Gotcha!

The country’s gone from strange to eerie. We
Watch candidates, confronted by the press,
Harried, but not about their policies—
Instead they’re stressed beyond all sane duress!

“You know a guy who knew a guy who cursed
In college once!” “Your middle name’s Hussein!”
“How come no flag pin graces your lapel?”
“You’ve never dodged a bullet!” How germane

Are such stupidities? We want to know
How to reclaim our battered dignity?
How churn war to peace, heal the myriad woes
Spawned by our shattered grim economy?

For pity’s sake, stuff politic patois—
Shut your pie-holes! Stop the peevish gotchas!
                                          (4/19/08)

Posted in Politics

Work

Idle hands (they tell us when very young)
Are the Devil’s workshop. And honest pay
For honest work (our unions’ constant song),
The rule that floats our social contract’s weight.

Damned balderdash! It’s time to take a clear
And cold-eyed look at what work’s all about—
For chrissake, it’s penal servitude! Fear
Boiled up in rattled Yahweh (bully lout),

Distressed that we would know as much as he
Of moral evil and of good. Judge God
Pronounced His grim sentence. Six thousand years
At hard labor (thus far)—for what? How odd

To serve so long for biting on a fruit—
Enough! Grant us parole, you tyrant brute!
                                       (4/15/08)

Posted in Religion

Incentivize—The Verb

That nit-picking Paul’s epistle to Tim,
Two thousand years ago, made it quite plain.
But, despite camels and needles’ eyes, grim
Greed rules, grinds grist, remains compassion’s bane.

Evidence? Overwhelming! Ask the desk
Guys who OK’d those bogus loans bundled
Into magic CDOs (no real risk,
Rated triple A!). They hawked, then trundled

Dour debt to drool-moist investors, bewitched—
Easy money! If they default we’ll steal
Estates and profit even more, enriched
By foul fakery, incentivized zeal.

Some saw impending doom, yet silently
Played on (incentivizing has its charm).
Then it all collapsed. Blame grew violently;
Paralytic fear widened, deepened harm.

And though forewarned, not once but many times,
By Jesus, Paul, and Chaucer’s Pardoner,
Who could resist incentivized lush crime,
Imagine demolition for the lender?

How long before, again, it’s all forgot?
Radix malorum est cupiditas.
                       (4/11/08)

Timothy 6:10
Matthew 19:24
Mark 10:25
Luke 18:25
Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Pardoner’s Tale

Posted in Greed, Religion

Figures of Speech

                  I
What am I, chopped liver?

Can someone explain
How I, being overlooked,
Ignored,
Become a savory dish
Whose taste, enhanced by crumbled
Egg, a bit of onion,
Held together
By gobs of golden schmaltz,
Is, despite clogged arteries,
Never, ever ignored?
Marvin Klotz (3/25/08)

                 II
Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!

Some things amaze—
Thrust you among
Twisted corridors,
Wide-eyed, concerned,
Because beyond the next bend
You’ll meet the minotaur.

Some things astonish—
Stun pliant flesh
To stone—
Petrified by wonder.

But how can curious sound
Or sight,
Adapt a blameless simian
Into my niece?
Marvin Klotz (3/27/08)

            III
Peachy / Honey

Adjectives get the job done—
She’s neat!

And irony still works—
He’s bad!

Sure, honey’s sweet—
But also (face it!),
However golden,
Gooey bee spit.

And how does a hairy
Bulbous fruit,
However ripe,
That Prufock dare not eat
(Gawd, the dribbling juice!),
Include, among its nutrients,
Such rapturous praise?
Honey, you’re a peach!
                   (3/29/08)

Posted in Poetry (What is it?), Words

Wi-Fi Biochemistry

Whence flows the anguished gush we all endure?
What neural interplay of chemicals
Transforms my quiet heart, that soft tambour,
Into a pounding snare, hurling feral

Jolts through blue avenues beneath the skin?
How does it work—how do unwired sight
And sound first pierce, then raise a raucous din
Along my arteries, kill appetite?

What molecules, released by darting words,
Suffuse the face with fierce, untrammeled blush
Or ire, while the mere sight of blood (absurd
As it might seem) can strike one senseless, crushed?

And why does that machine, controlling mood,
Churn out such havoc, push the same effete
Collapse within the flesh despite what’s rued—
A child’s death, or the home team’s grim defeat?
                                             (3/9/08)

Posted in Who Knows?

Noise

Car radios two hundred yards away
Cranked up so high their bass beats rudely shake
Our old home’s addled bones. Now, add the quake;
Phlegm coughing cycle mufflers (thug’s cliché)
Designed to amplify, not mute—foreplay
For arch noisome twits. Other thunders break
Our civil peace when midnight taggers slake
Their narcissistic thirst with viscous spray.

Battered, besieged by loud and silent noise,
We wonder at the malice. What human
Need, what want, what awe gives birth to such arts?
Are they prey yearning for status, grace, poise,
Or mock predators, enraged, born to stun?
Hear us, damn you, and our harsh thumping hearts!
                                                       (2/26/08)

Posted in Local Color