hypocrites

Iran's government
clothes itself in piety
blood streaks against green

solemn audience

Staring through the mist 
 big-eyed owlets watch me fetch 
 the morning paper

the white ribbon

 What about Sigi 
 Innocent, hanging, bleeding? 
Does he stand for Christ?

Yazid

Iran's government 
 renounced legitimacy 
 to rule by brute force

epistomology

Job threw up his hands 
 don't presume to understand 
 any divine plans

Will Rogers

They say "a statesman 
 is a dead politician"
 we need more statesmen

professional liar

Ahmad Chalabi 
lied the lies Dubya wanted 
 that's diplomacy

parsimonious

Luis Alvarez 
explained dinosaurs' demise 
with a single stone

Alvarez

One proverbial 
stone wiped out the dinosaurs 
 that's parsimony!

heavy probe

Proteins bind Xenon 
in hydrophobic pockets 
 where water won't stick

magic fungi

cheese has humble roots
coagulated casein
needs fungal magic

curios

if we kill our farms
parks of pristine wilderness
can't save the planet

a pawn in God's bet
Job still dismissed bad advice
even from his friends

clean slate

Nickel-sized hailstones 
 scours away the biofilm 
 cleansing the earth's face

bread and circus II

Subsidizing gas

 drives excessive consumption 

'til the well runs dry

bread and circus

Subsidized petrol 
 drives excessive consumption 
'til the well runs dry

jobs creation

Celebrate Luddites 
 they create so many jobs 
 one stitch at a time

trap

Encircling mountains 
 drain into the Great Salt Lake 
 smog piles up like salt

Jonah

go to Nineveh 
 prophesize the change to come 
 their kine deserve it

false banner

Rank misogyny 
motivates the Taliban 
 more than piety

poignant

Szechuan pepper-corns 
 stimulate the appetite 
while they numb the tongue

impressionable

Silver and linens 
wasted on this audience 
 I come for the food

irresponsible

Chairman Bernanke 
 blames a Chinese savings glut 
 for our deficit

not slinky

Universal sport 
 requires neither ball nor field 
 nor even a bed

dark day

  

A storm of locusts 
 strips the fields of leaf and bud 
blotting out the sun

half-wit

Brooks' illogic 
see the threat of tyranny 
 only from the Left

free press

Vatican outrage 
shines more press on Avatar 
 success is assured

Haiti

Grim confirmation 
 US marines are welcomed 
 conditions are dire

cancel the picnic

Thunder rocks the hills 
 hailstones plant themselves in mud 
 sowing the whirlwind

Healthcare, redux

 why do insurers
 have so much money to spend
 on their lobbying?

priorities

For carbon bike-frames 
 catastrophic failure modes 
 out-weigh the grams saved

tao

Guide the butcher knife 
into the interstices 
 bones just dull your edge

too holy to care

For Pat Robertson 
Haitians earned their suffering 
 smug condescension

abomination

Corporate persons 
grow by buying influence 
 and they're immortal

corporate masters

Now more than ever 
 real campaign finance reform 
 tops the agenda

collective action

endlessly patient
raindrops gnaw at mountainsides
dreaming of canyons

time will tell

A plague of haiku 
multiplying on Twitter 
 most of them are crap

Tikkun olam

This world can be healed 
 more than you do for yourself 
 do for your fellow

delusions

Invading Iraq 
 messianic fantasy 
 trumped US interests

rear-guard

Timothy Geithner 
 serves his cronies on Wall Street 
 not the citizens

1/18/10

"Chance of tornadoes"
forecast for the Monday storm
Wednesday's is stronger

what's the opposite of Free Speech?

Chinese censorship 
 hamstrings those who circumvent 
 state propaganda

priorities

Succoring bankers 
 rather than the unemployed 
 breeds revolution

cyber-war

Business in china 
 has to work around Pirates 
 they run the country

above all that

Smiling benignly 
 the crescent of a new moon 
 hangs above the storms

Aesop understood

Unlike the Mylar 
 my Dacron sail still flies great 
 as the years flit past

flying tortoise

Aesop understood 
 Dacron sails still perform 
 when the Mylar fails

limbic circuits

thinking takes too long
 when speed is of the essence
let the lizard drive

diversion

A well-turned ankle 
 swishing down the avenue 
 can strike grown men dumb

pervert

Our constitution 
 meant what John Yoo said it meant 
 through the looking-glass

age II

Haughty Tythonis 

 achieved immortality 

and lived to rue it

age

Haughty Tythonis 
 achieved immortality 
 but he missed his youth

coherence

What's different today? 
Is it a new editor? 
Maureen Dowd made sense

1/17/10

  

orographic lift 
 builds up Diablo's cap-cloud 
 too gnarly to fly

choices

Ian MacKellan
might have ruled as Saruman
but Gandalf's nobler

immigrant dreams

surgeons tending bar
dream of a better future
for their children here

existential angst

To live or to die 
 who can stay cool in the face 
 of final questions

ambiguous

Millionaire Bruce Wayne 
 and his young ward Dick Grayson 
 titilate Gotham

stand up for your rights

MLK taught us 
that no man can ride your back 
 unless your back's bent

sisyphean

Fighting entropy 
 shows the world that I'm alive 
 sweep the floor, again

the guy's got pull

Archimedes bragged 
 just give me a place to stand 
 and I'll move the earth

not gonna take it

Bloodied but unbowed 
 the Iranian people 
 call for Yazid's head

solipcists

For Americans 
 revolution in Iran 
 scarcely makes the news

deeply inverted

LA's atmosphere 
 stratifies like a deep lake 
heated from above

Karman vortex streets

Shedding vortices 
a bridge is pumped rhythmically 
 by a steady wind

equanimity

To live or to die 
 who can stay cool in the face 
 of final questions?

ambiguity

Millionaire Bruce Wayne 
 and his young ward Dick Grayson 
 titilate Gotham

universal values

Kansans and Kazakhs
chat while riding the ski-lift
the world skis Utah

under-employed

Such cultured english 
 in a parking attendant 
 marks a recession

Spring-like

Well, it isn't ice
 neither is it fresh powder 
 my snowboard grumbles

A Single Man

Great performances 
 in films that no one will see 
 fall like silent trees

roots of liberty

Teaching kids to think 
 rather than to just pass tests 
 subversive teacher

Crohn's disease

Intestinal worms 
preempt the host's leukocytes 
 soothing lullabies

Crohn'

Intestinal worms 
preempt the host's leukocytes 
 soothing lullabies

private reality

Whether right or wrong 
 he's "absolutely certain"
 they don't correlate

cold stare

Someone's watching us 
 climbing out of the hot tub 
 creepy old snowman

be here now

The past is over 
 the future may never be 
 now is all we have

the editor's eye

Accidental art 
my spell-checker discovered 
 I am the snow-bard

last runs

The shadows grow fast
 even as I ride the lift 
 the piste ices up

ambiguity

who knows what words mean?
 all language is metaphor
 unless it's pure math

hormones

Life was so simple 
 now we're multicellular 
 and it's so complex

trapped

Salt Lake inversion 
 obscures the dearth of new snow 
 pray for the next storm

fix it again, Tony!

Designed by fiat 
 the chinese economy 
 is over-heating

alien

unequipped to chew 
 morays use pharyngeal jaws 
to suck prey down, whole

ambassador Clinton

Envoy to Haiti? 
 How are the mighty fallen! 
 Once, Bill helped himself

foreshadowing

Note the skinny kid 
on whom the camera lingers 
 he'll show up later

no bell, book or candle

exorcize poems 
 that would take over your mind 
 capture them in ink

transcendence

Exalted moments 
 the silence drowns out the noise 
 of house-keeping chores

non-judgemental

  

John Yoo's less puzzling 
 when you know both his parents 
 are psychiatrists

values

  

His parents are shrinks! 
 maybe in Yoo's lexicon 
 there's no "right" or "wrong"

neolithic revolution

When we learned to farm
populations exploded
health standards collapsed

5th amendment

Bush's DoJ
messed up the prosecution
Blackwater thugs walked

indelible III

president Clinton

couldn't keep it in his pants

how come stains adhere!

indelible II

president Clinton

couldn't keep it in his pants

how come stains adhere?

indelible

president Clinton
couldn't keep it in his pants
some stains won't come out

gravity

Newton deceived us!
what he claimed was a constant
goes up each Christmas

obvious

Is it really news?
Doctors checking Limbaugh's heart
found nothing at all

the pain of what's not there

sometimes, amputees
suffer what's called "phantom pain"
like Rush Limbaugh's heart

changes

stray tufts of bristles
sprout over my shoulder blades
just like in "The Fly"

t'was a brave man

such strange, ugly rocks
wrinkled, cold, gray and mossy
conceal tasty flesh

regression

Miwoks feasted on
oysters, venison and crab
agriculture sucks

charming as Krishna

86-year old 
Andhra Pradesh governor 
 cavorts with gopis

Chicxulub

Luis Alvarez
postulates an asteroid
killed the dinosaurs

Alvarez

iridium specks 
correlate with extinctions 
 KT-boundary

count on it

Some things you can trust 
 as sure as death and taxes 
 politicians lie

hypothermia

  

pronounce no man dead
 until he is warm and dead
cold mammals fake it

opportunity cost

George W. Bush
disdained to lead the free world
he preferred crusade

primal fear

Canned goods and ammo 
 surge when the stock market tanks 
 fear overcomes greed

ambiguous

Bachelor Bruce Wayne 
 and his young ward Dick Grayson 
 keep Gotham guessing

legacy

The last regime's crimes
 cripple our  justice system 
 like old scar tissue

half a society

Women in burqas 
 impoverish society 
pent up like brood- mares

dirty start

The last hangover 
 of the holiday season 
 darkens the new year