bought

Right-wing noise machine 
 demonizes the unions 
 to enrich the Kochs

snowblind

Blinded by his spew 
 overtaking the snowplow 
 doubly hazardous

coherent

Paradoxically 
 synchrotron radiation 
 lets you tune quanta

squeak!

Every step I take 
 squeaks like silver amalgam 
 cold snow storm last night

raccoon face

Blue sky at 10k 
 everyone knows where you've been 
 skier's leprosy

microcosm

Wrought in wool and gold 
 tabernacle aped cosmos 
 in miniature

free at last

Pried out of ski boots 
feet compose sweet hymns of praise 
 for liberation

go big

Hucking the cornice 
 the grand homes of Malibu 
 frolic in the storm

deep

Spring in Rochester 
 excavates the fossil cars 
 missing since the storm

legacy

George, George, Jeb and Neil 
 four horsemen of destruction 
 Bush-league governance

epidemiology

A foot of wet snow 
 welds parked cars to the asphalt 
 heartattack weather

gravity

Better ski chalets 
 sit high on their properties 
 driveway drains to street

security

Skiing in mittens 
 the same thought recurs each time: 
 cellphones need lanyards

design tradeoffs

Gibbons and humans 
 share glenohumeral joints 
 suited to baseball

bounded in a nutshell

Colonel Qaddafi 
 remains president for life 
 of his shrinking cell

evil smells, evil times

Scent of burning brakes 
 descending the Sierra 
amateur drivers

Scott Walker

The Kochs' Trojan horse 
 wants to sell Wisconsin short 
 to pay his masters

the joint

Knees load and unload 
 pounding through the mogul field 
 youngsters' suspension

Prison 'suicides' 
 often mask a darker truth
 dead men tell no tales

cloudsuck

the Ideal Gas Law
 PV=nRT
fails at the dewpoint

the cost of Liberty

vigilance slumbers
"not the 'droids you're looking for"
 Jedi NSL

hero

a new SuperMan
 guards his adoptive planet
 "I am Number Four"

what the market will bear

the market's like that:
 when you want a deal real bad
 you'll get a bad deal

thank you sir!

Outrageous hazings 
 to become an officer 
 taint Sudan's police

perks

Chinese wine buyers 
 dominate Bourdeau's market 
 empires swig claret

sovereignty

Julian Assange
empowers electorates
 to vote real issues

it's personal

personal haiku
 failing to communicate
 to anyone else

pessimist

the blood of tyrants
nourishes our liberties
 in Jefferson's mind

blame

Colonel Qaddafi 
blames the strife on  bin Laden...
 . . .or maybe the Jews

temporary insanity

to catch a girl's eye
 testosterone poisoning
reckless behavior

spontaneity

Feral daffodils 
 defy the landscaper's plan 
 botany snubs art

political theater

Rod Blagojevich 
 tried to sell a senate seat 
it's fucking priceless

upstart

Rahm Emanuel 
 shocked the Chicago public 
 he's not named Daley

dark frame

For reasons obscure 
 my cell phone takes photographs 
 of pocket linings

rabid

Colonel Qaddafi 
"mad dog of the Middle East"
 kills his own puppies

Ozymandias

colonel Quaddafi
loves the Libyan people
they're soft to walk on

disruptive

Vast reserves of oil 
 don't make Saudis feel secure 
 when their world's in flames

class war

Colonel Qaddafi 
 finds protesters outrageous 
 they gum up tanks' treads

stubborn as an ass

Colonel Qaddafi 
 vows 'no negotiations' 
 Everything will burn

egoist

Colonel Qaddafi 
 vows a vast conflagration 
 reigning drama queen

the new country

Motley assembly 
 everything west of Auburn 
 came from somewhere else

deluded

This will be easy 
 Iraq will fund its own war 
 Rumsfeld's fantasy

on the rebound

Like Richard III 
 the full moon woos land bereft 
 of the setting sun

quo bono

Globalization 
 sends Mexican food to us 
 their kids in hungry

memento mori

stark black butterfly
 sucks the pluot's white blossoms
Death attends the dance

dehumanizing

colonel Quadhafi
calls protesters "cockroaches"
they clog his tanks' treads

fitting

Petite Cordelia 
 sought for Dustin Hoffman's Lear 
 'there are no small roles'

no time wasted

Dog-hearted full moon 
 woos the land newly bereft 
 of the setting sun

triumphant

Sweet cheery jonquils 
 flourish where nothing else will 
 they're toxic to deer

two Americas

Rushing to rescue 
 financial sector fat cats 
 they trample the poor

fixed nitrogen

For the war effort 
 crystals of saltpeter grew 
 under the outhouse

suckers

Wisconsin's voters 
 bought the Koch brothers' platform 
 hook, line and sinker

tinderbox

Tiny Tunisia 
 sparked a vast conflagration 
 in the Arab world

rampant

Lighting the hillside 
 trumping the gardener's plans 
feral daffodils

lunar eclipse

heaven-faring warg
vomits it's sky-candle meal
balance is restored

they'll find you next Spring

drowning in the snow
lungs full of frozen pleasure
chilly way to go

snow eater

eight-foot-tall steel knives
carve the berm into the screw
impellers launch it

Canon

Despite it's late date
the Rabbis went to great lengths
to include "Daniel"

powder

powder fills my tracks
snow-waves curl around my knees
bust out the fat-boys

wistful

post-holing back out
lots of time to contemplate
the piste not taken

iambic pentameter

monosyllables
appended to the lines' starts
shoehorn trochees in 

Christmas Carol

the first ghost beckoned
"bear but a touch of my hand"
fly into your past

ski culture

wind-driven powder
psyched the Sugarbowl crowd up
Squaw shut the lifts down

light-struck

hailing in Auburn
as sun struggles through the clouds
breathtaking, really

Tantalized

the lift-lines get old
holiday weekend skiing
way too "Disneyland"

the tomb was empty

serene in their faith
Chilean miners hang tough
no grave can hold them

ugly mob

shutting the chairs down
while skiers queue sixty-deep
lifties get black looks

Lear X

Gloucester's bastard son 
 duped his noble-born brother 
 to seem the villain

instability

Sporadic hail storms 
 augur well for hang gliding 
 chaos in heaven

priority

Europe's first burghers 
 left ceramic doll-houses 
 under the Black Sea

the Cure

Whatcha want from me? 
 unhappy psychiatrist 
 doctor, heal thyself

yeti

Snow-crusted whiskers 
guard my face from Winter's blast
  I am the Walrus

buddy system

Off piste powder stash
 If you biff it in these trees
Theyll find you next spring

Lear IX

Lear's youngest daughter 
 proved the best man of the bunch 
 Elizabeth Rex

O brave new world!

Abundant iron 

 over-turned the Bronze Age world 

disruptive technology

disruptive technology

Abundant iron 
 over-turned the Bronze Age world 
 weapons became cheap

Lear VIII

For want of a son 
 Lear left Britain to his girls 
 see: Henry VIII

Lear VII

Lear, in his folly 
 left Britain to his daughters 
 Tudors took it ill

In the Beginning...

Primordial life 
 may have used just RNA 
 proteins came later

awesome

 He came back awestruck 
 bumps the size of volkswagons! 
 Vail's not like Vermont

ravening

Primitive tire chains 
 grant traction when all else fails 
 tearing up the road

vision

To glimpse the future 
 strive to understand the past 
 the motifs repeat

garment of days

Jacob Marley's ghost 
 wore the chains he'd forged in life 
 a ponderous weight!

nivenauts

Helmet video 
pans from white to blue to black 
 full-twisting faceplant

stark

Monochrome ski-scene 
 evokes Vermont or New York 
 not California

ungulates?

Orcas and hippos 
 share a common ancestor 
 their teeth betray them

Anathem II

Stephenson's novels 
 masquerade as adventures 
 but ideas drive them

Lear VI

Poor Dustin Hoffman! 
 too old to play Romeo 
 too short to play Lear

Lear V

Dog-hearted daughters 

 vied to love their father less 

 and the bastard more

Lear IV

Dog-hearted daughters 
 vied to love their father less 
 than bastard Edmund

Lear III

A light Cordelia 
 is the critical asset 
 when you're casting Lear

immanence

The numinous lurks 
 any spark might cleanse the doors 
 wired into your brain

Lear II

Lear's bitchy daughters 

 fight to share the bastard's bed 

 ignoble dogpack

Lear

Lear's bitchy daughters 
 squabble over the bastard 
 ignoble dogpack

globalization

The U.S. Market 
 drives the planet-wide drug trade 
 out-sourcing vices

demographics

Arab autocrats
wait for the next shoe to drop
the kids are restive

press, freed

Arab journalists
revel in new-found riches
so many scandals!

al Jazeera

The whole Arab world
watches the news from Egypt
autocrats tremble

lovely, dark and deep

Robert Frost's forest
invited contemplation
were there only time

focused

Paul A. M. Dirac
loved his maths more than his mates
Aspberger's syndrome

smug

Party-of-Hoover
keeps pitching austerity
except for the rich

golden age

hunter-gatherers
before farmers forced them out
lived lives of leisure

Ramadan

Hassan al-Banna's
grandson joined the Swiss elite
so far from his roots

confusion II

a badly cooked steak
goes by the code name "well done"
English is cryptic

confusion

pity the tourist
asking for a steak cooked right
instead gets "well done"

vocation

alas, the image
came unbidden in a dream
I just transcribed it

Xanadu

Coleridge insists
"Xanadu" came in a dream
he transcribed fragments

Sapir-Warf

the liminal state
swimming Day-wards out of Dream
casts image in prose

professionalism

the Bard of Avon
banished trochees from his verse
iambs paid the bills

the Redactor

Who Wrote the Bible?
Richard Elliott Friedman
nominates Ezra

Deep Time

James Hutton perceived
no vestige of Beginning
no prospect of End

Winter sport

seven crows, soaring
twirling, diving and jousting
above Disney ridge

tricky

Hosni Mubarak 
 tossed the reins to the army 
 full-twisting dismount

looking backwards, not forwards

Banking on despots 
 keeps our foreign policy 
 in debt to the past

instability in heaven

Egypt's Armed Forces 
 guarantee the transition 
 no one knows what's next

change

Mubarak peers out 
 like Sisera's old mother 
 at a whole new world

boundless

One world's not enough 
 to encompass the ideas 
 of Freeman Dyson

cynic

Not content with faith 
 Elisha ben Abuyah 
 forsook happiness

Anathem

Raz promised Ala 
 were he granted a fourth life 
 he'd spend it with her

snipped

Upstart Macabees 
 can't be traced to David's line 
 so we'll skip that book

vapid

Expertly packaged 
 Justin Bieber's concert film 
 doesn't need content

going cheap!

Antique autocrat 
 must sell to make room for change. 
 will negotiate

behind

Still behind the curve 
 Obama backed Mubarak 
 history rolled past

unsavory friends

Beneath the cheap words 
 Washington loves a strongman 
 it's so convenient

about face

Muddled messages 
 when the lone dissenting voice 
 is the president's

tidy

Six by two by two 
 ludicrously small coffin 
 to contain a life

creationist bunk

No scripture designed 
 mammalian clotting cascades 
 it just took Deep Time

precarious

Hosni Mubarak 
 perched atop the pyramid 
 of his spy network

accessory after the fact

Barack Obama's 
 conspiracy of silence 
 guards Bush's war-crimes

old hand

In the new Egypt 
 who'll write the constitution?
 Send Noah Feldman

famine

my Winter garden
languishes for want of rain
I blame Dick Cheney

salad days

soar on a thermal

bask in a star-lit hotspring

life just ain't that bad

knowns and unknowns

Given two people 
 who agree on everything 
 one isn't thinking

inventive

Like everything else 
 L. Ron Hubbard's war record 
 is mostly fiction

politicized

Hassan al-Banna
 waved the banner of Islam
 in Great Britain's face

Jeb?

Campaigning towards '12 
 inevitable as death 
 there's another Bush

uncompromising

Belgium's government 
 gropes for a way past deadlock 
 see 'Lyssistrata'

still

Crushing high pressure 
 oppresses California 
 convection seems dead

selection bias

If you only write 
 from the depths of suffering 
 you write a dark tale

half-portrait

Manic depressives 
 only paint in their up moods 
 the rest is darkness

deferred maintenance

One broken window 
 invites more vandalism 
 upkeep cannot wait

beyond "why"

Moshe ben Maimon
 sought to see the face of God
 in Natural Law

combat-ready

Senator Jim Webb 
clears the decks for twenty-twelve 
 prepare to engage

pump it

Karman vortex streets 
 break the contrail's simple lines 
 entropy evolves

listless

Fair weather sailors 
 bolt upright in the water 
 going nowhere fast

touring display

Philadelphia 
 photographs of artifacts 
 meta-Dadaists

fresh

Rosy-cheeked students 
 flirting in the climbing gym 
 make me look ancient

new again

The moon's first crescent 
 chases the sun down the sky 
 plunging towards the sea

same old

Hollywood cliches 
 long ago ceased to amuse 
 I crave novelty

spartan breakfast

Lenticular clouds 
 piled up on mt. Shasta's peak 
 tall stack, no whipped cream

values for others

Persian paradox 
 back freedoms in Tunisia 
 but crush them at home

values

honor law, not men!
 charismatic leadership
 leaves no succession

an Ideas whose time has come III

Hungry Egyptians 
 crave more than subsidized bread 
 they want human rights

the state

Thirty years later 
the State of Emergency 
 has become Egypt

timetables

September won't do 
 Mubarak's day is over 
 Egypt wants change now

arrogance

Mubarak's regime 
 treats voters as a nuisance 
 there's no room to talk

lord of the dance

Sex and destruction 
 entwine in one deity 
 Sri Natarajah

now you see the violence inherent in the system!

Mubarak's hired thugs 
make sure things get violent 
 it's their metier

oppression II

Mubarak's kill-switch 
 alarmed internet users 
 all around the world

oppression

Deafening silence 
 all Egypt just went off-line 
 Mubarak's kill-switch

swept away

Like Pharaohs of yore 
 the Mubarak dynasty 
 went down in the mud

social safetynet

The crisis wears on 
 dandelions grow scarce in Greece 
 the poor live on them

inside joke

Not for everyone 
 Rothko and his admirers 
 share synaesthesia

an Ideas whose time has come III

Hungry Egyptians 
 crave more than subsidized bread 
 they want human rights

brilliant

Vivid orange newt 
 set on a verdant moss throne 
 biologic gem

what a State

Thirty years later 
 the State of Emergency 
 has become Egypt