SNERD LEE LIMBAUGH POETRY RUSH

BY “ROSE”
     August 2 looked like it would be a catastrophe, given the clues that Jane had found tucked into the pages of the Emily Dickenson poetry book. We thought perhaps it was an opportune time to re-activate, or should I say re-convene “The Old Ladies Detective Club.” Actually, we had never gotten off the ground with the club, but why not now, seeing as Jane had found her lucky hat with what she called her “Dodo” feather dyed purple. I guess she called it that so no one could accuse her of stealing an endangered peacock feather, because she gets embarrassed even though none of us, not even Marsha, who had been to Woodstock chasing the cute guys for their free love, ever fell for that endangered species crap. We recycle notions and hats, but the wine bottles can go down the chute with the Edison light bulbs. What the hell, we need to have some sins besides Nigel, Ralph and James, but that’s another story.
     When Jane summoned us to the Bookstore Café on Crosby Street around 5pm we were barely able to find a table on the main floor. When Marsha and I arrived, Jane was sitting down at the last table with a knish, a coffee, and the poetry book in question.
     Marsha had said, “Where’d you find it?”
     “Y’know, on the second floor balcony in the Poetry section under ‘D’,” sighed Jane wanting to get on with it. “Look, these bookmark papers are notes for a suicide pact.”
     “Whaaat?” Marsha and I shouted. Everyone who was standing and hovering around looked at us probably thinking, ‘could these old nutty ladies give up their table ’cause this should be for the hip youth,’ or whatever the kids say nowadays.
     “Well, um…,” Jane flubbed around her more usual eloquence.
     We grabbed the papers out of her hand that she had unfolded. It looked like notes for a suicide pact. “Shouldn’t we stop them, whoever they are?” I said, grabbing one of the scraps.
     “It’s just rambling philosophy,” said Jane suddenly changing her mind about the importance of her discovery.
     “Well, just some of it…bet you couldn’t answer this scribble in the side margin,” I said.
     “Oh yeah,” said Marsha, “What?”
     “What’s a trillion dollars?” I said trying to hype the notes and make it more than just a discussion of math and economics on a perfectly innocent plane.
     Marsha said, “Um, I never got past a million in my imagination…”
     Well, I said, “If I had a million dollars on this table, we’d have to have space for a million such tables to have a trillion dollars laid out.”
     “Uh, ha,” said Jane. “You have a million dollars? Put it on the table and we can go to Las Vegas right now…”
     Marsha grabbed the papers to read while Jane and I bantered like peahens cocking their heads looking for a peacock, and there were certainly a lot of cute guys roaming around with books trying to look unbookish. If we had a million dollars then…
     “First,” I said, “get us a million tables…”
     “Yeah,” said Jane finishing her knish like there was a potato famine, “that’s the thing: how much of this is fantasy and musing, and how much is real?”
     Marsha jumped in. “OK. I see we’re avoiding the main nut of it — this piece here,” she said. “Um, listen: ‘Dear Kathleen, Sorry for the letter but I don’t have a computer. I saw on CBS news that the President is not going to issue Social Security checks after August 2 no matter what unless he can raise taxes on Millionaires(everybody making $250,000 or more). He’s already taken my Medicare down to hell. Forget the damn pain pills and get me some pot or something. Hey girls, I say, sell all the silverware and the gold jewelry and let’s go to Las Vegas. We’ll bet everything on August 2. If we lose, we’ll go out into the desert and have a picnic under the stars. I’ve saved some drugs from my collection and we could see the stars and die quickly. I’ve heard you can see the heavens from the desert. We’ve had a long life and why wait for Armageddon? The Grandkids don’t care about us and anyway, they know everything about computer money video games, and it’s Greek to me anyway as Shakespeare said. No need to make them pay for us. We could do them a favor and go quickly while we can still think clearly.’ ”
     “It’s just musing,” I said, “but why don’t we go to Las Vegas on August 2, because, you know, actually, it is hopeless. Isn’t it?”
     Jane pulled her little gun from her bag and said,“Remember the movie, ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ ”
     Marsha screamed, “Be careful with that thing. Don’t be silly.” But the gun went off.
     Marsha is dead and so is Jane. It’s a mystery that I’m still alive considering that Armageddon awaits and I’m not optimistic even though I grabbed Jane’s hat and got out the door before the police came. It’s a shame that we could never get the “Old Ladies Detective Club” off the ground. Not everyone is clever enough to survive in a mild mannered maneuver. Oh well. I’ll go to Las Vegas by myself and look for the girls looking at the stars. Maybe I’ll find a cute millionaire.
=====
Liars of the North Pole
(Computer programs purporting to show that global warming is man-made have been found to be fraudulent)

Liars of the North Pole
you’re raping our children’s minds
taking their teddy bears
and giving them the polar bears who
will eat them when they visit Santa Claus

There is no Santa Claus
nor man-made global warming

Oh poor children
do you know that
Uncle Phil Jones’ greenhouse
under glass
in vitro
where ocean currents
do not lurk on amber waves of grain
and where water vapor can not escape
is a playhouse sham?

In the doll house
children cry for fantasy

Cool the medieval warming period
by fraud
by teddy bear
by fuzzy math
Computer programs purporting to show that global warming is man-made have been found to be fraudulent. The models have excluded water vapor (the most prevalent “green house gas”) and the Sun as factors in warming. A good model can be made for a glass enclosed building, but not for climate in the real world.
—————————————–
Global Home on the Range

Oh give me a warm globe
where the buffaloed roam
where the fools and the grantee whores score

Where rarely is heard
a contrary word
and the media sky
is cloudy with lies

Home, home at the trough
where the scientist pigs gather thoughts
where Phil Jones can lie
in East Anglia style
and peer deceit
makes all data
quite vile

——–
Never Fly Banana Bread On A Private Plane
My young elegant lady invited me to dinner, she said, for the last time, and I thought, Ut Oh. No, she said, it’s not you; it’s just that my Father says that all his best CEO’s are cancelling charter flights, because they don’t want to be seen on a private jet, and even he had protesters taking pictures, asking if he was a banker. She said he also wants her to keep a low profile for her own safety, and not go to expensive restaurants anymore. Well, fine, I thought, and I said, come to my place, and I’ll make dinner for us. That’s when she said, by the way, Daddy asked me to tell you that you’re fired. But anyway, they have gold, and they liquidated their venture capital firm before the bubble burst. She said the wedding is off, but the burger joint in the alley still posts my poems in the Bohemian limbo. Gee, I could have been someone: I could’ve been a contender or a protester… Alas, if birds could fly…
And then there’s the married man I heard of…

SHOPPING FOR BANANAS

Laid off and walking,
watching the birds.
Supposed to be shopping.

Usually I bring my wife
a hard banana, and
she ripens it for me, but
not today.

A tilt I have into the wind
a lean on the buffeting force
that holds the gull suspended,
its eyes asking why
I don’t fly.

Without a sail, I’d
rather walk than
have feathers

But I could use a wing up when
blown backward by class envy.

I built small planes
for a hated tycoon who
flew before the Congress.

Now I am laid off
for conspicuous buzz.
I’ve bought a few books
for my new look, but
I’m too busy
to shop
for a banana.

I’ve been studying genetics, ‘though my
school abilities were pathetic, but I’m

willing to try my hand
for my family’s survival. I’m
joining the bandwagon, hopping
on the stimulus train hoping
there’s money where I’m going.

Good news! I’ve got
a job cleaning the cages
of a researcher’s mice,

nice to research the genetics of
the Pelosi Swamp Mouse.

Hurray. Save the mouse!
At least they can’t fly, and
we’ve a government grant.

Interesting work:
I label each mouse
by painting its ear
forbidden to call it
an earmark.

At the bottom of the treadmill,
they won’t
tell me much. I’m
running in circles
without a raise or a buzz.
They’ve made

a mutation mouse, Mickey 22XFS
a secret endangered species
to be released with pay.

My wife’s got
a secret recipe for
my banana bread,
says get a promotion
or we’re dead.

I’ve overheard.

I’ve decided on blackmail, but
we’ll have to move somewhere
near a Banana Republic.

I could tell the public they’ll be
releasing Mickey 22XFS
an endangered species actor,
onto a farm as a blocking factor.

My wife says ask for money,
tell the story of what they’ll say:

Too little water in California.
Don’t let the farmer kill the poor mouse.
Stop the farming, save the water.

Save poor Mickey
Experimental Farm Stopper Species
’cause he’s got a grant, and he’ll be
released with pay.

I’ve brought my wife a hard banana.
She’s pleased to be in paradise with me, ’cause
as they say, “man does not live by banana bread alone.”
— Snerd Lee Limbaugh

~~ Banana Bread ~~
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup soft butter
2 eggs

1-1/3 cups mashed ripe bananas
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. rum
1 tsp. milk

2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1. Turn on an oven and set to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.
2. While dancing the merengue, hold a large bowl. In the bowl, mash the butter into the sugar and stir and stroke until it’s smooth and fluffy like a meringue cloud. Keeping to the beat, beat in the eggs, but don’t forget to crack them open first and don’t include the shells.
3. Rest a moment for the hard part. You may have to stop dancing.
4. In a bowl to your left, stir together the mashed bananas, vanilla, rum, and milk
5. In a bowl to your right, mix flour, salt, nutmeg, and baking soda.
6. Begin dancing again.
7. On the down beat, blend some flour mixture from the right bowl into the large bowl.
8. On the up beat, blend in some of the banana mixture from the left bowl.
9. Continue alternating until you sweat.
10. Do a spin and turn the mixture into the loaf pan.
11. Bake in oven for 1-1/4 hours. Shake your hands to prevent cramps.
12. Using a pot holder or oven gloves, dance the pan out of the oven.
12. Cool for 15 minutes in pan.
13. Dump it out.
14. Cool off.
— Snerd Lee Limbaugh

UNSEEMLY TO CRASH THE WORLD ECONOMY (Cantor In The Mist, Version 3)

The gracious Lady from UK,
Lady Erica, is astounded,
wonders if the Americans are
mortgaging themselves into socialism,
borrowing the rotten boroughs of olde
flooding the land of the free with
swamp swap toxic securities,
some sort of Donnybrook
(Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve it)

Cousin Lady Erica* cries across the ocean blues
to cousin Madison and his Specters†: you’ve

forgotten your revolution,
lifted an old tea ship adrift
the socialist moor of recent yore,
a fog and marsh imported.

I see a U.S. congress of heath
peaty, bogged down in
quasi-stimulus. Look here
you ruffians, you
petty porkers afoul,
your sheep’s in the swamp,
the cow is in your heath

Your liberty choir has lost its voice.
Hush petty Pelosi, let Eric Cantor sing.
The sheep are simply cowering,
the corn’s not in the cow

Hush little Pelosi and David Obey,
a thirteen dollar tax cut a week
won’t feed the middle class, not
any more than pap will do it

Much ado about
the Shrub League players.

*Erica: Genus for Shrubs, rigid and branched, the heaths. Or person’s name.
†A ghost or a last name: Senator Arlen Specter, one of three Republican senators voting with the Democrats.
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip.
(House minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio).
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
   ————————————————————–
RUSH LIMBAUGH IN CAPISTRANO’S RESTAURANT
Partisans of the Congress,
the people have no bread.
“Let them eat infrastructure.”

Businessmen don’t eat in
my Capistrano’s anymore. My
restaurant might close,
my waiters are laid off. The
swallows have come back, but
the fat cats have not.

Partisans of the Congress,
business has no capital gains.
“We’ll aim their taxes high –
a trillion or so.”

My chef is willing
to build a
trillion dollar road, but
he wonders if
his carving knives
can dig a dry hole

Partisans of Congress,
the people have no jobs
except for Limbaugh, the
last man standing.
“Don’t listen to him
a partisan.”

But Rush has come to Capistrano’s
laid a plan on my table. He’s got
a hope and a dream for change:
Let 540 billion bridges blossom,
460 tax cuts for Gotham –
his movie is hiring actors.
I’m taking lessons.
— Snerd Lee Limbaugh
***************************
A Ghost Who Loves War

Noble bystanders observed
her tortured to death
from a diplomatic distance
where culture is relative
because to pacifists
war is bad, but
war is good
when she was
my daughter raped

Be serious and love war
when we win

I died on Normandy beach, I thought
to save you all from Tyranny

Yet you waited to be serious
to be robust
to finally defeat the Soviet Union

My agony did not rest
when I visited prisoners in the Gulag;
I tried to comfort them, but
some did not listen to ghosts
or even believe

You waited to be serious
as I visited prisoners
in Saddam’s prisons –
need I tell you they were tortured
in sacred sovereignty
pain not our business
because you’re anti-war
against intervention, and
she was my daughter raped
not yours

You waited too long
like Chamberlain
to vomit

I love war
when it’s done soon

Next time don’t wait.
Evil doesn’t wait to teach hate,
to corrupt
to imprison my daughter

I will love the last war the best.
War is good.
Do it soon
do it well
win
so her screams
haunt me less
though I am
more ghost than you
but I fear going to the light–
I could not bear it if
she is not in heaven
or I will not be worthy to visit
— S. L. Limbaugh
(Douglas Gilbert)

Ode From A Marine’s Father
So Brave, my son
defends freedom of speech,
diversity, but please
kids of Hollywood
be safe
don’t crash into walls
drunken and
drunk on fame
honored for minor repentance
brave to not
spend millions
on drugs
on public relations
on improvisation lessons

Your crash pad
is more luxurious
than my son’s digs
surrounded by
improvised explosive devices

Make my son’s war movie
if your talent will let you
play a brave wife
brave daughter
with angst

Dust is no small thing
from a bomb
from a Trade Center,
a dictator no footnote to history
for his victims
in the big war
in Cambodia,
Bosnia, Kosovo
Ruanda
Darfur
the more to come
from indifference
delay,
crashing into walls
because Saddam
was an inconvenient foot
his trample a necessity of
balance of power politics
they said.