fight fire with fire

she sat at the bar holding her crystal tumbler in one hand resting it on a teal napkin on the cool zinc

absently she fingered the icecubes in her Rusty Nail a double(beyond her -- she ticked off the bartender by asking for a daesh(joke) of Angotura I dont use bitters in Nails he said)(it seemed to her guys always took whatever opportunity they could to languish in her presence they agreed or disagreed with her(trying to stand out in her head by hook or by crook) but she Aw she wasnt having it it wasnt keen or polite when anyone tried to mire or rob her of her free time  she said Well thats how I drink it . . . Please)(and this unnecessary shit after contending with a pharmacist who tried to lecture her on her birth control pills  he had religious objections to it  Christ she thought then told him she hadnt religious objections to his prostate examinations though with some unfounded confidence she also believed his physicians job was twofold  seemingly he also shoved things up his ass that werent his concern)

                                                                 absently she brought her indexfinger out of her drink and noisily sucked the liquor off it  she sucked loudly trying to deafen herself from hearing the FOX broadcast(why did FOX play incessantly either at the bar at the gym playing in office lobbies she had to go through to contend with business clients FOX was so much so that she nearly welcomed relished elevator muzak)

the lout bellowed Fight fire with fire to an enthused audience  he irritated her 

the crowd responded heaved and spastic  they irritated her

she didnt really but she wished his hair would go up in flames and maybe she also wished the flames would engulf his braindead cheerers too

she frightened herself when she had thoughts like that frightened herself because her patience the safety valve keeping her mouth shut her thoughts to herself was eroding

more than a couple of times recently her boyfriend had to physically extract her remove her from a bar when at last she could no longer hold her tongue and barked at the flatscreen no one in particular but no-ones always paid attention when they werent being paid attention to

under her breath she muttered Drumpf  Fight fire with fire  Why did he always see things from the perspective of peering from out of a safe place onto the world  as a turtle might from the confine of his asshole

he says We have to be so strong We have to fight so viciously and violently because were dealing with violent people vicious people

We have laws to uphold we have laws they dont have laws

Their laws say you can do anything you want to them

The more vicious you are the better

So we cant do waterboarding -- which may not be the nicest thing -- but its peanuts compared to many alternatives So we cant do waterboarding but they can do chopping off heads drowning people in steel cages They can do whatever they want to do

And they eat dinner like us and can you imagine them sitting around the table or wherever theyre eating their dinner talking about the Americans dont do waterboarding and yet we chop off heads

They probably think were weak were stupid we dont know what were doing we have no leadership

You know

          you have to fight fire with fire  

and the audience envelopes his words with a smattering of applause then begins to chant  U S A!  U S A!  U S A!

U S A!

shes sure off screen theres a Drumpf prompter or plant among the crowd who first applauded who first chanted U S A!  U S A!  of course the lemmings would follow

she thinks to herself as she melts her icecubes clutching her tumbler in her hot hands He thinks Daesh or ISIS or ISIL sits down like an American family at home show me that family and them sitting around their diningroom table their kitchen table like Americans did when the US was great -- Make America(in the 50s) Great Again! – before the Civil Rights Voting Act – when drunken Joe pointed fingers spewed accusations – when Jim Crow haunted the country – when there were segregated schools and bathrooms and waterfountains – Move it lady! To the back of the bus! And she didnt And later Rosa Parks said I have learned over the years that when ones mind is made up this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear

she took a healthy pull at her drink

she felt the thin vapors of mild inebriation splishsplash her brain its surface spit-polished and glazed

he said They probably think were weak

No she thought Thats what youre pedaling  You sell insults

They probably think were stupid

No  You think were stupid

They probably think we dont know what were doing How feckless our leadership is

No  Thats you braying factless assertions               

The chopping off of heads

And the chopping off of heads  she remembered the US military the Pentagon the CIA referencing their desire to decapitate Daeshs leadership

They use knives

We use hi-tech drones

We call them brutal while we sanitise our brutality white war machines silent thousands and thousands of feet overhead unleashing terrible missiles that not only kill and everyone we kill is a combatant has to be a combatant in War theres no such thing as a civilian if Americans died in America theyre combatants too combatants because its our tax money that buys our armament and pays our soldiers who do our bidding  we sanitise our brutality we vaporise people   and if they arent vaporized and arent so sanitised we leave them lay like chunk tuna so their people can guess whose body parts are whose

she killed her buzz

Barkeep  Another please

he heard her voice he didnt waste time trying to make eyecontact  he replaced her empty glass and damp napkin with a fresh glass and a fresh teal napkin(nice touch)

she stirred her full drink with her finger and quietly sucked the liquor from it

there was a last dribble in her mind she had to get out so she could enjoy her drink 

the speech was over and apparently the House didnt want to hear the commentators tell them again what they had already heard     

Vicious  

How bout IEDs  Improvised Explosive Devises  Taken off the roadsides now worn as suicide vests

We taught them how to build IEDs

Its Evoluted

Isnt a drone an opulent-to-the-Nth-degree IED

No more politics

No more HEEHAWs HEEHAWs she had heard enough He Heehaws for the day

she turned on her stool and dismounted it  she slung her purse over her shoulder making sure it hung straight down less conspicuous  she didnt want to draw any attention(which she always did without trying) she picked up her drink and walked to a small cocktail table near an exotic fish tank placed her drink down her purse on the table and gathered the second chair up and carried it off set it down and returned and built an invisible visible wall called Leave Me the Fuck Alone  Too many insults today   Too many men thinking they know whats best

Too many men with their heads up their ass

1655,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  29  6.16

1053, Thursday,  30 6. 16

* http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/06/28/trump_on_terror_you_have_to_fight_fire_with_fire.html

when he went outside into his yard the very first thing he always did was to acknowledge his plants

he wouldnt have them suffer him as he suffered the people he rode the bus into work among who either werent morning people(why accept a morning job) or embittered by one unnamed thing or another that he didnt know and that he hadnt any intentions of asking about

he preferred they remain unnamed

he never asked a soul  How are you

because he understood if he tendered it innocently

asked it unsolicited

its asking made one culpable to the sincerity implied

                                           and then brother . . . the shits on you . . . if you didnt mean it you should never have asked you should have kept your trap shut(Why do you think they call it a trap) kept your mouth your two-cents to yourself

you stepped in it brother

now sit back

shaddup

and listen

and you better listen well because theres builtin landmines and clusterfuck bombs

youre teed up for questions to fullfill the conversation fullfill your engagement your black-and-blue obligation

eidget  I trust youll Learn your lesson

but if youre unwiilling to adapt to the pedagogy you were forced to acquire unwilling to exhibit or demonstrate your social graces . . . you have no other choice than be Rude . . . stop them before they get on a roll . . . and rolling itll be because you opened the door(unsolicited!) to talk about the one subject theyre PhDs about  experts  substantial and confirmed . . . to talk about themselves

if youre unwilling youre gonna have to lean back out of that generous space and bubble of profound shared intimacy(it confounded him the leechlike want not to be cautiously secretive or retain some scant notion of ones anonymity) – this shits Real – it aint produced and directed vapid horseshit Reality (or maybe it is maybe it is lies or is deluded or is bitterly selfish – how would you know you wouldnt because youre strangers)(then his mothers voice enters the back of his head How do you think you get to know people You share stories You inquiry of them to learn if you have or share a commonality Relationships are based on equal risk Both willing to put themselves out there)(Shaddup mother!) Ohyeah Out there  THEYRE OUT THERE

Hell Im out there

unwilling                                                                                                                                       

you have to be Honest  Terse

Rude

lean back out and away from that intimacy

having sized up their Reach

out of swinging distance

you have admit you were only being polite you didnt truly want to hear How they were

You asked superficially

Rhetorically

All I meant was to greet you politely

if there is pushback on your honesty then what you got is Truly I dont care how you are

dont salt it by saying And you dont have to care how I am

theres no sense handing them a knife to wound you

if they want let them find their own

---   all that occurred to him as he went down the three wooden steps off the porch onto a concrete stoop at the edge of the lawn was what his plants thought about him

thats what he cared about

he devised looping circuits in the upper yard lower yard and backyard to walk so his plants wouldnt feel slighted and each would realise he sought to pay them individual attention

they all had their turn at being first or second or third and on and on  

they were never always last or neglected

each had a pet name and each name was based either on their personality or physicality

on windless days – had someone stopped to watch – theyd see the plants nod to him as he approached them

to each he had something to say

he obliged himself                                   

                remembering while he was in school and due to the latent letter of his last name he was virtually always the last pupil attended to and always sat at the back of the class as if his teachers followed some unwritten diasporic rule and always went alphabetically through the class list

they certainly administered his expectations of their strict devoted adherence to curriculum

except one

a freshly-minted first-year freshman English teacher just cutting her teeth 

between them they turned his prior experience on its head and he flourished under her attention 

the Administration refused to extend her contract to the following year

they discovered their teacher-student collusion how they bent the rules as far as they could tortured them without breaking them and had gone outside the norm to educate him

succeeding she somehow exceeded her authority

that was the hard line they desperately couldnt afford her to redrawn

they informed her she was better suited elsewhere  

hopefully there she would learn to get-along and succeed become an avid team member

he thought their repression was ridiculous 

not every pony had to be saddled every peg had to fit inside a square hole

conformity shouldnt be cherished

but conformity is a rubber-stamp   

certainly they must see that

understand that

Certainly they echoed

his sophomore year was bitter and in it looking forward he saw that every year would be as bitter or worse because they werent changing and neither was he

while trench warfare and siege mentality were harbingers of a failed time they remained strategic options

stubborn archaic options

despite their intellect to recognise that each dug in and howling raised their nascent flags of animosity there would be no way forward that wasnt tainted

he relished his plants

he was devoted to them   

it would have been nice not to have fought his way to here

but then likely he wouldnt have been there

Huh 

     Whaatrouble*

 

1306,  Sunday,  12  6. 16 

 0518,  Thursday, 16  6. 16

* Jeremiah Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ND_fwX2fM