HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY

Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers. May your day be filled with love and joy.

Warning Beware of Butt Floss

In my house we try to conserve energy and water. My wife and I try to do what is right for the environment, but we don’t always agree on when it is time to save resources or when it time to throw in the towel. Let this serve as a warning environmental conservation disagreements stink.

My wife likes to reuse bath towels after we shower. She likes to hang them up and let them dry. If you ask her why she will answer, “You just wiped off water. You were finished taking your shower so the towel is just wet not dirty.” If you make the point that company might use drying towels then she will defend with they are expected to use the hand towels by the sink. Now there are four things wrong with this philosophy when it comes to towels.

First, my wife seems to have no time requirement for how long a bath towel should be used. If it hangs there for a week, the “clean” towel can start to have its own unique smell, and it’s not a “clean” smell.

Second, somewhere during this process of drying and reusing towels, one always turns into a floor towel to step on when we get out of the shower. If anyone else is like us that towel gets used like a mop for the entire bathroom as wet people scoot it along the floor to avoid getting water all over the place. Since it gets hung up to dry with the other towels, I often find it hard to remember which towel is the floor towel. The thought of drying off with the dry floor towel grosses me out, but if I protest by getting out new towel then I get grief for wasting towels.

Third, I personally dental floss my butt when I dry off. You all know what I’m talking about when you put the edge of your towel in between your butt cheeks and give it a few good tugs back and forth. I’m pretty sure many other people do the same. Women might deny it, but men do it. It is the last thing you do when you’re drying off. It’s like buffing the last bit of turtle wax, pun intended, on a car to make it shine. I just don’t want to reuse my butt floss. What if I forget which edge I used? This brings me to my final point.

Fourth, just because you expect company to use the hand towels to dry their hands and faces doesn’t mean they are going to do so. Without naming names, I saw a visitor at my house using my butt floss to dry his face and hands. I tried to stop him, but he just said, “What? What’s wrong?” What could I say in return? I simply told him those weren’t the hand towels, and they might be dirty. He didn’t seem to care, but I imagine if I would have said I used it on my butt he might have cared.

If this is happening in my house, I pretty sure it is happening in other houses across the world. So let this be a warning to everyone visiting others, “Use the hand towels!”

Obama Osama Joke Already Think This Will Help Obama's Approval Rating?

Why did it take an Obama to get an Osama? Because the Bin Laden family had Osoma hiding behind some Bushs.

I've already heard some Republicans try to give credit to Bush for Osama's demise and takes verbal shots at Obama for taking so long to get him. "Bush said we would get him and we did." Really? I remember Bush saying something like, "Osama Bin Laden is just not that important. He is not our top priority," after years of inability to capture or kill Osama. I recall Obama making a campaign  promise he would make bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice a top priority when elected. By my count that makes one big promise Obama has squarely kept just two years into his Presidency. Spin it any way you want. He got the job done. I'm just glad the families of the 9-11 victims finally got some justice, and all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, should just be happy justice was served.

Birth Certificate? We Don't Need No Stinking Birth Certificate!

Please shut up about the birth certificate already! It is just a distraction from the real problems facing our country. What I can't understand, besides people watching his bad show, is why some people are actually saying they want Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential candidate? Really? Does anyone remember the guy inherited millions of dollars but still managed to go bankrupt? He owed so much money to the banks he was too big to fail, and they managed his fiances for him putting him on a half million dollars a day budget. Please think about that, $500,000.00 bucks a day. He is already out of touch with 99% of Americans so please don't put him in charge of our money. Wake up America and smell the coffee! The Coffee Party is growing check it out.

First Place in The Political Poet Poetry Competition

SOUND EFFECTS IN VISTA

Boom-ah-boom-ah-boom-boom.

The walls and tables quiver.

The F-18s are at it again,

Practice bombing the Whiskey

And Zulu regions of neighboring

Pendleton. They carpet bomb

While I’m stretched on the carpet.

Fluffy folds her ears, scrambles

For cover. They bomb through

Letterman's monologue—I pretend

The jerk next door's banging his drums.

The windows rattle like hippie

Tambourines. Newborn hawks

Scream at the planets and stars.

by Kirby Wright

About the Author Kirby Wright

Kirby Wright was born and raised in Hawaii. He is the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA, set on the islands of Oahu and Moloka'i.

He wishes to dedicate his poem to the memory of his father, Harold. S. Wright.

Second Place in The Political Poet Poetry Competition

Buddha

The ghost, the pine, the quarter moon

fading. The hay sits like a still life

waiting.  Blue surrounds the figure

seated on the hill, wrapped

in sky and earth.  The dearth

of crickets rides with dawn. 

The sky is teal over auburn hills

over olive grass beneath sandy

hay beneath Buddha within breath.

Out of time means nothing

but time.  Space is no-space

within which to let breath

go, swirling to the ends

of the fuzzy image and beyond

to the impartial whiteness

that is the true universe.

Versed in hills and hay yet

outside of them is how we reach

stars without grasping, without gasping

at their enormity.

We can touch the night, we touch

the night, we the night

and sitting outside of it.

by Taunja Thomson

About the Author Taunja Thompson

Taunja Thomson's poetry has been published in The Cincinnati Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Poets’ Collective and, most recently, in The Licking River Review. Additionally, she won the poetry category of Northern Kentucky University’s Women’s Studies Creative Writing Competition in 2003, and her poem “Seahorse and Moon” was nominated for a Pushcart Award in 2005. Taunja currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and four cats and maintains her poetry blog, Beneath Cherry Blossoms.

Third Place in The Political Poet Poetry Contest

Passionate Crosshairs

It’s too late to panic, there are crosshairs

all over everything, it’s rutting season

and America is shedding common sense.

Political correctness has taken offense,

and has lined up the cross hairs on the

crosshairs of crosshairs, and it’s stroking

the trigger lovingly, seductively… breathe.

The metaphors have drawn their swords,

and the battleplan defies all definition.

The tyrants of fantasy demand the right to

control wagging tongues, reality be damned.

Crosshairs are to be outlawed for optimal

inaccuracy, you have the right to arm your

mind but you can’t be allowed to see… hold.

In the sight of optical allusion, a metaphors

last stand, a definition surrounded by passion,

by bloodlust, by a language of hateful rhetoric.

Surrender is not an option, resistance must die.

The battle cry is semantic and imagination is

burned, the dictionaries pages torn by intellectual

efforts designed to appease the unbalanced evil

that parades as a deranged berserker killing

everything in its path, ignorant of orders… pull.

The shot has been fired, it travels the fine line

of the crosshairs but the metaphor is too fast.

Hiding behind innocence the bullet finds its

mark, and the truth bleeds out by definition.

Now in shackles the metaphor of imagination

is lead shuffling, its feet in the chains of opinion.

A scapegoat, captured and tortured until a guilty

confession is obtained, back by popular demand.

A metaphor, drawn and quartered, in the crosshairs.

by MrDaMan

Virgil R. Hall II (Randy)

About the Author Virgil R. Hall II

I play with the fire in my head and as my soul burns I try my best to translate the empathy of my mind’s eye. That's all; I am but a camera taking snapshots through the shutter of my soul. Trash or treasure is all a matter of perspective. As long as it is fun and entertaining I will continue to write and explore the melding of images, poetry and music. Virgil R. Hall II is my given name; "MrDaMan" is my internet nick which I have adopted as a pen name of sorts.

My friends know me simply as Randy. Destiny is the road we travel, not the destination. I am but a Humblebee floating in empathy. My path currently lies in Southern California. http://TalkLiberty.com