Author: Mike Hoffman

Down and out semi poet who is down and out in the Low Country of South Carolina after living in Atlanta which is not to be confused with the south, the old south or the new south. Atlanta was a global metropolis with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. The low country, low because it is low, 8 feet above sea level, is not Podunk but once you get to Podunk, turn left. I try to chronicle a small part of all that through my daily haiku for you.

8.30.2025 – this is not China

this is not China
this is the United States in …
2025

Adapted from the article Has the US turned its back on free-market capitalism? by Callum Jones deputy business editor for Guardian US, where Mr. Jones writes:

While Chairman Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, had been fundamentally opposed to free markets and capitalism, Reagan argued that societies which enjoyed “the most spectacular progress” were the ones where people had been “permitted to think for themselves, make economic decisions, and benefit from their own risks”.

What would Reagan make of a country that, in a matter of weeks, became the largest shareholder in a microchip manufacturer; demanded a cut of firms’ overseas sales in exchange for export licenses; and fired a statistics official after government data embarrassed its ruling party?

In just the past week, senior government officials in the country have pushed to exert control over its central bank; ordered a tech giant to strike a deal with a supportive media conglomerate; and successfully urged a restaurant chain to reverse a rebrand.

This is not China. It is the United States, under a Republican president, in 2025.

Don’t forget that this government also released local militia onto city streets to ‘Preserve Order’.

This is not China.

It is the United States.

Under a Republican president.

In 2025.

8.29.2025 – suddenly precious

suddenly precious
in the age of violence –
tough gent on our side

Adapted from the passage in the book, Six Men by Alistair Cooke (New York, Penguin, 1985), where Mr. Cooke writes about Humphrey Bogart:

There was nothing now to offend the most respectable suburban patriot in a hero who used the gangster’s means to achieve our ends.

And this character was suddenly very precious in the age of violence, for it satisfied a quiet, desperate need of the engulfed ordinary citizen.

When Hitler was acting out scripts more brutal and obscene than anything dreamed of by Chicago’s North Side or the Warner Brothers, Bogart was the only possible antagonist likely to outwit him and survive.

What was needed was no knight of the boudoir, no Ronald Colman or Leslie Howard (whose movie careers compensatingly slumped) but a conniver as subtle as Goebbels. Bogart was the very tough gent required, a murderously bland neutral who we knew, if the Germans didn’t, would in the end be on our side.

I am waiting.

Waiting for that person.

Waiting for that person, that kid, that someone, anyone, to say “But he has no clothes!”

Someone on our side.

What was needed was no knight of the boudoir, no Ronald Colman or Leslie Howard (whose movie careers compensatingly slumped) but a conniver as subtle as Goebbels.

The very tough gent required, a murderously bland neutral who we knew, if the Germans didn’t, would in the end be on our side.

This character is suddenly very precious in our age of violence.

Very precious and very rare.

Where is that person today?

Let me ask you a question.

In the movie, Casablanca, which side do you line up with?

In the movie, Casablanca, who do you identify with?

Now ask yourself this.

If the current president was in that movie, who would he be?

I can’t see the current president playing chess, stopping the arrogant German from entering his casino, helping out the couple from Bulgaria or allowing the band to play the La Marseillaise.

But I sure can see him marching across the room, leading his entourage of cabinet secretaries to the piano and singing German marching songs.

I feel he would love and embrace the role of Major Strasser.

So again I ask, who can watch Casablanca and want to choose that side.

The OTHER side.

Who?

Who wants to stand and be counted with that side?

I don’t know.

Not me.

Me?

I am waiting.

Waiting for the very tough gent,, a murderously bland neutral who we know, in the end, will be on our side.

And this time, I know, our side will win.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Our nation turns it lonely eyes to you.

8.28.2025 – thought you was happy

thought you was happy
don’t know how you feel today
baby, I feel blue

Oh, I wish that yesterday
Yesterday was today!
Yesterday you was here
Today you gone away

I miss you, Lulu
I miss you so bad—
There ain’t no way for me
To get you out of my head

Yesterday I was happy
I thought you was happy, too
I don’t know how you feel today—
But baby, I feel blue

Yesterday and Today as published in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (New York, Knopf, 1994)

8.27.2025 – as false dawn outside

as false dawn outside
open window morning air
awash with angels

Sunrise over Skull Creek and Pinckney Island, SC

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,

Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,

From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Yet, as the sun acknowledges

With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”

From Collected Poems 1943-2004 by Richard Wilbur (New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004).