On the Graduate Student Bulletin Board: A Found Poem (2019)

No Wall.  No Ban.  No Fear

Black Lives Matter

“Please don’t let me die”

LGBTQ Activist

Queer Spirituality

Know Your IX

#Sayhername

No Justice No Peace

Safe Zone Ally

Trans Umbrella

#Notnormal Resist

Bodies without borders

Speak Up….

We Believe Anita & Christine.  We Believe Survivors.

“Why did you shoot me”

Stop Profiling Muslims

Resist

Being an ally is about listening

Gun violence ends now

Seize the means of production

Help Pass Issue 1

Cincinnati March For Our Lives

Free the Slaves Cincinnati

United We Stand

Moms Demand Action

LGBTQ Safe Zone

Black history is everyday

Prisons are bad for health

My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy

My favorite gender neutral pronoun is comrade

Stand up.  Speak out.  Walk out. 

“It’s not real”

Covid Chit Chat

Cooped up forever, it’s driving me insane 

I have to get out, maybe go to a store 

A store?  What store?  And go there what for?   

Please shelter in place, stick with the campaign

But we're out of pickles and cottage cheese 

And I’ve barely one six-pack of Coke 

Coca-cola, pickles, is this a bad joke?

The store is Grand Central for killer disease   

I'll wear my new mask, it’s bulletproof protection

Stay six feet away, no kisses, no hugs

Just keep this in mind, no vaccines, no drugs 

They've no way of taming this demon infection 

Being scared of a germ isn’t my cup of tea 

Since when have you been such a sissy? 

I'll tell you a thing or two, Missy
So sad but we oldies no longer are free

Well I’m going to the store and that's that

I was thinking that maybe you'd drive me there 

O.K., holy moly, I don’t even care 

Anything to wind up this god-awful spat 

So pleased you've decided to see things my way

Already you’ve made this a non-COVID day 

(And out the door they went, hand in hand) 

Instructions to the Age Seventysomething OLLI Online Learning Students

          (Mostly verbatim quotes from a U.C. OLLI “OLLIGRAM”, 5-22-20)

Let’s get ready, OLLI students!

The second week of our OLLI Online classes is coming up.  

Soon you will get your JOIN MEETING email link

asking you to ACCEPT or DECLINE the meeting. 

If you click ACCEPT, your email

will go to your DELETED EMAIL box

and you will have to go there to get it back.

To join the class

look for “JOIN BY BROWSER”

after you click “JOIN MEETING”.

You may have to install an ”EXTENSION” 

to Safari for this to work. 

If you have a question

use the QUESTION & ANSWER TOOL. 

If you still have tech issues

send a chat to the host and

keep your WEBEX CONTROL GUIDE

with you at all times. 

If there is difficulty

with your Cisco WebEx Meetings App, 

click JOIN MEETING

and JOIN BY BROWSER.

You may again need to install an EXTENTION (sic). 

Be sure to MUTE YOUR MICROPHONE

as a courtesy to fellow class students.  

If the audio or video cuts out

try moving closer to your router,

mute the video camera icon,

and turn off devices like Roku, firestick, etc. 

And DO NOT CLICK ON THE ANNOTATE BUTTONS

for they send automatic messages to the presenter.   

Any other questions?

Call the OLLI WEBEX ASSISTANCE LINE

513-538-7711

Good Luck! 

And have a fulfilling online learning experience.  

Two Dogs

Lil Paws is the naughty one

A little punk pipsqueak 

Who yaps at the big guys on Ludlow Ave. 

Even the Great Swiss Mountain Dog

Thirteen pounds but 

The loudest barker in our neighborhood 

Back home Lil Paws chews up undies

Ball point pens

Pastries on the breakfast table  

Pooped on the rug two times

Ate two holes in the quilt

Clearly a descendant of wolves  

But remarkably cute nonetheless 

Loves being petted

Snuggles up at night in the bed

Likes to lie on my chest  

Iko is older, better mannered

Never does anything wrong 

But he doesn’t have quite as much fun  

Twice the size of his Yorkie brother

Though still he gets bullied around 

A miniature Schnauzer

Rarely groomed, lots of mats 

Iko follows me from room to room 

Like my buddy  

Naps at my feet

Puts his paws on the arm of my chair

When he wants attention  

A pretty good rough-houser

Lies on his back

Grumbles contentedly 

And kicks four legs in the air 

Both dogs like going for walks

Lil Paws charges out in front

Straining on the leash

Pulling me along

But Iko lags behind

Sniffing every pole, every hydrant

Or clump of gladiolas

The dogs growl at pedestrians in masks

But otherwise are one with the world 

Now What?

These masks are making me edgy

Are those my neighbors or crooks?   

The world has lost half its smiles   

And where are the pretty girls’ looks?  

And what about staying apart?

Six feet may, in fact, be too little

No handshakes, no hugs, no touches

Connections are tattered and brittle

We’ve lost many good things in life 

Imprisoned as we are in our house  

The germs are the guards for this jail 

At least I’m locked up with my spouse 

Will this be the plot for the rest of our days?

Can we have any hope we'll defeat the malaise?

Ear Wax Terrors

I’ll tell you of a ghastly experience  

It came as a hair-raising shock

Like marooned in the wastes of Antartica

Or entombed by a large granite rock

I asked Dr Z about ear wax

He peered in my ears, left and right

“Yep, you’ve got plenty of wax,” he said

His nurse would take care of the blight 

The nurse squeezed hot liquid in each of my ears

Then she switched on her vacuum device

Whoosh, the wax popped from my left ear

But my right ear she had to do twice

I didn’t hear well as I drove the car home

My left ear, I’d say, was okay

But then I discovered, my right ear — stone deaf

Mere words can’t describe my dismay

I worried the wax had simply gone deeper  

The surgeon might slice through my head 

Perhaps my eardrum was suctioned out

That part of my brain was now dead

I called the office in dire panic

“Try peroxide in your ear,” said the doc

“If it’s not any better by Friday

“Come back in at eleven o’clock”

My wife took the job as my medical aide

Each morning she filled up my ear

I still couldn’t hear a word of NPR

I returned to the doc, full of fear

           

The nurse said she thought that my wax now looked softer

She swished and she swushed and a big chunk came out

My ear, my life, was miraculously saved

So pleasing to hear myself shout

The eeriest feeling is being stone deaf

Even if it’s only one ear

I’d lost all connection with the world’s right side

Many things on my right I hold dear 

"The Dance of Life" by Edvard Munch

Midnight on the Norwegian isle 

A full moon glitters on the lake 

While villagers cavort along the shoreline

Spinning, twirling to the mesmerizing music

A gray-haired man lustfully dips his partner 

While a man in black and his partner in red slowly sway

Hand in hand, arms stretched downward

The man’s face, yellow in pallor, the mask of death

The woman, dark circles engulfing her eyes

Sad, absorbed, resigned

The last dance the doomed couple will know

A woman in white stands to one side 

Smiling, fresh and innocent, virginal 

To the right, an older woman, adorned in black 

Hunched over, face glum, hands clasped

Gazing at the couple, contemplating their demise

The dance of life persists but moments more 

Until the dancers sink down to the netherworld