bereft

Colbert and Stewart 

leave America bereft 

of journalism

when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean

intangible fish

can't have any calories

law-logic diet

friends

Netanyahu's friends

pocketed a nation's wealth

"privatization"

we have a winner!

circular genomes
still dominate life on Earth
as they always have

failure

Scott woke on Tekoa
draped in what had been his tent
in the howling wind

late bloomer

young Richard Feynman
married his consumptive bride
then discovered girls

fey

characteristic
a sociopath's glib charm's
fun on a first date

faithful

Beren, returning
clenched a Silarillion
in his severed fist

echoes

the laughter of loons
dead generations ago
peals in memory

forward looking

Berkeley's cellphone law
mandates that users be warned
of unproven threats

call rotoRooter

governor Christie
blocks a tunnel to New York
we'll need dynamite

good as his word

Beren claimed his bride
with a Silmarillion
in his severed fist

greedy

laissez-faire's death-knell?
Feds may dictate drug prices
to combat Hep-C

Bigot IV

Donald Trump wants walls
to guard White America
from Brown immigrants

on it

ceaseless vigilance
Maurice Obstfeldt never sleeps
at the IMF

bigot III

Trump wants a White Wall
to protect America
from Brown immigrants

branchings

extrapolating
'n' moves into the future
chess as rabbit-hole

faith II

alone together
how much can one ever know
of another's mind

faith

sharing solitude
with one you can't wholly know
even love's finite

wink wink

non-prosecution
kept doors open on WallStreet
for Eric Holder

Capital advantage

Thomas Piketty
showed why Donald Trump succeeds
with being smart

quality

Donald Trump's father
paid good money for an heir
in Indonesia

family ties

photos of Orangs
haunt Trump on the campaign trail
and fam'ly albums

shallow

male-pattern baldness
doesn't bother prince William
Trump's more insecure

when the Law is wrong

every ransom paid
sponsors Evil in the world
despite Torah law

winning design

tube-within-a-tube
segregates "self" from "supper"
pie-hole to corn-hole

clueless

thinly-veiled bigot
the face of White Privilege
epic comb-over

discriminating

by one's first birthday
distinctions without meaning
drop out as phonemes

by his own dim lights

Dunning and Kruger
explained Donald Trump's so dumb
he believes he's smart

nativist

Trump wants to pretend
our grandsires weren't peasants
fleeing poverty

pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

new puppet, same hand

Jeb talks tough on lobbyists

because he's told to

new puppet, same hand

lobbyists told Jeb:

talk tough about lobbyists!

Jeb did as he's told

Power to the People

four decades later

what the Church Committee found

should keep you outraged

clownish

anywhere there's Trump

above the dumb posturing

there'll be Hell toupee

unfree

chained to the Euro
Cuba's second currency
resonates to Greece

bring in the clowns

the people's favorite!
Trump's visage is everywhere...
...there's a piñata

marker

Walter Alvarez
traced the dinosaurs' demise
in iridium

boffo!

what party's complete
without a Trump piñata?
not the GOP!

opportunity

each glorious dawn
must bleach out a million stars
nothing's without cost

utility function

learning Speed-to-Fly
topping out each climb's for kids!
love 'em and leave 'em

incendiary

new on the menu
la cochinita pibil
took my gut by storm

iconoclast

A Boy and his Dog
survived the apocalypse
and suburbia

warped

Donald never knew
how hard that first million is
born to privilege

no class

 born to privilege
to use the technical term
Donald Trump's a putz

thresholds

flying trip, podunk
aiming for "not poisonous"
low expectations

bigot II

Donald ingested
biases from his father
sweetened with millions

scribo

slight text revision
seventy-two pissed vegans
grate a bomber's flesh

bigot

poor little rich boy
Donald's not responsible
for his warped worldview

institutionalized

Gardena police
abetting after-the-fact
reward killer cops

putz

Piketty explained
how Trump's inherited wealth
distorts his world-view

changes

time-travel's easy
if you don't mind the slow pace
and it's just one-way

revanchism

Germany's bankers
wrote a new Versailles Treaty
to oppress the Greeks

sensei

goliath heron
flies just like a hang glider
would if it could flap

keep 'em afraid

RedState radio

outside the BayArea

the sky is falling!

dangerous man

valor in action
teaching the youth to question
got Socrates killed

search-image

Würmern und Schlangen

dedicated detectors

kept our grandsires safe

ilui

Abraham Heschel
like Conrad and Nabokov
rocked his fourth language

direction

Life is the journey

the pursuit of happiness

never really ends

monetized

the "Land of the Free"?
millions of Americans
languish behind bars

economic war

bring Iran online!

shut Putin out of Europe!
gas is fungible

dweeb

Leary and Alpert
thrived in academia
until Andrew Weill

consciousness

Timothy Leary
heartfelt materialist
mystified Ram Dass

peoplehood

Chancellor Bismarck
built German's identities
into their pensions

fifteen minutes of fame

silicone butt-plugs
immortalize Donald Trump
el cageleche

now it's a party

el Chapo Guzman
put Trump's ass on his hitlist
big pink piñata

unmoored

Dinesh d'Souza
sound so whacked out to the Judge
he called in a shrink

ill repute

the Donald's new name
"el guero cageleche"
won't wash off for years

falsus in unum...

Lichtblau and Risen
documented Hayden's lies
he's in-credible

personal stake

lawns fadng to gold
bring the drought home to voters
in California

green

a lawn on one's roof
might reduce cost of cooling
but children fall off

finite

what's the point of grass?
shameful waste of resources
unless you keep sheep

rankings

John Kenneth Galbraith
tall, but not as imposing
as Julia Child

corrigible

pope admits error
ignoring the Middle Class
humbly fallible

critics in the dark

inevitably
the problem of qualia
shadows Rothko's art

proud

Jefferson Davis
stood for every free man's right
to wear women's clothes

circus

his father's money
greased Donald Trump's path through life
when he falls, it's news

emergent

Conway's 'Game of Life'
lets simple algorithms
breed complexity

testing, testing

extroverts' frat house
trial by karaoke
weeds out the poseurs

well-trained

Cheney's hand-puppet
claimed to be "the decider"
obediently

contentious

:

among ethnic groups

narratives of oppression

strange treasured heirlooms

clean-up

desert patina
scrubbed off twice, once from my skin
once from my  bathtub

quantitation

William Hamilton
modeling evolution
treats it as science

naive

no snakes haunt DeepSee
it just can't know what it's like
to live on the veldt

horizon

blinded by the light
14 billion lightyears shrink
to our campfire's reach

post-frontal

not yet ten o'clock
Huber launched into darkness
feeling kinda late

E-ticket

Winter-cold downdrafts
spill down Tinemaha Pass
where planes go to die

fad

chic new phobia
there's chromium in stainless!
glass waterbottles

Thursday

Williamson's glacier
getting rejuvenated
as Huber sets up

thinking slow

worthy Butterburr
could see through brick walls, in time
were he not mortal

too phat II

such pretty lighting!
anvil clouds at ten a.m.
throwing lightning bolts

measure twice

proofreading function
buys you more fidelity
than polymerase

what is Man, or Lord that Thous are mindful

earthworms and corals
bracketing "Descent of Man"
put us in our place

manipulated

RedState radio
stokes the electorate's fears
Goebbels? Or Orwell?

scandalous

loco parentis
Hastert's thing for teenaged boys
sounds felonious

race mode

perfect Speed-to-Fly
leave when you'll reach the next lift
before decking it

low gear

Peter persevered
North of White, South of the Flats
new snow damps thermals

noctilucent

storms on the Inyos
bask in sun long past nightfall
things are fucking tall

peoplehood

I'm still unconvinced
that president Lincoln was right
they're not my people

topped out

love 'em and leave 'em
when two circles buy no gain
seek your next thermal

rotor

Huber went to Laws
from 12k on Black Mountain
like a falling leaf

capped

flirting with cloudbase
still below the mountain tops
more "Alps" than "Owens"

optimizing

perfect Speed-to-Fly
attachments cause suffering
love 'em and leave 'em

out-classed

approaching the Wall
Mike K's Atos cored through me
then dwindled, Northbound

downshift

scratching at 10k
going neither up nor North
just wasting daylight

S2F

perfect Speed-to-Fly
 rips the heart from each thermal
love 'em and leave 'em

turbulence

pimping off Mike K.
I can't hold a straight heading
too rich for  my blood

black box

no one understands
how John Searle's mind operates
(John Searle's a sub-set)

shit in, shit out

Olestra eaters
fucked by the food industry
at least they're well-lubed

overwrought

airport newsstand prose
trying to write like Dan Brown
Kurtis sounds rabid

auspicious stars

just South of Mammoth
the Owens starscape unfurls
stormclouds behind us

what goes up...

cloudsuck's evil twin
evaporating droplets
super-chill downdrafts

vain pursuit

Soren Kierkegaard
recommends Faith, not Reason
to find Happiness

stultifying

One's search for Meaning
ends in John Searle's lecture hall
(not 'cause you've found it)

too phat

four-inch hail implies
ten thousand feet per minute
straight up, minimum

something for nothing

how is mass conserved?
each sugar-free gummi bear
makes a ton of gas

epistemic limits

good economists
keep track of what they don't know
(and they're mythical)

dedicated detector

over-trained on cats
DeepSee's blind to the serpents
that haunt primates' minds

forward looking

rose-tinted forecast
extrapolates sigmoid curve
exponentially

anhedonic

like a protein shake
skinless, boneless chicken breasts
nourish, joylessly

field effects

the dead don't suffer
just hard on those who were close
like being stupid

catharsis

who needs the candy?
whacking a Trump piñata
spews out dopamine

off-loading

drifting off to sleep
jotting down the day's last thoughts
frees the processors

unthinking

colloidal machine
decides, then backfills reasons
to obscure its tracks

land of many uses

seedlings and rifles
someone's farming contraband
by BigBend HotSprings

portenteous

violent gust-front
rocking trucks in the LZ
caps a no-fly day

grand

Turneresque sunset
paints towering storm clouds mauve
behind Hat Creek rim

ethnic markers

smelling aftershave
night patrol in Vietnam
IFF by nose

unfit

Casita, Bishop
salso in souvenir bowl
emesis basin

RightWing

Hobbes elevates kings
out of the State of Nature
inexorably

conjurer II

three pounds of pink gel
renders a world in 4-D
to fit scant data

conjurer

given scant data
my "tiny mammalian brain"
makes worlds in real-time

forethoughted

real sophisticates
would pack the coffee gear last
last in is first out

crass

what's "Good Behavior"?
Scalia's ad  hominem
attacks test the line

clown

Lord, we beseech Thee
keep Donald Trump in the race
for comic relief

tempest

calm your thudding heart
visualize whirled peas (but
not in guacamole)

substandard

'engineered lumber"
unfit for structural use
cardboard balconies

wink wink

under the table
"unpermited diversions"
bleed our rivers dry

make an example

minister Schauble
argues for letting Greece burn
to keep clients meek

de-globalizing

cordon sanitaire
insulating Europe's banks
garroting Athens

values-free

California's shame
last save for Mississippi
short-changing students

slated

nomen est omen
HongKong's second richest man
answers to "KaChing"

bonded

Marines sit shmira
'til their comrades are interred
blood-deep tribal bonds

curvature

hyperspace cosmos
Einstein's perfect telescope
peers at his backside

condescencion

monarchists scolded
if you let the masses vote
they'll vote for FreeLunch

backer

most FortyNiners
died poor while making Strauss rich
he sold them shovels

historic marker

now, it's official
the StoneWall Inn's a landmark
not going away

uber alles

Angela Merkel
means to squeeze tribute from Greece
where Xerxes couldn't

Hooverism

staunch ideologues
Germany's austerians
watch Greek children starve

double standard

"sampling" the interns
as Bill did casually
would sink Hillary

futile

Dylann Roof's hate seed
failing to launch his race-war

fell on stony ground

stony ground

Dylann Roof preached Hate
but Charleston resonates more
to Gospel of Love

security risk

House Speaker Hastert
first sex deviant blackmailed
since McCarthy's reign

testament

Justice Kennedy
writing for posterity
sings the praise of Love

categorical imperative

anti-Vax zealots
imperil the Public Health
savagely selfish

strange tools

second Isaiah
hailed Cyrus as "moshiach"
for sacking Babel

boundary condition

on a seamless world
Plato's Essentialism
imposes edges

snark

Whitehead summarized
two millenia of thought
"footnotes to Plato"

aliens

tube-worm cathedrals
sanctify deep-sea hot-vents
that must smell like Hell

trashy

stirrings in his pants
intimate that Grey's alive
albeit brain-dead

meaning in context

chief justice Roberts
saved his credibility
and the ACA

vincit amor

reverend Pinkney
founded life on foregiveness
death mustn't change that

pawn sacrificed

Abdulmutallab's
half-assed suicide attempt
just blew his balls off

trampled

nine million Uighurs
resent Beijing's baseless lie
that they are "Chinese"

priorities

no one should burn coal
for carbon sequestration
it's the ideal form

like turning the lights on

Dorothy Crowfoot
solved penicillin's structure
where's the sport in that?

poseur

Peter Medawar
punctured Teilhard de Chardin's
obscurantist prose

conjoined

loyal to a fault
Colin Powell stayed too long
on that Ship of Fools

dark side

Cheney's undead hand
gropes for levers of power
through Jeb's advisors

symbolic

Strom Thurmond's son, Paul
disavows the rebel flag
I felt the earth move

dummy

Cheney's no dummy
he was the ventriloquist
moving Dubya's lips

dummy

Dubya's right-hand  man
reached through ass, stomach, larynx
to make his lips move

cozy

Jeb feigns excitement
as lobbyists wave dollars
for one more lap-dance

imbedded

Bush clan trade secrets
Jeb has mad courtesan skills
lobbyists queue up

for sale

Jeb asked lobbyists
what they want his lips to say
as he rides their laps