Agitation

Listen to Marvin read Agitation

Neurobiology, doubtless, maintains
Strange modalities manipulating
Brains—sound and sight and worry, produce strains,
Synapse sparks, ebbs and snarling flows freighting

Behavior with stark predilection.
Bacteria sickens; murderous rough
Blows evoke fear—reasonable, stunning—
The body dealing with the body’s stuff.

But how do some sweet words, or certain sights
Suffuse the skin with blush, while spiteful pride
Enflames a man, a mob, a clan to heights
Of insane deadly rage, to homicide,

To suicide, serving invented god?
Rage: hist’ry’s sculptor and malignant bawd.

II
Genesis, essentially strange, weird,
Includes, among its artifacts, triggers
That launch missiles of flaming rage—so seared
With hate, infused with such deadly vigor—

Crisping reason, civility’s broad base,
To gray ash. OK, this we understand.
But here’s the funny part—the rage embraced,
However scant the cause, however bland,

Is just as deadly dangerous, despite
Its trivial origins, as world war three.
He jumped the line, she cut me off, the sight
Of swastikas, my injured pride—the glee

Of purple rage, once triggered, propels breath
Beyond reason, maims, ends with mindless death.
     (5/15/11)

Posted in Politics, Today's News, War, Wisdom

Economics

For A.F.

Just got the first quarter report—bummer!
Can’t really complain. For thirty-three years
(Mostly with laughter, though sometimes with tears)
We’ve done well. Now? We’ve never been glummer.
It is what it is, not so? And Summer
Is over—reality breeds fierce fears,
Our treasured investments, it now appears,
Beaten downward by a deadly drummer.

Cash flow, always our singular mantra.
Why would General sell producers off?
For chrissake, sell the damn losers, cantya?
Don’t stick a finger in, demand we cough!
Prospective (high taxed) profit? No heart throbs—
But loss of cash flow income wrenches sobs!
     (5/5/11)

Posted in Affluence, Greed, Poverty

Last Thoughts

I thought I’d write a poem about ladies—
Those girls, gorgeous, playing paddle tennis—
But symptoms altered my priorities.
Internal thumps, signifying menace,

Sternly focussed thought (though short of panic).
A mild chest pain on the right side—muscle
Perhaps, not artery—then cyclonic
Drain of breath, like a toilet flushed, tussle,

Until the air returned (the bowl refilled),
Sett’ling that dreadful whirl of dizziness.
I knew these symptoms well—I saw them spilled
Before by one near, dear to me, in great distress.

An EKG might show a heart defiled—
My first (or last) thought: get our tax forms filed!
(4/3/11)

II

I think I’m dying, though I may be wrong.
That’s the grim part—here’s the strange part, quite weird:
I find I’m not depressed, nor do I long
For more years on evil Earth, so shit-smeared.

Why, then, am I whelmed with anxiety?
Not, I assure you, by contemplation
Of hell or heaven! It’s sobriety,
That denies a peaceful culmination.

I have responsibilities you see—
Others, innocent, unjustly suffer
Consequences of my demise, pay fees
In spirit, cash, that chip their lives rougher.

Yet I’m OK with death, though still quite tense,
Regretting my death’s inconvenience.
(4/16/11)

Posted in Aging, Death, Family, Taxes

The Way It Is

Listen to Marvin read The Way It Is

Just last week, chatting with a regular
At the paddle tennis courts, I, beguiled,
Noted Luiza, stunning (our blond star!),
Was showing more flesh lately, fashion, style.

“That’s because of Natalie,” he replied—
(New girl, Mediterranean, robust,
Richly endowed, a presence, undenied,
Fueling male spectator’s smoldering lust).

But why should Luiza care? She’s lovely,
Married, talented, financially safe.
“Marv,” he laughed (his wit so far above me),
“That all means nothing. Rivalry still chafes—

“What counts is raising pulse-rates, awe, fever—
Only one can be la donna prima!”
(4/16/11)

Posted in Beauty, Lust, Vanity, Wisdom

Backhand Bob

For Darlene, Gina, Taylor, Jim, and, of course, B.A.

Banter at the tennis court, often strange,
Grew epic when Backhand Bob mesmerized,
Explaining how reunion capsized
His life into warm seas—left him deranged.
Fifty years later, back in Illinois,
These high school grads (those that survived life’s pain)
Gathered—and there, Darlene, delight unfeigned,
Snap-shot him. Dolly—his first love, heart’s joy!

She explained, the next day, that photo’s task—
To show your only daughter Dad’s true face.
“My daughter? What daughter?” choking, he gasped—
Yes Bob, your daughter, with two children graced!
A golden aura drowned his black, bleak pall—
Bob’s proud life bloomed, meant something after all!
(4/22/11)

Posted in Family, Inspiration

Tumult

Listen to Marvin read Tumult

March, Twenty-eleven
And the guys down at the paddle tennis courts
Ask, “Marv, what’s goin’ on?”

For nine years now
We’ve fought in Iraq,
Afghanistan.
Africa boils, as Egypt,
Libya, Ivory Coast
Revolt.

Across a little stretch of sea,
Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon—
Even Bahrain, for Chrissakes—
Churn and grumble.
Don’t even ask
About the shambles
Of nuke-potent Pakistan.

“Marv,” they ask, “What’s goin’ on?
How will this end?”
As if the Earth had never seen
Such gross grotesquerie.

But consider:
Grotesque is what we are.

Consider the first sin—
Just 5 pages
Into that thick book.
They’ll tell you
It was disobedience—

C’mon, really?

Nah!
The knowledge of good and evil—
The loss of innocence—
Somehow, in god’s twisted mind,
That was the original sin,
That brought about the fall of man.

Imagine it!
Knowing good from evil
Cost us paradise.

And just two pages later,
That same Bible,
Reports our first murder.
Motive? It seems god,
Evidently a carnivore,
Preferred Abel’s fat lamb
Over Cain’s ripe fruit.

Not many pages later,
That same god,
Disgusted and disheartened,
Decided to drown
Every living thing
Except Noah’s family
And some creature breeding pairs
(Seven if kosher,
Just one pair otherwise).
Why?
Though clearly pissed,
I guess he was too lazy
To start, again, from scratch.

Let’s skip ahead
To the wonderful story
Of the golden calf.
For dancing around a sculpture,
Levite zealots, at Moses’ command
Murdered three thousand of their kin—
Brothers, friends, neighbors—
That’s what the holy book asserts—
For dancing around a calf.

You get the picture?
You see where this is going?

The massacre at Jericho,
The savagery of Judges
David and the Philistines.
Don’t even ask about
The Persians, Turks, and Greeks,
About the glory that was Rome
And the Huns that brought it down.

Capeesh?

“What’s going on?” you ask.
More grotesquerie;
“How will it end?”

For six thousand years
We have never seen
So much as one half century
Of simple peace.
How will it end?

It never ends.
(3/31/11)

Posted in Politics, Religion, Today's News, War