don't just do something, stand there!

analytic minds
struggling with meaninglessness
appear inactive.

grandiose

Ivanishvili 

 out-does stately Wayne Manor 

 his cave dwarfs Bordeau

right of way

Two gliders, head-on 

 --barring terrain and traffic-- 

 each rolls starboard, hard

dotty

Godless socialists 

 loom large in Romney's nightmares 

 living in the past

posit less, explain more

Baruch Spinoza 

 conceived ethics free of God 

 atheist prophet

in the long run...

Wealth is transient 

 likewise career, health and life 

 all you've got is friends

sweet deal

Our IRS winks 

 at wages earned on Wall Street 

 that's "carried interest"

dwindling

Last of the Noldor 

once Galadriel sailed West 

Maglor's still singing

utilitarian II

Love's a clever ploy 

 that long-lived genes cultivate 

 in transient hosts

boys

Building random cairns 

 for want of a better game 

 keeps the boys amused

mushroom theory

With enough shovels 

you can live in denial 

 of nuclear war

no vestige of a Beginning

Hutton and Lyell 

 to explain geology 

 posited Deep Time

that's entertainment!

Japanese TV 

 game-shows reward suffering 

 vicariously

tissue of lies

Paul Ryan's budget 

 not just aspirational 

 counterfactual

that's affirmative

sixty years too late
Romney's binders of women
illegal quotas

bland

Mitt Romney's platform 

 tries to appeal to all sides 

 under-specified

mystic

Searle's homunculus 

 that he swears isn't a "soul" 

isn't "mind" either

utilitarian

Love's a strategem 

 deployed by a long-lived gene 

 on transient hosts

thugs II

Shooting Oscar Grant 

 while he lay prostrate, helpless 

 bad cop! No donut!

feet of clay

Hard-currency kooks 

 don't know their idol is dead 

 "barbarous relic"

thugs

Bloomberg's police force 

 culture of impunity 

Quis custodiet. . .?

omens

purple ice-cream sky
melting in heaven's bowl
prelude to Summer

membrane display

2-D lipid sheets
establish identity
as lipids careen

but of course!

native French speakers
with technically fine syntax
bastardize English

changes II

we pause to reflect
as one more trip 'round the sun
flows into the next

changes

vibrant foliage
marks the end of one cycle
and starts another

non-answers

turtles, homunculi
can support many theories
via recursion

boundary conditions

scant reassurance
all sinks stops at ground level
(though not at tree-top)

trade-offs

handling's paramount
most days are won in the climbs
not gliding between

inspiration

Tolkien's muse fell mute
while the stars wheeled 'round, unseen
stuck at Balin's tomb

ends. beginnings

Autumn equinox
like Frodo selling Bag End
life's new adventure

the old, the new

moonless Autumn sky
stars down to the horizon
view to tomorrow

blowback

we paid for a Shah
but got an Ayatollah
Karma's pendulum

engage

each Rosh Hashanah
first embrace mortality
then dive into life

self-segregating

fractional freezing
excludes gold from quartz crystals
as magma plumes cool

noxious

how dear's our Free Speech?
must we defend each scumbag
who defames Islam?

"too polite"

post-partisanship
beating into heavy seas
wrecks on a lee-shore

Darwin's triumph

nectar stashed so deep
must be for a long-tongued moth
to be named later

death of the substitute

lifting up his eyes
he noticed the other ram
tangled by its horns

get it right

Yom Kippur drama
foregoing food, drink and sex
rehearsing for death

design fail

badly shaped bike seats
pinching the pudendal nerve
designed for numb nuts

most humble

What had been Jethro's

became Moses' idea

in the retelling

prophet

"A nation of sheep
begets government by wolves"
                                           Edward R. Murrow

words make the Man

for a commoner
Shylock's weirdly eloquent
Shakespeare's sly tribute?

prior restraint

Shelon Adelson
drives newspapers out of print
to suppress dissent

new Galileo

church-backed junk science
"reparative therapy"
promotes suicide

aspirational

playing to the press
Schleimann "gazed upon the face
of Agamemnon"

new age

Fingolfin followed
flowers sprung beneath his feet
at the Dawn of Man

suspended

Durin's long repose
prepared Dwarves to ride barrels
scarcely respiring

aleatory

less an "Etch-a-Sketch"
as Mitt tries on new faces
more "Magic Eight Ball"

render unto Caesar

Germany's bishops
guard their tax-base jealously
on pain of hellfire

endings

Galadriel left
only Maglor still tarries
singing on the shore

la migra

the Doom of Mandos
fell on Galadriel too
did she sail in vain?

unreliable

yet another Mitt
who knows who he'll be next time
shake the Etch-a-Sketch!

will-of-a-wisp

Searle's quixotic quest
hunting a homunculus
that's all in his mind

where's the beef?

war-hero's brother
still feeling over-shadowed
Bibi beats his chest

very clever

China led the world
half a billion years ago
big-brained arthropods

grandiose

Ivanishvili
out-does stately Wayne Manor
his cave dwarfs Bordeau

Maillard

braised in its own fat
pig is magically transformed
into carnitas

internal reference

two gliders, head-on
--barring terrain or traffic--
each rolls starboard, hard

nostos

last of the Noldor
save only for Finarfin
Galadriel sailed

undocumented

stuck in INS
Galadriel would deny
the Doom of Mandos

low expectations

rolling out of bed
the oldest I've ever been
personal record

doomed

exiles of Arda
seven sons of Feanor
and one hound named Huan

off the ledger

Externalities 

 like the high cost of cheap food 

 steal from the public

outrageous

Libyan petard 

 killing our ambassador 

could provoke airstrikes

not quite proteins

Not just achiral 

 N-alkyl poly-Glycines 

 lack hydrogen bonds

fugitive verse

Across the aether 

 haiku about god knows what 

flit like neutrinos

keep asking

Polling for wisdom 

 Vox populi, vox dei 

 ask most idiots

the official story

In the Tudor myth 

Richard III's twisted spine 

stood for terpitude

delusions of grandeur

Bibi's delusion 

 of forcing Obama's hand 

 drives the world towards war

spooky action at very short distance

Virtual photons 

popping up and winking out 

 Casimir Effect

thuggish

"Persistant problem 

 of unreasonable force" 

 L.A. jail scandal

but he's our son-of-a-bitch

Our pawn in Yemen

 welcomes drone strikes on his turf 

somebody loves us!

lawless

"One percent doctrine" 

in Dick Cheney's rhetoric 

 justified horrors

Cassandra

A nation of sheep 

 begets government by wolves 

 (Edward R. Murrow)

If not now, when?

Dawn's first glimmer shows 

 newspaper on my curbstone 

 no Cheney obit

why is Obama on board?

Dick Cheney's project 

 undercut the rule of law 

 set torturers free

laundering

Torrents of Rials 

 spill into Afghanistan 

shopping for dollars

criminalizing dissent

Bloomberg's police force 

 criminalizing dissent 

 backed the RNC

well blow me down!

Virtual photons 

transferring real momentum 

"Casimir Effect"