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)

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)

Invades our lungs and livers, pales our health.
That damned filth-begotten heat will soon choke
All frail life, reach the tipping point by stealth,
Kill us all in a manner quite baroque.

And here’s the unbelievable strange part—
It’s not auto exhaust, the threat of coal,
Smokestack emissions that will smother souls—
It’s ceaseless cow methane belches and farts.

We’ve got to rid the earth of gassy beasts—
Become vegan before we’re all deceased!
(6/14/14}

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)

My ancient plumbing’s doomed to fail,
The oven timer’s broken
(And that part’s not available),
These failures just a token.
The groceries must consciously
Exclude all fats and sugar.
The garden’s filling with debris,
The weeds displaying vigor.
The workplace teems with evil stress,
The picky cats grow bitter,
Refuse their food—strut cheekiness—
While I clean out their litter.

I take a hundred pills each week
I’m not sure why I do it
It’s not a prolonged life I seek
I’ve lived too long, so screw it.
The traffic’s plain unbearable,
And every summer’s hot—
Meanwhile, it’s damned impossible
To park in Costco’s lot.
I’m booked to make two visits soon
With G-I all the topic—
I feel that treatment’s not a boon
And dread what’s colonscopic.

I sometimes fantasize
I’ll find a warm, dark
Hole one bright day,
Slip in and
Just dis-
Appear.
(3/31/14)

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)

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)

Yesterday,
During Friday prayers,
A bomb killed twenty-six
Worshippers—
This time Sunnis
Killed by Shiites.

Just one year ago,
Twelve pleasure seeking folks
Watching a movie
Were shot dead,
And seventy more wounded
By a nut with a gun—
The anniversary marked
By nasty demonstrations
For and against
Guns for nuts.

As I passed our garden fence
I saw a Monarch butterfly
Bouncing about,
And a busy hummingbird
Feeding at the complex purple bloom
Flaunted by a Lily-of-the-Nile.

I cannot find the words.
(7/20/13)

I suffer a dis-ease.
Victims of global hate
Infect my soul
With empathosis, sliding down
To deadly empathitis.
(6/24/13)

In Paris,
Armed with a box cutter,
A jihadi attacked a French soldier—
(Anything to do
With last week’s murdered
London troop?).

In India,
To promote their cause
Maoist rebels kill seventeen.

Sweden’s dull prosperity
Is shattered
By angry immigrants
Rioting, smashing, burning—
Responding to
Perceived neglect.
(They could, of course
Return from whence they came,
Where, doubtless,
They flourished.)

In Pakistan,
Where costly regulation
Is ignored,
A bus blew up—
Killed 15 children
And their teacher.

Our current,
Salient military issue?
Commanders plead
With macho troops
To stop raping
Their female comrades.

Among the most interesting
New species discovered in 2012—
A cockroach
That glows in the dark.
(5/26/13)