George and Melissa were a storybook couple
When Melissa heard a terrible tale
How George’s cousin, long-removed,
Robbed a bank of her great grandfather’s
And wound up doing time in jail.
Now she thinks that Georgie owes her
For some craven, gross indignity
And now he plays a losing game
Of repaying her for losses
that will never make them equal
And will never lift the stultifying shame.
Keep them squirming. Keep them squirming!
It doesn’t matter who’s wrong and who’s right
When myopia means a good fight.
Keep them squirming.
If you behave like the victim, they will always owe you something
For the dignity they stole from sinless cogs.
By choosing their crimes carefully,
You always will have company:
A chorus of self-righteous underdogs.
If a sanguine sense of self is what it takes to make you happy
Just go out and grab your demons by the ears
And blame the rest of your humanity,
Entrapped by their banality,
Their sense for truth and justice,
And their fears.
Keep them squirming. Keep them squirming!
The misty tiger of your cause can be real
Embellished by the magic of your pompous zeal.
Keep them squirming.
Compromise is unwise. Give an inch, and they’ll get lazy.
Reason is not reasonable today.
Folks with steady moral compasses
Aren’t all Forrest Gumpasses
Wailing like a banshee will make some of them look your way.
Common sense isn’t common. If it were you’d loose your ticket
To the train where polar differences thrive,
And the answer in the middle
Wouldn’t solve the long-lost riddle
In a world of crazed gorillas talking jive.
Keep them squirming. Keep them sqirming.
To atone for the life that you live.
It sure beats learning how to forgive.
Keep them squirming
.
— from the poem/song Keep Them Squirming
by Job Conger
Copyright 2003
William Claude Dukenfeld, remembered better as W. C.. Fields wrote:
“It isn’t what they call you that matters. It’s what you answer to.”
Another golden aphorism: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
In grade school we learned this. It’s true. If we hadn’t learned it. Some of us would have hung ourselves before we turned 30.
I had friends and acquaintances who didn’t learn it. Their bones are dust.
<>Jesus Christ taught us to turn the other cheek. How many people who wantonly call themselves Christians behave as though Jesus didn’t say that? As though the Son of God didn’t really intend to say that?
Friends, Christians and countrymen, believers and non-believers, should remember those words.“Let the bastard prove his pedigree to you.
Then weigh, carefully, your inclination to emulate him.
You don’t lose it if you don’t let go.”
I said that.
Thanks for reading this.
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
