Great Minds Think Alike

A Dialogue on My Startling Intellectual Resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia


GLEN: Sydney Carton of Aggressive Conservative makes an interesting point about my post on Roe V. Wade.

SOCRATES: I would be most grateful if you would share it with us.

ALCIBIADES: As would I. Regale us, please.

GLEN: He points out that Scalia raised similar objections in his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood V. Casey. So, we kind of think alike. Which I thought was cool.

SOCRATES: Ha ha ha.

ALCIBIADES: Ha ha ha ha.

GLEN: Well, you can laugh all you want to, but there are ... you know, points of congruence, and stuff.

SOCRATES: Points of congruence. Ha ha ha ha.

ALCIBIADES: Ha ha ha ha ha.

SOCRATES: I wonder if Antonin Scalia also got his head caught in a shoe rack when he was a child.

ALCIBIADES: It must be so, Socrates, for how could it be otherwise, when there are so many points of congruence? Ha ha ha ha.

SOCRATES: Wait a minute, wait a minute! Isn't Antonin Scalia on the list of "People Whose Shoes Glen is Not Fit to Lick"?

ALCIBIADES: I seem to recall that he is, indeed. But as you yourself are the author of that monumental work, I defer to your superior scholarship on the matter.

SOCRATES: Alas, no. It is often mistakenly attributed to me, but the list was actually compiled by Heraclitus when he was scamming grant money from the MacArthur Foundation. I merely wrote the introduction to the Esperanto edition. Would you be so kind as to hand me the first volume? We must consult the text at once, for if Scalia is on the list, the theory that he and Glen were separated at birth will stand refuted.

ALCIBIADES: And once again philosophy will be indebted to Socrates.

SOCRATES: Let's see ... Number One, Jeff Goldstein. Number Two, Bon Scott.

GLEN: Bon Scott?

SOCRATES: Number Three, the guy who played "Potsie" on Happy Days.

GLEN: Bon Scott? Are you talking about the guy from AC/DC who choked to death on his own vomit?

SOCRATES: Number Four, Antonin Scalia!

ALCIBIADES: Hah! Hah! Busted!

GLEN: [Expletive deleted]

SOCRATES: It was a beautiful dream while it lasted, wasn't it?

Poems from another winter

JFK IN HEAVEN

JFK's in Heaven,
He's our chief remembered joy.
Handsome, rich, forever young -
Our brief and shining boy.
May he shine on in our memory
And never fade or dim;
Ask not what he did for us,
Look what we did to him.
We shot him through the head.
(It should have been you instead.
Or maybe Ted ...)

Oh well, let's just remember
The words the poet said:
JFK belonged to Jesus,
And that's really why he's dead.
You see, He only loaned us
Our pretty plastic Jack
To fill our dollhouse Camelot
Until it was time to give him back.
Jesus took him home to Heaven
To sit at his right hand,
And all our sins went with him -
Satan grabbed his nuts and ran.

And the ferryman waived the usual fee;
Oswald went to Hell for free.
So, where does that leave you and me?

Why, right here on the barren earth,
Beneath the veil of tears,
But if we all just keep the faith
We'll quickly pass the years.
And soon we'll all see Jack again
(Oh, we'll never let him go)
And we'll forget the pains we suffered
While we waited here below.
When the first television angel
Welcomes us to the fold,
And the Holy Motorcade
Rolls down the streets of gold ...
There'll be no Vietnam in Heaven,
No wives, no screaming brats.
Our bodies will be glorified -
We'll all be Democrats.
No more burden to bear,
No more price to pay,
Just rolling along forever
With Christ and JFK.

All that loving goodness,
All that charming wit ...
You'll never get enough of it.
No shit.


THERE IS NOTHING NOW OF ME

There is nothing now of me
but her confessions late at night,
when, under the gentle priestly prodding
of her lawful wedded husband,
she undergoes the necessary exorcism.

She conjures me for him;
a fleeting, almost comic figure
with long white fingers and a garbled voice.
A clownish open-casket face
gleams wetly and then evaporates.

But maybe I am not
sent to the swine in my entirety.
Unspoken adumbrations ferment like sins
in warm pools of forgetfulness,
breeding vengeful poltergeists.

I am speechless, blurred and dead.
And yet I will drop photographs
to lie like bombs in dusty undiscovered places,
and scuttle dirty dried leaves
across clean white kitchen tiles.