Balance

Big-headed babies
kill more women in childbirth
but their dads bring gifts

dangerous game

big-headed babies
kill more women in childbirth
but they come with gifts

evolutionary expansion

just like peacock tails
or a stag's enormous rack
sex ballooned our heads

Beyond free will

Compelled to use tools
by natural selection
boy grabs stick, hits rock.

Support

Dammed I.T. Monkey
scragged my nmr system
to mount a new patch

Sublimate

Bouldering problems
satisfy the impulses
to swing through the trees

Selection

Anything for sex!
Peacocks tails or human brains,
Darwin mandates it.

evolutionary expansion

Just like peacock tails
or a stag's enormous rack
sex ballooned our brains

Positivism

Stand up for something --
invest in america!
Buy a congressman.

Melancholy Dane

Existential angst:
Unk killed Dad and married Mom.
What's a boy to do?

dystopia

unnewspeak thoughtcrime
nonIngsoc eastbloc unprose
doubleplusungood

Beowulf

Big Danish monster
Geatish hero kills it's mum
Beware of dragons.

Iliad II

Sing Achilles' wrath
Agamemnon took his girl
Patrokleos croaks.

Moby

Ahab's obsession:
Pale, demonic cetacean.
All hands lost, save one.

Iliad

Sing, Muse, of his wrath.
Brave, beautiful Achilles!
He chose fame and death.

Fellowship

"Fly, you fools!" he cried.
Then he fell. Great tasks remain ...
for the little folk

Ozymandias

A tourist told me
He saw a great big statue.
Very ironic.

haiku cliff's notes: hamlet

Despite dad's murder,
Danish prince still vacillates.
Whole cast ends up dead.

Got air?

Live your oldest dream
learn with the hang gliding club
step into the sky

Transience

Like fire-flies in jars
fag-ends glint in beer bottles
then they fade to black

night light

starlight on hilltops
reminds us how much we've lost
in this plastic world

So near, so far

Consider the stars
source of all heavy metals
remote as world peace

Troposphere

Contemplate the sky
clinging like a coat of paint
to our fragile world

Frat culture

You're not really drunk
if you can lie on the floor
without holding on.

Insecurity

Drink in the night sky
know your insignificance
marvel that you're loved

Scheduled grief

Teen-aged rebellion
eases the separation.
How else to let go?

and thus a blog was born

Chimps in glass cages
we're animals in exile
captives of our minds

What does "miss" mean?

I stress my parents ...
because that is what teens do.
Who could miss such love?

anitya

napping, i awake
knowing my soul dissipates
every time i sleep

Censorship

Given more power,
those who legislate g-strings
will mandate burquas

Save the children

Just for halloween
you deserve a horror film.
Must see "jesus camp"

The illusion of control

We coin this word "void"
as if we could control it.
But there's nothing there.

Bad math

We make terrorists
faster than we can kill them.
Heckuva job, Beorge!

...second time as farce

We snubbed Sistani
just as we snubbed Ho Chi Minh
back to the quagmire ...

History Lesson

"The Tet Offensive?"
An unfair question ...
For one doomed to repeat it.

Enron continues

Lay's conviction tossed ...
because he can't appeal it.
It pays to be dead.

Impermanence

The "Thousand-Year Reich"
"American Century"
gone like the dodo

Joyless survival

Gray and relentless
"a guide to knowing your saints"
bleak as "osama"

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Unregulated
eating, growing, changing shape
teens are like cancers

Aerobic limit

My heart hammers loud
like a bird frantic to flee
this cage of my ribs

Shortbus

Pan-sexual sport
among consenting adults
arrives at best fit

shepherd's hell

saw the god of hell
in the magic theater
shocked me to my core

XVI. The Tower

disaster ruins some
but those that learn to transcend
become true heroes

start a fire

Haiku are like sparks
struck from one soul by a blow
kindling worlds of thought

Overheard in a bar

Sometimes, it's too much.
If it lasts more than four hours ...
ask your physician.

Myopia

Forty years gone now
each summer flits past faster.
Work devours all life.

Calibration

We are strangers here,
spirits in a fleshly world.
"weird" is just normal.

Delerium

The world melts and runs
as if I were on mushrooms
but it's just the heat.

turn the mountain

Trapped here on the earth
no launch site faces this wind
The clouds laugh at me.

Rational design

We were created
to trip on psilocybin.
A good god loves us.

Wired for it

We're born receptive
to 'shrooms and music and awe.
Fools would harness that.

Zoo games

Spit at a llama.
He'll treat you like his own kind.
Wet intimacy.

Mon Dieu!

A meal without wine?
The social order crumbles!
French dystopia

Meadow lessons

Dragonfly eats wasp,
flycatcher eats dragonfly.
The circle of life

lead us not into temptation

Our standing army
invites foreign adventures
to warrant its cost

rapid collapse

all the dominoes
positioned across the globe:
then two towers fell ...

reversal

warmarch, eyes wide shut
into the horror and death
peace requires our sight

Oh! How can this be?

Oh! How can this be?
At ninety, belting the blues.
Only the Tao knows ...

Frenchman Street, 2006

First behind the mask
and then the devastation
there you find the soul

pest control

neon flypaper
laid out upon Bourbon street
keeps the tourists down

redemption

here on frenchman street
(there's not a tourist for miles)
the blues rock your soul

higher ground

Global warming strikes:
coastal flooding, hurricanes.
retreat to Denver!

egoistic cancer

i am my own man
free from external constraints
like a HeLa cell

state terror

Baghdad to Beirut
cluster bombs and phosphorus
slaughter innocents

Uneasy lies the head

When my country kills
innocents without reason
what is my duty?

Contempt

Cheney curled his lip:
"the peasants are revolting!"
would that he were right

George, meet Marie

King George flew over
far above the mud and death
"let them eat beignets"

Louisiana to Zambia

Not quite lusaka
but close: gutted highrises
abandoned storefronts

Katrina as opportunity

Poor folk flooded out
by storm and mismanagement.
"urban renewal"

Jazz after death

New orleans is dead
preserve it for the tourists!
They just love a wake.

Apathy

A nation of sheep
deserves Cheney and Rumsfeld
government by wolves

m is for money

gotta have a schtick
this world of do-as-you-please
demands you pay rent

applied kabbalah

The Kelipoth are
nothing but shells, empty shells:
just like this music.

bourbon redux

Who listens to this?
"the preservation of jazz"?
better preserve prunes!

maison bourbon

A brick crypt contains
the embalmed spirit of jazz
under neon glass

"snatch"?

Nothing's certain, but ...
wouldn't you rather risk it?
snatch your heart's desire!

gastronomie en la belle epoque

canard a l'orange
"let them eat HFCS"
Marie would be proud.

Foresight

N'awlins has achieved
that which vegas aspires to:
"a splendid ruin"

urban renewal

empty iron heart
cap'd by a mardi gras mask:
gentrification

voodoo rebirth

down in new orleans
broken windows frame them ghosts
dancing zydeco

touche

Claws held up en-garde
a scorpion glares at me
from my own wood-pile

handle with care

Seven bland families
make an explosive mixture:
in-laws' reunion

cooking with napalm

Seven bland flavors
make an explosive mixture:
in-laws reunion

Copernicus

Our planet rotates
twisting our reference frame.
Hills devour the moon

possibly too much information

more weird dreams last night
festering shit-bomb toilet
blows: i am splattered

New film

No bonfire of socks
but see "the science of sleep"
It gets so much right.

Target fixation

Glider in tree top
his spent body dangles, limp.
Bill, consumated.

Unaccountable

Pardoned for war crimes
unacknowledged, uncounted
George smirks at the law

sounds of nature

Congressional reps
like seagulls screaming "MINE!" "MINE!"
fill the air with noise

braying asses

I strain to extract
any sense from this congress.
Just noise, no signal.

No signal

Congress in session
like the braying of asses
is it only noise?

crocodiles without tears

predatory cops
ambush unwary drivers
like crocs on stream banks