On the night before Christmas

It was the night before Christmas and in the White House the lights were dim,

A solitary person strolled the hollowed halls, he walked as a man on a limb.

His demand was on the table, the lines were drawn tight,

It would be on his mind on this frightful long dark night.

 

A wall was in his dreams and those dreams were being smashed,

He was like a fighter in the ring but his body had been abused and lashed.

But he was a fighter, the maker of deals, the person who could argue from the hip.

Why oh, why then was his popularity on the downside and worse of all why did the market dip?

 

Gone were his stalwarts, his advisors, those silent mutes now evicted from their glass domes,

Sent back for one reason or another back to the depths of their homes.

Kelly, Sessions and Mathis plus others names now forgotten,

Gone was their bodies, their minds, like old fish now rotten.

Oh, Santa Claus I need a gift, one that I can trust and behold.

Maybe a hundred percent rooms rented at Largo, all rooms sold.

And then maybe the deal of the century, a Trump Hotel in Moscow with top notch suites,

A parade should be held down the Washington streets, with a band playing my personal beats.

 

Yeah, Yeah, and Yeah, Trump is the Man,

He gets the job done, as only he can.

So,  the Stock Market takes a tumble and people lose their shirt.

So people hate my mood swings and tend to treat me with remarks that hurt.

I got Fox News and that is all the comments that I need,

Cut me and you will see my blood has red, white and blue as it will bleed.

 

 

I will shout, Merry Christmas to all, as I sit on my throne.

Sitting there I will do that, as I get glory from my friend Hannity as we speak on the phone.

Good luck for the year of 2019 as the country is in dead lock,

At least I own the real estate painted White on this prestigious block.

 

 

Our president in Sound of Music

 

sung to the music of do, re, mi, from Sound of Music.

 

Let’s make this easy for I know you went to school,

Although there are days when I think you play with the wrong tool.

 

Do a Congress, a do nothing place,

Re your prejudice, your hatred of race.

Mi the word that reflects your obsession of yourself,

Fa a word that you placed on your me shelf.

So a word that shows you do not care at all,

La the la la land where eventually will cause your  fall..

Te capitalized and drunk with hamburgers galore,

Your country be smeared as you wallow on the floor.

The Plan

The other shoe has dropped,

Another moral code has flopped.

We lie, we cheat, and we stink,

Like old socks on dirty feet.

 

We have now drowned in the swamp of our own making,

We have saturated our blood vessels with the fat of bacon.

Our greed has reached such great heights,

We now have justified this: for this is basic in our rights.

 

Please give my mind a break of what is right and what is wrong,

Stop singing those words of, “They are coming to take me away” that crazy song.

What is right is now wrong, and what is wrong is now right,

The mind is reading to explode in this bizzaro world of flee or fight.

 

I predict that some will be willing to let it go by the wayside,

Give me a break the code words and let me go out with the tide.

If you let me take a pass, and let me take my go free card,

I will resign quietly if you take off the cuffs and call off your guard.

 

Pence is measuring his new drapes in the halls of the White House,

He is playing quiet and making moves like a conniving mouse,

Ready to assume the throne and then a pardon on the orange man,

He will do this for this is the procedure and this is the plan.

Differences: a story of utensils

Kuaizi moved to the United States and went to school.  It was a new experience for him.

 

 

 

 

There he met Joe Fork and Amanda  Spoon.  They were mean to him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They thought they were better than he was.

Joe Fork thought he was special for he had prongs.

Amanda Spoon thought she was special because she could hold soup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So Kuaizi asked them a question.  In the world how many people use you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Some people use is” they replied. 

Kuaizi laughed.  “In the world I am used by more people than both of you.”

Joe Fork and Sam Spoon thought about that and realized Kuaizi was right.

 

They became friends for all of them had purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moral of the story:  Accept the differences and the world is a better place.

Goodbye 2018

It has been 365 days but why does this year seem so long?

Maybe it is me, and on occasion I have been very wrong.

But long and filled with anxiety and dread,

Glad it is almost over, enough said.

 

Could it be Trump and his style of chaos and fear,

Is that behind it as I numb my brain with rye and beer.

We once were looked on the moral thread of decency,

Now we smell like an outside toilet with the floor smeared with pee.

 

I do not know about you but I look for a silver lining,

The stock market is in the toilet and there is no longer fine dining.

The caviar has gotten rotten and the steak has flies,

I threw both out along with a dozen Trump ties.

 

May the new year be blessed with common sense,

Goodbye to Trump and his puppet, Mike Pence.

Bring back morality and truth and no more fake news,

Bring back reality to the front and realistic views.

 

Bring back our spirit and get rid of the stagnation,

Remember who we are, the best, the honorable, a unified nation.

The river of life

Grinding to a halt,

A life of one’s self, well taught.

I know now that I am not Superman,

Can not fly, or have eyes that x-ray and scan.

 

I work at many tasks, some good and some bad,

At times I am frustrated at myself, limits to the rad.

I have been a dad and a granddad and a husband to a wife.

I have great satisfaction and some hardships and even some strife.

 

But through it all life hums through its course,

Most of it now gone from memory like a salad toss.

A lot of talk mostly to no good end and then some deep thoughts,

I learned a lot of knowledge and the some self taught.

 

Life is in the jungle of enemies and shapes that you cannot define,

Some of life is gentle and some of it is rude, vicious and unkind.

But you go down the river, started at your birth,

Some of the twists of the river have caused you some hurt.

 

Some of the river is smooth and goes by gently as a soft stuffed animal,

And then there are the tricky parts, turbulent waters, and the deep canal.

At the end you reach the point of destination where the ticket says the end.

So many currents and you have gone through so many twists and bends.

 

The trip is concluded and the legacy has been secured,

Your boat is old and rickety but you now have been terminated and moored.

The cargo has reached the destination and will be dispersed,

Life is now over so many things that can never be reversed.

 

 

 

Eight nails in the coffin

The casket lid would be nailed shut early in the life of Tom Burdett,

He made every wrong choice and his early demise was a sure bet.

The first nail was chosen as he learned to smoke a cig,

A piece of paper rolled around some tobacco leaves and twig.

 

He started at the age of ten or so,

Into a fake adulthood did this boy blow.

Growing up too soon and graduated to drink,

His beautiful color turning grayish instead of pink.

 

The second nail came soon after, when he took to rum and coke,

He wanted so much to be liked, just one of the guys, a real bloke.

The third nail quickly followed as the drunken rages grew,

He punched his girl friends with rough sex, they shared the black and blue.

 

The fourth nail came through no fault of his own,

Into a conflict of war his soul was torn, gone was his soul.

He saw too much blood and lost to many friends to this war,

His soul was grounded no longer able to be free to soar.

 

The fifth nail of his coffin came from an addiction to a drug,

Sometimes so devastating his body fell, no one to hug.

He was battered and torn, his mind attacked by a wrecking ball,

He was being set up for the ultimate dead end, a frightening fall.

 

The three nails followed with a horrible shriek,

His body filled now with poison as dirty dishes in the sink.

Finally in the hospital he started to fade,

When he died into a coffin his body was laid.

 

He reached for heaven but a man in a devil’s mask reached out his hand,

He now plays a mean horn in the depths of hell in a tormented rock and roll band.

The myth of climate

There is something foul in the surrounding air,

But we are so use to pollution that we do not care.

A few protested but they did little but raise a noise,

Just regulated to sign carrying protesters, out of touch girls and boys.

 

Smog so deep and penetrating poison choking our lungs,

Leaving a taste of acid on our skin and even eliminating the taste from our tongues.

Nothing at first but years of irritation will take its toll,

Lung diseases will prevail and corpses in the streets will roll.

 

Acid rain will fall and the statutes will melt,

A swatch of devastation crossing the country, a black belt.

The belt will grow and some states will be void of people,

The church bells will not ring from the empty church steeple.

 

Barren land, stretches of empty vegetation will be on the minds of all,

Trees with no leaves will rot and make crashes into the ground as they fall.

The outside of buildings will be black with mold,

Property values will plummet as the land values fold.

 

 

Congress will act and invoke emergency clauses,

But the allocation of money will be interrupted as the representatives invoke pauses.

Who will pay for the bulk of the devastation?,

Hems and haws as there was a Congress of hesitation.

 

To late to reverse the effects without a mass influx of money,

A whole section of the United States empty, and this is not funny.

Yet, Climate change is a myth and the empty heads argued in vain,

The truth staring them in the face and yet all know they are insane.

 

 

A part time job for teachers

Time has become pressed as I took on a part time job.  If you have a B.A. in education and have taught one year you too can apply to VIPKID.  This is a pretty good part time job but it requires a lot of patience as the gigs come in slowly at first and then increase as your exposure increases.

I teach English to Chinese students via the internet.  The computer is a requirement and headphones are a necessity.

In the beginning they put you through the paces.  I have been doing it for forty days and am now getting up to speed.  It is good at this point for one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a week.  Nine dollars a half hour.  It is one on one with a Chinese student.  Most of the children are extremely polite and want to learn.  A lot different from a classroom with thirty students.  The lessons are set and on the screen. Most of the time you are correcting what they are reading.  It is not a hard gig.

The big problem is the time change.  You get most of the jobs at 5 or 6 in the morning and 8 or 9 at night.  It is a good supplement for a teacher trying to make ends meet.

If interested go to VIPKID and take a look.

War and Peace

• World War I, 1917-1918.
• Vietnam, 1964-1973. …
• Korean War, 1950-1953. …
• Mexican-American War, 1846-1848. …
• Iraq, 2003-2011. …
• Revolutionary War, 1775-1783. Total deaths: 4,435. …
• Spanish-American War, 1898-1901. Total deaths: 2,446. …
• Afghanistan, 2001-present. Total deaths: 2,322 (according to icasualties.org) …

The list gets longer.  We usually do not start a war but we sure get into them.

The Revolutionary War is taught in school and yet most children cannot name any of the battles.  We are lucky if they remember Washington and Franklin.  We have allowed history to fade into history.

The big one is the Civil War and most students know it was the North versus the South. They figure it was about slavery.  They may have heard about Lincoln, Grant and Lee.  Other than that, it has faded out.

World War 1 is usually a foot note in the history books.

World War 11 is seen as old vintage films.  John Wayne as a young man.

Korea is totally forgotten.

Vietnam is a scar we do not like to think of.  My son and grandson went there as tourist.  What a crock.

Our enemies became our supposedly friends and our friends drifted into the enemy category.

 

Now, today we have a President who may lead us into more conflict.  He blunders around like a bull in a china shop.  There are dictators out there who love the march and parade the weapons.  It is only a matter of time before the toys of war will be used.  Nostradamus would not be going to far over the cliff to figure that out.  The economy loves war.  It generates money and the focus of our country is money.

I am scared that the children will be marching soon.  I have seen how war affects the people.  The excitement at first and then the realization that war cripples’ people and some do not return.  May I be wrong.