Better Angels

Steven Pinker's prose
weaves strange realms of inquiry
novel syntheses

special

"InsideAutism"
featured on the WholeFoods rack
might explain a lot

neo-Hobbesian

post-Colonial
massacres build Pinker's case
for Leviathan

podunk's conservative

linguistic fossils
words l'Academie condemned
persist in English

appetite

yetzer haRah tov
pot stimulates appetite
that makes it good, no?

we have ways of making you listen

G-man thuggery
FBI used NoFly lists
to coerce hackers

zealots

failing to patch leaks
NSA instead shredded
civil liberties

values

Holder's DoJ
decriminalized torture
but prosecutes leaks

coercive

"whitehat"? or "blackhat"?
hackers threatened with "NoFly"
do FBI's dirt

outstanding

plum-colored sportcoat
would seem an affectation
without the Mohawk

shanduh

public piety
as Rapfogel gets sentenced
not "good for the Jews"

thief

Cliven Bundy's fans
while engaging in FreeSpeech
are--nonetheless--wrong

focused

better hearing aids
give  you a whole mixing-board
to squelch the garbage
http://tinyurl.com/lgo9sfh

picture this

"#MyNYPD"
documents brutality
more than love for cops

non-prosecution

Barack Obama
decriminalized torture
but waffles on pot

defensible

Second Circuit Court
wants Kill List memos published
Law must have Reasons

fixed

Sheldon Adelson
conducts his own primary
we "pick" from his list

Esse

big soliloquy
contemplating suicide
glimpse of one Dane's soul

born again

JRR's Easter
the "long dark of Moria"
recaps Golgotha

ideologue

Searle's adrift in words
what machines can't have is "soul"
not "intelligence"

Sold!

on Obama's watch
corporate influence grew
hard to call this "change"

intelligence

new film ("Transcendence")
set in Berkeley AI labs
gives Searle no credence

Symposium

harnessing Eros
Socrates conjured the State
out of blind couplings

Transcendence

not Kurzweil's vision
and AI film with zombies
smacks more of the BORG

haystacks

Hassan elAhi's
own Library of Babel
casts shade on itself

dreamweaver

Avivah Zornberg
weaves midrashim out of Jung
like dreams with footnotes

huh?

Alcibiades
in his ideopolis
can't hear Socrates

cypher

not much to run on
Clinton's legacy at 'State
won't inspire T-shirts

demogogue

Putin scares the Rich
who hide their rubles abroad
 but the mob  love him

scapegoat

Russia and Ukraine
trade "anti-semite" charges
both of them sound right

sync

competent lovers
play on the others' bodies
intimate music

encumbered

onceYitzhak was bound
he could never leave the Land
(temple property)

sectarians

immunologists'

arcane vocabulary

keeps their turf sacred

l'zachehr

odors of damp earth 

like that madelaine for Proust 

evoke Springs long past

surveillance city

NewYork's PoliceChief
deigns to comply with the law
now that Bloomberg's out

mishpat echat

WestBank terrorists
increasingly wear kippot
and not kefiyahs

those who understand will understand

subtle tanaim
implied "Rome" but said "Edom"
couldn't be trusted

buy-in

in Scalia's mind
unenumerated rights
are just for the Rich

what we have here...

if not the hardware
why's my print-queue not moving?
distracted driver

McCutcheon

SCOTUS ruled: cash talks
citizens don't get a voice
if they can't buy in

Omm

exorcised in ink
haiku from the monkey-mind
free processor space

game-face

Boehner's spray-on tan
masks the blush when he's lying
Noise over Signal

minhag haMakom

strange oneg shabbat
fried jalapeno poppers
ParadiseValley

seduction

for the true salesman
the real product is himself
wares come, and wares go

classy

Baran's ingenol
built on the work of others
unattributed

stormy

Eastern Nevada
range after range of mountains
white-capped like combers

revolution

"Her" twists Pygmalion
Kurzweil's singularity
spins the reference frame

money talks

symbolic free speech
rights peculiar to the rich
genteel Class Warfare

entrenched

entrenched injustice
first tallies whose ox is gored
then passes sentence

versatile

where there are no bees
daffodils proliferate
vegetatively

patriots

Unity's champions
constructing national myths
risk bulldozing Truth

Qaeda's frontman

Ashfaq Kayyani
booked his special place in Hell
Haqqani group rate

snark

Agamemnon's kin
kept adultery in-house
not like those Spartans

hectic

EastCoast mogul field
bouncing rather than carving
Pachinko noises

hate sells

Narendra Modi
stoked pogroms in Gujarat
Partition still bleeds

Keystone Kops

Pakistan's police
apprehend a nine-month old
but not bin Laden

reworked

if not Orestes
who inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet
to avenge the king?

bought

Marx foretold Feinstein
"regulatory capture"
coups come from within

napping

Feinstein overlooks
what she's paid to oversee
that's "intelligence"?

no light of day

Ford pardoned Nixon's
unenumerated crimes
Justice,  blindsided

war of choice

July of '01
Rumsfeld's hot to oust Saddam
fill in "cause" later

unknown

studiedly opaque
Donald Rumsfeld keeps talking
but never answers

seminal

Jodorowski's "Dune"
greatest movie never made
the pipe-dream lives on

the illusion

versimillitude
sometimes needs broken English
to sound authentic

delete-all

for gods of Babel
the purpose of the GreatFlood
was Noise Abatement

weaponized

WestBank charedim
wage demographic warfare
against the planet

such an honor

who'd want such a job?
Afghanistan's president
needs a rhino's hide

sold!

in re McCutcheon
a century of reforms
drowned in seas of cash

insiders

in re McCutcheon
malefactors of great wealth
buy access wholesale

st. Albert

biking through Basel
mind flickering like bike spokes
the new world unspools

bias

Unity's champions
constructing national myths
risk bulldozing Truth

saint Albert

biking through Basle
as the world melts around him
the new world unspools

to blend, too bland

anxious to blend in
a nation of immigrants
ditched grandma's cookbook

found art

a million dash-cams
before monkeys type Shakespeare
out- blam Michael Bay

tempus mutantur

in diaspora
Isaiah's static vision
gained a chariot

bootstrapping

Sheldon Adelson
trusts his cash can shape a world
where cash shapes the world

ho hum

just an "after-shock"?
anywhere outside Chile
7.8's "big"

Baal

now, it's been revealed
Ezekiel's chariot
is Sheldon's scooter

non potestis servire et mammonae et dei

GOP hopefuls
kneel before Adelson's throne
idolatrously

a law unto himself

Scalia derides
what he calls "argle bargle"
when it isn't his

unbalanced III

John Roberts down-plays
joint fundraising committees
to corrupt the law

unbalanced II

steering by weight-shift
our High Court leans so far Right
the  Ship of State lists

unbalanced

four corporate whores
tip the High Court so far Right
we're apt to capsize

sold!

the Breyer dissent
warns a new oligarchy
has this Court's blessing

amok

bleaker than Owell's
James Clapper's surveillance state
doesn't need HumInt

where the text's silent

whom did Cain marry?
were there other Creations?
midrash can run wild

finis

Maybe Dolon's head
held an epic tale, unsung
as it licked the dust

Maunder minimum

after the Bard died
17th century's sun
didn't shine as bright

who's dog?

Clapper's confidant
Feinstein's a toothless old bitch
barking just for show

next bubble

BitCoin advocates
deny they're speculating
they just love tulips

lost years

Once Troy had fallen
did Helen sail home alone?
Was she in Egypt?

opening for midrash II

who raised Hermione?
while her parents were at Troy
wolves roamed in Sparta

in the balance

Seven decades in
Ataturk's experiment
lacks a conclusion

regulatory capture IV

James Clapper seems sure
Feinstein's a toothless watchdog
yapping in the night

NSA's mole

while Feinstein's still Chair
Regulatory Capture
blocks real oversight

regulatory capture III

while Feinstein's still Chair
there'll be no intelligence
and no oversight

opening for midrash

what plays have we lost?
Clytaemnestra's ghost in Hell
has a tale to sing

progress

KitchenAid's dough-hook
tenderizes octopus
without a stone wall

speculative

BitCoin advocates
deny the're speculating
they just love tulips?

resonant II

away at college
what was Hamlet studying
if not Aeschylus?

applied science

civilian PsyOps
good advertising jingles
stick like cholla spines

who knew?

Hamlet must have known
the Orestes precedent
but feared that answer

victors write the books II

Troys streets ran with blood
when the victors sing the tale
none dare call it "rape"

victors write the books

Troy's gates ran with blood
taken by the pride of Greece
none dare call it "rape"

high-concept

more people on stage
than are in the audience
avant-garde music

delicate

a sweat-cooled scrotum
shields spermatogenesis
from core temp'ratures

euphemistic

Hamlet's own uncle
after murdering the king
"comforts the widow"

criminal

thugs in high office
Leland Yee's corrupt dealings
would make boss Tweed blush

bitter

Nino Scalia
denounced as "argle bargle"
the law of the land

resonant

by the MRI
something lurched in my trousers
ferrous pocketknife

twisting in the wind

once the neck's severed
Christie doesn't know he's dead
but his corpse sure stinks

anti-heroic

Paul Krugman makes clear
this generation's TR
won't be Hillary
http://tinyurl.com/lhc5jqo

Bridge too far

Chris Christie's lawyers
assure us he knew nothing
...get what you pay for

cocky

Searle argues both sides
unafraid of being wrong
time and time again

puppetmaster II

Bibi wants credit
for killing Saddam Hussein
like Dubya's his pawn

cheater

skulking Aegisthus
shirked the all-Greece enterprise
seized booty at home

first modernist

Euripides ripped
what were Homeric heroes
as politicians

a woman scorned IV

Agamemnon's queen
plotted the war-leader's death
as she drew his bath

get a job

even Priam's son
earned his keep tending the flock
Homer wastes nothing

false metric

surrogate markers
look good for bisphosphonates
but bones keep breaking

poseur

out of a man's pelt
elaborate man-scaping
excavates lost youth

rabid III

even Tom Friedman
isn't beating the War Drum
Putin over-reached

the rod

rabbi Aeschylus
saw God's love in suffering
who influenced whom?

a woman scorned III

Agamemnon's queen
as implacable as Death
talked to hide her mind

a woman scorned II

Agamemnon learned
he could placate Achilles
but not his own wife

wrath of a woman

unlike Achilles'
the wrath of Clytaemnestra
couldn't be assuaged

the price of everything

consumer culture
makes sex a commodity
like everything else

politician

Agamemnon's choice
to claim war-leader's powers
his daughter must die

old wisdom

stubborn apple tree
not trusting that frost is past
ignore's Spring sunshine