sharp haggler

Vasco da Gama
gave ibn Majid the helm
and took the trade route

indiscrete

calcified speedos
scantily-clad geoducks
let it all hang out

mindless

physicists derail
rushing to evaluate
what they haven't grasped

time ill-used

each day, millions play
the world's worst video game
"Driving in Traffic"

honed

the sarcastic tongue
unique among edged weapons
grows sharper with use

oppressor

Bloomberg's policies
routine humiliations
serve the one percent

scanty

inadequate shell
barely girds a geoduck
banana hammock

sparring

not conversation
rhetorical jujitsu
courtship as bloodsport

beneath the Law

NoSuchAgency
Searches Unreasonably
with impunity

out of touch

Bloomberg's ambition
mayor of the one percent
wants the people's love

non-enforcement

bank impunity
manipulating markets
only if you're big

the name of the thing named

Jews make a fetish
of the many divine names
Muslims call on "God"

appropriate tech

eight-inch-wide pipette
all geared up for geoducks
settling for HorseClams

low ebb

misty dawn, clam bed
were it not for the foghorn
I might be there still

hiatus

opportunity
deferred in Dias' day
fell to Da Gama

tide waits for no man

dig clams at sunrise
take your siesta at noon
when the seas heap up

dishonor

fund raising falters
Performance Enhancing Drugs
don't work for LiveStrong

innovator

hungry for IP
Henry the Navigator
invents lab notebooks

outward horizons

oddly ascetic
Henry the Navigator
left love unexplored

greenbird

no prop, no engine
when I've hooked a phat thermal
I run on fusion

code switching

careful rhetoric
Obama speaks "legal brief"
Bill Clinton speaks "Black"

long may she reign

Charles is first in line
for a crown he'll never wear
God Save the Queen! (please)

evocative

no room for "meta"
I need readers' memories
to flesh out haiku

pigeonholed

no one notices
--if there's a bone through your nose--
whether your eyes match

congenital

chattel slavery
present from our Nation's birth
Original Sin

bankrupt logic

Detroit's Manager
blames Labor for misplaced trust
in bad Management

avatar

some think--on a whim--
God took form as Bombadil
to walk among us

values

ask librarians
any book that's worth banning
is one worth reading

inside man

Geithner rescued banks
America's middle class
can't bail itself out

self-indicating

a moat of my sweat
rings the machine I trained on
ok coach! I'm warm

enlightened

lives in the moment
pathological Buddha
forms no memories

Newt's achievement

William Butler Yeats
saw "the center can not hold"
partisan gridlock

reference frame

through the gradient
your hang glider gains airspeed
(if you land downwind)

love me, I'm a liberal

fifty years later
King and Ochs still resonate
the arc bends slowly

the fierce necessity of now

fifty years later
King and Ochs still resonate
the arc bends slowly

where you stand depends on where you sit

On my dying day
I hope to go in my sleep
like my grandfather

not carrying on
like the wailing passengers
in his taxicab

Detroit

screwing the Unions
by declaring bankruptcy
Michigan tacks Right

doubt

is this the right bar?
she wafts in as I'm leaving
fashionably late

ramifications

Wait for Moshiach!
Neusner says they aren't Jews
who wait for Schneerson

Omerta II

Holder listens to
uppity whistleblowers
then prosecutes them

Omerta

Holder listens to
uppity whistleblowers
looking for their crimes

method acting

Zimmerman's jurors'
own gated community
offered pedicures

trying

communication
fails at the seafood counter
I clean my own fish

so hard to please

real Goldilocks day
when I'm not scratching for lift
I'm fleeing cloudsuck

too phat

at the gliderport
lift's perversely abundant
when I want to land

coded

Sierra forecast
extraordinarily phat
"chance of thunderstorms"

Niemoeller

who will speak for me
if I don't stand up this time
we're each Oscar Grant

the way to a man's heart

Ming revolution
plotted while Mongols looked on
mooncake by mooncake

winning

more than his armies
Genghis Khan's Y-chromosome
conquered the known world

gun culture

Zimmerman aspired
to be a real cop someday
new Pinocchio

chainsaw

"Chainsaw Al" Dunlap
bragged he's good at turn-arounds
but just gutted them

sparks of revolution

Detroit's bankruptcy
contrived to break the unions
large-scale Class Warfare

gastronomy

polysaccarides
meta-stable hydro-gels
"puddings" and "gravies"

our lot

rejoice in what's good
perfection's not for this world
while we're in galut

open minds, open roads

Genghis Khan's empire
tolerant as Cyrus'
opened the Silk road

pathetic

Zimmerman aspired
to be a real cop someday
like Pinocchio

quo bono?

Venetian merchants
grew rich off of the Crusades
proto-Raytheon

double bonus

ambiguity
many-layered rhetoric
makes each word count twice

not for us

the well of Mimir
conceals absolute Wisdom
under Yggdrasil

liason

Igor Stravinsky
loved Sergei Diaghilev
not that it matters

something old

unctious, savory
fat King salmon slowly smoked
could seduce Keller

Silence is golden

projecting romance
onto a loved one's silence
feeds the fantasy

scapegoat

Nero blamed Christians
for the fire that gutted Rome
history damned him

world changer

John Harrison's clock
demystified longitude
before GPS

cowardice

Captain Schettino's
dereliction of duty
shames all Italians

put the toothpaste back

Pandora's remorse
afflicts James Sensenbrenner
PATRIOT amok

demagogue's myopia

James Sensenbrenner
want's to stuff the genie back
Pandora's remorse

in this together

just like pollution
the bird of cinema flies
across all borders

subversive art

Art needs no visa
the bird of cinema flies
across all borders

military/industrial complex

Cheney's Pentagon
wouldn't want to win a war
it's bad for business

bird in hand

Bibi's agenda
annexing Samaria
corrupts Israel

attribution

colonial rubes
credit Thomas Jefferson
with John Locke's ideas

building

it's all connected
Emerson's "Experience"
informed Hendrix's

tell tale

grizzled veterans
we who haven't died or dyed
wear our years with pride

God-fearing

Henry Ford's terror
 of swearing to testify
moved him to recant

my children have defeated me, my children have defeated me

Kurzweil horizon
past the singularity
machines spawn machines

Stand your Ground

just "feeling threatened"
justifies a homicide
in Florida Law

aspirational

'Til Justice is blind
we still need Federal Courts
 to back-stop the States'

asymmetry

had Trayvon been armed
and he chose to stand his ground
who would acquit him?

elusive

Truth is a lizard
leaving its tail in your grasp
scampering away

of where and when

John Harrison's clock
made longitude tractable
before GPS

arms race

old reptiles' nightmare
endothermic predators
gnaw them in their sleep

inalienable

John Locke established
Free or Slave, the Right to Die
sets bounds on bondage

Oscar Grant’s Last BART Ride

Cuffed, face down, shot dead

The train has left the station

Long, long, long ago 

Zimmerman

The Law is an Ass
if you legislate nonsense
don't blame the jury

who ya gonna trust?

Zimmerman aspired
to be  a real cop someday
deeply pathetic

the testimony of the one whose eye is opened II

they've seen Death up close
unlike most Americans
doctors die at home

obsolescence

MicroSoft's zombies
vast operating systems
eat your machine's brain

too phat

too scary, less fun
I don't want to consummate
cumulonimbus

do-nothing

"balance of powers"
only works when there's push-back
this Congress is lame

the testimony of the one whose eye is open

"heroic measures"
doctors offer to patients
but choose death at home

cut short

"Old Man and the Sea"
excerpt from a grand opus
never completed

self-selected

squeamish physicians
self-sort towards psychiatry
where Death's more abstract

dupes

useful idiots
dispatched like SpamBots to hide
TeaParty funders

malefactors of great weath

once Morsi was out
suspicious fuel shortages
resolved in the night

into that good night

they've known Death up close
unlike most Americans
doctors die at home

averages

there's uncertainty
climate is what you expect
weather's what you get

repression

Taliban fighters
terrified by a schoolgirl
take comfort in guns

aspirational

Coleridge's wife
wailed for her demon lover
settled for cold pork

not just brains

on T. Rex's skull
towering sagittal crest
anchored masseters

2020!

outside the Beltway
Edward Snowden's a hero
Washington's gone mad

nostalgia

in Minas Tirith
the empty throne of the King
recalled Numenor

"extremely primitive, not unlike the Western United States"

in Locke's conception
"American" meant "savage"
without prejudice

chance companion

once 'cross the river
Frodo blundered at a loss
'til he met Gollum

inexorable

...tore down new houses
and built old ones in their place
while I lay sleeping...

b'yomeinu

Netanyahu nods
at a two-state solution
while he scuttles it

when in the course of human events

when's rebellion just?
John Locke cites Hezekiah
v. Assyria

discretion

Locke's "Second Treatise"
spoke of "appeal[s] to Heaven"
but meant rebellion

teach your children well

single mothers raised
both Clinton and Obama
stern backseat drivers

reciprocal

Japanese student
taught Ingrish teacher to play
pork shakohachi

qui bono?

organ by organ
more sacrificial virgins
keep Cheney undead

suicide substrate

epoxyketones
inhibit proteasomes
irreversibly

non potestis servire et mammonae et dei

cardinal Dolan
rendered nought unto Caesar
that he could conceal

low-impact

green vultures prefer
Prometheus' liver
it's sustainable

convenient

sunshine democrats
leapt to embrace Egypt's coup
with unseemly haste

strongman

Egypt's rich masters
saw threats in democracy
engineered a coup

eylu v'eylu

justice emerges
when adversaries contend
in a court of law

delayed gratification

Timothy Geithner
once through the revolving door
has lots of new friends

revolving door

welfare for WingNuts
Geithner's honoraria
impoverish MainStreet

bagman

Dolan hid assets
like "render unto Caesar"
was just for suckers

fallout

downstream from Hanford
Portlanders' drinking water
needs monitoring

riches in this world

Cardinal Dolan
hid Church assets from the court
screw "...unto Caesar"!

...take care that these Laws be faithfully executed...

two al-Awlakis
American citizens
murdered without charge

"suffer the children to come unto me"

cardinal Dolan
played a shell game with Church funds
to screw rape victims

spoilage

eat what's in season!
foodstuffs that never "go bad"
weren't ever "good"

floop

unlike Hawaii

carbonated magma plumes

blow explosively

winnowing

closer to Lassen
each field's decorated in
larger ejecta

conspicuous consumption

as water grows dear
the lush green of rice paddies
seems profligacy

not really from 'round here

exotic terranes
fused to add California
to the continent

what is justice?

cities of refuge
break the cycle of blood-feud
"vengeance is the Lord's"

empowerment

way past Gutenberg
printing's next revolution
this time, it's 3-D

bogus

fancy masquerade
Obama's "surveillance court"
plays at due process

barad...

golf-ball-sized hailstones
explain why the trees are bare
Christmas in July

apotheosis

triumphal skull-cairns
mark an owls favorite perch
rats' death deity

thumb on the scale

under the table
NSA's investment fund
suborns Search Engines

full employment

before power tools
irrigating Babylon
took a lot of hoes

a matter of taste

Chris' "special K"
pretty as sun-ripe roadkill
entices vultures

eye-catching

Chris' "special K"
lures vulture out of thermals
road-kill color scheme

new wave

wizened olive trees
watch invaders come and go
this year: Brooklynites

people's technology

empire unraveled
along the Ho Chi Minh trail
on a bicycle

so regimented

except in Britain
'corrupting the Blood Royal"
sounds like a good time

cheater

Game Theorists showed
Nietzsche was a parasite
on Society

such stuff as dreams are made of

diaphanous wings
cheat gravity for a while
dream-like in the sun

the thrill is gone

shrunken mylar sail
the wing nods as you thermal
pitch hysteresis

bigger

one station wagon
sprawled across four parking spots
Texas license plates

l'avdoni

Hannah pledged Shmuel
to a lifetime of Service
where's Free Will in that?

criminal contempt

lying to Congress
Clapper spat on oversight
like he's above that

all others bring cash

without oversight
"just trust us" doesn't cut it
James Clapper should hang

aggressor

in Trayvon's murder
Zimmerman claims self-defense
while giving pursuit

render unto Caesar

Cardinal Dolan
played a shell game with Church funds
to screw rape victims

boundaries

Courts' Writ ends at Door
between consenting adults
there's no State Interest

degrading

nasogastric tubes
deprive Gitmo detainees
of the Right to Die

new beginnings

for want of a dog
a squirrel stakes out the niche
scavenging goat scraps

score!

Pillsbury's ospreys
near-perfect entertainment
killings, food and flight

follow the leader

he's still of two minds
big head rationalizes
what small head decides

numbered

cruising for lovers
instead of forging friendships
youth frittered away

solipcist

enough about me!
tell me...what are you thinking
about my ego

burden

all our hope and dreams
heaped on our kids' report cards
probably warps them

who would have thought?

each step, heavier
walking across the asphalt
Phoenix is melting

muffled

tongues of Summer fog
lap the GoldenGate's channel
affectionately

no injury, no case

the Ninth Circuit Court
lifts its Stay on Gay Marriage
 no one stands to lose

tantalizing

"secret makes mutton
slippery" the menu says
no one's the wiser

dog-whistle II

dog-whistle screenplay
recasts Superman as Christ
for those who have ears

dog-whistle

warped Christology
Krypton's sole begotten son
sent to redeem us

bloat

shrinking the payroll
while bloating total spending
outsourced government

criminal enterprise

long before Yemen
JSOC's lawless global war
dates back to Carter

Sharon's arithetic

making enemies
faster than we can kill them
JSOC slipped the leash

who's served?

Wall Street's doing fine
nationalizing the Fed
could rescue Main Street

chummy

interlocking boards
$16trillion in cheap loans
went to Fed partners

untidy

decapitation
Syria's remaining hope
Assad as zombie

bias

prosecute Cheney!
before you try Ed Snowden
for Espionage

address unknown

without a passport
Edward Snowden's just "cargo"
real spy-thriller shit

inside joke

Putin's dark humor
shipped journalists to Cuba
chasing Snowden's ghost

defiant

shades of Tiananmen
to Russian and Chinese youth
Snowden's a hero

meddling

Westminster's mullahs
"Act of Uniformity"
set the Pilgrims off

Hobbesian

Karl Rove screwed us all
where was once the Rule of Law
now, anything goes

un-reliable narrator

Ayn Rand and Nietzsche
rationalized their failings
as social creatures

stall II

AirFrance co-pilot
mistook falling for diving
everybody died

prophetic literature

The Fall of Arthur
written between two World Wars
thrums with foreboding

un-natural

Hamas legacy
Gazans' life-expectancy
nasty, brutish, short

one-day sensation

Beijing calculates
letting Edward Snowden leave
isn't their problem

not worth getting hit

a higher pilot
not trusting that he's been seen
cedes the right-of-way

counter-cycle

blue-water sailor
if you plan your life just right
it's always Summer

bright-eyed II

Sierra morning
frost glitters on sleeping bags
the milk-steamer squeals

bright-eyed

vaporiera
shrieks defiance at the frost
Sierra morning

strong stuff

quantum one-time pads
elevate cryptography
out of hackers' grasp

stall

keeping flow attached
regardless of attitude
sorts out the doomed ones

BigBrother

Obama exults:
"in Berlin, our values won!"
at home, Stasi rule

the lives of us

speaking in Berlin
Obama sneered at Stasi
he keeps them at home

over-control

the rudder functions
to spin you into the earth
on landing approach

a history of Time

Heretical thoughts!
Spinoza had glimpsed Deep Time
long before Hutton

relief

not quite comedic
Michael Keaton's Dogberry
just seemed demented

delusion

Special Creation
sets Mankind over Nature
like we're not of it

CHANGE

I've marked my  ballot
Snowden in 2020!
'til then...Webb? Feingold?

license without freedom

if there were no Law
Locke claimed there'd be no Freedom
Hobbesian nightmare

we have all been here before

Hutton saw cycles
no vestige of Beginning
no prospect of End

hello?

microwave background
echoes of the dawn of Time
if one but listens

special

reification
rips our "selves" out of "nature"
like we fell from space

ars longa, vita brevis

"BillyElliot"
keeps retiring its male leads
tiny shoes to fill

unsocialized

"unreliable
narrator" of his own life
Nietzsche was a jerk

plus ca change...

nature hasn't changed
Much Ado about Nothing
resonates today

anti-social

new-wave IPAs
homicidally hoppy
don't play well with food