obsessive

Rich Santorum thinks
more often about gay sex
than gay people do

pre-revolutionary

Junta in Egypt
outlaws the majority
ensure civil war

impeachable

Dubya directed
vast criminal enterprise
to tap my phone line

reference frame

meteor showers
make heaven the reference frame
our orb hurtles through

rebranding

organic chemists
did nanotechnology
before it was chic

the Wolf of WallStreet

DiCaprio's gift
superhuman shallowness
apotheosis!

good trick

bats and cetaceans
evolved echo-location
independently

vapid

hard to feign interest
in bathroom fixture chit-chat
"I must be going"

oppressive

Cairo's protestors
called for bread and gasoline
but received grape-shot

shadowy

Obama's flip-flops
one can only speculate
who's pulling his strings

sticky issue

covering for Bush
Obama winked at high crimes
and made them his own

transitional text

Jacob's testament
foretells Judah's monarchy
but withhold's blessing

shattered

one Porlock merchant
breaking Coleridge's trance
bulldozed Xanadu

budget

birds resorb gonads
once mating season's over
payload's expensive!

uninhibited

Shmuely Boteach
faults the Right as bad lovers
Give 'em Hell, rabbi!

free ball!

the "bridegroom of blood"
still defies exegesis
midrash can run wild

fig leaf

if we send in troops
we'll contrive to sound noble
South Sudan has oil

watchmakers

melted gummi bears
cement their gingerbread house
engineers amok!

pick your ground

Athens' "wooden wall"
not Sparta's land-based phalanx
stopped Xerxes at sea

prelude

starting in Finland
Khodarkovsky in exile
plays Lenin (backwards)

hellspawn

teleology
makes devout Darwinians
invoke religion

crowded

Jerusalem's stones
witness to so much bloodshed
leave scant room for Peace

gospel

secular canon
Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol"
sings of teshuvah

pre-Revolutionary

in Putin's third term
a new Czar stalks the kremlin
dissent will be crushed

IPCC report, in haiku, illustrated

http://daily.sightline.org/2013/12/16/the-entire-ipcc-report-in-19-illustrated-haiku/

anno domini

Sir Isaac Newton

born December 25th

launched modernity

gained in translation?

Sylvia Plath's Ted
lent Aeschylus new vibrance
rollicking English

dilemma

what of Orestes?
"murder" implies a judgement
let's say he "killed them

materialism

can a finite grave
hold all that had been a man?
Platonists think not

beyond its means

the Delta's dying
let SoCal roll back its lawns
not grab more water

science

without causation
epidemiology's
merely suggestive

poof

seemingly random
haiku out of the ether
mentative snapshots

distortions

hagiography
obscures Nelson Mandela
the man's great enough

running the asylum

NSA's asset
planted in our own Senate
shields it from the Law

like the sands of the sea

Syria's brain-drain
fuels Swedens economy
like Jews built New York

no charge

malachat movet
rebated to Madiba
the lost Robbens years

attached flow

knife-sharp trailing edge
reunites the two airstreams
their sum cants downward

continent

Rembrandt sketched Joseph
blowing Potiphar's wife off
anti-erotic

those who understand

water-hammer pulse
telegraphs a leaky valve
each stroke's half wasted

ambivalent

Sukhot's a challenge
Jews must be wholly joyful
even in Galut

so sue me!

"fair use" exemptions
don't exist in British law
barristers wax fat

craven

Washington culture
punishes visionaries
rewards cowardice

new eyes, old text

lapidary verse
each face refracts something new
"turn it and turn it"

comfort zone

each new recipe
vies with the old tarte aux pommes
in my repertoire

discretion

of all the banksters
only Madoff's serving time
his victims were rich

princelings

routine corruption
JPMorgan hires the sons
of Beijing's elite

lost

cockney rhyming slang
emerges in translation
from bad Mandarin

it's who counts the votes

Barack Obama
blindsided Hillary's crowd
he was "nobody"

causation

sometimes perversely
incentives shape behavior
see "Cobra Effect"

consciousness

hexapodal dreams
crept through Gregor Samsa's nights
dawn brought no relief

Im lo Achschav

a soul with no scars
"was nothing worth fighting for?"
no olam haBah

self-referential

Nebuchadnezzar
recast as rod in G-d's hand
it's all about us

with friends like these...

every dove season
our hopes rise for Scalia
to hunt with Cheney

the oppressed III

Byelerus police
arrested a one-armed man
for outlawed applause

kept man

Paul Ryan's secret
tax-loopholes for plutocrats
pay for his campaigns

upgrade

much improved columns!
"David Brooks is on book-leave"
we get the respite

repatriation

WindCave's bison herd
had to lose New York accents
from the Old Country

myopic

blue-blooded moluscs
look down on upstart mammals
built for the short-term

the oppressed II

corporations wield
"a power of life and death"
over citizens

the oppressed

twenty-nine million
for a Starbucks CEO
while workers eat beans

autonomy

choosing their kids' toys
parents learn humility
they'll be who they'll be

adhere to our enemies

October Surprise
prolonged hostages' ordeal
probably treason

managed

managing scandals
to break on a holiday
dampens the outrage