equitable

John Adams slandered 
 Hamilton and Jefferson 
 evenhandedly

to the point

Without brevity 
 focus, wit and humor drown 
 in torrents of words

Carpe Diem II

Soar while the sun shines 

 as patient as Death Himself

 Gravity can wait

carpe diem

Soar while the sun shines 
 as implaccable as Death 
 Gravity can wait

budget-hawk

President Hoover 
 served up austerity gruel 
 when we needed bread

outrageous

The French are outraged! 
 to delay their retirement 
 could cut into lunch

everything in its place

Disregulation 
makes cancers from our own cells, 
 monsters from our banks

minions

that whiff of sulfur
 lingering where Dubya spoke
 Cheney must be near

Christian Values

Angela Merkel 
 demands assimilation 
 German Jews worry

just do it

There's no diploma 
 act as if you're enlightened 
 the world resonates

strings attached

Members of congress 
 dance to their rich donors' tune 
 plutocracy won

don't tread on me

pitchforks and torches
appeal when people feel used
by a ruling class

hypothetical

I've heard it rumored
some jokes aren't about sex
bu that's unconfirmed

primitive daemons

when you're overwhelmed
the inner monkey grabs on
let the lizard drive!

barriers

to tell your mother
that you're learning to hang glide?
Harder than flying!

debateable

Carl Paladino
by contrast to the freak-show
looks like a statesman

Tea tantrum

Delaware voters
can choose Christine O'Donnell
or act like grown-ups

narrow niche

bdelloid rotifers
dispensed with sex long ago
now they're fugitives

Randy Michael

everyone was shocked
by Mr. Michael's conduct
turns out, he's Randy

myopic

David Petraeus
tamped down the daily death toll
stoking seccession

no exit

David Petraeus
armed ethnic militamen
his pet crocodile

deliver us!

President Jackson
zeroed the national debt
we pray for his heir

same story twice

Azazel's scapegoat
Abraham's son Ishmael
they're isomorphic

renunciants

first, they renounce meat
then fish and--finally--sex
dead to the world's joys

unrewarding

banish the sex trade
if you have to pay for it
you're doing it wrong

footprints on the beach

prints of cloven hooves
mark the earth where Cheney trod
His? or his master's?

no niche unfilled

Piscivorous bats 
 swoop out of Trinidad's nights 
 it pays to fly low

deep time

As ages grind past 
 rivers eroding headwards 
 hew mountains in twain

tantrum

Delaware voters 
 can choose Christine O'Donnell 
 or act like grown-ups

bargain with the devil

Bdelloid rotifers 
dispensed with sex long ago 
 now they're fugitives

bitter old man

From Dick Cheney's lips 
 requiescat in pacem 
 drips with sarcasm

thrillseekers II

Belgian skydivers 
 fought for their instructors's love 
 they fell hard for him

thrillseekers

Belgian skydivers
 fell hard for their instructor
 one got death, one life

targetting

first, staurosporine
 carpet-bombs the whole kinome
 then we zero in

blinded by the Right

AIPAC would pretend
the status quo can go on
apartheid beckons

sanguine

For Sam Peckinpaugh 
 gratuitous violence 
 stood in for feelings

dairy-free!

For her vegan guests 
 she replaced all the butter 
 they loved the duckfat

undaunted

Iconoclasm 
 sits comfortably on Eastwood 
 like a worn holster

realism

The first rule of holes: 
 before you can clamber out 
 you must stop digging

imagine peace

John Lennon's boyhood
 was the stuff of opera
 he might be Tommy

bought

Whose interests are served 
 by denying climate change? 
 follow the money

oily

Big Oil's candidates 
 focus on courting money 
 not on governance

hot spot

Clouds pulse off Shasta 
 like a map of Hawaii 
 dying as they drift

garnish

Dubya craved a war 
 ever-shifting rationales 
 were window dressing

written in stone

Water-cut canyons 
 are V-shaped in cross-section 
 glaciers carve out 'U's

you could find it with your eyes closed

Towers of droppings 
 mark rhinoceros trail-heads 
 olfactory cairns

competence

Let hippies do it 
 if FEMA had run Woodstock 
thousands would have died

big brown truck

Ever versatile 
 to improve Kazakhstan's herds 
 UPS ships cows

Castle rooked

Ben Franklin's scion 
lost to Christine O'Donnell 
 sense is so passé

imposed peace

Tito and Saddam 
suppressed sectarian strife 
 and basic freedoms

patience

Chilean miners 
 packed without preservatives 
 won't keep past Christmas

doppler

Like i'm standing still 
 the police cruiser blasts past 
 dwindling to a point

come-on

Caldicott's fourth bore 
 teases us with parted lips 
 but we're frustrated

rootless

Stratocumulus 
rarely mark ground-based thermals 
 unrequited dreams

isomorphic

The scapegoat service 
 evokes Abraham's two sons 
 for those who have eyes

flip flop

Carl Paladino 
 now betrays rabbi Levin 
 as a new wind blows

not ready for prime time

Carl Paladino 
 flounders without principles 
 a bull on a wire

naaseh v'nishmah

Interlingual puns 
 show that Jews and Arabs mixed 
 in the six hundreds

shallow

Mutual trophies 
 each shines on the other's arm 
 he's rich, she's pretty

the razor's edge

quenched in the ice bath
trapped in the Martensite phase
maximally hard

foregut

Ruminant grazers
they carry a heavy cross
burps prompt "who farted?"

in your dreams

your next vario?
augmented reality
with heads-up display

paper trail

Anita Fishman
wed first Epstein, then Harris
but kept publishing

savant

Sage Archimedes
kindled ships with focused light
but couldn't dodge swords

thug

all diplomacy
for Ambassador Bolton
starts and ends with force

a use for hot air

Cheaper than ammo 
 mock tanks full only of air 
 maintain deterrence

unleisured class

Who has time to vote? 
 keeping the wolf from the door 
 keeps the proles passive

track record

Microsoft's new phone 
 battles our expectations 
of Blue Screens of Death

what's a gill to do?

a salmon at sea
never lacks for sodium
upstream, it's precious

raucous

garbage-disposals
straining to digest old shoes
sound like raccoon brawls

conversion factors

The cosmic answer 
 life. . .universe. . .everything 
 equals forty-two

osmotic dilemna

Conserving scant salt 
 as a salmon swims upstream 
 what's a gill to do?

No bargain

 Israeli tourists
 killed their captors in Kashmir
 awful hostages

American egoists

Bin Laden's first goal
 was the Saudi monarchy
we're the after-thought

participatory democracy

in the Ideal State
uncritical ditto-heads
 don't deserve to vote

feed me!

Artisanal food 
 cuts no ice with teenaged boys 
 they're looking for fuel

budget

Twenty five trailers 
 dangle from our state budget 
 like blood-engorged ticks

bigot II

Fred Phelps has rights, too
 May he choke on his own bile
 exercising them

no leg to stand on

Show some gratitude 
 Indigenous Peoples Day 
tolerates White Man

of allegations and realities

Professor Goldsmith 
 conflates alleged terrorists 
 with hardened convicts

Ussher's folly

In six thousand years 
 no reptile could produce wings 
 that requires deep time

low expectations

If they were landlines 
 such spotty sound quality 
 unacceptable

all things are new again

Intruding magma 
 metamorphized the old shale 
 into fine new slate

styx

Rivers of red sludge 
 spill into the blue Danube 
 shroud the corpse in mauve

males seek males

in Afghanistan
a Pashtun minority
seeks hegemony

incurious George

''moral clarity'' 
 in George Bush's lexicon 
 meant no need to think

uncivil rights

Even noxious speech 
 is protected by our courts 
 short off "fighting words''

vice

Beauty's just skin-deep 
but ugly goes to the bone 
 witness Cheney's sneer

all in the family

Karzai's relatives 
 reach out to fellow Pashtuns 
to divide the spoils

windfall

To geologists 
 roadcuts can be a godsend 
 history laid bare

terse

Conjuring a scene 
 in seventeen syllables 
 leaves no room for flab

the soul of wit

The greatest sermons 
 have strong starts and strong endings 
 and nothing between

artifice

Emma Bovary
mistook art for life itself
neglecting the Now

unrequited

only Iraq's Kurds
seem to like Americans
we snub them, of course

protege

perched on my hat-brim
the aegis of a mantis
guards me from the flies

I want to know you from the inside

Dmitri Medvedev 
 may be only a puppet 
 but a fist wears him

futile

Unending cycles 
 higher plants build cellulose 
 fungi break it down

telegraph ave

The streetkid asked me 
"got a daughter I could have?"
 wow. I must be old

liar

Carl Paladino
makes up stuff when facts won't do
 Hey...it's politics!

Cecelia Chang

 The dean at st. John's 
 mistook them for grad students 
 worked kids like her slaves

market value

What's a hostage worth? 
 bargaining with terrorists 
 encourages them

Fed's debtor

Germany paid off 
 WWI's reparations 
 the U.S. Still owes

Justice is blinded

Rahm Emanuel 
 looks forward to Chicago 
 now, we can look back

Nature

Politicians lie
 the way that icecubes are cold
 or that knives are sharp

Total Information Awareness

There's no privacy 
 in Ashcroft's America 
 they're always watching

spectacular

Christine O'Donnell's 
 undignified spectacle 
 isn't leadership

emancipated

The yoke of heaven 
 rests lightly on those who've known 
 another master

simple pleasures

Splitting up firewood 
 sates an atavistic urge 
 if Pete Seeger's right