Those martyrs seeking orgasm
In Jannah they hardly can fathom,
Focus their wits,
Explode into bits—
Which part gets to feel the grand spasm?
(6/28/14)

A tyrant named Saddam Hussein,
Immoral and finally slain—
Was better by far
Than Iraq’s evil stars
And should have continued to reign.

Von Clausewitz made it quite plain—
War’s function must not be arcane.
Attacks fueled by vanity
Are simple insanity,
The horror of leaders’ lame brains.
(6/15/14)

Of global politics and one true god
Religion, of interminable gun
Massacres, the horror of Africa—
I proposed a business that might be fun.

“Let’s raise some capital, use connections
To create a new TV sensation
We’ll name it The Good News Channel, and shun
The daily horrors that afflict, that stun

Simple humanity.” Laughing a fit,
“Marv,” they said, “there ain’t no money in it!”
(6/5/14)

I used to go to meetings, speak and write,
Obsessed with sense, with rationality—
Convinced we had the tools to mend, despite
The obscene rants of nationality.

Alas, how wrong could one man be, not see
How hatred—preached in mosques, and synagogues,
In Hindu temples, church—shaped history?
How faith and greed and demagoguery

Combine to overwhelm philosophy—
That love of wisdom doomed to atrophy.
(5/8/14)

An intellectual, perhaps Voltaire,
Perhaps Diderot, many years ago
Reflected on our freedom and welfare
And determined what everyone should know:

“Men,” he proclaimed (women too—human yeast)
“Will never be free until the last king
Is strangled with the guts of the last priest.”
Mercifully, he never saw new things—

He never saw the dark enslaving source
Controlling worship, governments, and banks—
Birthing our greedy corporations’ force
With Wall Street traders’ horrifying pranks—

Far worse than priests and kings—alligators!
Reptilian beyond all decency,
Secret financial manipulators—
Parasites—sucking up our currency.

We never will be free until, benumbed,
They choke to death on their own bilious scum.
(11/15/13}

The stuff we yearn
To hear and taste.

But then
The daily news intrudes.

Over a hundred killed
Stampeding to a Hindu shrine.
A schoolboy shoots a teacher
And himself.
Scores of innocents killed
By careless drone strikes.
Egyptian Islamists
Raid a wedding party
At a Coptic church.
Six bombed to death
On a Russian bus.
Seven bombed to death
On a Pakistani train.
Our largest bank
Offers thirteen billion
To cure its criminality.
Twenty thousand children
Die every day
From malnutrition
And preventable disease.
Twenty thousand, every day.

All this, an iceberg’s
Puny tip.

How?
How can we heed
The happy refrain,
And just, dammit,
Just
Let the sun shine in?
(10/23/13)

A corollary proposal might end
Our vicious modern wars effectively.
Let us adopt a universal law
Requiring ev’ry male from sixteen
To sixty—ev’ry male in this grim world—
To get laid ev’ry day of his cold life.
(To be fair, a few medical waivers
Might be granted, if clearly justified.)
The result, pleasant and benevolent,
Leaves no testosterone to fuel those wars.
(10/16/13)

Occasionally
I canonize a pet,
Exalt my wife and sons,
And revel in the mystery
Of sun, moon, stars.

But mostly I decry
The mess the masses
Have contrived
Through advertising,
Greed, theology, and politics.

For three thousand years
We’ve preached morality,
Teach it in school,
Then graduate into
Murderous, insane reality.

If ever a book
Of my bitter verse appears—
My history of ego and of nations—
Its title will declare its motivation:
A Sequel to The Book of Lamentations
(9/26/13)

American exceptionalism
Has, once again, presumed too goddamn far.
Syria writhes into brutal schism
And we write rules? That goes beyond bizarre.

Whence comes our jaunty swagger, arrogance?
Our shining city on a hill nonsense?
Our comic opera madhouse foolish dance?
How could we be so futile and so dense?

Another comic opera, dafter,
Might end with folks happy ever after.

II

For pity’s sake, where do we get the gall
To order Syrians around? “Red lines
Exist, you crossed, and we are quite appalled!
We’re gonna blast you for your monkeyshines!”

The problem is we don’t know what to do—
Where to aim our righteous moral arrow.
We look and listen, hoping for a cue,
Mumbling that “our action will be narrow.”

The plain truth is there are no good guys here.
If we depose the present brute, and curse
His government, should we not pause and fear
That rebel triumph puts in place much worse?

We’ve armed the world’s comedians—they mock—
While we become a global laughing stock.
(9/4/13)

What, one wonders, constitutes a moral
Obscenity? It means, I guess, disgust,
Unwillingness to constrain a quarrel
To bitter foes refusing to adjust.

Their venom spills, consuming innocents,
When battle violence becomes obscene
At Jericho, and concentration camps,
In Syria, when nerve gas kills, unseen.

America, empathic, won’t abide
Obscene, immoral slaughter in the East.
Our hearts, exceptional and dignified,
Forget the giant obscenity unleashed

By us on Hiroshima’s citizens
And Nagasaki’s unwarned innocents.
(8/29/13)