My Volume Of Verse

I’ve hammered out
Three hundred ninety poems,
Some bent and skewed,
Some polished
And quite bright.

Occasionally
I canonize a pet,
Exalt my wife and sons,
And revel in the mystery
Of sun, moon, stars.

But mostly I decry
The mess the masses
Have contrived
Through advertising,
Greed, theology, and politics.

For three thousand years
We’ve preached morality,
Teach it in school,
Then graduate into
Murderous, insane reality.

If ever a book
Of my bitter verse appears—
My history of ego and of nations—
Its title will declare its motivation:
A Sequel to The Book of Lamentations
(9/26/13)

Posted in Greed, Illusion, Poetry (What is it?), Politics, Religion, War, Wisdom

Kaparot

Next to advertising, religion
Offends the most—in some respects they match.
Both perceive the rest of us as pigeons,
Bird-brains that their glib gibberish can catch.

Pray this! Buy that! Comfort and save your souls!
The foolishness they peddle is bizarre.
They use plain magic to attain their goals
But charge for access to their repertoire.

Take kaparot—atonement—now on sale,
When sinners, for eighteen bucks, purify,
Load their sins on chickens, when all else fails,
Recite a verse, slit their throats, cleansed! They sigh—

They’ve exercised their bible-based conceits—
Then give poor folks those tainted birds to eat.
(9/26/13)

Posted in Conformity, Vanity

Fashun

We figured it out—clothes were important,
Whether fig leaves, togas or furry pelts,
To keep from freezing blue, thumped by the brunt
Of winter ice or summer’s red-burn welts.

Then evolution sets in, our comfort
Morphs to chic, and bright fashion looms—in charge!
I understand a well-filled shirt’s report,
Remain transfixed by deep décolletage,

But can’t explain why fashion ran amuck.
Jackets make sense, but why those notched lapels?
Shirts serve, but what’s the point of collars, cuffs?
Why three-inch heels on sexy demoiselles?

But, most of all, I wonder what cockeyed
Putz thought up the most outrageous, useless,
Idiotic, obligated, juiceless,
Weird and stupid fashion quirk: men’s neckties?
(9/14/13)

Posted in Conformity, Vanity

Natural Selection

They taught us atoms were the smallest things
Back in the thirties—clearly they were wrong.
They taught us evolution pulled the strings—
Natural selection frames what belongs.

Ambient temperature, predatory
Skills, food supply, and complex brain cell thrums
Contribute to evolution’s story,
Along with supple opposable thumbs.

Being omnivorous certainly helps.
Innovation parries nature’s changes
That might end our standing, select new whelps
To dominate the earth’s changing ranges.

Though proud our species thrives, fit, perfected,
I wonder why earwax was selected.
(9/8/13)

Posted in Vanity, Wisdom

Foreign Policy: The Comedy

Where, pray tell, are Gilbert and Sullivan
When we need them? Surely, the Mikado,
Lord High Executioner, their henchmen,
Could better guide this land’s limp bravado.

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)

Posted in Politics, Today's News, War

Moral Obscenity

“Moving closer to possible U.S. military action, Secretary of State John F. Kerry condemned last week’s apparent poison gas attack in Syria as a ‘moral obscenity.’” (Los Angeles Times, 8/27/13)

What, one wonders, constitutes a moral
Obscenity? It means, I guess, disgust,
Unwillingness to constrain a quarrel
To bitter foes refusing to adjust.

Their venom spills, consuming innocents,
When battle violence becomes obscene
At Jericho, and concentration camps,
In Syria, when nerve gas kills, unseen.

America, empathic, won’t abide
Obscene, immoral slaughter in the East.
Our hearts, exceptional and dignified,
Forget the giant obscenity unleashed

By us on Hiroshima’s citizens
And Nagasaki’s unwarned innocents.
(8/29/13)

Posted in Death, Pain, Politics, War