Tag: Marvin Lurie

If You Have to Ask, the Answer Is ‘Yes’

By Marvin Lurie

It sensitizes certain nerve endings.
You can see and hear what many can’t.
Your training begins young,
the neighbor who won’t let her daughter play with you,
taunts and shoves in the playground.
You are woven an invisible garment
act by act, word by word.
to wear for life.
It has a star on it
that can be made visible by those who hate you.
If you forget for a while,
you will discover gangs of haters
dedicated to reminding you.
You may find comfort with others like you
in your own holy place,
only to find it too is threatened.

A new Pharaoh arises.
He is attractive to those who hate you,
who believe they are now empowered
to say “America First.
This is a white Christian country.”
He continues to hint approval
while weakly denying it.

Now you understand
why your ancestors
slept with their shoes under their pillows,
sewed coins in the hems of their coats.

 

Marvin Lurie is retired from a career as a trade press editor, president of an association management and consulting firm, and senior executive in an international trade association. He began writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. He and his wife moved from the Chicago area to Portland, Oregon in 2003 where he has been an active member of the local poetry community including service on the board of directors of the Oregon Poetry Association for two terms, as an almost perpetual poetry student at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland and as a participant in several critique groups. Visit his website at marvlurie.com.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Faigl.ladislav.

Alt-Majority Nursery Rhymes

By Marvin Lurie

Every time I think I’ve gone too far,
I read the paper and realize I haven’t gone far enough.

Baa Baa Donny
have you any money?
Yes sir. Yes Sir,
full banks many.
Some for my gold door,
some for my pompadour
none for the little boy
stranded on the shore.

Donny Donny quite contrary
how your orders do grow,
with midnight tweets, rash deceits
and craven Republicans all in a row.

Chatty Donnie
sat with his cronies
predicting a terrorist doomsday.
When big bad Putin
started shootin’
he frightened Chatty Donnie away.

Pussy-Grabber pudding and pie
groped the girls and made them cry.
When the lawyers came out to play,
Pussy-Grabber ran away.

Donny had such little hands
they couldn’t help but show
and everywhere that Donny went
his hands were sure to go.

They grabbed a woman’s crotch one day,
which is against the rules.
He said it’s just locker room talk
besides they’re minuscule.

Old mother Hubbard
went to her cupboard
to get her blood pressure meds.
She didn’t have any pills.
There weren’t more refills.
Obamacare was repealed by the feds.

 

Marvin Lurie is retired from a career as a trade press editor, president of an association management and consulting firm, and senior executive in an international trade association. He began writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. In 1998, anticipating retirement and with the desire to reinvest time and effort writing poetry, he took several week-long and shorter poetry workshops taught by established poets and started over. He and his wife moved to Portland, Oregon in 2003 where he has been an active member of the local poetry community including service on the board of directors of the Oregon Poetry Association for two terms, as an almost perpetual poetry student at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland and as a participant in several critique groups. Visit his website at marvlurie.com.