Halloween IV

  

Vampires, ghosts and ghouls 
 mocking the darkness of death 
pig out on candy

honest politician II

To serve insurers 
more than his constituents 
Joe sold his good name

honest politician I

To serve insurers
 more than his constituents 
Lieberman turns tricks

politicians' honor

  

To fund their campaigns 
 senators are bought and sold 
 as loyal as whores

Prosperity Theology II

Jesus never taught 
 that wealth marks the virtuous 
Reagan made that up

Prosperity Theology I

  

grifters love Ghana 
 you can set up your own church 
and get rich at it

modesty

clothes communicate
ethnicity and status
angels don't need them

subtle boundary

"what's the difference 
between sects and cults, guru ?"
 "heretic! You die!"

left behind

Relics of the past 
compact discs and buggy whips
 retailers' tar-pits

diet

Twenty-one meat meals 
 fuel an american's week 
 wasteful to the bone

National Security Letters II

pile "prior restraint"

 on "unreasonable search"

 NSLs amok

National Security Letters

When "prior restraint"
 hides "unreasonable search"
 NSLs amok

meet the new boss...

 Eric holder says: 
 "trust us, we're not like George Bush!" 
 just how, isn't clear

Kekulé redux

Frustrated glove-maker

Dreams of new knitting technique –

Beats rational thought

GOP

United in 'no' 
 one day, they'll have to tell us 
 what it is they're for

used and discarded

Pat Tillman's body 
 was desecrated in death 
 for propaganda

entropy wins

 Like dead fallen leaves 
 laundry rustles underfoot 
 a teenager's room

within you, without you...

Without outside tools 
 using just our intellect 
 can we know our minds?

slurred

Blunt head injury 
 leads to deaths in the drunk-tank 
 cops don't understand

mother's wisdom

Barbara Bush warned us 
George wasn't her brightest son 
 but he smiles real nice

lost in the woods

Wolves howl with delight
when the children of asphalt 
 go mushroom hunting

so Right, so wrong

eight years of failures 
nailed down Dick's bona fides
to advise Barack

Asking for rigor 
all I get are faith-statements
 no one's satisfied

cold comfort II

Your garment of days 
woven of a lifetime's deeds 
 warms you in the grave

marketing

 news is a gimmick
 bringing viewers to networks
they live to sell ads

memorial

 Your garment of days 
 woven of a lifetime's deeds 
 outlasts flesh and bone

ivory tower

Slow on the up-take
the savants at U of O
found that sex is good

tantalized

half a memory 
eludes my full attention 
lurking in shadow

infantilized

Cast out of eden 
Dumbo without his feather 
 it's called adulthood

power to change

 More than armed revolt 
 Darwin's dangerous idea 
 frightens theocrats

third language

 Mandarin's frontier 
so much closer than Tibet 
 it's in chinatown

ivory tower

A little too late 
 scientists at UofO 
showed that sex is good

truth is beauty

 "fine" or "performing"
 arts share one criterion:
Do they make you feel?

chosen

Pity bangladesh! 
 nature's laboratory 
testing disasters

the Right to Arm Bears

Ursine weaponry:

Does the Second Amendment

Justify bad puns?

shibboleth

 "the Right to Bear Arms" 
 Rorschach test in just five words 
 tells me who you are

something familiar...

throw all Shakespeare's plots
into a giant blender
out comes Cymbeline

volition counts

God clearly abhors
all consensual gay love
Molestation? fine.

mute witness

Valiantly striving 
 to show the wind that trashed them 
 the ghosts of windsocks

yellow jackets II

 Still batting clean-up 
 scavengers of dinosaurs 
 now live on hotdogs

Yellow jackets

 once, dinosaur flesh 
 how are the mighty fallen! 
now they eat hotdogs

scavenger

Once, they ate mammoths 
 now, yellow jackets settle 
 for your hamburger

morally bankrupt

eight years of George Bush
has impoverished the U.S.
only his friends won

CLAW

First, Gell-Mann warns us -
get a Crude Look At the Whole 
 details will blind you

clearer than ever

 Inscrutable film 
 by Joel and Ethan Coen 
 first, understand Job

Papal outreach

Welcome Anglicans! 
 if you are intolerant 
 you can be Catholic

beyond our design

So much DNA 
encoding our olfaction 
predates settled life

trainable

 Fifteen thousand years 
 favored humans who like dogs 
and dogs who like us

cats are hard on birds

rather than gazelles
some cheetahs hunt ostriches 
we call that "culture"

web of fate

Cutting and weaving 
 entangling his destiny 
 with the worst drivers'

damnation

Dante keeps a place 
 for those who carve golf courses 
 out of the desert

Bakersfield II

Dimly, through the murk 
nodding donkeys slurp up crude 
 must be Bakersfield

of sense and cents

Maine's recovery 
relies on "Stealth Destroyers" 
whatever those are

moral hazard

Profits and losses 
 keep bankers' wagers honest 
 unless they're bailed out

spirits

When he's off the horse 
 Santana's muse deserts him 
self-indulgent noise

Om

Turn off your cell phone 
 feel the sand between your toes 
 risk hearing nothing

meet the new boss

Through their man Geithner 
 malefactors of great wealth 
 take care of their own

bleach

 Far too many blondes 
 grace California's beaches 
 defying their genes

remote

Visit el Cajon! 
 drive to the end of the earth
turn left, keep going

ball mill

Surf churns the cobbles 
 grinding like an ogre's teeth 
 on Doheny beach

Bakersfield

South of Cajon pass 
I emerge into daylight 
 as if waking up

loyal to a fault

Too many voters 
are voting for their home-team 
 instead of thinking

spectacular

Malibu's grand homes 
 teeter on the precipice 
 poised for the next storm

edgy II

nacreous luster 

dances on a fine knife's edge 

polished martensite

edgy

Pearly gray luster 
dances on a fine knife's edge 
polished martensite

scum

Smelting metal ore
the dross rises to the top 
 like politicians

never mind the crocs...

Our new immigrants 
 giant snakes in Florida 
learn a new diet

invisible

ride motorcycles 
 as if no one knows you're there 
 too often, it's true

beyond function

Damascus steel knives 
 burnished like fine jewelery 
 make fetishists drool

emission controls

When you run cattle 
 on a hi-test fuel like grain 
 the gas could kill you

knee-deep

 Augean feed-lots 
stink unto very heaven 
I'll have the tofu

determined

 libido's a ploy
 by which our genes replicate
 where's "free will" in that?

silent coup

Warrantless wiretaps 
 by evil corporations 
rape our sovereign

used

 Invest all your hopes 
 in the "candidate for change"
Lather. Rinse. Repeat

commodities

 Twenty-two thousand 
 dollars to recruit each one 
 makes grunts feel cherished

adrift

When profits meet Rights 
 healthcare in America 
 belongs to the rich

san pedro's gate

 Flamboyant flowers 
 big enough to fit a bat 
 perfume the night air

worse than Bush

Wicked old tyrant 
 ruling through terror and lies 
Robert Mugabe

tyrant

Robert Mugabe 
 too mean to retire or die 
 fetch the wooden stake

tikkun

Make the world better 
the rest is commentary 
 but it takes practice

wages of virtue II

brave Ariadne
saved Theseus in the maze
 Phaedra bedded him/

wages of virtue

brave Ariadne
 saved Theseus in the maze
he wed her sister

ars longa, vita brevis

tuberculosis
took John Keats at twenty-five
 just his verse survives

independent

Olympia Snowe 
 dislikes the public option 
 but won't "just say no"

don't "just say no!"

Too fond of thinking 
 misfit in the GOP 
Olympic Snowe

Fermi's ghost

 I can learn nothing 
 from the expected result 
 bring me something new!

love is blind

Without parasites 
 sex would seem a lousy deal 
 unless you're a male

abstract blur

strobing blue, then brown
the pilot sees the earth loom
as the panty spins

of art and trade

seeking perfection
Shakespeare polished his sonnets
the plays paid the rent

transfixed

Thoughts flit through my mind 
 flickering, elusive fish 
I spear them in verse

no secret handshake

Basking in hot springs 
 although we haven't met yet 
 these are my people!

perspective

 For the Mohicans 
 indigenous peoples' day 
 celebrates slaughter

knowledge is power

 In the PDB 
PyMol is the interface 
 that makes structures speak

due warning

"POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" 
 tattooed above the eyebrows 
 buys some elbow room

most persecuted

 Poor Berlusconi! -
compares himself to Jesus 
noone weeps for him

ancient machines

 In the ribosome 
 RNA does all the work 
 the rest chaperones

follow the money

 In pursuit of cod 
the Portuguese mapped the West 
 before Colombus

filibuster

A sea of bland words 
can drown real conversation 
 while saying nothing

ur-story

The paths of the dead 
 Gimli follows Gilgamesh 
 terror is timeless

leading the blind

Arrogant teachers 
 not knowing how children learn 
 pretend to teach them

recycle that

With Detroit's collapse 
 the forest comes creeping back 
 to fix more carbon

irresponsible

 Stanley McChrystal 
exploited Pat Tillman's death 
 for propaganda

cynical manipulation

Tillman's tragic death 
was used as propaganda 
 to sell war at home

pudgy arms

 quarter-inch needles
that were "intramuscular"
now just reach subQ

not to the swift

Gorbachev had grasped 
 that SDI could not work 
 Reagan never did

Cheney's lamprey

 Could such a state fail? 
 Enron bled california 
 White nigh unto death

recycle that

With Detroit's collapse 
the forest comes creeping back 
 to fix more carbon

subtle motives

Parasites drive us 
 to ditch half our own alleles 
 each generation

herds of nerds

polo on Segways 
 lets the geeks in on the fun 
 but they're still dorky

fucking parasites

pricey strategem 
to spare kids our parasites 
ditch half your alleles

tikkun

do more than hoping
 be the one you're waiting for
the world's our project

Lake District Idyll

Every single pub
Claims a Wordsworth connexion
At least the beer’s good

this Shah wears a beard

 Torture some students 
 jail political rivals 
 earn revolution

sex! What a bargain!

 Lose half your genome 
with each new generation 
 to dodge parasites

bad science, bad harvest

 Trofim Lysenko 
 would make Siberia bloom 
 if mendel were wrong

better half a genome

Despite the hassles 
 parasites and pathogens 
 ensure that sex pays

Heller

Where there is no state 
 the right to bear arms adheres 
 to the citizen

compensating for something

 For the foreign press 
 missiles rumble through Beijing 
 trade-show on steroids

bad theory

Can we raise children 
to be engaged citizens? 
 Lysenko thought so. . .

simplify

Cap the ratio 
circumference to area 
 gerrymanders die