Rants Log-in | Search Rants | Account Info

This is an encomium to a good friend and events-planner extraordinaire.)

PEDRO the PARTY PLANNER

Peter, Petros, the Rock.
Perhaps not so solid as to support a church
But, solid in commitment -- you won’t go in hock --
Nor ever fear you’ll be left in the lurch.

Peter, Peter, Peter, in business he is true to ya.
Bubbly, faithful and giving.
He is as wine-wise as Julia
And as clever as Martha Stewart Living.

Peter, the go-getter,
The party-boy at large,
Will make a party better –
Even decorate your garage.

Pe ...

Reviewed by Curtis W. Long



A CIVIL WAR CHRISTMAS
(Play by Paula Vogel)

In what turns out to be a chock-full-of-music drama, this one-night episode placed in the embattled U.S. capital in December of 1864, had a limited engagement at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto, California. It marks the 40th anniversary of Theater Works of Silicon Valley.

Playwright Paula Vogel is a native of Washington, D.C., and she uses her knowledge of the layout of that city as the backdrop for a complicated renderi ...

OF JUDAS and ASSORTED VERMIN

Among one hundred senators,
All sworn to do our bidding,
One fits best among janitors –
Made queasy by that fitting..

This misplace solon vacillates
Twixt “rat” and “snake,” for starters.
His erstwhile friends he clearly hates
And now shamelessly barters.

A party favorite, he once ran
As V-P – It was ugly!
He became the forgotten man,
A burden he bore smugly.

But, in the race to keep his seat,
His party left him hanging.
In the midst of the ca ...

(Someone was explaining something to me, using metric measurements, as though it were a universally understood concept. Having no experience in a scientific or technological discipline, I realized I was not immediately grasping the import of what was being conveyed.

In jest, and ultimately in tragic truth, I said, “Don’t talk to me in metric; I’m
American.”

Ergo, the genesis of this otherwise pointless poem.)


METRIC AIN’T AMERICAN

Don’t talk to me of meters and ...

STILL COME THE FLAG-DRAPED COFFINS

“Show me no flag-draped coffins!”—
Cynically I said one day,
Because the flag-draped coffins,
Then, were all hidden away.

Those who caused so much anguish,
Sought so to hide it from view.
Thus, were the flags to vanish,
Thus would the thought go from you.

Such are the men of mayhem,
Those who from comfort make war.
They merely start an anthem,
Yell, “Fire!” and then hit the floor.

Those whom the anthem reaches
Go forth to render their souls.
Meanwhi ...

(This is a tribute to José Rosa, CEO of RosArt Multimedia, Inc., upon the occasion of his birthday.)

ODE to PEPI

So often he came
To the count of ten,
But bounced up off the floor.
With no one to blame,
Like the best of men,
His lumps he staunchly bore.

Big Apple's the fault--
Where his fire was lit
To scrutinize the world
He started to vault,
With a mind well fit;
He thought he'd give it a twirl.

The world's not a chump,
Though its turn is slow.
And, yes, it will punch back.
So, into a slump
Quite soon d ...

CRI des ÉCOLES

Young Cabrini-Greenish denizens in fratricide
A victim among them,no place to hide.

An honor student, with all life ahead --
Now a bloody mass, all senses dead.

These encounters, too, though senseless be,
Come through lack of thought by you and me

There’s something weird afoot in public schools,
Something lacking therein – the proper tools?

An unknown poison pollutes the modern air
And infects the students in our care.

Frustrated, we wring our hands, fuss about,
But fro ...

AMERICA in AUTUMN

Let us not judge her too harshly, our America, in this season of her discontent. After all, she is but a young lady. As with all earthly creatures, she continues to experience growing pains.

The trauma of her birth remains in her subconscious. It is reflected in every step she takes. Her conception resulted from a love-hate relationship between a distorted Spirit of Liberty and the Status Quo. Her formation in the womb was fraught with abortive danger at every stage. Magnetic ...

“…AND FLIGHTS OF ANGELS…”

The Great Bard, a tragedian non pareil, would have given his eye teeth to have known of the Kennedy clan. There it all was: Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth---even the sonnets sang.

What a beginning! An indigent Irish family chased by famine to a new nation in a new world. They scrape as scrape can through a cynical ban on spirits and a crippling depression, then rise to lord it over the British at the Court of St. James.

Their crown prince is blown from the skies at t ...

ATTITUDE and ASSUMPTION
Involving
POLICE, PROFESSORS and PRESIDENTS

The Black-White racial divide in this part of the world dates from 1619. It was expanded until the middle of the 20th century, when legal and social attempts finally began to effectuate a closing of that gap. Considering the centuries it took to open so wide a gulf, the half-century’s progress in attempting to briddge it has been heroic, but insufficient for the job at hand.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we come upo ...