All posts by Mike Varga

Poems

When Darkness Comes

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Public Health Officials are being threatened with physical harm and being harassed because people believe a pandemic is a hoax, and public health directives impinge on their freedoms, while they rather believe conspiracies promulgated by those who have made public health a political battleground… God help us as a species…

When Darkness Comes

When darkness comes it will not be night
It will be in a world filled with light
It will be a time when many will know truth
When we will need to hear from our youth
And yet enough will never listen and hear
The science, the data, the truth so clear
They will seek the fatalism of conspiracy stories
With their evil intent, and twittering flurries 
As every con artist knows, it’s the elaborate show
Witch doctors, shamans and village priests know
Just weave a story for the ignorant, to keep them sheltered
From evil they contrive, never mind science and truth altered
No, the darkness does not come in the night of fear
It comes when people hear what they want to hear
It comes when anxiety wins out over thought and reason
It comes when data and science is declared to be treason 
Then in a world full of available and abundant light
Darkness will reign along with the anxieties of night

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Dad’s 1947 Ford Coupe

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Dad loves to tell us stories… last night he reminded us of one of my favorites.  I thought I would share it here, because it demonstrates the ingenuity of an earlier generation…. and it’s a great story.

Dad was an aircraft mechanic.  He specialized in oxygen supply for naval aircraft.   He grew up and lived close to where he was stationed at Grosse Ile Naval Air Station, just south of Detroit.  He used to like to say that he was station on an island 2000 miles from the West Coast!   That was true, but  that island was on the Detroit River!

He bought a 1947 Ford Coupe for $50… it was a simple car, no radio, no heater, just transportation.  It needed an exhaust system, that would have cost $35, and being the mechanic he was, he was not going to pay that price.  So he rigged up an Oxygen supply in the car and had an aircraft respirator in the car so he could drive it without  being asphyxiated when it was cold, thus allowing him to keep the windows up.


One early morning, long before dawn he was driving to the naval air station and crossing the bridge to Grosse Ile, the latch for the hood of the car released and the hood flew up and hit the top of the car, thus blocking his view and bending in the middle.  He stopped and tried to get the hood down but was unable.  Fearing being rear-ended on a foggy dark morning, he drove across the bridge with his head out the window.  Pulling over he climbed on top and managed to get the hood down and latched, all though with a crease in the mangled hood.   At the naval air station he got a heavy hammer and did his best to hammer the hood into place and make it look something like normal.  But the real ingenuity was yet to come.

Deciding that he no longer wanted to deal with this problem of a car, he decided to sell it.  As it was the day new recruits were arriving.   He decided to create one hundred one-dollar chances, and raffle the car off.  Guys were thrilled for a chance to win a car for a $1, some bought 3 tickets, some 5, but he sold all 100 tickets.   Dad was delighted to rid himself of the car and pocketed $100 for his $50 Ford Coupe.  The guy who won the car, was thrilled to get a car for a $1 ticket, complete with its own Naval Air Oxygen System.

Poems

Entropy…

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Entropy

The irreversible slide into chaos
Order to disorder, all things decay
Unless new energy is added
Improvements are made
We are not immune to poor maintenance
We are not immune to poor stewardship
Someone asked yesterday…
     why is the world falling apart?
While denying the entropy of their own heart
Ignoring the evidence of decline
Denying the existence of malevolence
Because they hear him speak
In a language that resonates with their own heart
The vibrations set in place
Like crystals that fracture along fault lines
Established in childhood, and never questioned
Because it is what has made them feel safe
It is what has made them feel special
But no one escapes entropy

 

Poems

Tree Song…

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Tree Song

The trees sing with the wind and seasons
With their song and for their own reasons
The sunlight filters as a reflection of notes
Treble in the manner that the leaves denotes
The shadows are the base, the cool base
Where creatures find their  hiding place
And scurry with purpose if they show
To where, only they would know
And butterflies flash their colors in brief visits
As they flit in the sun as hopeless romantics
And the deer in the shadows watch warily
As we stroll our path, blithely and merrily 

*** did you see the deer?

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Slippery Slope…

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We have taken another step on the slippery slope in the journey from democracy to authoritarian rule.   We have seen the discredit of the free press, we have seen the efforts to shape the courts, we have seen and continue to experience the conspiracy theories borne out in the individual personality wrapped in paranoia that is beating back a supposed deep-state.  Furthermore, data and science and truth is lost to political context, everything is seen in the context of for or against.  Division is the state of the dis-union.  Now the next step, secret police.  Secret federal police, part of political theater.  In the context of “law and order”… neither is being achieved.  The law is broken, without accountability.  This is not policing, this is provocative theater, creating fear and division.   How can there be accountability when there are no name tags on paramilitary being deployed in the streets, completely unwelcome by the leaders of a community?  What do arrests mean, when there is no “lawful” authority established?   How can tear gassing mothers aligned to encourage peaceful protest and discourage violence be justified as a deescalation?  It is quite the opposite.   What about the video of a Navy Veteran being beaten and pepper sprayed because he asked to talk to the “secret police”, is this what we think democracy looks like?  Is this what we believe the right to assemble, and the right to free speech means?  And then who are these men in fatigues, with weapons and helmets that are part of this slide to authoritarian rule?

But let’s not mince words, because when combined with tolerance for neo-Nazi white-supremacist, it is clear that this slippery slope is really a backward slide toward fascism.

Beware the next steps: the intentional limitations on voting, the ratcheting of fear mongering, and then the final invalidation of democratic election results.
Wake-up America!

Poems

Dreams of a Certain Age…

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Dreams of a Certain Age

Dreams of all-ages inform, and develop our fears
Develop our present,  fill out our futures
Adjust our memories of great and past glories
Or may feed the monster, our anxieties

We should be able to use them as we need
throughout life as a measure of ourselves
As a measure of how we fit into the world
Of the past, present and the future

Dreams of youth are for envisioning
A future-future, a world possible 
Seeing oneself in that future
Accomplishments, purposed glories, and joys

Dreams of a middle-age are for envisioning
A present-future for us and our children
Accomplishments for the family, however defined
And for higher and greater purpose and joys

Dreams of later-age are for envisioning
A present state of mind, a preservation of memories
To allow for shared-dreams of a state-of-mind
Beyond body present, but for purpose of peace and joy

Poems

To Be Known…

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To Be Known

With all the fractures and failings
With no side-guards and railings
With all the anxiety and worries
And yet all the stories and glories
As a package of many experiences
Of who I am, beyond appearances
Except in these inadequate words I write
Or the dreams playing in the dark of night
And the time of thought all alone
I explore that Id I’ve ever known
Beyond the image of what I am
To the heart and soul of what I am
Requiring love-sharing to be shown
And it’s quiet return for me to be known

 

 

Poems

Espresso…

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Lately I’ve been thinking of a word and then I write what that word leads me to write… I did that with Anonymity, Choices, and Taste… today I awoke with a word in my mind I seldom use anymore, as I don’t have a machine, and I don’t go out for coffee… the word is Espresso…

Espresso

Exotic gift from Angelo
To the voluminous coffee world
Creamy, nutty, and oily
The scent of coffee and cigars
Occurs in a crazy mix of the mind
Bitter, and sweet as dark chocolate
And a name to match, espresso
It will survive sugar, just wounded, but
Milk, or cream will drown to death
Angelo’s coffee dream

*Angelo Moriondo invented the espresso coffee machine in 1884, Luigi Bezzera made several improvements in 1901…

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Masks and Politics… who knew?

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How could Masks be so political?   Current polls show that 96% of Democrats wear masks, while 66% of Republicans wear masks… is Political leadership the cause of this, or is political bias the outcome of those considering if they should wear masks?

I think Mr. Trump should embrace Masks and save lives… He could have engaged his base with MAGA masks!  We all would benefit.

I think that Biden could have his own Biden Masks… we all would benefit.

Masks are uncomfortable, but a ventilator is far more uncomfortable, so much so that you must be in a coma to wear it.  I’d rather wear a mask and social distance.

 

Poems

Pine Needles have a point…

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Pine Needles

Seemingly delicate and thin
Deceptively sturdy and precisely
And singularly straight collectors
Of rain drops at each needle point
Sparkling like diamonds in the still
Of misty morning refreshing the day
Waiting for the whisper of the wind
To shake them free of their diamonds,
Their adornment so then they can sing
Each with the resonance
Of their singularly straight and uniform length
A miracle of evergreen and ancient providence
Never jealous of the oak and maple colors
There to hold too the snowflakes that collect
In the winter and shine with the white of purity
In the perfect role of palace guards
Protecting the bounty of cones that ensure
The future, the evergreen future