the People's man

Pete Seeger sang on
long after his voice was gone
dragons yet to slay

spice of life

genius of Szechuan
meat or tofu or noodles
makes beer taste better

aiming low

our  "soft bigotry"
worked in George Bush's favor
low expectations

kludge

"federalism"
a nation comprised of States
not of citizens

anthemic

Pete Seeger's lyrics
still resonate in our hearts
'though is voice is stilled

extractive

extractive empire
WalMart bankrupts Mom&Pop
and calls it "profit"

homogeneity V

Orinda's classy
White People's last bastion
cultural desert

homogeneity IV

Orinda's classy
where they keep the White People
cultural desert

homogeneity III

fog swathes Orinda
advertising what it's got
everything is White

homogeneity II

fog swathes Orinda
absolute monotony
everything is White

heavy stuff

rotational rates
in galaxies' outer limbs
can't be baryons

homogeneity

fog swathes Orinda
nothing challenges the eye
everything is White

loyal to the people

Teddy Roosevelt
learned to trust the workingman
"traitor to his class"

feckless congress

FISA amendment
the Spy Community's coup
wears the mask of Law

the bigger man

fourth on Mt. Rushmore
Teddy stood just 5'8"
his growth was inward

shalom bayit

TR's own father
hired a substitute to serve
in the Civil War

the letter of the law

more than mere statutes
aggadic material
incarnates ethos

foresworn

Ellsberg's explicit
Dick Cheney's an enemy
of democracy

Greed

Jamie Dimon's raise
extractive economies
love Gordon Gekko

voiceless

huddled in the snow
gazing in at the banquet
ninety-nine percent

unbalanced

the man they called "Vice"
betrayed our constitution
to strengthen his boss

thou shalt not yoke an ox and an ass together

William Howard Taft
aspired to dispense wisdom
not to rally votes

overshadowed II

TR's long shadow
eclipsed William Howard Taft
no small feat, really

over-shadowed

William Howard Taft
only brought Teddy's brio
to the dining room

good design stands up

planetary gears
designed by James Watt himself
out-lived steam power

amnesia

convicts Down Under
built a nation of their own
that now shuns migrants

Orwellian

Greek CoastGuard scandal
towing migrants towards Turkey
"rescue" shouldn't kill

phenotype

the shape of a foot
betrays the genes (to the wise)
Charcot Marie Tooth

deeply insincere

Murdoch's genuine!
no veneer of phony class
shit from skin to bone

rug? rat?

Donald Trump's coiffure
legit? Or is it road-kill?
there ain't no ear-tag

hopeless

Murdoch's ambition
was bigger than Australia
he aspired to class

cheater

game theorists proved
Nietzsche was a parasite
on what others built

good company

Cuomo's image soars
to look vastly popular
run against the Clown

crushing

high pressure sunset
stable as the benthic brine
devoid of drama

mud fight

Feinsten and Rogers
leap to besmirch Snowden's name
before he damns theirs

the arc of the moral universe is long...

Reconstruction stalled
"an idea whose time has come"
took a hundred years

punch the mother fucker

flares require airspeed
fly a quarter of a loop
before tail-sliding

damage control

Rogers and Feinstein
strain to tarnish Snowden's name
before he outs them

jerk

writing for himself
Nietzsche labored to explain
why no one liked him

"non-invasive"

a smart contact lens
beats a sharp stick in the eye
to read blood glucose

singularity

new Galatea
outgrowing her Pygmalion
steps out in Her world

stand-off

Snowden's deadman switch
threatens Feinstein (but with what?!)
to deter hitmen

shades of Trust Busters

net neutrality
requires new legislation
it's not current law

lossy

cardiac murmur
reports inefficiency
so...I can eat more?

non disputandum

decadent Czarists
favored weirdly sweet champagnes
with their caviar

bedfellows

Syria's complex!
now a Christian named "Jihad"
speaks for the rebels

art is in the juxtaposition

three penetrations
sex and drugs and foul murder
Kill Your Darlings crux

boundary conditions

half-reassuring
all sink stops by ground-level
if not by tree-tops

January thaw

errant honey bee
slurps sweat for want of nectar
slim Winter pickings

mistakes

ask Kennedy's ghost
what he'd change in retrospect
Dulles? or Dallas?

unreliable narrator

you can't trust that bitch
I dance better when I'm drunk;
Vodka tells me so

2020

ineligible

for the White House this time 'round

Snowden horizon

lost on the deaf

try just making sense
if you're relying on charm
you've got the wrong man

outside the box

Denethor despaired
thinking that Men stood alone
wreaked not of Halflings

dear bought

pierced by many shafts
Boromir bought Frodo time
to ditch the pursuit

file that

for Manicheans
the god who creates Evil
isn't our problem

clockwork

four Jovian moons
tell perfect celestial time
to one who can read

les autres

human connections
spelled "hell" in Sartre's system
and "God" in Buber's

skin deep

cast-iron saucepan
variant on bechamel
more like a "gray sauce"

brief day in the sun

himalayan peaks
thrust marine limestone skywards
temporarily

self-defeating

Austerians lead
armies of the unemployed
toward Revolution

experienced

Death holds no horror
for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
he's been there before

global warming

dirty rags of snow
look more like May than New Years
skiing's been cancelled

tinkerbell

the "God of the Gaps"
shrinks as Science advances
trending towards zero

whole man

celibate priesthood
knows human imperfections
only as failings

phenomena

guitar valhalla
Duane Allman (ranked number two)
sits at Jimi's feet

irony

while Hector rampaged
the best of the Achaeans
sulked over a girl

invasive non-native

Clovis horizon
at New World megafaua
within mere decades

fist

Vladimir Putin
not knowing how to let go
strangles his baby

old story

each black hole evokes
saturn swalling his sons
as it devour stars

Ich ud Du II

searching for meaning
in an absurd universe
try Buber's I/Thou

noted

famed for being wrong
John Searle's bitter legacy
will be a footnote

Ich und Du

adrift in the void
minds seek Meaning's foundation
Buber thinks it's Thou

don't ask

absurd creation
obscures Meaning in the dross
of John Searle's lectures

there is no "why"

absurd creation
nothing but relationships
I and Thou and Death

luftmenschen

Chicago's grillage
undeterred by lack of rock
castles built on sand

war party

Egyptian junta
pushes open civil war
bans opposition

opportunity

Leif had a vision
for a planet in crisis
Greenland real estate

telltale

Benazir Bhutto
accused Pervez Musarref
from beyond the grave

usual suspects

Benazir Bhutto
'accused Pervez Musharref
from beyond the grave

myth and variations

Pygmalion retold
simulated emotions
half of a romance

old truths

"jury of his peers"
Before Marx lifted a pen
posits Class Warfare

blinded II

a thumb on the scale
tips Justice in Texas courts
melanin's heavy

of form and substance

meter's not the point
banal ideas in haiku
just evoke boredom

quack

homeopathic
doctor took a placebo
died of overdose

overdue

spirit dwindling
I need a vacation soon
thanksgiving haiku

arctic circle III

on top of the world
sun and moon spin around you
the cosmos as top

arctic circle II

day, night, dark and light
just a shift in perspective
 on the Great Circle

Arctic circle

full moon, setting sun
here at the edge of the world
in perfect balance

via dolorosa

just fourteen stations
to walk the path Jesus walked
but a million shops

embattled IV

arvat and salat
yelled across the western wall
like crazed football chants

embattled III

the "city of peace"
is that some sort of sick joke?
hope springs eternal

embattled II

we project our myths
onto this unbreathing rock
and kill to claim it

embattled

dead stone on dead stone
we build these towering walls
to force us apart

old-tech

shells are your harbors
twigs are your direction home
waka spiderweb

clear-eyed

Anita Perry
said Choice is a woman's Right
embarrassing Rick

M/I complex

Hadley said "let's bomb!
Assad lest we lose our face"
Raytheon cleaned up

industry standard

transglutaminase
does kinky perverted things
to transform your "meat"

obscurantist

Heidegger rejects

subject/object distinction

for experience

encounters

the BART doors slide shut
and he starts his monologue
yet another "friend"

herd

basking in Summer
East coast Sunday traffic jam
to Catskill moonrise

not drinking the kool-aid

faced with surveillance
kids raised on information
will blow the whistle

one law

justice in Texas
falls heavy on the Black man
white kids float right through

justice is blinded

a judge in Texas
found Couch too soft to serve time
prison's for po' folk

intruders

behemoth's hoofprints
cows tramp around my garden
the fence has been breached

safe haven

Benkler and Lessig
from their safe Ivory Tower
lay corruption bare

obsessed

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