Thirty innocents are murdered
At a Baghdad apartment.
Palestine keeps lobbing
Useless missiles into Israel,
Inviting air strikes
Leaving hundreds dead.
In central Africa
Christians and Muslims
Systematically slaughter
Each other.
Seventy folks were shot
In Chicago
Over the holiday weekend.
Everywhere, inspired zealots,
Responding to orders
From their one true god,
Kill the infidels.

Meanwhile
Regal oaks, stately elms,
Weeping willows
Overarch
Lotus, rose, yarrow, dahlia—
Incandescent, stunning—
Wordless poems.

Breaking news: car bomb
Kills 89 in Afghanistan.
Malaysian plane shot down
Over Ukraine for no discernible reason.
295 dead.
More wordless poems.
(7/15/14)

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)

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)

Find a woman,
Raise kids.
But work, always work,
Which steals your time,
Controls all thought.

Meanwhile
There’s war,
Always war,
Propelled by greed
Or ordered by
The one true god.

Then, way old,
Retired,
Beyond volunteering,
Unencumbered,
You have the space and time
To figure out what life is all about
Just before you,
Like every other living thing
On this pustular planet,
Doomed,
Die.
(2/27/14)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When business grapples humans by the throat.
When holy days, unceasing, bind our souls
To flagrant commerce based on anecdotes.

Why does a tale of helpful Indians
Create a four-day lapse in useful work,
Create a massive airline traffic jam,
Allow us to engorge as if berserk?

Then Kwanzaa, Christmas, Chanukah appear—
Emerge from mythic origins. Merchants
Wallow in divine nonsense, hold sales, cheer!
And wallets gasp at made up reverence.

Just as old age devours spirit, health,
So does this absurd season swallow wealth.
(11/26/13)

His son is a godhead named Jesus
Appointed by pop to reprieve us.
He loves us we’re told,
A saver of souls,
So why does he fiercely bereave us?

The good stuff, we’re told, comes from god,
And men create woe (that seems odd)—
Now Falwell is dead,
And Robertson’s fled,
Who’ll tell us why this fierce jihad?

Just what was the Philippine’s sin
That justified typhoon Haiyan?
Divine mystery
Festoons history,
And tangles its yang with its yin.

We sinners attract our gods’ wrath,
They punish with holy bloodbaths,
Use foes, floods and plague,
With motives quite vague—
Those sacred divine psychopaths.
(11/16/13)

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}

But folks rebelled: “We want a king to rule!”
Old Sam tried his best—warned that evil kings
Would rape their daughters, draft their sons, and fuel
Their reign with nasty tax on everything.

They got their king—good looking, rich, and tall—
Along with endless stress—who really ruled?
Universal struggle, fierce, mindless brawls
Twixt clerics and their monarchs never cooled.

Solomon built his temple with corvée—
Monarchs pray, kneel to kiss the bishop’s ring—
Some foreign states collect tax, to this day,
To help those churches do their awful things.

Not hard, I guess, to understand that fling
We read about—that flash German bishop
Spent 40 million bucks to tune his digs up.
Clergy rules! The proof: our Bishop of Bling.
(10/30/13)

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)