Folly

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Love the Flag

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to the more he adores the flag. -Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)

Dodgers Clinch the Division

(This poem is dedicated to Vin Scully who, during the division-clinching broadcast said, "Hong Chih Kuo throws hard don't you know.")

Dodgers Clinch the Division

Hong Chih Kuo
throws hard
don't you know,
but Chavez Ravine
is no Big Blue Machine,
Dodgers get strikeouts
and surfers
get wipeouts,
summer is over
and Torre can glower
at a defense now porous
and an offense
that's dolorous
while the boo-birds
sing the chorus,
5 losses a stench
hope 's riding
the bench,
no time to be cocky,
a Colorado Rocky
waits at the plate
to seal the fate
of Dodger blue
that has bled
on the diamond,
it's said.

A season unraveled,
Manny's dreadlocked
in battle
with a bat that
seems addled,
time for the death-knell
to rattle
when all of
a sudden
a wild seventh inning
sends my head spinning,
thunder is thudding
and balls are
now scudding
down lines and in alleys,
lightning cracks
in the valley
as the Dodgers
now rally.

Hope has returned
and the blackness now burns,
the crowd is aroaring,
the stadium soaring,
a singular vision,
Dodgers clinch
the division.

Laudizen King - October 3, 2009

Marek Edelman

Today I honor the memory of Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt against the Nazis in World War II, who recently passed away in Poland. He showed courage and honor in the face of unimaginable horror and cruelty, and I wonder how he felt about the rising tide of anti-semitism in Poland, Europe, and the world at the time of his death.