RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Casino COVID”

Casino COVID

Caught in slot machine blur

Praying for the jackpot of herd immunity

Big Pharma legislated impunity

The three cherries of hurriedly tested vaccine untested for the long term

Could be worse than the germ!

RNA concoctions messing with our genes

Holy shit where are the simpler days of captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans?

Displaced by the politico-medico teams

Opening, closing, duplicating and replicating surges and waves

Killing and maiming more?

Similar to an infected whore

Misjudged again and again

Ruining the economy and the health of all

Crazy focus on a virus but in a casino you know who always wins?

The house

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Merciless Judging of Parents by Their Children (Georges Simenon)

“Today I realize that a couple with children is not just a couple. And sometimes they forget it. Near them in the house, almost always present, there are children who watch them and, in the measure of their own intelligence, judge them.

The parents think of themselves as simply a father and a mother. But they are wrong. They are two individuals whose every gesture, word and glance are judged mercilessly.”

Georges Simenon, “Letter to My Mother”, 1970

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “The Unofficial Mission”

The Unofficial Mission

Sleek

And silent

The 52 birds knife up through Da Nang tropical air

And when over their target

Spawn the hot roe of doom

Upon the suspecting unsuspecting below

Leaks to the Fifth Estate

“NAPALM BURNS AND MAIMS 700”

In a private conference the generals and politicos are Most Disturbed

Shouting “God damned press bastards”

While millions with temporary interest

Gobble down the evening meal gawking the evening news

And agree with the generals

That it was the gooks, commies, Ho and Cong

With their propaganda machine

Smith and Jones thought it all deserved less attention

After all war is war

So open up another can of beer and switch to Hogan’s Heros and Rat Patrol

Where was and will

War films fun and

Painless

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Harlem’s Sense of Community Before Its Collapse (James Baldwin)

“When I say I was luckier than the children are today I am deliberately making a very dangerous statement, a statement that I am willing, even anxious, to be called on. A black boy born in New York’s Harlem in 1924 was born of southerners who had but lately been driven from the land and therefore was born into a southern community. And this was incontestably a community in which every parent was responsible for every child. Any grown-up seeing me doing something he thought was wrong, could (and did) beat my behind and then carry me home to my Mama and Daddy and tell them why he beat my behind. Mama and Daddy would thank him and then beat my behind again.”

James Baldwin, “Dark Days”, 1980.

RKS Literature: Can a White Person Ever Know What a Black Person is Talking About? (James Baldwin)

“I hit the streets when I was seven. It was in the middle of the Depression and I learned how to sing out of hard experience. To be black was to confront, and be forced to alter, a condition forged in history. To be white was to be forced to digest a delusion called white supremacy. Indeed, without confronting the history that has either given white people an identity or divested them of it, it is hardly possible for anyone who thinks himself as white to know what a black person is talking about at all. Or to know what education is. “

James Baldwin, “Dark Days”, 1980.

RKS Literature: “The Communist Manifesto”: Your Horror at the Communists’ Intention to Do Away with Private Property

“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.”

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”, 1848.

RKS Literature: The Last Wishes of a Dying American Hobo (Jack Kerouac)

“I’m sick. I’m alone, I’m dying-see my hand up-tipped, learn the secret of my human heart, give me the thing, give me your hand, take me to the emerald mountains beyond the city, take me to the safe place, be kind, be nice, smile-I’m too tired now of everything else, I’ve had enough, I give up, I quit, I want to go home, lock me in a safe, take me to where all is peace and amity, to the family of my life, my mother, my father, my sister, my wife and you my brother and you my friend-but no hope, no hope, no hope, I wake up and I’d give a million dollars to be in my own bed- O Lord save me, In evil roads behind gas tanks, where murderous dogs snarl from behind wire fences cruisers suddenly leap out like getaway cars but from a crime more secret, more baneful than words can tell.

The woods are full of wardens.”

Jack Kerouac, “The Vanishing American Hobo”, 1960.

RKS 2026 Portuguese Wine: Morgado Silgueiros 2021 Reserva (Vinho Tinto) from Portugal’s Dão Region

I was fortunate a few years ago to benefit from a five-day media trip to Portugal’s Dão region relatively close to Porto. The wines and cuisine did not fail to impress. Our base in Viseu was a charming town with a fascinating medieval centre. It is worth a visit as is the Dão wine region.

Morgado Silgueiros 2021 Reserva is produced by Adega Cooperativa de Silgueiros which we did not visit. On occasion I review their wines all scoring close to 90/100.

The wine is a blend of Touriga Nacional (50%), Tinta Roriz (30%) and Alfrochiero (20%).

Aroma: Red and black fruit particularly black cherry and cherry liqueur. A smidge of chocolate covered cherries and rhubarb.

Palate: Grippy tannins. Firm body. Lean. Santa Rosa plum, raspberry and more of that cherry liqueur.

Personality: Consider me a good everyday wine. Basic. Well made. A fair deal.

Food Match: Beef for sure. Ox filet. Vegetarians may want to pair with lentil-black bean “meatballs”.

Cellarbility: No point in ageing. Drink in 2026

Price: $17 CDN.

RKS 2026 Portuguese Wine Rating: 88/100. Natalie MacLean 88.

(Morgado Silgueiros 2021 Reserva, DOP Dão, Adega Cooperativa de Silgueiros, Viseu, Portugal, 750 mL, 13.5%).

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: I HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM SQUIRREL HUNTING!

I HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM SQUIRREL HUNTING!

Oh what puppy pain! I have been banned from backyard squirrel hunting. And I’ve come so close!

I bark at the sliding door when I see the varmits but Bob says, “NO! When you learn how to come to me when I say COME perhaps you can resume the chase.”

That COME seems very important to him and now on our walks he is practicing this COME command incessantly. I will do whatever it takes to be back on the chase and for some reason COME is coming between me and my quarry!