this one's better; it goes to eleven

the eleventh plague
sank Pharaoh and his horsemen
in a sea of mud

runaway warming

Decreased albedo 
 deep blue seas shed their sea-ice 
 positive feed-back

impoverished II

explode into space
those who haven't learned to fly
dream in just 2-D

impoverished

Expand your palette! 
 those who haven't learned to fly 
 dream in black and white

a reflective mood

Glenn Beck's viewership 
 surrounded by idiots 
 in every mirror

light show

Launch North, then turn East 
 jetliners fly nose to tail 
 as if on parade

neo-Mecca

Modest pilgrims' garb 
 hides what architecture can't 
some Muslims like bling

More, and less

Edit it tighter! 
 you're no Miguel Cervantes 
 Most readers want less

short journey

Many ways to die 
 converge at the Gilman ramp 
 merging with the Styx

Oz

pay no attention
to who's behind the curtain!
vote the party line

dumb-show

Putin's sock-puppet 
 claims to be running Russia 
 And Cheney's the pope

and you can't get out of the game

Each growing crystal 
 minimizes entropy 
 all wins are local

Grozny!

Ramzan Kadyrov 
 uses courts to quash critics
 Stalinist poseur

Ramzam the Terrible

Putin's pet tyrant 
 thinks he's Chechnya's own Stalin 
 at least in Grozny

paradox

noisy atheists
endorse what can't be proven
with religious zeal

ominous

qwoth Oppenheimer:
Now I am become Shiva
Destroyer of Worlds

murk

thousands of feet deep
Salt Lake City's inversion
fouls the Winter sky

Archimedes

fourteen hot-tubbers
one rough ton of human flesh
left scant hot water

sorry, wrong number

text without context
intended for someone else
strange intimacy

rigor

haiku for stoners
without metrical constraints
self-indulgent crap

timing is everything

Jane Austen's screen-plays
pre-dated motion pictures
strange monopoly

terse

Edit it tighter! 

 you're no Miguel Cervantes 

 Most readers want less

timing is everything

All of a sudden 
 we're blessed with abundant rain 
 batten the hatches

and they're off!

put your wagers down!

 the mansions of Malibu

 race down to the beach

balance of terror

The rest of the world 
 spends less for its armed forces 
 than we alone spend

cui bono?

Whose revolution 
 didn't count on armaments 
 from meddling neighbors?

neo-Ptolomists

Lucretia Borgia 
 loved her brother, Cesare 






Not in a good way

who governs? III

Who's sovereign here? 
 jury nullification 
 worries the fascists

silver foot

Over-watering 
 raises saplings with weak roots 
 like George W.

saber-rattling

Koreans take arms 
 promising a Holy War 
 in time for Christmas

mud II

Malibu's mansions 

 huck themselves off extreme cliffs 

the landing's killer

mud

Malibu's mansions 
 huck themselves off scenic cliffs 
 to bask on the beach

de gustibus

wow, check out that hat!
there's no accounting for tastes
or the lack thereof

wetware

Action potentials 
 somehow conjure abstract thought 
 mind is what brains do

alignment

eclipse and solstice
 coincide once in a life
 our clock strikes Tuesday

unreadable

even if Hawkings
 were as brilliant as Hutton
he lacks a Playfair

squirrel bane

bushy-tailed or straight
 Pale Male's the scourge of rodents
 they taste like chicken

vacuous

Living the life style 
 feeling none of the passion 
 rock-star as zombie

Wallace Simpson

The woman he loved 
 dragged Edward from England's throne 
 to keep her bed warm

Firth

Colin Firth's big year 
 first Isherwood, then the King 
 made great cinema

eclipse II

Like a candle-stub 
 the moon gutters in the sky 
 Fenris is winning

eclipse

Orion blazes 
 in a sky suddenly dark 
 as the moon's eclipsed

snuffed

The moon's extinguished 
 snuffed out under earth's shadow 
 stomped like a cockroach

out there

Text without context 
 etched gold plaques slung into space 
 interstellar spam

gleanings

stooped under their loads
 olive trees await harvest
only goats oblige

eclipse

perfect alignment
casts earth's shadow on the moon
near-miss is brighter

celestial clockwork

eclipse and solstice
coincide once in a life
our clock strikes Tuesday

worthy

I pray for the strength 
 to be the sort of person 
 my dog thinks I am

Candor

Speaking from the grave 
 so that he can speak freely 
 Twain recounts his life

I have an idea...

action-potentials
somehow conjure abstract thought
"mind" is what brain does

the history of mud

Dead Sea sediments
chronicle a changing world
pollen grain by grain

short attention span

Twitter's market cap.
 twice that of the New York Times
content's so passé

bird's eye perspective

Pale Male's Central Park 
 is infested with humans 
 but he's tolerant

lanesplitters

Glaciers of tail-lights 
 flowing imperceptibly 
 watch bikers ski past

decrepit

Haughty Tythonis 
 didn't ask for lasting youth 
 old age rode him hard

Rare Exports III

Finnish cinema 
 doesn't play Hollywood's game 
 kids must be tough there

double agent

Kayani's clients 
 among Pashtun terrorists 
 won't let NATO win

Rare Exports II

Pre-Christian nightmares 
 haunt the children of Finland 
 their Grinch is Santa

Xe

Reek of corruption 
 as if from an opened grave 
 clings to Blackwater

elevated perspective

Climbing the mountain 
some attain the grace of age 
 above the weather

Rare Exports

Finnish zombie films 
 conflate Santa with Old Nick 
 elves haunt the long night

Who governs? II

how come the rich kids
 get the really big presents?
 they wrote the tax code!

gender roles

Femininity 
 gets dissected in Black Swan 
 Fight Club in tutus

long arm

Putin's iron fist 
 tickles Medvedev's innards 
 to make his lips move

nap time

Heads back and slack-jawed 
 commuters stuck in traffic 
 seem to be napping

new tech, new strategy

Through millenia 
 the high ground determined wars 
 this year, it's joy sticks

what counts II

one more sex scandal
couldn't stop Berlusconi
 Italians don't care

nova stella

Cassiopeia 
 hosted a supernova 
 that blew Tycho's mind

Igor

Tycho Brahe's dwarf 
entertained dignitaries 
 to his petty realm

money-mad

In the mid-eighties 
 the first billion dollar drug 
 drove Pharma insane

pests III

Marauding wild boar? 
 even garden pests have class 
 in Alsace-Lorraine

Vermin envy

Wild boar raid gardens @
stealing the maize in Alsace 
 i just get rodents

gastarbeiten

Ultra-practical 
 China just mints new Muslims 
 to work in Mecca

like a rock

A boot to the head 
 works better than reveille 
 to wake a marine

Sham democracy

 Who's sovereign here? 
 if we can't know 'state secrets' 
 we're voting on lies

pests II

It seems so unfair 
 Alsatian gardens get boar 
 I just get rodents

pests

Even the vermin 
 have more class in French gardens 
 wild boar raid their maize

stimulus

Our Great Depression 
 died at last in WWII 
 That's a drastic cure

scandalous

Paying teenaged girls
 Silvio Berlusconi 
 out-scandals the Church

paranoia

President Nixon 
 trusted neither Jews nor Blacks 
 . . .nor anyone else

The uses of terror

 Riding the crisis 
 Bush cultivated our fears 
 to seize more power

off-budget costs

War is corrupting 
 no heart can remain unstained 
 killing our brothers

the People's Revolution

Cities in China 
 bulldoze villages to grow 
 peasants get the boot

gender roles

Femininity 
 gets dissected in Black Swan 
 Fight Club in tutus

Korea's last threat

Waves of immigrants 
 when North Korea implodes 
 worry the Chinese

follow the money II

Who stands to profit 
 as North Korea implodes? 
 arms sales would go down. . .

follow the money

Global Arms merchants 
 know where their profits come from 
 peace is bad business

bully

Julian Assange
showed us what's done in our name
threatening allies

bully

Julian Assange
showed us what's done in our name
threatening allies

moderation

Thomas Jefferson
ate meat as a "condiment"
to adorn his greens

an audience of one

who needs such poems?
tall and blonde and self-absorbed
they speak to no one

priorities II

Kentucky's budget
includes building Noah's ark
healthcare's optional

boundaries

are there boundaries
beyond which no debts bind us?
Who is thy neighbor?

full of it

this lame-duck congress
can't move legislation through
"fecal impaction"

Oh No!

John Lennon's great love
tore the Beatles asunder
and broke his fans' hearts

quid pro quo

The book of Daniel 
 introduced an after-life 
 to settle accounts

ipsos custodes

Cyber criminals 
 paid by China's government 
 guard the Pirate State

what counts

Our democracy 
needs leaders who've learned to count 
 voters, not dollars

priorities

live in the moment
getting airborne is the goal
the miles are gravy

irreconcilable

two halves never meet
too busy being clever
to ever listen

grub

eating at Raleigh's
or most places in England
could drive one to drink

topsy turvy

Party of Lincoln
at war with our president
insurrectionists

magic bullets

soviet gunships
transmuted Afghan farmers
to Mujahedeen

collective

tribal Chicago
prosecutes the entire gang
for one member's crimes

ethics

censure Charles Rangel!
or give up the last pretense
that ethics matter

dazzling

optimized for dusk
deers' eyes bleach out in headlamps
dazzled by the light

transitions

step into the light
the next train is right on time
this may sting a bit

daybreak

breakfast on the road
before the diners open
one pie with two forks

afternoon

turn between the ruts
don't be looking for an edge
when your board's airborne

independent suspension

under his stiff boots
skis flex to trace the terrain
two-inch-tall bindings

assumed risk

if you've ducked the gate
who would blame the engineeer
if the train hits you?

conservation of snow

wind gives, and wind takes
powder scoured from the summit
piles up in the trees

sideways

still riding dirty
every time I hear my edge
I'm giving up glide

sculpting big

farmers of the snow
planting fence to reap powder
where there are no trees

pay attention

CHECK FOR LOOSE CLOTHING
riding the lift down would suck
dangling by your scarf

conspiracy II

haiku are sketches
the reader participates
to conjure a world

conspiracy

to conjure a world
the reader is complicit
with haiku's author

played

Yemen's president
plays us like a violin
we pay, he dithers

issues

Growling and snapping 
 Kim Jong-Il passes the torch 
 familial rabies

money laundering

Industrial farms 
 reap billions in subsidies 
 for corn we don't need

Green tide

 Ahmadinejad 
 survived one impeachment vote 
 but the tide's rising

never too late

All the cheerleaders 
 love the guy in the red truck 
 in his fantasy

gradient

All landings are loud 
 either wind screams in your ears 
 or the earth smites thee

self-referential

Haiku are easy 
 but literary merit 
 is more elusive

mouser

The hawks keep hunting 
 but the first kill of the day 
 goes to the egret

tunable composites

Balsa to rosewood 
 composites of cellulose 
 span a vast spectrum

deniers and analysts

Among insurers 
 the debate is last year's news 
 climate change is real

ironic

The ironic twist 
 makes haiku interesting 
 without it, most suck

solidarity

Black America 
 no longer votes as a bloc 
 class has replaced race