same job twice

A great Sys-admin 
 never does the same job twice 
 he automates it

monetize this!

Textureless pink sludge 
 reclaimed from the butcher's saw 
 gets sold as 'ground beef'

hawk

Senator McCain 
 calls for still more use of force 
 the budget be damned

externalities

Privatizing risk 
 has the bankers crying 'Foul!' 
 Wall Street's all profit

years of practice II

Bavarian pubs 
 pump endless rivers of beer 
 through expert livers

slurpee

An arthropod's blood 
 sloshing freely in its shell 
 juice-box for spiders

years of practice

Well-practiced livers 
 process whole rivers of beer 
in Bavaria

nation of chickens

Read today's scandal 
run in circles! Scream and shout! 
repeat tomorrow

new disorder

In a single week 
 earthquakes and revolutions 
 rearranged the world

cruel and unusual

multiple post-docs
 bizarre hazing ritual
 for academics

flats

Small skating movements 
 pump skiers past the flat bits 
 'boarders piss and moan

do it again!

Repeating motifs 
 can frustrate gene sequencers 
 VCs don't notice

fuming

Headline in Auburn: 
 'highway closures good business' 
it's all perspective

uncompromising

Evil's not abstract 
 Phil Ochs saw it in Nixon 
 unequivocally

miscarriage

Oscar Grant's murder 
 got down-rated at trial 
 'involuntary'

Great Dictator

Presidents for Life 
 get to make up words at will 
 search 'zenga-zenga'

hawkish

UN-backed airstrikes 
 need to enlist Obama 
 cue the Valkyries!

immersion

three hours door-to-door
trades Sierras for suburbs
waking from the dream

de gustibus

worn close to the heart
accordions hug you back
love is deaf, as well

low expectations

make the pie higher!
put food on your family!
babbling idiot

"I'm in control here"

Alexander Haig
weirdly like Dr. Strangelove
when Reagan was shot

haute cuisine

pretentious desserts
threaten to put your eye out
but taste like cardboard

terse

Homer or Tolkien
could keep audiences rapt
I keep mine shorter

kept

pity Celeborn!
married above his station
too dumb to notice

innocent

unwary pigeons
fly away from boys and hawks
not from pelicans

is it good for the Elves?

Silmarillion
Tolkien sang of joy and woe
and intermarriage

chiasmic

were the Ring taken
Bombadil must fall at last
Last as he was First

powder II

pointing the fall-line
praying I don't submarine
deep in the backseat

tableux

Such a pretty cast 
 each might be a Greek statue 
 and they act the part

Des Hommes et des Dieux

What were they thinking? 
no chase scene, no blasts, no sex 
 Leave it to the French

Of Gods and Men

'Des hommes et des dieux' 
 no chase scene, no blasts, no sex 
 What were they thinking?

barriers

Dietary laws 
 deter people from dating 
 sex still finds a way

new disorder

In a single week 
 earthquakes and revolutions 
 rearranged the world

the end is always near

Nuke plants are burning 
 the imagination reels 
 apocalyptic!

future performance II

An historian 
 peering into the future 
 needs humility

future performance

Through a glass, darkly 
 we extrapolate our pasts 
 out towards what may be

powder-keg

Saudis in Bahrain 
 risk a Sunni-Shia war 
 new Sarajevo?

Psychedelic Club

Don Lattin's new book 
 recounts Andrew Weil career 
 self-aggrandizing

poseur

In his later years 
 Andrew Weil wore Alpert's beard 
 trying to be cool

microcosm

Crows orbit the owl 
 bound by their sense of outrage 
 strong as gravity

bought

Only Armed Forces 
 claim to be 'all volunteer' 
 while they work for pay

weaning

Years of Mac-N-Cheese 
 makes children soft, wan and dull 
 they are what they eat

old school

Creeping retronyms 
 stigmatize technologies 
 that were new last year

morning after

Noon at the frat-house 
 cold pizza served with warm beer 
 breakfast of champions

Marked

Congressman Foley 
 can't resist an open mike 
 or  tim, or bruce or...

pink sludge

The stuff of nightmares 
 cheap industrial ground meat 
 might be anyone

blind justice

Don't teach your girlfriend 
 the taint of special treatment 
 doesn't fade with time

priorities II

A crease in my sock 
 forced me into the ski-lodge 
 painful as a stone

booming

Artillery shells 
 trigger the skiers' stampede 
 towards fresh powder tracks

sprung

Teleology 
 shows through in English usage 
 years spring from the Spring

Winter's meal

Falling off the bone 
 like alien  bolognese 
 last night's Panang Neur

vortex street

A tail of blown snow 
 wags behind the car ahead 
 as vortices shed

powder

spilling from the tree
 like a plume of smoke gone mad 
 the snow's good today

Occam

Simplest is still best 
 the more caveats you add 
 the less you've explained

mortality

Abandon all hope 
 thou who art born of mortals 
 none get out alive

next!

Yemen's president 
 forfeited cred on the street 
 when he shot their sons

above the Law

Wild Bill Donovan 
 slandered J. Edgar Hoover 
 who would take that case?

"right-wing intellectual"

Ross Douthat's column 
 intellectually lax 
 wastes newspaper space

paradox

Were God omniscient 
 the illusion of free will 
 would be irony

smart valves

Even as we sleep 
 sphincters tell liquid from gas 
 it's a no-brainer

conservation of momentum

Really flying now! 
 my snowboard's front edge stopped short 
 cartwheeling thru space

Art

Mere realism 
 came to bore painters once there 
 was photography

guard my lips

Only thought is free 
 once a word has passed your lips 
 it can't be called back

vision

the eyes won't focus
without something contrasty
trees help near white-out

character

some make excuses
citing life's complexities
others get it done

blessed

on the best ski days
sacramental white powder
dances in my nose

recycled

Wall-earned promotion 
 what had been a favorite shirt 
 now waxes my boots

Sapir Whorf III

Language, not optics 
 gives the rainbow seven bands 
 arbitrarily

like a rock

The Djinn had his joke 
 asking for a Golden Boy 
 she got one who's dense

patience

Estivating snails 
festoon the stems of Scotch Broom 
 like bizarre seed-pods

Afifi

FBI calling: 
 ''give us back our GPS! 
 What right do you have?!''

armed and dangerous

The stakes are sky high 
 one could suffer loss of face 
 hunting with Cheney

bonfire

Sordid prurience 
 keeps folks watching Charlie Sheen 
 as he self-destructs

go big

Harness convection 
 use mountains for stepping stones 
 soar with the eagles

pump it

Small skating movements 
 pump skiers past the flat bits 
 boarders piss and moan

can't stop

Failed meditation 
 The mind refuses to stop 
 watching my eyelids

mud season

Airing it out big 
 Malibu's mansions show off 
 hucking the cornice

can't win if you don't play the game

They'll try anything 
 if it could help them get laid 
 Darwin isn't proud

to the point

Fewer syllables 
tests the poet more than more 
 Milton was lazy

memorable

Alexander Pope 
 bid for immortality 
 in mordant rhymed verse

Ars longa vita brevis

John Milton's great work 
 suffered from prolixity 
 life's just not that long

weather-vane

Extend your hind leg 
 lunge over the bent fore-knee 
 let your snowboard float

and wear a helmet

Ski with composure 
 don't be flinching from that tree 
 Missing it's enough

simplify!

Neither curb nor rail 
 penned one in on Durin's span 
 Bauhaus aesthetic

Mazel trek

Shatner and Nimoy 
took their ethics into space 
 Chabad to the stars

bad things come in threes

When's a seam played out? 
 in the Bush establishment 
 George Prescott's the charm

the "little brown one"

El marronito 
stands in line as the third Bush 
 George Prescott in '12?

zombie economics

Hoover's theories 
 failed in the 1930s 
why won't they stay dead?

meet the new boss

Iraq's parliament 
 can no longer propose laws 
 hail the new Strongman!

atavist

Tom turkeys strut it 
 glinting in the morning sun 
 females walk behind

wisdom

Listen to the owls 
 swapping tips on how to kill 
 anything that moves

tyranny

Say the magic words: 
"National Security''
brush the Law aside

profligate

Shoes worn only once 
 fill closets you could dance in 
 unsustainable

maybe what's free's not the best

Westboro Baptist 
 enjoys protection of law 
 for its noxious speech

agenda

Internal memos 
 seeking pretenses for war 
 all point to Rumsfeld

Sapir Whorf, again

What makes a rainbow? 
 more hues than I have names for 
 let's call it seven

Djinn humor

Barbara Bush's wish: 
 asking for a Golden Boy 
 she got one who's dense

sustainable?

Nitrocellulose 
replaced ivory billiard balls 
 the industry boomed

Free Speech

Westboro Baptist 
 has a right to noxious speech 
 Charon waived his fee

time out

freshies in powder
I'll be your friend tomorrow
today, no waiting

mosquitoes

undeterable
blood-sucking automata
won't stop 'til they're dead

static

oncoming traffic
zips by at the speed limit
we have ringside seats

the last mile

many yards of snow
lie between me and my bed
shoveling by starlight

culture

along with the rugs
alleles traveled the Silk Road
no bloods wholly pure

facetime

speaking face-to-face
when we could exchange e-texts
quaint! are you Amish?

not for everyone

such nerdy haikus!
with whom else would I share them?
I have special friends

hubris

working for Rumsfeld
one can learn humility
from what is lacking

fidelity

Unlike mosquitoes 
 bedbugs specialize in us 
 faithful to a fault

fast company

Louis Farrakhan 
likens Bush to Qaddafi 
 each ordered war crimes

worst of all possible systems...

Philosopher kings 
 would cure democracy's ills 
 alas, they're just myths

being served

Chasing market share 
 instead of reporting news 
 corporate harlots

ridicule

In the classic world 
 the ridicule of poets 
 terrified tyrants

guard my lips

Only thought is free 
 once a word has passed your lips 
 it can't be called back

atavistic

Tom turkeys strut it 
glinting in the morning sun 
females walk behind