there aught to be a law!

for the Public Good
Typhoid Mary's peach ice-cream
earned a prison term

soma

TV addiction
vicarious adventures
take the place of life

inflation's wages IV

in deSitter space
galaxies coagulate
from quantum hiccups

inflation's wages III

virtual photons
stranded in deSitter space
break isotropy

inflation's wages II

strong inflation makes

macroscopic lumpiness

from quantum hiccups

inflation's wages

in deSitter space
each quantum fluctuation
could spawn galaxies

slowly

King's dream, still deferred
the "fierce urgency of Now"
doesn't make money

reference frame

not all's relative
doppler-shifted microwaves
clock the earth's "true" speed

Byzantine II

we betrayed Morsi
to buy Arab League backing
for strikes on Assad

fallible

passing years can't dim
a first love's dewy visage
viewed through beer-goggles

benighted policy

incandescent bulbs

piss a nation's wealth away

shed more heat than light

look at me! II

Anthony Weiner's
unwarranted self-esteem
craves affirmation

promotion

seven years later
Nepal's rebels face the troops
now, as officers

look at me!

Anthony Weiner's
unlimited self-esteem
craves an audience

build a fence

secular Talmud
the Federalist Papers
comment on John Locke

Great Satan

Brotherhood leaders
tarred with consorting with us
killed by our junta

perverse incentives

vacant retail space
languishes--no incentive!--
in this tax climate

decisions, decisions II

brain? or genitals?
Weiner's partition function
meters out scant blood

decisions, decisions

Robin Williams' law
explains Anthony Weiner
"there's just so much blood..."

sequelae

ash falls like snowflakes
on HetchHetchy's still waters
driving pH up

remove

video-cam's slave
just documenting a life
but not living it

flagrant

incandescent bulbs
icons of wretched excess
cast more heat than light

blame-shift mutation

Kerry's pet junta
frames the Muslim Brotherhood
for police murders

top-down

Bloomberg and Kelly
deny nonWhite New Yorkers
due process of law

blood price

only Assad's death
will staunch Syria's bleeding
sounds like a bargain!

beneath the Law

col. Ghaddafi
beaten to death by the mob
deserved so much worse

damned

modern-day pharaoh
al-Assad's atrocities
preclude teshuvah

unfocused

Manning coverage
psycho-sexual drama
drowns mordant critique

excerpts

Bo Xi-Lai's trial
the greatest show since Eichmann's
won't be broadcast live

s'lichah

"ahavat chinam"
means you've just hugged a stranger
rabbinic humor

don't panic

well-organized sink
often lurks downwind of lift
retrace your drift-track

backwards

infectious disease
morbidity renaissance
due to fear-mongers

chastened

low on Sanhedrin
flying bee-line toward RedSpot
eager to grovel

special audience

not for everyone
haiku about hang gliding
are their own reward

semi-stealth

against brown dead grass
elk win the camouflage game
but their shadows lose

spooked

CIA concerns
that Stalin backed Mossadegh
"real, but unfounded"

public realm

in "modern" Iran
manscaping's political
like everything else

too late

one o'clock on Slide
tidy launch-potato queue
so far below me

hell-bent

the Fort Hood shooter
aspiring to martyrdom
argues it's treason

cover story

useful idiots
rationalize the jail-break
springing Mubarak

one-way

they'll do what they want
our fictitious "leverage"
never budged Egypt

one-way

they'll do what they want
our fictional "leverage"
never budged Egypt

downward

even more than food
North Koreans' meth habit
burns through their scant cash

disillusioned

coming home from war
Lawrence demurred a knighthood
most irregular!

bleary

bloodshot sun rising
like the party ran too late
for wildfirefighters

military/industrial complex

sixty years ago
we overthrew Mossadegh
to enrich BP

bear with us

sarcastic retort
may take a moment to load
please stay on the line

meet the new boss...

epic prison break
Mubaraks cronies sprung him
in rivers of blood

stock scene

camera pans back
landscape of rumpled bedding
the morning after

fight club

relating to men
Ed Norton's alter-ego
did what he dared not

savant

Samuel Johnson
needed no Academie
to know what's English

instructive

Weiner's pool of blood
not enough to operate
both penis and brain

fallacy III

Searle's words cofuse him
what machines can't have is "soul"
not "intelligence"

short tale

aspiring Bambi
leapt into Anthony's path
he played Godzilla

evil

Evil--for Arendt--
arose without force of will
where discourse was quashed

repressive

NSA snooping
taints Civil Discourse itself
George Orwell's nightmare

window

one o'clock on Slide
tidy launch potato queue
so far below me

repute

pay the bard on time!
Menelaos the cuckold
never lived it down

mythic time

only the Hindus
grasped Deep Time before Hutton
metamorphic gods

deep time

Herodotus glimpsed
"in the long lapse of ages"
all is possible

foundational problems

Newton's calendar
starts with Jason's Colchis jaunt
sound math built on sand

don't hold your breath

the end of Hamas
prophesied in Isaiah
isn't for this world

BigBrother

NSA snooping
taints the very internet
George Orwell's nightmare

Warhol's world

even the humblest
writer has a readership
in the NSA

Doublespeak

Egypt's generals
blame the Muslim Brotherhood
for getting gunned down

the Rich are different

pardoning Marc Rich
brought Bill Clinton disrepute
but the price was right

authoritarian

Dartmouth's frat culture
explains Timothy Geithner
we're just getting hazed

heroic

Lavabit's founder
threw away ten years of work
to spit out the gag

job security

Islam's enigma
a religion of the Book
shunned the printing press

winning

Genghis Khan's penis
mightier than his hordes' swords
conquered the genome

justice delayed III

shrewd prosecutor
by playing the "London Whale"
could land the big fish

justice delayed II

J.P. Morgan's "whale"
could inculpate bigger fish
shrewd prosecutor

justice delayed

pressuring the "whale"
could implicate real big fish
WallStreet runs with sweat

limits of computation

Jeremy Bentham
tabulated suffering
for the Greater Good

phony democrat II

Kerry's pet junta
keeps democracy messy
Cairo's streets run red

so alone

entangled bodies
span the event horizon
"firewall paradox"

falsified

71 south
James Cook felt he'd proved his point
nothing to see here

false symmetry

Esdras fooled 'em all
"six parts land to one part sea"
'til James Cook went 'round

fallacy

John Searle won't admit
what machines can't have is "soul"
not "intelligence"

celestial mechanics

comet-tail debris
burns up in our atmosphere
almost like clockwork

material science

ultimate gym chalk!
amorphous mag. carbonate's
methanol solvate

discrimatory

Bloomberg's police chief
presumes that if you're not White
you're a criminal

scene I

as the fog-tide ebbs
landscapes materialize
glittering with dew

stolen fair and square

Mugabe's landslide
fraud on an enormous scale
"take it or leave it"

too much and too little

the doe moaned limply
"I am never doing that
again for two bucks"

brute

Galileo bowed
to the Pope's temporal force
not his arguments

purity

Johannes Kepler
more devout Copernican
than Copernicus

forward

Cook's second voyage
ran East 'round Antarctica
by chronometer

no soul necessary

Babbage's engine
algorithms incarnate
as you turn the crank

priorities

keeping James Clapper
says that lying to Congress
isn't a big deal

poor value

driving in traffic
squanders high-priced skilled labor
for lack of a train

albatross

credibility
slips out of Obama's grasp
if he keeps Clapper

forgettable

shapeless heap of notes
under all the ornament
there's no melody

Free Press

"who controls the past"
George Orwell warned presciently
"controls the future"

parallax

through an old man's eyes
lord Tennyson's "Ulysses"
looks back on lost youth

conservation of jokes

jokes recirculate
leaping cultures and boundaries
only the nouns change

license

fog laps highway one
imagination runs wild
on blank white canvas

context

nineteeth century
"going to town" meant much more
in a rural world

monoculture

bdelloid rotifers'
faithfully conserved genome
forfeits the Arms Race

Butler's insight

War is a racket
bartering our sons' lifeblood
for corporate wealth

monoculture

bdelloid rotifers
illustrate why sex is good
always fleeing plagues

absorbing boundaries

stumbling tipsily
into the potential well
trapped in the hot tub

fresh

as the fog tide ebbs
morning's landscape is revealed
glittering with dew

perverse sequence

droopy-eyed campers
struggle with coffee-makers
pre-caffeinated

whoop-dee

dawn's first woodpecker
flaps a rollercoaster's track
intermittently

sparkling fresh

as the horizon
dips beneath the suns first rays
each dewdrop kindles

nothing for nothing

Szilard first explained
the cost of information
"Shannon entropy"

apologist

while Feinstein is chair
intelligence gets punished
on her committee

gag on this

recursive horror
just mentioning NSLs
prompts a gag order

puppet

no prospect of CHANGE
Obama has been captured
by his NSA

I'll have what she got

wax models of fish
foster communication
when gaijin eat out

regressive II

Blomkamp plays Fritz Lang
new dystopic cinema
same old Class Warfare

regressive

Lang's "Metropolis"
blueprint for Bloomberg's New York
ran on workers' blood

what's in a name?

Waldseemuller's map
christened the Americas
for a Florentine

screwed

Christie's auctioneers
could liquidate Detroit's art
all things have their price

assets

Christie's auctioneers
could liquidate Detroit's art
all things have their price

frontman

no deep thoughts glimmer
in Ronald Reagan's speeches
paid to read the lines

a woman's place

Sisera's mother
as he cools in Yael's tent
waits for him in vain

opportunity

genius' mistakes
portals of discovery
to the prepared mind

confused

at an isotherm
amid all the turbulence
cores are elusive

the pest of the pest

Iberian lynx
--if they eat only rabbits--
could save Australia?

one-way

Railhead database
vast write-only memory
blackhole for knowledge

unprocessed

Railhead database
new Library of Babel
no datum escapes

criminal in chief

eager to exalt
the Supreme Executive
Cheney broke the law

stardust

super-nova blasts
transmute lighter stuffs to gold
bling begins with blam

autocore

as you raise the nose
swept wings show more anhedral
and tend to roll in

criminalized class

Nixon's "war on drugs"
the cure's worse than the disease
workforce in prison

there and back again

John Harrison's clock
disruptive technology!
told both "when" and "where"

unbalanced powers

criminal wiretaps
Dubya should have been impeached
in 2004

calibration

don't make the "perfect"
the enemy of what's "good"
quit while you're ahead

sheltered II

with enough lawyers
minimum security
more "resort" than "pen."

above the law

with enough lawyers
Libby did time on squash courts
instead of prison

sheltered

"justice" for the rich
means time at racketball camp
prison's for small-fry

non-enforcement

the right pounds of flesh
not from "mere" lowly VPs
might reform WallStreet

na-asseh v'nishmah

incrementally
playing at being adults
comes to feel normal

simplify, simplify

best explanations
have the fewest moving parts
fewer wires to cross

lean times

grass-colored kitten
camouflaged in September
reappears in March

collective

sum of many ants'
algorithmic behavior
looks intelligent

created equal

plain white linen shroud
erases class distinctions
every corpse a prince

inefficiencies

poor signal-to-noise
he chatters incessantly
but doesn't say much

good life

Summer flying trip
grilled steaks, good friends, old red wine
cause for gratitude

dead end

John Searle's paradox
derailed dimwits in A.I.
the rest ignore him

more to learn

even on good days
when I think I'm on my game
Mike K. climbs through me

reckoning

wonder of its age!
Harrison's chronometer
told both "when" and "where"

conflict

poorly socialized
pilot circles the wrong way
in the lift I've marked

incentive landscape

all the incentives
barring a transaction fee
fuel speculation

ars longa, vita brevis

sir Francis Bacon
stuffing a chicken with snow
died of pneumonia

slut

fuck the elections
Kerry embraced the Junta
phony democrat

elusive

over-stuffed wonton
slips out of my chopsticks' grasp
cannonball! stained shirt

an ill wind that blow no one any good

Kurds in Syria
catch a whiff of Liberty
on the winds of war

honor among thieves

Fabrice took the fall
for the sins of GoldmanSachs
code of omerta

criminal

as Zimbabwe burns
Mugabe clings to Power
not to rule of law

egoist

like his statesmanship
Berlusconi's victimhood
is all in his mind

interface

no, I'm not dozing!
I'm a lead beta-tester
for GoogleEyeLids

how convenient?

Kerry's endorsement
of the Egyptian Junta
opportunistic?

selective pressure

sub-therapeutic
antibiotics kill germs
mostly the wrong ones

part-time

grass-colored kitten
camouflaged in September
re-appears in March

karma

retirement's too dull
Cheney deserves a drone strike
without due process

monster

Mugabe chortles
it isn't who votes that counts
it's who counts the votes

context II

pairing's everything
even IPAs are sweet
when the food's Szechuan

but not enough to operate both

no mere narcissist
Weiner's satyriasis
robs his brain of blood

paper assets

ghost inventory
banks still claim hollow assets
at bubble values

context

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

not carrying on
like the wailing passengers
in his taxicab

upwind

around the hard way
Magellan's grant proposal
required he go West

nothing good

ill-omened first lines:
"Houston, we have a problem"
"hold my beer! Watch this"

versatility

biwingualism
lets one match tools to the task
they aren't all "nails"

justice delayed...

expedite Justice!
no due process for Cheney
just send in Hellfires

making enemies

the junta we backed
mowed down hundreds in Cairo
winning hearts and minds

crooked

Ahmad Chalabi
passed back false leads we'd fed him
to justify war

but no simpler

lazy physicists'
simplifying assumption
model cows as spheres...

transferance

celibate priesthood
sublimating libido
gets hot over sin

pile of leaves

salad? or laundry?
ambiguities abound
Garden of Eden

orders

code of omerta
older than the Papacy
protects insiders

virtue

paradoxically
the Nietzschean ubermensch
isn't even "mensch"

high

too high for fingers
dump the VG off its cleat
still in your bar-mitt

results

trust a Waldorf School
despite Steiner's meshugas
to turn out good kids

compensating

Chinese court eunuchs
had--in trade for what they'd lost--
the emperor's ear

so slow

"Youth Killed by Bronze Bull"
Darwin's at work on Texans
purging the gene pool

repurposed

fish had evolved ribs
long before a diaphram
gave them new function

equality

nine parts of desire
Allah bestowed on Woman
two would kill a man

ironic

bitter bureaucrat
censored FreeSpeech monument
donated to CAL