bipartisan outreach

 courting Snowe's support
 Is the game worth the candle?
 She's married to "No"

Noah's ravens

 Children bear our genes 
 forwards into our future 
 none ever return

Conan's technology

 in Arnold's era 
 open ditch irrigation 
 impresses no one

it ain't rocket science

Cap the ratio 
 circumference to area 
 gerrymanders die

knowing

Stripped of its method 
 science is a belief-set 
that's nothing special

ruddy

Our sun's red-shifted as if it were leaving us but it's just wildfires

v'shinantam l'vanecha

Teach them carefully 
 kids learn best what they learn first 
 you get just one shot

Nice rack of antlers 
in my driveway this morning 
 on a puny buck

no vestige of a beginning...

Roasted by magma 
 carbonate rocks decompose 
 CO2 erupts

spendthrift

Our number one crop 
 generates no revenues 
 for our needy state

9/26/09

Iron-gray sky-dome 
lets no heat convect away 
Lafayette swelters

misengaged

don't stop to reason!
pike a side and root for them!
politics is sport

role models

How to tell a child
that her mom drives like a jerk?
I smile, woodenly

seniority

we might give up coal
were senator Robert Byrd
not quite so senior

thuggish

what sociopath
breaks and enters without qualms?
Call her "Goldilocks"

Money is politics

U. Of illinois 
 as corrupt as Chicago 
raffled admissions

sidelined

rather than thinking 
 voters recoil in horror 
 that's the pundits' job

American standard

 fatter than Jabba 
 medicated to the gills 
 who could call this 'health'?

allegro non tropo

Colonel Qadaffi 
 shows his worldly acumen 
 wit needs brevity

virtual box

Domino theory 
kept our troops in Vietnam 
 beyond all reason

moral clarity II

Firm in his beliefs 
 lacking imagination 
Dubya charged backwards

sidewalk mysteries

Talking to herself 
 psychosis? Or bluetooth phone? 
 often, i can't tell

nico press

 cold-flowing alloys 
 fix the loops at cable ends 
 charmingly old-school

architectural gems

Cushioned in cloud-banks 
 the city's towers are wrapped 
as if for shipping

beyond insurance

End of life matters 
 can't be cut from the debate 
to reform healthcare

embers

Glittering earrings 
 refracting the sun's last rays 
 capture one star's light

the oppressed

Civil liberties 
died for us all under Bush 
I am Oscar Grant

cui bono II

Insurance debates
 never quite get to healthcare 
 follow the money

please clear the field

 Root for your pundit! 
 don't engage in politics! 
 it's spectator sport!

there and back again

in 1913 
presumably without drugs
 Carl Jung met dragons

legacy

Students who had clout 
were preferred at illinois 
 despite their transcripts

soft standard

Rather than the law 
Holder would enforce guidelines 
 from the DoJ

logorrhea

colonel Qaddafi
just can't seem to stop talking
 like Biden on drugs

retrospect

We're doomed to find out 
that youth's wasted on the young 
 a little too late

seasonal hazard

Paper bags on fire 
rain from new mexico's skies 
 it's traditional

derailed

Holder takes the bait 
 enforcing in-house guidelines 
 instead of the law

careless words

A dense wall of words 
 baffles without shedding light 
 teaching moment lost

natural immunity

Killing viruses 
 might not be such a problem 
 if they were alive

slackers

Democracy fails 
if it's a spectator sport 
 citizens must play

the village

Pundits promised us 
"Hillary's unstoppable"
 they should get out more

good subjects, bad citizens

voters love pundits
who tell them what to believe
maybe Hobbes was right

new shah, old tactics

Young Iranians
who had never known a Shah
learn to hate Savak

Savak-II

state-enforced terror 
against Iran's own people 
 just like the last Shah

cactus eater

James is emphatic 
"you can't eat san pedro's blooms!"
but he won't say why

bobble-heads

Voters love pundits 
who tell them what to believe 
 thinking causes stress

home-free

The autumn's first storm 
 has no power to chill us 
basking in Scott's tub

on average

Two thirds of a dog 
makes a mess of the carpets 
 in the average home

bias

Essential sexists 
 blame men for Wall Street's excess 
 since Lyssistrata

dinosaur

We might give up coal 
 were senator Robert Byrd 
 not quite so senior

all in the balance

termites' symbiotes 
 release more greenhouse gases 
 than all our coal plants

river of carbon

Vast oceans of grass 
 oxidized to CO2 
 in ungulates' guts

opportunity cost

Three trillion dollars 
 squandered on George Bush's wars 
might have been useful

red scared

Joe McCarthy's dead 
 so why's America scared 
 of single-payer?

portability

In a chariot 
Ezekiel ported god 
 into the galut

Fall flood

Undergrads in spate
saturate berkeley's sidewalks 
 flowing slow as mud

neural nets

Integrating blips 
 from stochastic ion gates 
 order emerges

il-2

sweat soaks my bedding
the teeth chatter in my skull
dumb immune response

moral clarity

Untroubled by doubt 
 like a rock, only dumber 
George w. Bush

purpose

Soulless intellect 
 animates the marketplace 
 but can't make values

long national nightmare

An age of horrors 
fear masquerades as freedom 
 Cheney stalks the earth

heroic

The world mourns Sigfried 
 all the young women loved him 
a leek among men

portable

In his chariot -
Zeke's god moved to Babylon 
 to tend His people

lean times

fleeing from Sudan 
refugees mass in Mali
as gaunt as Steve Jobs

SETI

Arecibo's bowl
reaps the music of the spheres
to pick out one voice

clothes-horse

rising in the night
to swap out sweat-soaked PJs
not feeling dapper

ague

this flu too shall pass
waking in dry pyjamas
feels like big progress

responsibility

legal opinions
offered by Cheney's henchmen
tortured more than law

jaundice

yellowed by wildfires
as sunset tints Diablo
excellent moonrise