“Board puts faith in ‘In God We Trust,’” LA Times 11/7/07
Earnest Christians,
Afflicting this Shining Nation on a Hill,
Want to adorn every schoolroom
With a bold slogan
To pummel kids:
“In God”
(They must read daily),
“We trust.”
Trouble is, there is no god.
But let’s assume there is.
What worldly evidence
Suggests this god gives
A rat’s ass about anything,
Much less, what we earthy
Bipeds do?
As well, we’d like to know
Which of the 6,912 living languages
(Not counting the dialects
Of 55Cancri’s fifth planet)
Does it speak?
Given harelips,
(Among other hiccups in the helix),
Malaria, tsunamis, quakes,
Eternal holy war,
Pious Job’s dead children, putrid sores,
Just what,
Precisely,
Is it
That we trust this god to fix?
(11/10/07)
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Holy Sonnet X, John Donne
Jeez John, the older you got the more you
Worried about our universal end.
Your flamboyant youth, no doubt, contended
With your late found piety; your soul’s hue
No doubt, seemed a bit too black, and late rue
(You wondered) might not serve enough to mend
That soul’s torn cloth, allow it to ascend
When darkness struck, when that last trumpet blew.
I grant, your sonnet’s final line strikes hard.
But what the devil does it mean? Death dead?
A nice conceit. With luck, you weren’t charred,
Escaped the fiery fate that fueled your dread;
Sentient, eternally, to hear those hordes
Of angels humming major seventh chords.
(11/6/07)
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with feare.
Holy Sonnet XIX, John Donne
Guilt is one thing, but grim acquiescence
To Yawah’s tyranny’s another thing
Altogether! Listen, who put the bling
In sex if not God? So why is license
Now required? God, of his bright puissance.
Created orgasmic bliss, made us sing
The flaming pleasure of sexual flings.
Why? To make us tremble seeking penance?
What strange game have we here? Lure us to touch
The glowing coal that He might scorch our hand?
Establish licentiousness to trap such
Of us that succumb, whereupon, unmanned,
We’re threatened with fire. How very queer
To stab our trembling joy with shaking fear!
(11/1/07)
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
W. Shakespeare
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats
I
The more untrammeled time I have to spend
The less there is to spend it on. My eyes
Grow weary reading. TV’s a barren
Waste. Sport no longer tickles, and sex drives
Down a dead-end street. Memories, those hot
Idylls past—they’re all pretty much forgot.
II
Six different meds float my life (one pill
Mitigates another’s dire effects). Stuff
I used to want now seems plain laughable—
Insipid toys, detritus, lint and scruff.
Morbid introspection lays bare my lot—
A mind and body crumbling into rot.
III
Attention fuels a smolder of despair—
The gyring world spiraling—the new-born
Beast devours Bethlehem. No forbearance
Can soothe its rage. No garlands to adorn
An Earth gone mad, where zealots’ parting shots
Yields Armageddon, ends their false gods’ plots.
(10/28/07)
“Secrecy Trumps Torture Appeal”: Headline, Los Angeles Times, 10/10/07
Khaled El-Masri was snatched by agents
Of that shining nation on a hill (known
For its principles, human rights, ardent
Dedication to justice), agents prone,
Alas, to error. They got the wrong guy!
For five months, they slapped him around, dropped him
Into a hellish abyss, burned to pry
The goodies out of his bent body—grim
Revelations of terrorists’ next move.
Alas, he knew nothing! This innocent
Victim sued—surely, damages approved
By courts ensued. Once more, alas. Savants,
(Believe it!) ruled: despite impurity,
No hearing for Khaled; such plain justice
(See the dour faces—the dark rictus)
Endangers national security!
(10/26/07)
The tagger and the terrorist are clones,
Spawn of the self-same primal need: Fear me!
See me! Listen! I will never lie prone
Beneath your abasing heel! Your cheery
World I find anathema! The lurid
Marks I leave, the lethal vests I wear serve
To cut minds free, foment distress, and cure
Complacency—leave pompous ease unnerved.
So what are you gonna do about it?
Impotently stamp your feet? Hurl rage? Kill
Us all? Bury us in some black abyss?
But Hydra can’t be killed, will not be still!
Try something new. The salt tears, glistening,
Will dry if you would but see, hear, listen.
(10/25/07)
