Curious Me

On the strand of the mighty Pacific Sea,
Here with God mostly, and curious me.
Surf’s in view; sky’s sublime hue:
Beauty, sanctity, into my soul imbue.

What rapture can I capture
Of California’s shore?
A Christmas sun declines,
An old mission offers signs.

Memories of many years ago
About some heaven here below;
How Indians, Padres won that day,
Though hell would have its part to play.

12/28/2009, Mission San Luis Rey

 

To an Old California Flame

Of halcyon days in our youth and strength,
(Not to mourn that long gone is the time),
But, upon memories to dwell at length,
Reminisce with me in this little rhyme.

Ample indeed was our vigor and health,
Passion, adventure, in abundant supply;
Knowing all about cost; little of wealth,
Yet rich in ways mere gold cannot buy.

Compatible in contrasts, faith and forces,
High school and grad school, our respective courses.
Domicile, friends, hometown, heritage, age,
Dillon, pace, politics, my campus stage.

 

For the 40th Anniversary
 of RFK’s Assassination

In a thousand days of JFK,
Hope held sway for a better way.
To the noble we did aspire.
What was keen and bold we did admire.

Jackie helped us look for class,
Rise above the crass and brass.
In Spanish and French, for Jack she spoke,
To grace and poise she inspired plain folk.

Naught did we dream, little think or say,
How soon Camelot would pass away.
When we looked to Bobby five years later,
‘Twas hard to say who was the greater.

Something like his brother’s were his ways,
His rise like a blaze through inky haze.
Like Gaius Gracchus in his time,
With Tiberius’ torch – bright, sublime.

Memory of the Gracchi brothers will never cease,
Nor Agis and Cleomones of ancient Greece.
Like John and Bob killed by assassins’ blow,
They dared to defy, go against the flow.

Losing such leaders, so matchless and rare,
Some Americans gave way to despair.
Yet memory of two courageous profiles,
Has strengthened our nation for future trials.

6/5/08

The 1909 Time Machine

On Spokane’s carousel
When just a lad,
It’s a pleasure to tell
What fun we had.
 
Horses bedecked in jewels
Saddled to ride,
And very few rules
From which to hide.
 
Round and round
Grab the ring
Sousa for sound
With lots of zing!
 
In 1909
It cost not a dime.
Just a buck today,
Dad, what do ya say?

Sure, Michael, my boy,
This marvel machine.
It’s more than a toy,
It’s history’s scene.
 
Your grandpa in pride
Rode yon prancing horse
Circling astride,
Happy of course.
 
But ancestors abscond
To the distant beyond.
So to God genuflect
When you’re here to reflect.

Make haste, take your place,
I’ll watch without tears,
While the blur of the years
Carousels by my face.

 

Seabeck After Sunset

‘Neath a starry array
By the beautiful bay
Under the bright north star
Smoking a good cigar.

Beside a scenic shore,
On a lee of the sea,
Amidst historic lore,
Sixteen decades I see

In 1856
They built lumber mills,
With wood and some bricks
To amass dollar bills

Thirty years did pass.
Loggers toiled and earned.
Till both mills in a mass
From stray sparks were burned.

Workers and the others
Left a dead ghost town.
Till the Coleman brothers
Gave it new renown.

What the fire had spared –
Old houses in rot,
For retreats repaired
As a holy spot.

Thus today it is,
No machines obscene
From the lumber biz,
To a sylvan scene.

Near the lapping waves
And the call of a crane,
From the city it saves,
Lest we go insane.

9/15/06

 

Viewing Fort Vancouver

Three centuries I see
From beneath this tree,
In the orchard’s shade
By the palisade.

Nearby the Columbia flows.
Above, the HBC flag blows.
Over Vancouver's jewel
Here once Britain did rule.

It was a time long ago
Of joy and hope, toil and woe,
When Providence shined bright,
On the White Eagle’s flight.*

Now with loud growl and roar
Trains speed by, airplanes soar;
As archaeologists here
Dig up many a good year.

The Oregon trail –
It was crossed with pain;
Here its end to hail
In grateful refrain.

We can’t sing all the songs
Sung by pioneer throngs.
But honor where they trod
And give glory to God.

Bob Struble, August 2006

* John McLaughlin, known to the Indians as “the White Eagle,”
Chief Factor of the Hudson Bay Company at Ft. Vancouver, 1824-1846.

 

Dedication revised

To adore Him day and night
Endures in the Catholic rite.
February twelfth – my mission:
Go to church, keep the tradition.

Abe Lincoln was born that day,
Midnight came and went.
For my book, I stayed to pray
With heartfelt discontent.

Knelt down, and from my pew prayed
Shocked to have erred, sorry I’d strayed,
The good Lord to appease,
I went to my knees.

2006



|Reelection Motive

I'm here, said he
To look out for thee.
You should savor what I do;
My departure you would rue.

So reelect me,
It's best, you see
D.C. I should roam,
And never go home.

T's unkind to say,
I should go away.
Don't be so firm
As to limit my term.

Go back you say?
Beyond the beltway?
Where people see clearly,
And earn their bread dearly?

No!  I must abjure
To become obscure.
The people to dust!
Reelection or bust!

December 2005 issue of No Uncertain Terms, (U.S. Term Limits), p. 6.

 

Independence Day, USA

Fourth of July
Emblazoned so high,
That children may see
By history.

And for young and old
Of most every mold
Who want to learn,
Who can discern

What the past does teach
Re the hardest reach,
For liberty's door,
By means of a war.

How to fight for right
Lest darkness and night,
In despotic awe
Engulf real law.

Nor we miss in our day
Noble wisdom of aye,
When they fought for good
As today we should.

Published by the Knights of Columbus in The Lancer, (Council 1379), August 2005

 

The Colossus of Toads

The ancient idol on the island of Rhodes
Stood grimly astride the strait.
But here we suffer a colossus of toads,
Our country to desecrate.

Salvage my soiled nation – long uncleaned,
Proudly in thrall to sin and war.
Release her from the postmodern fiend.
Let her radiance shine once more

 

Hope

Oh give but a hope, let a vista but gleam,
To uplift and restore – her beauty redeem.
Once convinced it could be, bereft of despair,
We’d fight with a will: Constitution repair. [1]

 

Storming Falluja

Fallujans flee, of your fighters be rid,
Your city, your honor our GI’s demand,
We’ll find them, we’ll kill them, they cannot be hid,
Uprising is doomed to sink in the sand.

Your town is besieged; we storm and we blast,
By land and by air, with engines of war
To save you and free you, your ways to recast,
And strike from your core all we abhor.

Terrorists, quoth Bush, fiends infernal,
Death shall you reap, damnation eternal.
Our troops bring money and sweet liberty
Postmodern soul and morals oh so free.

Humvees haul speakers, sepulcher sound,
Decibel foes down, quake hearts and confound.
Hell’s Bells, AC /DC – what a binge!
Pound them with gall, let Mohammedans cringe.

“But here we lived, and our children did play,”
Comes poignant reply of townsfolk who hail
their insurgents, as to Allah they pray,
That resistance wax strong, occupation fail.

Occupiers in Abu Ghraib

Lest on our pain, Osama might thrill,
At demon depths, they tortured at will.
To set Iraq free, oil to make flow,
Sadistic they posed, brazen and low.

Since base desires did grimly encroach,
And a dearth of morals did earn reproach;
Will they ban all cameras, then get rougher,
If no captive "foe" can be seen to suffer?

 

 

LBJ

By hook or by crook the White House he’ll gain.
And greatness he’ll claim with napalm and pain.
Wives and mothers he will bereave,
The “rule of law” will give him leave,
And the Tonkin resolve, his guilt absolve.

 

To my wife, Jeryl (aka Wootie)

My Wootie’s date of birth,
To hear you’d be amazed,
Indeed her face and girth,
The years have little phased.

Still cute, and wry and quick,
Beauteous in her smile.
A marvel I did pick,
With whom to walk the aisle.

That streak I see of grey,
Like a thread in rainbow fair,
‘Tis but a sunbeam’s ray,
To grace a wife so rare.

10/24/2004

 

Woot’s Seventh (& Seventeenth)
Anniversary Song to Wootie

O I’ve been with my Wootie for seven long years,
There’s been a lot of good days, and not many tears
She has given me kids that do make me to boast,
And I’ll love her to the day that I give up the ghost.

When we quarrel my dear wife she seldom will pout,
Nor call me the likes of a numbskull or lout;
She’s got heart and she’s smart and she’s still like a girl,
And my own mind she still can reduce to a whirl.

On vacation she camps like a ship soon to sink,
In Russian she writes with a barrel of ink;
At dinner a table we rarely can find,
As a wife and companion she’s one of a kind.

When I’ve been with my Wootie for ten thousand years,
I’ll take her to the angels; she’ll bow to their cheers.
She will smile with delight and her face it will glow,
As the saints march down gold streets in row after row.

… Lo full ten years have passed since those lyrics I penned,
And almost a score since we first did befriend;
It is clear that it’s best if we bolster our bond,
Till the toll of that bell from God’s glory beyond.

And though teach you may do for some decades to come,
While my time of retirement may be gleeful or glum,
How we wend on our way will depend on our love,
And that Dove in our hearts which descends from above.

June 25, 1995 (& 2005)

 

Clergy

Some prelates seek to palm and please;
strong words they do eschew.
They hate to hear con-tro-versy;
and fire and brimstone rue.

Their Gospel becomes mammon,
and IRS remit.
While Decalogue’s dethroned;
firm virtue deemed unfit.

Blest the bishops who such ways abhor,
Who show faith and morals bona fide.
Pressures for concessions they ignore;
They’re loath to waver from heaven’s side.

 

For One More Chance

Noble heritage, oft sung and taught,
Deserted now – for dung and dirt.
Where are the guilty to be sought,
For postmodern onslaught of sin and hurt?

By one citizen’s head infested,
Was John Kennedy’s vision arrested?
No!  On Oswald’s ilk the blame’s a fraud,
Camelot’s flame is on hallowed sod!

T’was you and me ­– stop and think,
Citizens blessed who let it sink,
Founder’s bequest, hardly did we hurry,
Levies to raise ‘gainst hellions’ fury.

Powers-that-be conducted the dirge,
Having reaped and earlier sowed,
To agnostic wave, an ancient surge,
Ship-of-state onto reefs they rowed.

Who’s to blame?  Not her?  Not him?
Then powers and pulpits, be accused!
“Home of the brave,” rendered dim,
Precious few shall get excused.

Save those who fought but lost,
Who stood, did fall and grieve,
To see our legacy tossed,
And patriots flailing to retrieve.

Now, punish whom for one last chance?
Blame scribe who shows yon door to hope?
For he puts at risk all who dance,
Of stress, arrest, or hangman’s rope.

No!  Broken all’d be for apostasy,
Had national sins congealed;
Been tallied by God ‘gainst this country,
And our entry to mercy sealed.

This book’s a burden, to be sure,
For fear and lethargy do allure.
And indolent ingrates shan’t bestow
To God and homeland what we owe.

 

Adulteration by Adjudication

"We the people" it starts,
'Tis true, dear hearts;
The Constitution, you see,
Was for you and me.

Until the Court did decide,
No Religion to abide.
When judicial power raw
Down gaveled God's law

When the nine, or less
Potentates of pagan regress,
Claimed dominion to din,
Against nature – "full right" to sin:

Sodomy they hailed.
Pornography they availed.
Ten Commandments despised,
Moral heritage revised.

Let kids pray?  Banned in schools!
Unborn child?  Cruel choice rules!
By the Constitution bent,
The agenda was sent.

Heaven and hell?  Paid no heed!
Amend?  Too slow, no need.
Thus usurpers evoked evil,
And provoked painful upheaval.

O highest law of the land,
How judges who’ve stolen command,
Ruled ‘til they sullied and smeared,
Your splendor so long revered.

Hearkened they to the True?
To what Framers did contrive?
No!  Yon words never “grew,”
Nor “breathed,” nor stayed “alive.”

Sweet land, gone forever sour?
Not yet - if soon falls this regime;
Palisades of lies, tall in power,
As Jericho's walls, it would seem.

For in God we trust,
So the motto states.
Counterrevolution or bust,
Open the gates!

 

Discrediting Jefferson

If suddenly from long repose,
At Monticello’s burial hill,
TJ rose with his silver quill,
A Declaration to compose.

In his country he would see
Freemen less at liberty;
Less free to write with frank and literate pen,[2]
Nor to read indeed so far beyond their ken.

The Roves would scorn his essay; cull
And mock the keenness; want it dull,
Make simple sound bites blare the din,
‘gainst ingenious statesmen, like him.

 

Thinking

Better spun views, or news out of sync,
than suppression of the right to think.
Show those teachers the door
Whom the free mind abhor

For Catholic Exchange, 5/12/09

 

Authority

T’would be wrong to supercede,
‘gainst Authority properly formed.
But revolt is right, and just indeed,
When the Republic has been stormed.

Attorneys some, have got their way,
With bluster, ink, and bray.
Tis for us to fight, again to bring,
The Constitution back as king.

You may preach right prim of legality,
That man’s law must be obeyed.
But ‘tis base to bow, when reality,
Has the highest law betrayed.

 

Robin Hood to the Rescue

As the farmer who failed to pay the tariff,
Now noosed on gallows by Nottingham’s Sheriff,
Saw Robin Hood’s arrow, or Little John’s sword
Cut the hangman’s cord and foil the sinful lord;
So might today’s brave men resist and disrupt
Law-like orders that usurp, kill or corrupt.

 

Reinstate America the Beautiful

I love that land, honest and right,
Beauteous wherein was I born;
Prisoned now by bars forlorn,
By usurpers uncontrite.

Though they violate, shunt her aside,
Anew may she rise on future tide.
With her righteousness unshorn,
Nor religion held in scorn.

 

Sexually Obsessed

Their life’s pilot resides in the loins;
Heart, brain, soul, subordinate to the crotch;
Trumping all desire to think, weigh, watch,
Or discern and do what wisdom enjoins.

 

“Indivisible,” or Partition

Some terms ring untrue, like songless birds,
Whose yakking do lovers loath and rue.
“Under God,” and “Republic,” are voided words,
To which pupils pledge, “indivisible” too…

When grand lady’s turned to ruse and scorn,
Gone hussy in hulk with virtue shorn,
Willingly deflowered by Sodom and porn,
Then must beauteous be found in smaller form.

“One nation” in Union ever,
Now and forever never to sever?
Unless turned false and rude, like rot!
Counsel mocked? Reform spurned?  Split may be sought.

 

Roll over Roger

Oh Roger Williams you’d turn in your grave,
To see such travesty in your founding city,
God’s law, enshrined, none arose to save,
In the park named for you – great the pity.

In Providence and Rhode Island Plantations,
A haven you made for Jews and Quakers,
For religion in general, from Puritan incantations,
Freedom for piety, in variety, from gentry to bakers.

Save Catholics, of course, linked to the papacy,
But for all the rest, thanks to the divinity,
for his Providence, in our capitol’s name,
Gratitude enshrined in the 13th state’s fame.

And so, in Rhode Island long ago,
Seed did you sew and freedom bestow,
To lift up the Commandments in high renown,
Till Providence of all places pushed them down.

 

Monuments moved, or
Downplay the Decalogue

Many years have gone away,
The olden days are done to stay,
Yea, that’s the shelf where they would lay,
All the rules of yesterday.

Ten Commandments included,
God’s call to obey thus precluded,
Convenient indeed for fun,
To which so eagerly they would run.

Not fun of the good clean healthy sort,
Like field-sports of wide assort,
That do comport with standards high.
No – thrills such as cause a cringe and sigh.

For the saints do moan when we miss,
Our own eternity of bliss,
For want of faith and Godly laws,
To probe and check capital flaws.

Heaven mourns when we take away,
Beacons to mark that Mosaic quay,
From which people and nations stray,
To be damned and doomed extempore.

 

Offend None

“Please all and you please none,”
A proverb by that ancient Greek,
Aesop of wise fables spun,
On merits bright and evils bleak.

But ‘tis taboo today to offend Trevor,
Politic rather to honor or flatter,
Tho’ loving rebukes surely can sever
From sin, heartbreak, and beguiling blather.

With Winthrop and Mather ‘neath the sod,
Better in Boston to spare the rod.
Religion offends; righteousness rends:
So Deval says as Sodom descends.

Thought-police feign to fight offense,
Pretend to defend the hapless few,
Who never see, nor ever sense
The true agenda that false “friends” brew –

To have virtue obscured and rarely nigh,
With prudence only for the money supply.
To get vices approved, lifted high,
Lest faith and morals be abided by.

 

Liberty vs. License

Never can fast be the same as slow,
Nor is an ebb tide at all like flow.
Though both of these pairs come from motion,
Although each might share common ocean.

Freedom likewise has opposing poles,
One dreadful with bergs and many shoals.
Liberty, though, is hopeful and clear,
And, under God, gives our souls good cheer.

Some freedoms unleashed can accursed be,
As when levies broken admit the sea;
Saltwater, brine, kill what we grow,
Katrina unchecked brought death and woe.

The boundless freedoms can jail bars become,
Like radio audio through background hum,
Melodies or conversations caged by din,
Like someone lovely trapped in whisky and gin.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address on freedoms four,[3]
Skipped ignoble freedoms we do well to deplore;
For they coexist harshly with versions we revere.
Liberty’s parodies, fear; noble freedoms hold dear.

 

Endnotes