Transcendental Sonnet #1130:
Rap As We Wrap

sharing das rote Lachen with Silke

On front lines and in flu-shot lines
Watch where you step look out for mines
Incompetence and monkeyshines
Bowl for a few more Columbines
As we await the end my friend
As we await the end

I watch the news and try to understand
But all I see is chaos out of hand
Out of mind and going blind in Neverland
LA is still OK but here we know
There are lots of places where we cannot go
And we just want to make our garden grow
As we await the end my friend
As we await the end



+Steven Curtis Lance

Copyright MMIV Silke LLC

I like that a lot. Monkeyshines is a film isn't it? What does it mean in your poem? It sounds like an American slang term, but it's not one i'm familiar with, though I feel I should be. Is the clue in the film plot. Something to do with trained monkeys. Killer monkeys? Ok. Incompetence and monkeyshines. That would fit. bowling for columbine - shoot em up. Flu shot lines. Again that's another American term. Risk of stepping on mines in flu shot lines? Must be some kind of hazard, maybe something that's been on the news recently? Ah yes, here we are:-

Quote "Making the elderly, frail and unwell queue up for hours on end carries risks of its own. In California, a 79-year-old woman died from a head injury when she collapsed from exhaustion while waiting in line for a flu shot. In New Jersey, a man in his 70s was hospitalized after showing signs of hypothermia after waiting outside in chilly temperatures for the vaccine. Locally, four elderly people passed out and one was taken away in an ambulance at the Visiting Nurses Association of Western Michigan's first public flu clinic this month at Rogers Plaza. Nearly 1,700 seniors, infants and people with chronic illnesses showed up for shots at the Wyoming site.

At another public flu clinic, more than 200 people -- some bundled in blankets, using walkers and portable oxygen tanks -- lined up outside the Kent County Health Department office in Kentwood. The temperature outside was in the 40s, uncomfortable for many of the elderly and chronically ill waiting in line. It will be much worse if shot-seekers have to stand outside when the weather turns colder""...........

Well I'll be damned. That makes sense of the following lines:-

I watch the news and try to understand
But all I see is chaos out of hand

Yes I like it even more now I think I understand it better. Great!!! Well done Steven.

Thanks!

Yeah, you got it.

Monkeyshines is an old-fashioned American slang term for hijinx, shenanigans, monkey-business, slick tricks and the Bush Administration: chicanery, that sort of thing. It comes from the "Roaring Twenties." At least, I learned it from those who roared in the Twenties.

I can't get a flu-shot, yet I'm "high-risk." I hope I don't get pneumonia and check out, but I don't think I will. I'll just have to be really careful this year. I'm so reclusive and obsessive-compulsive, I should be OK; I don't go out much, and I can't stand any sort of cold nor draught. I take pretty good care of myself, and drink a lot of Earl Grey tea. I stopped smoking a few years back, and stopped drinking this year. I take multivitamins. But this flu-shot thing is a disgrace for an ostensibly civilised country. This is the stupidest I've ever seen this place, and it's getting stupider every day.

Do you know there are people here who would exhibit symptoms of rabies reading my sonnets, and probably are doing so even now? I think it's funny. I fly the Swedish flag at my house, and I have a sticker on the front door and another on the bumper of my grandparents' 1965 Chrysler which reads "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican."

As Gimli Son of Gloyd says, "Let 'em come!"

Monkeyshines are what we saw here yesterday, I would say.

By the way, I don't see Smigal hereabouts...

Thanks for the clear explanation. I do like the way your comments are often accompanied by a little running commentary of life in America through your own perspective, or the little details of how your day is going. I find it a much more gentle, less abrasive and soothing window on the USA than watching CNN. I also enjoy discovering bit by bit, the personality behind the person.

I had a phone call tonight from a girl in Boston who I met in a Napster chatroom. The story of our meeting is told in a poem I wrote for her, titled 'ping', which I posted here some time ago. Did you ever read it? It must have been five years ago now, and we became firm friends. Two years ago I visited her in Boston. There is an amusing story in that, and I may well tell you it in a private message. It was my one and only visit to your country. I'm afraid it did nothing to alter my opinions of it. I can well understand why you fly the Swedish flag.

Many of my friends in England are off the wall eccentrics.

God knows I'm an off the wall eccentric!

Have you heard this?

"Boston the hub of the universe
The home of the bean and cod
Where the Lodges speak only to the Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God"

I used to always fly the Union Jack, until Silke sent me a Swedish flag.

My grandfather Lance came here and fell in love with the desert. He loved to take photographs of it and write poems about it. He lived in Sedona, Arizona, which very closely resembles Mars, as far as I can see.

Sedona, Arizona is a nice place.

I live in the family home of my mother's people here in Orange, California, and it is nice here. It was a German colony. Some say it still is. California pretty much hates Bush, and the feeling would seem to be mutual. My kids and I refer to him as the Chimp-in-Chief.

We have an excellent punk band, T.S.O.L., "True Sounds of Liberty," who say it well in one of their songs: "Love your country, hate your government." My son Teddy is a punk. I suppose I am too, rather. God knows my father is, and he's all of seventy-five. One never seems to outgrow it.

I shall listen to T.S.O.L. right now, as a matter of fact, cranked up all the way.

Thanks for being so nice about this little sonnet. I am so happy that you like it! I just wanted Silke to have something silly to enjoy before she went to bed. I'll try to write some more now. I do enjoy writing sonnets, as you might have observed by now...

I remind myself of my Lance people, with all their obsessions. Delightfully English all. My daughter calls me "sweetly dotty," which I treasure as a compliment. Indeed she means it as such.

Cheers then, and everbest,

+S

Nice without Smigal lurking about, isn't it?

yes very nice. Finger crossed, it could be a smigal free night.