frothy

Irish investors 
 built extravagant mansions 
 on foam foundations

ionic thought

Action potentials 
 transmute simple chemistry 
 into complex thought

frothy

Irish investors 
 built extravagant mansions 
 on foam foundations

irrational exuberance

Bubbles and pipe dreams 
 made insecure foundations 
 for Irish mansions

cricket

Wow, Brits are patient! 
Cricket matches last longer 
 than most marriages

common wisdom

For the longest time 
 chemists poo-pooed kinases 
 'til there was Gleevac

Inordinate fondness

No less than their shells
 a passion to speciate
 defines the beetles

convictions

It's contrarians 
 who propel science forwards 
 when the crowd is wrong

convergence

Darwin and Russel 
 each using his own data 
 converged on the Truth

black November

Ireland's finances 
thud wettly to the sidewalk 
 like bankers of yore

friends

Solitary Dick 
 Nixon bowled in the White House 
 Obama shoots hoops

trapped

Stormy day derby 
 raindrops cling to the window 
 coursing towards the sill

ozymandias

After Las Vegas 
desert will claim the ruins 
 when the waters's gone

dive!

Raindrops strafe the tub 
 chilling any bit of flesh 
 that isn't submerged

indiscriminate

Professor John Yoo 
 fails to distinguish High Crimes 
 from Code Infractions

asinus asino, sus sui pulcher

Many were awestruck 
 by Adonis' beauty 
 the boar didn't care

know what I mean?

Some teachers discount 
 how their words will be misread 
no theory of mind

perfunctory

Furtive lovemaking 
 may satisfy Darwin's ends 
 but not Eros'

great expectations

Kennedy's long dead 
 official cynicism 
 has replaced ideals

childish

Charles Rangel's tantrum
so impressed the Ethics Board
he got a time-out

absence of evidence

no one speaks badly
about Vladimir Putin
dead men tell no tales

folly

Dietary fads
drive Americans frantic
the French think we're nuts

there's a place for us

without parasites
sex would be extravagant
and males redundant

pedal to the metal

in this Red Queen's Race
each antibiotic fails
as the germs mutate

outlier

House Speaker Boehner
screws up this TV's balance
he's way too orange

guerilla genius

"all flank and no front"
Lawrence of Arabia
re-invented war

Dubya's folly

Since Salah-u-Din
nothing unites the Arabs
like a new Crusade

log jam

request the pat-down
moan inappropriately
share the discomfort

responsible

I'd watch him closely
Ireland's Finance Minister
might jump off a roof

CETP

Gaming the metric
 without fixing the problem
 one can waste billions

the face of light

The eye-lid of dawn 
 lifts from the East's horizon 
 day breaks in a blink

again?

Bailing out Ireland 
worries Germany's bankers 
 Einheit costs a lot

First the Osties...

German taxpayers 
 wonder what it is they've bought 
 bailing out Ireland

System?

Bandwidth for cellphones 
 worth several billion rupees 
 made sweet door-prizes

Traumatized

Bharata's children
 orphaned during Partition
 can't seem to know peace

indispensible?

One good solar storm 

 would demolish GPS 

 as an afterthought

keep it brief

Conjure up whole worlds 
 in seventeen syllables 
 feel like a terse god

deracinated

Displaced by glaciers 
 diamonds found in our Midwest 
 point towards Canada

annals of a former world

Auriferrous clays 
 trace ancient river courses 
 flowing towards lost Seas

control

Calibrated debt 
 keeps the masses in harness 
 short of rebellion

qualified praise

For a researcher 
 'he's adept at PowerPoint' 
 damns him with faint praise

Galut

Exiled from Mecca 
 the Prophet's society 
 thrived in Medina

for everything, there is a season

Patient as bare trees 
 mycelia forebear fruit 
 waiting for the rain

mushroom hunting

Holding their cards close 
 mycelia rope-a-dope 
 waiting for the rain

Falsifiable

 At Shaarayim
 Finkelstein's chronology
met carbon dating

bubble

Bloated with gases 
 the corpse of Wall Street blew up 
 spewing corruption

Diva

American cows 
 tuned for a hi-test diet 
 can't compete on grass

sans all

Factory chickens 
 devoid of any flavor 
 too much like tofu

hero

The mythic hero 
 rides in to impose order 
 Bad Day at Black Rock

Obama's bipartisanship

Unrequited love 
 covering up Bush's crimes 
 can't buy him a friend

opinionated

Although it gets Press 
 just being contrarian 
doesn't make one right

endless

Pulse drones in his ears 
 can one night last forever? 
 insomniac's plight

pet food

Aggressive raccoons 
 prowl Alameda's footpaths 
 enforcing lease-laws

exemplar

Old popes should retire 
or so Benedict opines
hypothetically

worrisome gaps

Computer vision 
 fears trees' shadows on the road 
 they might be chasms

anonymous

Arizona law 
 lets candidates launder cash 
 to buy elections

blame

Fever wracks Haiti 
 searching for someone to blame 
 for the cholera

agent orange

Harsh defoliants 
 stripped the Ho Chi Minh Trail bare 
 felling man and tree

one law for the stranger and for the homeborn

Pope Benedict cedes 
 condoms can be justified 
 for social outcasts

9981

Truman's precedent
integrating our army
stands for gays as well

memory is cheap

Aristotle feared
writing destroys memory
little did he dream...

changes

As Keith Richards grew
choirboy morphed to scout leader
then to Jack Sparrow

do nothing II

congressman Armey
obstructs progress just as well
from outside the House

do nothing

Dick Armey's program
for paralyzing congress
doesn't need a Seat

b'reshit

before creation
abyssal chaos brooded
pregnant in the dark

Who Governs?

Nasrallah's hubris
dragged Lebanon into war
that's insurrection

stove piped

screening out the truth
Karl Rove chose convenient lies
to justify war

diplomatic

defending his wife
ambassador Joe Wilson
took on Dick Cheney

Old Soldier

Douglas MacArthur
picked a fight out of his league
then faded away

it's in the details

Justus von Liebig
explained macronutrients
but missed vitamins

high fidelity

downloading Beatles
fans remember their first loves
when they're sixty four

grey roots

downloading Beatles
the 21st century
deigns to put down roots

Moshe ben Maimon
called Abraham an "adult"
alone in the world

mr. Richards

Captain Jack Sparrow
emerged as choirboy, then scout
faded in Keith's past

onboard

cabbies of London
don't rely on GPS
they have The Knowledge

of medium and message

Write about painting 
 dance about architecture 
 don't ask me to care

Great Expectations

Why's this time different 
 can the leopard change his spots 
 politicians lie

9981

Truman's precedent 
 integrating our army 
 stands for gays as well

what cost honor?

Private citizens 
 moral as corporations 
"strategic default''

omens

Lenticular stacks 
hover over the North Bay 
 clouds of Damocles

seniority pays

Alaskan voters
live on Federal earmarks
vote for Murkowski!

long-term storage

Forget CO2 
 for sequestering carbon 
 coal is the ideal

bad citizens

As Rich as Croesus 
 and as moral as Iago 
 corporate persons

trade wars

Subsidized cotton 
 keeps daughters illiterate 
 all around the world

green revolution II

Fixing nitrogen 
Haber prolonged the Great War 
and transformed a world

green revolution

Haber's fertile mind 
kept Germany in the war 
 and boosted farm yields

holy cow

Ancient miracles 
 Making steaks out of grasses 
 wander the pasture

beggar thy neighbor

China's trade surplus 
 sucks down the world's currencies 
 into Beijing's maw

lost in translation

Professor Alter 
 toils to translate poetry 
 into something else

can't beat this

Forget CO2 
 for sequestering carbon 
 coal is the ideal

HAL

As Rich as Croesus 
 and as moral as Iago 
 corporate persons

form and function

Hamburger patties 
 biconcave like red blood cells 
fill out on the grill

Power

addicted to coal 
 now I am become Shiva 
 destroyer of worlds

sailors' delight?

Hot pink mammata 
 glow in the sun's dying rays 
 ominous evening

cutting it close

On Armistice Day 
 europe stepped back from the brink 






 temporarily

charisma

Ralph Nader drones on
as implaccable as Death
but half as charming

too good

"chance of thunderstorms...
light and variable winds"
call it a "sick day"

Can you hear me now??

cell-phone connections
as solid as promises
from politicians

earthmovers

Plowing the Hudson 
 depositing Long Island 
 glaciers carved New York

yap yap yap

Senator DeMint 
 barks like he yields real power 
 big dogs ignore him

measure for measure II

Mehserle's sentence 
 turns on the judge's mistakes 
 not on evidence

indeterminate

Floods of teenagers 
 spill out of the nation's malls 
 free-range? Or feral?

yurt

The dome of st. Paul's 
 girt by sir Chris' steel chain 
 the world's biggest yurt

stunted

Starved for affection 
most infants will fail to thrive 
 the rest are crazy

post-partisan

Campaigning's over 
 let's hang some war profiteers 
 it's good for morale

stuck

"Orange John'' Boehner 
 had profited from gridlock 
 now he's stuck with it

there is none so deaf...

Yakking ceaselessly 
 without pausing to listen 
 there's no dialogue

measure for measure

Mehserle's sentence 
 outraged Oakland's citizens 
 they saw a murder

splay

Centrifugal loads 
tend to burst a dome's lantern
 without buttresses

splash

Millennialists 
make no plans for tomorrow 
might as well go big

no take-out

Last night's fresh powder 
 sublimes away in the sun 
 manna for skiers

priorities

All is transience 
 ski the powder while it's fresh 
we'll eat when it's gone

sympathy for the Devil

Belgium's archbishop 
 took a creampie to the face 
 no one sympathized

the show must go on!

Christine O'Donnell 
 promises she's not done yet 
 That's entertainment!

quo bono?

Potable water 
 saves more lives than wonder drugs 
 for pennies per day

traitors

War profiteering 
 never got prosecuted 
 among friends of George

out, out brief candle

Good players and bad 
 sing their parts then fade to black 
 all is transience

attention seeking behavior

Elliott Spitzer 
 had to know that he'd get caught 
 he had enemies

out of control

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

look at the monkey!

Behind opaque prose 
 Fractional Reserve Lending 
 conjures cash from air

smoke and mirrors

Pay no attention 
 to what's behind the curtain 
 vote like good cattle

ill-served

Enacted as law 
 bills drafted by lobbyists 
 which no one has read

tainted

The best government 
 a billionaire's cash can buy 
 works in Washington

Oligarchs

 Four powerful men 
 brought rails to California 
 and grew fat on them

It's Logical

Paradoxically 
 in the best possible world 
 Spinoza died young

non potestis servire...

More than he served God 
 Eddie Long served his ego 
 "love" means many things

Full Faith and Credit...

Fiat currency 
 rests on paper, ink, and faith 
 bullion is for soup

puppet-master

Ashfaq Kayani 
 employs his private network 
 in the Taliban

politics by other means

Rabin's assassin 
 defeated peace in his day 
 our day is here, now

too much

Dignified silence 
 beats proving yourself a fool 
 by speaking too much

delegation

since Schechter-Poultry
 the War Powers Act can't fly
 the Act was stillborn

contrast

Dear Sarah Palin 
 we beg you to run in '12 
 make Obama shine!

the power of the ghost writer

Teddy Sorensen 
 gave wings to Kennedy's prose 
 inspired synergy

the face, and the backing

Without bank backing 
 you might be a Kerensky 
 but not a Lenin

soccer moms

Kids in soccer cleats 
 chill as their moms mark ballots 
 Danville afternoon