross-examined him. I looked in his eyes as I tried to test the truthfulness of his testimony. And I would fail, because Schroeder was so honest and likeable and real that you knew every word he said was...
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Know your rights.

If you live in the United States of America, you know that the Bill of Rights, those first ten changes to the Constitution, give each citizen certain powers and protections from the government. But while these rights contained in the Bill of Rights, commonly understood, provide essential freedoms to us all, very few people in our society actually know what they say....
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We arrive at the end of the corridor in a wide ward with chairs around televisions and chalkboards. Zeppinger! Got a visitor! A man with his head down on his folded arms on the table looks up at Mulney. Zeppinger. Lawyers here.
Zeppinger speaks: HE CAN SHA-ZIZZLE MY PUH-ZIZZLE!
Im Bloomsday, from the public defenders office. I have some important legal matters to discuss with...
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CHAPTER 2

9:45 a.m. Im at the Cleveland loony bin, about to talk to a dangerous mental patient. I take a dump in a clean bathroom, thanks to the kindness of a shuffling, limping hospital staffer. A black man in his sixties. Morgan Freeman in the movie.
I pace behind him as he slowly keys through door after metal door until we reach the Cuckoos...
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The Easter House


First Floor:
Cracks in the eggs
Chicken in a pan
No blue, no red, except the bathroom,
And the freshly painted porch.

Second Floor:
Panda poses in jade drizzle,
Naughty mirrors are not Feng Shui
Seven doors later is the spa,
Yellow and bright in the morning sun.

Attic:
The attic is minded high
A cot and a library and one useful...
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The Clock Parade

We are
Trapped in Prague without passports
No hope of escape from this cage with no bars
We fend for ourselves, but mostly each other.

Huff to the top of Petrin Tower Hitler dreamt of imploding it.
The Josevof, pristine, crumbling cemetery
Where the sons and daughters of Moses, piled upon one another, aspire for eternity.
Hitler spared that, too.

White asparagus...
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Lawyers, Nuns and Money


My experience with the beloved Sisters of St. Ruth began when, while jogging through their ravine access to the Cuyahoga River valley. I had found a large bone less than 50 feet from a cemetery for nuns on the property. I took the muddy bone to the Convent. I told the sister who greeted me exactly where I had found it,...
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