Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall**
All his resources and misguided men
Couldn’t put Trumpty together again.
Trumpty Dumpty shat on us all
Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall**
All his supporters who thought he would win
Couldn’t put Trumpty together again.
*it’s all a fairytale, not just the future part
**pending
26 March 2016
Tim Konrad
Throw Things Away? No Way!
(with apologies to Dr. Suess)
Oh, the burden on people who constantly say
they don’t have a clue how to throw things away
so, to their dismay, their things stay, they stay.
But wherever you move them, they’re still in the way
so their bulk can confound you another day;
so throw them away, you say, you say.
But why should I throw them away today
when they might come in handy another day?
Throw them away? No way, I say.
They require too much space. They’re just in the way.
You’ll feel so much better, you say, you say,
Unencumbered by stuff, you’ll have time to go play.
But to do what you’re saying would take me all day
and tomorrow and next week and clear into May.
I’d sooner forego all the fuss and just say
I don’t need to toss out my stuff to go play.
I’m happy with things as they are here today
I can live with the clutter, so please go away.
24 March 2016
Tim Konrad
Sitting at my favorite haunt by the river
but displaced from my usual perch overlooking the water
by a band setting up for a performance,
I seek refuge on a stretch of deck
running down one side of the establishment
with a lesser, but adequate, view of the tiny harbor.
The place is crowded!
no one told me it was St. Paddy’s Day.
I sit tentatively at the only spot available
that’s outside, and the day was made for outdoor seating,
as I sip my beer and remain on alert
for the table behind me
the one that’s actually a table and not a wine barrel,
to become vacant.
When my neighbors eventually depart
I take possession of their abandoned territory,
whip out my Ipad, and begin to type.
Before long, I become aware of signs of encroachment
embodied in the form of a vanguard of little girls
seeking to infiltrate my refuge
but held back by their attentive adults
as they, three families strong,
congregate NEARBY in celebration of something
bearing resemblance to a family get-together
or an excuse to meet for beers.
One of the women is from Spain
another from Colombia,
their accents sounding exotic but puzzling
to my Mexican-conditioned ears.
I pick up bits & pieces–
something about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
and going to the Big Island
in December.
A band plays old folk-music favorites
faithfully
but unremarkably,
an extra sonic dimension
to spice up the already over-stimulated ambiance.
The children surge
as the band takes a break
and the party orders more beers
while one of their group sings the praises
of a Marin County beer
with ties to the Grateful Dead–
an apparent selling point
for these well-traveled visitors to our parts.
The children pay no attention
to their cross-border origins,
interacting with their peers
without judgment or discernment
as children do everywhere.
I peruse the headlines
on my Ipad-version
of the digital edition of the NYT.
Gogi Grant died today.
(Instead of going green, Gogi turned it)
Frank Jr. passed yesterday.
Who will it be tomorrow?
And, who was Gogi Grant, anyway?
If you have to ask . . . don’t bother.
Or go Google Gogi! Whatever!
The waiter comes out
and asks, “Is everything okay?”
to which one of their party responds, “Not really.”
as they order another round
of that GB regarded beer.
The music goes on
unremarkably.
I didn’t know they had music at this place!
The ‘Kinder’ crowd
has, inexplicably, settled down.
Perhaps they’re running low on sugar.
I hope no one notices!
The food arrives
the children, now fed, gravitate
to the music.
The sun retires
making way for the twilight.
As the breezes die down,
the water becomes like glass,
duplicating the surrounding landscape
like a big soft lens, only upside-down.
Soon the egrets will arrive
to bed down in the nearby trees
as is their habit.
But not this day, it turns out.
Perhaps it’s the recent time-change
or, maybe,
they’re off celebrating St. Paddy’s Day.
17 March, 2016
Tim Konrad
OK, Republicans,
your chickens are finally
coming home to roost!
You’ve dumbed down the electorate
with decades of spending cuts
and now SURPRISE!!!
they’re all voting for Donald Drumpf!
Poetic justice
to be sure,
the law of unintended consequences
on full display,
justly deserved
for those whose unpopular views
depended on subterfuge
for their predominance
but, for the rest of us???
03 March 2016
Tim Konrad
Well,
you knew this was going to happen.
Looking through the photos you’ve taken
of the people you know
and the number of people you’ve known
who have gone on,
passed through whatever
lies between here and forever . . .
But you didn’t count on
the emotional element, did you?
People seldom do, I suppose.
I mean, death brings up a lot of emotions,.
especially when it happens up close,
but the kind of emotions stirred up
by the recognition of
the sheer number
of people you know
who’ve made that transition
at this point
are of a kind unto their own.
The Germans probably have a word for it.
***
Changes,
little changes . .
the kind that occur each day
almost unnoticed,
become much easier to recognize
with distance
like that growth spurt
that little Johnny accomplished
in the two months
since you last saw him.
They, and all the other
little changes that accompany
you
as you traverse your path
(with or without your awareness)
become visible at certain times;
not so much incrementally
but en total,
as they coalesce and reveal
the sum that is more than its parts
and you suddenly realize
that the way the world appeared
last summer
is not the way it appears this February
and that the shadow you cast
grows longer with the passage of each season.
29 February 2016
Tim Konrad_
Alas!
I have Comcast;
the doubtful Internet provider
that sometimes moonlights
as an affliction!
The king of compromised communication.
The master of impossibly ambiguous
and insanely inscrutable
contract terms and conditions.
Having become intimate with them
this past week
over the course of many phone calls–
each one of which became necessary
to tease out the parts
uncover the causes
and repair the damage done
by virtue of the previous call
and the call before that–
not to mention the one
that inaugurated this perplexing odyssey–
I question whether the gain
if indeed there is one,
which has yet to be decided,
will equal the cost.
And all to address
a simple problem . . .
and one straightforward in every respect–
the lagging performance
of my so-called ” high speed Internet”
which hasn’t been all that perky
lately.
Today,
I told their representative du jour,
“they transcend the government
in their commitment to inefficiency.”
She said “well, I hope not”
“It’s true,” I replied,
“and I know whereof I speak!
I used to work for the government.”
They asked me to tell them how they’re doing
I think they meant on their website.
25 February 2016
Tim Konrad
All my life
I’ve been a
prolexic dyscrastinator.
I’ll admit it
because there’s no denying it!
I can get things off
and put things backwards
with the rest of them.
It’s not like I’m putting things off
so I can avoid getting them backward
or something.
That would take effort.
My practice
requires absolutely no effort whatsoever.
For me, the avoidance of effort
dovetails nicely with
the dyscrastinating part.
After all,
Not everything’s prolexic.
24 February 2016
Tim Konrad
I used to long for the good old days,
dwelling on the past
in an attempt to recapture
the quality of feeling
I fancied was present back then,
but found lacking in the present.
An idealized version of reality
that owed its existence
to a faulty recollection
and was perpetuated
thanks to a misunderstanding
of the nature of time itself.
I now realize that
constantly living in the past
isn’t living at all:
That living thus
means life is passing you by;
that living is a verb
that only remains so in the present.
That whether
the “good old days”
were, or weren’t,
that’s not what’s happening now!
23 February 2016
Tim Konrad
My heart is full of wonder
and my eyes forever weep
with joy and awe.
Memories of a lifetime
flood the senses
but none compare
with the brilliance
I behold before me
this instant.
21 February 2016
Tim Konrad
sonora2sonoma 