my Tea Party tantrum

Policy makers' approach

Usually, I can keep it in check, but now and then my Tea Party tantrum just gets the better of me. I am sick of being old and powerless; I am sick of politicians whose promises have no substance or vision; bad news pulses in my veins as maiming and dispossessing others gains yet another foothold through institutions like the Department of Homeland Security or Islamic State; unreconstituted nitwit drivers talk on their cell phones at red lights and are unprepared for a green ones; and everywhere opinion becomes an acceptable substitute for substantive consideration. A tsunami of anger wells up, infuriated in its helplessness. Part of the problem, of course, is that there is hope that somehow decency and civility and some sort of peaceful co-existence will evolve. Won't someone please-please-please take these assholes out behind the barn and tan their back sides?!

It's choleric. It's childish. And, from time to time, it's true.

Bit by aging bit the smog creeps in like the "Godzilla el Nino" in Australia -- fierce, unremitting, wounding, incalculable. And to this honest difficulty human beings want to add their own self-serving adventures?! It feels like a noose that is tightening, tightening, tightening. No "no" can stop or allay its onslaught ... and it is infuriating. Whichever way you look, things seem to push you back into a corner where you are forced to do the only thing you could do in the first place ... lead your own decent life.

In which regard, I guess it is time for me to repeat again a poem I find pointed and true and naughty enough to suit my tastes -- Ray Ronci's "Homage to My Father."

HOMAGE TO MY FATHER

My father said:
Fuck Father Farrell,
what does he know, that old bastard!

Study all the religions. Learn Italian.
See Venizia, Firenze, talk
to all kinds of people
and never, never think you know more
than someone else! Unless,
unless they're full of shit.

And if they are, tell them;
and if they still don't get it, fuck it,
there's nothing you can do about it.

Learn how to bake bread.
If you can make pasta and bake bread
you can always feed your family,
you can always get a job.

Keep your house clean
and don't worry what anyone else does.
Cut your grass,
prune your fruit trees
or they'll die on you.

Don't drink too much
but don't always be sober --
it makes you nervous.

A couple glasses of wine,
some anisette now and then,
a cigar never hurt nobody.

Nervous people always got an ache here,
an ache there, they get sick,
they die --

Look at Father Farrell:
he'll be dead in a year.

Fuck him!