holdings

the vatican owns
Italy's top gay bathhouse
but swears it's "hands off"

through

past the isotherm
no  longer just clinging on
the rockets kick in

epistemology

Bishop Berkeley knew
just what went on in his head
the rest was hearsay

false witness

routine perjury
taints many drug convictions
yet the cops walk free

Telushkin III

rabbi Telushkin
fears Hillel has gotten lost
in Shammai's rule books

Telushkin II

Telushkin argues
Shammai's codified rule books
are crushing Hillel

above the law

Cheney's grand project
Executive without bounds
threatens all our Rights

great circle of life II

lizards hunting flies
hunted--in their turn--by cats
great horned owl watching

Telushkin

Telushkin's "Hillel"
rips pious orthodoxy
on Social Action

Green war

Ukrainians train
dolphins to harpoon Russian
low-carbon warfare

post-Hillel

Orthodoxy drifts
step by step, insensibly
to endorse Shammai

neoTzarist

Putin's new Russia
puts Cossacks above the law
"same as the old boss"

circus

Steubenville headlines
humanize the criminals
more than the victim

Mission Accomplished!

ten years in Iraq
Weapons of Mass Destruction
tally: zero (still)

narrow

Roth's narcissism
leaves little room for women
except as objects

insight

no less than Darwin
the Dunning-Kruger effect
explains the workplace

pipedream

"the charm is broken
all the phantom-world so fair"
shattered at Porlock

quest

like Diogenes
senator Patrick Leahy
peers into darkness

so fucking easy

hire a teenager
while she still knows everything
to fix the world's ills

faith and credit

sign at the checkout
announces: "IN GOD WE TRUST
all others, pay cash"

devastation

the Porlock merchant
collecting a petty debt
laid waste to a world

kingmaker

in urban districts
Stephen Colbert's influence
could shape our Congress

pattern recognition

viewed from too close up
Claude Monet's water-lillies
dissolve into noise

priorities

in this troubled world
the love of power confounds
the power of love

hysteresis

growth factors amok
an exuberance of bone
can freeze a shoulder

culture clash

Funston-trained ridge-rats

clog the air in front of launch

thermalling takes room!

interesting?

Freud's theory of dreams
defies falsification
unscientific

unforgiven

Mark Sanford's ex-wife
demurred to help him campaign
nest to "that woman"

bad boy

for the Arab Street
Chavez was a new Nassar
tweaking Uncle Sam

collateral

al-Assad's death throes
convulse the entire region
sucks for Lebanon

peers?

George Zimmerman hopes
a jury of scared racists
will find murder "just"

slow victory

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's
dissent in re Ledbetter
got the law repaired

unmoored

Dennis Rodman's trip
boosted Kim Jong-un's ego
through the stratosphere

score!

seasonal bounty
as I'm filleting herring
bonus sacs of roe

fundamental

cationic bees
choose anionic blossoms
basic attraction

vantage

keep some perspective
one's "collateral damage"
is another's "son"

deracinated

Yiddishkeit's dying
wine-swilling Californians
sniff at slivovitz

tenuous

a thin rind of air
clinging like a coat of paint
bounds our biosphere

bloat

siddurim wax fat
obsessive-compulsive Jews
cling to every verse

bought

Feinstein blocked Wyden
"Regulatory Capture"
greased John Brennan's path

lynched

two al-Awlakis
killed by their own government
haunt a nation's sleep

S/N

sorting EEG
from EMG artifacts
most papers are crap

hospitality

Avram avinu
treated strangers like angels
each one worth a world

unballanced power

a craven Congress
shirks its duty to impeach
even for murder

institutional inertia

LBJ was warned
if we blink in Vietnam
dominoes will fall

over and out

sign on the clinic
exhortative? Humorous?
"REHAB'S FOR QUITTERS"

used

let's drop the pretense
Dubya was a sock-puppet
over Cheney's fist

un-free press

in-bed editors
quashed Brennan's Awlaki link
'til he'd been confirmed

echoes

Tolkien wasn't coy
modeled Rohan on Saxons
and the Dwarves on Jews

brat

Kim Jong-un's tantrum
tearing up the armistice
to get attention

hello? hello?

there's nothing "out there"
reality's a construct
built on sparse data

importance

in the Berkeley Club
one teaches, the other talks
crossed priorities

self-made fraud

perfect candidate
born cute in a log cabin
that he'd built himself

poof

clouds well below launch
didn't stop us flying Tam
however briefly

Banks' man

decoupling Wall Street
from U.S. economy
Geithner's sleight of hand

meet the new boss...

evil Emperor
installs his clone on the throne
retreats to shadow

the Green of the Red

take only headshots
leave only offal to rot
rednecks' Green ethos

dark dreams

Hrothgar's countrymen
drink the Winter nights away
dreaming of the Sun

frosted

snow caps Diablo
like some out-sized confection
to tittilate Thor

out-classed

honorable show
Thor came in second to Fire
dumb eating contest

dumb and dumber

tetraethyl lead
poisoned a generation
to make Big Oil rich

Mensheviks

colonoscopies
out-poll most Republicans
money can't buy love

see what it gets you

oppressed Tibetans
piously non-violent
get snubbed, robbed and killed

self portrait

portrait of a mind
edgy as a mosaic
composed of haiku

winning

Darwin's bottom line
breeding opportunities
reward high status

sinking through lift

helical glide-path
optimizing the thermal
stairway to heaven

simplify

you can forget "speed"
it's all "angle of attack"
from the wing's vantage

blah blah blah

fake erudition
names things but explains nothing
no one's the wiser

death throes?

as al-Assad falls
Hezbollah's feeling naked
cranks up violence

Stick and Rudder

for Langewiesche
every LZ's a short field
he comes in nose-high

timeless

fifth century bards
Aeschylus, Euripides...
spawned modernity

uncoupled

until Tim Geithner
rising tides lifted all boats
now, it's "sauve qui peut"

don't forget to close the door

Texas patriots
remember the Alamo
more than the Union

rodef dom

Hariri jr
wants al-Assad jr's head
to fatten the crows

out of the ring

as the conclave looms
Keith cardinal O'Brien
turned in his red hat

proto-humanist

the Eumenides
replaced Furies with juries
meting out Justice

hero

Douglas Fairbanks' films
invented Action Heroes
steroids came later

vanity of vanities

all schoolboys' hero
rather than dull senescence
Achilles chose death

the road to Hell

Bibi's ambition
for anschluss with the WestBank
taints Zionism