RICH AND POOR (IN IMITATION OF MARTIAL)

For capital, public domains
Means pouring money down the drains.
Against this they are all dead set
Unless it gets them out of debt.

WHORES AND POLITICIANS (IN IMITATION OF MARTIAL)

A whore on whom you’d pay to piss
Would never think to sell a kiss.
In this way politicians fail
Since everything is up for sale.

PASTOR WARREN

“God’s chosen me,” said Pastor Warren,
“To help Obama find his way
As President he goes explorin’
On whether it is A-OK
The day that he’s inaugurated
To force the gays to be castrated;
And whether he should form a plan
To have the Air Force bomb Iran.
I’ll say he should be purpose driven
And dedicate his life to God
And make himself the Lord’s vice squad.
And when America’s forgiven,
We’ll sit down have James Dobson in
And show him that you play to win.”

ARNE DUNCAN

When Secretary Margaret Spellings
Lauds Arne Duncan as the choice
Obama made, the rebel yellings
Of neocons will surely voice
Acclaim. With Duncan, education
Is all about expropriation
Of “public” from the public schools.
But students are nobody’s fools.
They understand that his expulsions
Have made him look like he raised scores
As business gave him raves and roars.
There’s method in his mad compulsions:
To test so he can privatize
Some schools and leave the rest as sties.

OPEN COURT

To really better education,
Requires of teachers that they think
About their wrongful toleration
Of lessons that are rinky dink.
Instead of teaching kids what’s critical
The school boards’ plans are parasitical
On companies like Open Court.
To these a teacher should retort:
“I want to make my students clamor
For understanding when they go
To battle with the Status Quo.
And if their status quo’s the slammer,
When they get out they’ll understand
The school board helped to get them canned.”

FOR IRAQUI JOURNALIST MUNTADER al-ZAIDI

A shoe was thrown by one reporter
To strike a blow at W.
Too bad he didn’t lob a mortar
And turn the THE MAN into fondue.
The mainstream press is so housebroken
They emphasized George Bush’s jokin'.
But throwing shoes are an attempt
Iraquis use to show contempt.
For what can show a man’s more sordid
Than soles of shoes that pick up dirt
And blood from people that he's hurt.
Too bad that anger’s not exported
Back home where it won’t be a joke
When buckaroos go up in smoke.

THE DUNGHEAP OF HISTORY

The purpose of my ranting writing
Is to improve your martial arts
In hopes that one day my broadsiding
Will help us storm the pols’ ramparts;
And tear from office politicians
Submitting them to electricians
Who’ll happily supply the shock
Will end their lying poppycock;
As well, their partners, corporations
Whose exploitation bleeds us dry.
Then, tired of eating humble pie,
We’ll send them on to destinations
Where one day they may prove of use
Or garbage heaped like foul refuse.

FOR TRUTHDIG.COM

Who educate our mediocrities
At schools like Harvard, Stanford, Yale
Pretend they are a modern Socrates
But who among them dare assail
The state by speaking truth to powers?
Instead they hide in ivory towers
While outside we all live in hells
Promoted by their clienteles.
These Ivy Leaguers- all- are dunces
Who serve the corporations as
The makers of our Alcatraz.
It’s shameful they got over once. Is
It possible (I mean what if),
We shoved these fuckers off a cliff?

THE STATE OF THE UNIONS

A union needs strategic planning
For nowadays to just survive
It cannot get along by banning
Nonunion workers from the hive.
So businessmen hypothesizing
Where to begin economizing
Might then be met at every turn
By workers whom they cannot spurn.
When unions turn to politicians
(Who owe the bosses oh so much
Because they have the Midas touch),
They’ll never fulfill their ambitions-
For when you back politicos
You’re always backing status quos.

DISAPPOINTMENT? ( A REPLY TO ALTERNET BLOGGER ROBERT CREAMER)

Who thought Obama’s advertising
Of ending Bush and Cheney’s reign
Was spot on are now realizing
They might have voted John McCain.
For when Obama was elected
The cabinet that he confected
Was mostly made of neocons
And Democratic woebegones.
Who dreamed Obama walked on water-
The liberals in blushing pink-
Began to feel their dream boat sink;
That he might even prove a rotter
By choosing those to rule the roost
Whom Washington has mass produced.

Re: MELTDOWN (FOR AESA MEMBERS)

Perhaps if I just keep on blogging
The truth of what I have to say
Will interfere with all the clogging
In peoples’ heads brought on by way
Of total lack of education
On how we might end exploitation-
By making workers their own boards
Appropriating bosses’ hoards.
Of course this means the dissolution
Of capital. But that’s not news,
For capital was born to lose
In fiery hells of REVOLUTION.
Ergo we’ll never mind the store
Unless prepared for civil war.

IS THIS THE END?

I’m finally out of gas this morning.
I cannot write another word.
Who listen to my witless scorning
Are hardly ever even stirred.
Who’d ever think to blog his curses
In Alexander Pushkin’s verses
Should have his head examined so
They’ll see what made him suck his toe.
This writing thing’s so traumatizing
I’d gladly drown myself in booze;
Or hide away like Howard Hughes.
I’m tired of always criticizing
As our conditions here on earth
Grow more and more like Leavenworth.

THE SINGULARITY (FOR COUNTERPUNCH)

1
As we approach the “Singularity”
Which means Obama’s swearing-in,
Will we regret his popularity?
Despite the odds that he would win,
He voted military spending
Until the ship of state’s upending;
Or thinking that he finally can
Beat down unbeat Afghanistan;
As well for trumping off-shore drilling;
More money surging to Iraq;
A bailout of the banker’s stock…
The thing that makes all this so chilling
Is when he really sparked some hope
He suckered us with rope-a-dope.
2
Why not begin with whom he’s hiring
To be his White House chief of staff-
Emanuel who needs rewiring
Or less caffeine and more decaff.
The man’s surcharged with irritation
As he stabs out in his vexation
At party members who must go
As traitors to Guantanamo.
This shows B.O. has no intention
Of ending the Iraqi war.
His chief of staff is so hardcore
He’d not let any sow dissension
About Iraq, Afghanistan.
Emanuel’s his triggerman.
3
Who think Obama’s left-of-center
Should think again and then some more.
You’ll find a sign says, “Do Not Enter”
Emanuel’s placed on the door
To his, Obama’s, Oval Office.
For Rahm Emanuel would off us
If he finds gender, class, and race
Attempting to get to first base
Impinging on his man Obama;
And even labor leaders who
Believe Obama will come through
To set things right and end their trauma
Of losing members (that’s their wish)
An outraged Rahm will say, “Go fish.”
4
And speaking of the left-of-center,
Joe Biden is a Democrat
Who is the perfect complementer
Of everything that is old hat.
For Biden has a reputation
For helping banks escape taxation;
And, at your risk, you’ll disregard
The Senator from Mastercard
Who authorized bankcard creditors
To keep you ever in their debt
By helping cut the safety net
Of bankruptcy. Now these predators
Are roaming free. Will it seem strange
When we’re the “ stock” in stock exchange?
5
And what about how B.O. voted
Renewing the Patriot Act,
A law that surely is devoted
To seeing privacy is whacked?
It gave telecommunications
Immunity for its quotations
Of everything we wrote or said.
But did The Man once hang his head
In shame at this domestic spying?
He voted cloture, offed debate
Which favored Bush, the chief of state.
If you should find this mystifying,
It shows the pols your naivete
Will never much get in their way.
6
And, too, there is the Wall Street crisis,
As Dems refuse to intervene
As Paulsen tries to sacrifice us?
Come on, B.O., you can come clean.
You voted to give up gazillions-
Then pared it back to hundred billions-
To bankers who were overstressed .
Why not vote them a stretch in EST?
Instead you keep on emphasizing
Republicans did it alone.
Except the Dems were in the zone
And voted for this plans devising
Including you, House, Senate leads.
You must believe we’re all jerkweeds.

7
And when the Court struck death in cases
In which no body lost its life,
Obama freaked and said disgrace is
When penalties of death aren’t rife.
He then denounced the Court’s decision
By heaping on it his derision
Agreeing with conservatives
But not with his God Who forgives.
Obama said he’d long supported
Expanding death for many crimes-
Which shows the man’s behind the times
When other countries think it sordid
As well his home state Illinois,
Except for Whitey’s good ole boy.
8
Or Lieberman, committee chairman,
Who spoke in favor of McCain
For President, “The finest airman
To be shot down. He knows the pain
Of servicemen and women fighting
To keep Iraq from reuniting,
While Barry might try some glasnost.”
For this Joe gets to keep his post
As chairman of Homeland Security?
And B.O. helped the turncoat out!
This takes the cake without a doubt.
It guarantees that change’s purity
Will be diluted with the views
Of those who have the red state blues.
9
And last but far from least there’s Hillary
Who is Obama’s nominee
For State if she can escapes the pillory
And can get loose and fancy free
Of husband Bill as her advisor.
She’d rather be his ostracizer.
But Bill knows how to hold his own
(Though feels it more when not alone).
But be that how it may, Obama
Will have his hands full-neocons
And other Clinton woebegones
Will put him in a freaking trauma.
The only thing that’s more inane
Would be to bring in John McCain.

10
I could go on and on forever-
Suffice it’s Clinton 3.0.
We voted for the Land of Never
Where people who have all the dough,
Like CEOs of corporations,
Are still in charge of operations
To keep the good old USA
The planetary beast of prey.
But it’s a stay of execution-
We want to be led by the hand
And taken into Wonderland.
But when we see that’s no solution,
We’ll give up groveling for sops
And start again and build co-ops.

FOR DASHA

I won’t condemn Islamic fashions
On how a woman should be dressed,
Until the Christian man refashions
The sizes to which he’s obsessed.
Till western woman’s manumitted
From how her body is outfitted,
She’ll never be free from the sense
She dresses purely to serve gents.
This Christian form of domination-
That men control a woman’s form;
That what they want should be the norm-
Is really just a degradation.
A perfect girl does not exist
Except as advertising’s grist.

WHY ISN'T JOHN McCAIN SMILING?

Why’d John McCain let Joe the Plumber
Make speeches praising his campaign?
With Palin, you’d think dumb and dumber
Was overkill. “No pain, no gain.”
That must have been what he was thinking.
It’s either that or he was drinking;
Or maybe even taking drugs.
But either way they drove him bugs.
They cured him of irregularity-
A feat for men in his age group
Though he remained a nincompoop.
As he lives out the “singularity,”
He’ll see the White House crowd’s the same
And playing at their old shell game.

AND WHAT EXACTLY HAS CHANGED?

We will be an Obama nation
Which means THE MAN needs latitude
While undergoing his mutation.
That means of course that we’ll get screwed.
I say this as an admonition-
Obama is a politician
Which means he’ll do ’bout anything
To grab a hold of the brass ring.
Admittedly he was mind blowing-
When he was billed our only Hope,
A classic Ali rope-a-dope.
But watch as offices start going
To pols who always added grease
To capital and its increase.

A MESSAGE TO THE VOTERS (FOR RALPH NADAR)

Will President-Elect Obama
Play Uncle Sam to all the folk
Whose wallets suffer from the trauma
Of emptying, if not dead broke;
Or Uncle Tom to corporations
Who mainly made up his donations;
And what about the “infidels”
Locked up in isolation cells?
Will he eliminate our calling
Of pushing JUSTICE to the wall?
Why not phone in a wake-up call?
“Get off your ass. No more stonewalling.”
But don’t stop there. For so help me-
Mere voting’s never set us free.

TO BE CONTINUED??????

Who says it’s my responsibility,
Especially if Obama wins,
To tell folks of his inability
To keep the U.S. from it’s sins-
To keep us from the blood we’re spilling;
And dry up all the oil drilling;
To make him eat the poppycock
That keeps us hunkered in Iraq?
Obama’s winning means presiding,
Once he has come into his own,
On raining fire and brimstone
On people who’ll just keep on fighting,
As once they did to Ho Chi Minh
Who thought he had a world to win.

MATING IN CAPTIVITY

He thought could life be any bleaker
As he made plans how he’d upbraid
His wife who was a fortune seeker
Whose plans included getting laid
By Satan. Yes, the very devil
Who’d promised madam her best revel.
The gentle man sought some constraint
And so to God he made complaint.
God listened as he curried favor;
Then said you must display desire
If you, the lady’d, reacquire.
But said it laughing up His sleeve,
Remembering Adam and Eve.

WHY MORONS SUCCEED IN POLITICS

Why morons make good politicians-
At least in these United States-
Is voters’ brains lack all cognitions
On any of the finer traits
Of what it takes to guide a nation.
Religion and their education
Have stripped the voters of their wits;
Hence, we elect so many shits.
Time after time they are elected
Unless of course they first resign
Before a Leno can malign
Them in the jokes that time’s perfected.
Alas, according to our sects,
We’ll keep on voting birth defects.

THE PRINCIPAL EDUCRAT

If teaching were a real profession,
We’d have the independence to
Use thoughtfully our own discretion
In teaching kids don’t have a clue.
Instead the educrat bureaucracy-
A bloated tribe of mediocracy-
Thinks that it knows how teaching’s done
And can be done by anyone.
The principal administrator
Has done a little classroom time
Then fast-tracked out so s/he could climb
The ladder up to castigator
Of what once drove her up the wall
Without a daily Seconal.

IT'S KILLER TIME

The NCLB mandates testing
To count the prisons we will need
Because who fail they’ll be arresting
On charges that they cannot read.
I know you’ll claim I’m pessimistic
When all I am is realistic-
There’s money for the rich folk’s schools
But why spend money on their mules?
But when the mules begin their bucking
It never even gives you pause
That you’re the reason they’re outlaws.
And tired of all the jive and shucking,
The mules know they’ve been serving time
So why not go and do the crime.

PALIN INTERVIEW WITH POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE

"I read all sorts of publications;
Especially the daily news.
My team supplies me with quotations,
Specifically about the Jews.
About them teaming with the nigger
To sap this nation of its vigor
So when it comes to Judgment Day
We’ll all be dead because we’re gay.
That’s why I’m running on this ticket-
To see our kids remain co-ed;
And not start thinking God is dead.
If that seems like a sticky wicket,
I say to you beyond a doubt-
LET'S KILL 'EM ALL THEN SORT IT OUT!"

LIBERAL HYPOCRISY

The Governor, Ms. Sarah Palin,
Appointed friends and donors to
Top jobs. And now the Dems are wailin’
About what they themselves would do.
Methinks this smacks of some hypocrisy-
For, after all, this is democracy
Where you’ll be left out in the cold
If you don’t sell yourself for gold.
A case in point Barrack Obama
Who’s raised more money than he spends.
Won’t he, as well, reward his friends?
Of course he won’t appoint his mama
To office. That would be a joke.
She's dead already and died broke.

A PRAYER WARRIOR FOR PALIN

I am A Palin Prayer Warrior
And hope to God I live to see
Rejoicing angels lift and buoy her
From VP to Presidency.
Then she can help us smite blasphemers
As Sampson did with asses’ femurs
And crush them to a bag of bones,
Returning glory to Dow Jones.
She’ll put an end to their verbosity
On separating church and state;
That gays and lesbians may mate;
And finally end the worst atrocity-
That woman will receive her due
And be presented on The View.

WHEN!!!!!

Electioneering is the seeking
Of power in an office that
You promise voters you’re critiquing.
Since politics was first begat
You’ve promised them idealism;
To do away with cynicism;
That you’re the one, the real McCoy,
To represent the hoi polloi.
But once elected to the office,
And after time to settle in,
Just like a snake you shed your skin;
And sideways slithering you scoff us
Until you do it all again.
When will we learn to holler "WHEN?"

A NEW LEFT (FOR NOAM CHOMSKY)

To vote the lesser of two evils,
So Chomsky says, is doing right.
Because he’s given up upheavals;
Or maybe he’s too old to fight?
He’s all but given up democracy
By giving way to vote plutocracy.
I’d rather vote a party that
Is willing to go to the mat
With capital and take production
And put in the workers’ hands.
He’d say to fire from frying pans.
But Chomsky needs an introduction
On what it means to build a Left
Not based on surplus values’ theft.

THE EXCESS TESTOSTERONE EFFECT

The architects of this recession
Can’t help themselves. Testosterone
Has helped make gambling their obsession
Since risk’s been bred deep in the bone.
The rules of rational investing
To these are naught but foolish jesting-
They’re out to take the biggest prize
No matter it means our demise.
Consider then the implications
Of trusting your investments to
A man who’s fueled by derring-do.
Why not require of them castrations;
And if that doesn’t do the trick,
We slice up each and every prick.

YOU CALL THIS AN ELECTION!!!!

I get up early every morning
And sitting at my table write
A satire’s flyting full of scorning
For liberals both “left” and right.
But liberals who are “left-leaning”
Inflame my wit into demeaning
Their vain attempts to help brainstorm
How capital might brave the storm.
Meanwhile what passes for democracy-
The right to vote and have our say
Each four years on election day-
Is just a cover for plutocracy.
Republicans and Democrats
Should call themselves REPUBLICRATS.

A SOLUTION TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

The Constitution needs (amen)ding
When liberal democracy
Has long outlived its patent pending
And ended as hypocrisy.
To think we’ll all go to perdition
(If workers wanting manumission
From value added they don’t get
Should want to try a soviet
That promises no exploitation),
Is drivel when they say take ten.
Then what? I feed my kids on Zen?
So why not try expropriation
To put an end to their grand theft.
Let’s organize to hang a Left.

DIE HARDS

Though Cheney was a tad aggressive,
He was the Right man for the job.
He may have been a bit excessive;
But polishing George Bush’s knob
Required a man whose artful striving
Could turn a weeny to conniving;
And so Bush went from hockey puck
To being, sure-enough, dumdstruck. .
And neither will be prosecuted
Except perhaps in lines of rhyme
Though every breath they draw’s a crime.
In Texas they’d be executed.
Ask widows of the Texas Guard
Who’d like to see both men die hard.

THE BRADLEY EFFECT

Republicans are gratifying
Electorates who think that race
Deserves a thorough vilifying
In hopes McCain will take first place.
Meanwhile the Democrats are wailing
It’s true McCain may be prevailing
Because Obama’s six point lead
Means nothing has been guaranteed.
I don’t care who wins this election
Since both men are but(t) corporate sluts
Who pander to our modern Tuts.
Yet voters who’d vote for complexion
Deserve to vote as they see fit
And so emerge besmeared in shit.

POLITICAL POWER GROWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN

The minute I become discursive
A voice inside my head says, “Hey,
You will be classified sub(vers)ive
For wanting to go all the way
And wrecking Capital’s longstanding
By organizing its disbanding
And giving over what it makes
To workers who deserve fair shakes.
So be prepared. A desperado
Is hunted till s/he’s run to ground
And then, in truth, is duty-bound
To fight it out for Eldorado-
For power grows from out a gun,
If you’d bring down LEVIATHAN.”

WE HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF DICK CHENEY

Dick Cheney has a White House office
Near Bush’s where he sits and thinks
How best the NSA might off us
For causing him official stinks.
He grumbles out his hateful thinking
About comedians lipsyncing
A man whose mates know’s to be feared
Yet all he gets is booed and jeered.
He knows where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried
And, mad at Bush, thinks he’s the man
Who should have filled a dog food can.
Alas, his plans on that miscarried.
He calls McCain. For no support,
He wants the next seat on the Court.

FOR A LEFT TURN

Where is the Left when it’s most needed;
When capitalism’s crisis gets
So hot it’s time’s been superseded?
But all we get are its bad debts.
Why not build on its self-destruction
And use that as an introduction
To put the workers in control
And send it down its own black hole?
But that won’t happen acquiescing
In voting for a Democrat
Who uses us as his doormat
Which he’ll help bankers repossessing.
As Lenin said, You play hardball
Or Capital will never fall.

THE CRYING SHTICK

I hardly think Joe Biden’s crying
Is reason to get all choked-up-
Though he distracted me from trying
To guess the size of Palin’s cup.
No. Biden is so disagreeable
Because he made me quite unfreeable-
I have to go the whole nine yards
And pay off all my credit cards.
I’ll bet the banks will give him credit!
They have to if they’d see him win;
He’s life to them, their kith and kin.
The Bidens of the world don’t get it.
But neither do my closest friends
Who just like me are at loose ends.

THE CULTURAL STUDIES OF DONNA HARAWAY

At Santa Cruz, Cultural Studies
Is celebrating twenty years
Of leaving history’s fuddie-duddies
Behind and crying in their beers.
With studies on mankind’s educing
From groping to the modern goosing;
How mankind went from loving dogs
To slaughtering much smarter hogs,
The profs are all quite certifiable.
They couldn’t tell a cyborg from
A human made by human mum.
Since what they write’s not verifiable,
They say and do just what they please
While jargoning academese.

DYSTOPIAN THOUGHTS

I’ve always practiced contraception;
Or else ideas I’ve declined
Might lead men’s senses to perception.
I much prefer to keep them blind-
The ones who scoff at God’s morality,
For higher forms of rationality;
That shows off its opposing thumb
To argue earth is Kingdom Come.
That we’ve already been admitted
To heaven on this lucky earth
From that first instant of our birth;
And that it’s our fault we’ve permitted
The earth to be a living hell
With mankind as its cancer cell.

AVON CALLING

I wouldn’t leave a false impression
Behind me when I’m finally gone.
I studied hard for my profession-
To be a mullah in Iran.
But found the work so damned appalling,
I gave it up for Avon calling.
I went about in full disguise-
All husbands saw were my brown eyes.
How wonderful to be admitted
Where only “other” women went.
They praised me as if heaven sent
Since only God could have outwitted
A husband in his bailiwick.
But, still, we did it double-quick.

ARE PREACHERS RISKING THEIR TAX EXEMPT STATUS?

Who says that we can’t make endorsements
From out the pulpits where we preach?
The Bible needs our reinforcements.
As stains on shirts need lots of bleach,
So we will pour on fire and thunder
So that who hear us will not blunder
And shamble to the voting booth
And not vote for the gospel truth.
If not McCain then sister Sarah-
Despite the threats the IRS
Might make deserves a full-court press-
For she’ll inaugurate an era
Where Christians go full speed ahead
As soon as John McCain is dead.

RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

For Jesus freaks who now are plotting
Religion in the public square,
Perhaps you ought to go glob-trotting
And see Iran and its nightmare-
Enforcing on a single nation
The status of one congregation;
Who think there’s nothing left to teach
Except for what their mullahs preach;
Who send out goon squads as marauders
Investigating all parked cars
To see who’s leading seminars
On J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potters
Then, after beating them for fraud,
They’re strung up in the name of god.

SPHINCTER

Mechanically she ope’d her sphincter
So that the camera peered inside
And got a look that was succincter
Than any yet declassified.
I speak, of course, of Sarah Palin,
A joke not even Woody Allen
With all his humor could conceive
Not even in pure make believe.
The camera showed the inconceivable-
At bottom, almost out of sight,
It glimpsed a fading pilot light
That showed what was barely perceivable.
For up her ass was John McCain
Who stood stuck in his smear campaign.

ANTITERRORISM TACTICS

The man was held in long captivity
Because he didn’t understand
The Constitution’s relativity
On what it means to tip your hand.
If you don’t face a court’s proceeding,
You’re pounded on until you’re bleeding;
And that’s kept up until you break
Or, bloody raw, you’re served as steak.
Arrested on the charge: SUSPICION
Because he fit the profile of
The terrorist- None of the Above,
They finally beat him to submission:
He was an interstellar probe
Sent out to find a peaceful globe.

VIOLENCE

It’s violence that is systemic
That threatens us with requiem;
Not rapes and murders, epidemic,
Which men commit ad hominem.
These latter liberals find contemptible;
And argue that they are preemptible
If only we were more PC
Respecting all identity.
Did god respect the men of Sodom;
Or capital the working prole,
Exploited body, mind, and soul?
It’s only when you’ve hit rock bottom
That you can see a system work
And know why men can go berserk.

THE FIFTH AMENDMENT

According to the Constitution,
Secreted in the Bill of Rights,
You have to talk if your locution
Won't land you in a court’s searchlights.
This means the feds can be freewheeling
And torture you beyond all feeling
So long as you’re not brought to trial
But held until you’ve gone senile.
No doubt the Bush administration
On Cheney’s orders took a stand
On pulling off this slight of hand.
And so, what’s next? The cancellation
Of free speech rights? To take a breath,
And, speaking, talk yourself to death?

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

When Wall Street bankers’ caterwauling
Has reached crescendo in its pitch
With cries about the sky is falling
You know their ploy’s a bait and switch
To get them off the hook for making
Investments that are like housebreaking;
And after they’ve pulled off their heist
They’ll leave us bleeding, sliced and diced.
Come on! Bring on a great depression.
My wallet’s empty anyway.
I’m ready for a come what may.
It’s time we showed what repossession
Looks like to us, the working proles,
When we walk in the leading roles.

THROUGH A LOOKING GLASS

1
McCain was in Alaska hunting
(He had a taste for some fresh meat)
When suddenly he stood confronting
A woman with a toilet seat.
“My dear,” he said. “What are you doing?”
She answered, “Hunting. Out pursuing
A candidate who has the brass
To peek inside my looking glass.”
“The toilet seat,” McCain said asking?
“Yes. Stick your head in. Tell me what
You see.” “I’m looking up your butt.”
“Exactly so,” she said. “It’s masking
The issues with my perfect fit
So none will know you’re full of shit.”
2
And so the two were joined together
And left Alaska far behind;
The toilet seat their binding tether-
But out of sight was out of mind.
Ms. Palin played to much admiring
Stumps of Christians who’d been retiring
From working to elect McCain
Because they couldn’t potty-train
His mind to their god’s way of seeing.
McCain claimed he’d been born again,
A Daniel in the lion’s den.
He all but cut out reparteeing
And stayed on message fighting chance
His dick would slip from out his pants.
3
But late one night as they were flying
To Arkansas where they’d debate
The Clintons on the use of lying
When you have cuckolded your mate,
McCain asked Palin her ambition
After he won the competition
For president; and Palin said,
“Assuming, John, that you’re not dead,
I would, of course, want your endorsement
For president- a woman who
Can do the job as well as you.”
McCain said she’d need reinforcement-
For presidents to be world class
Must sometimes take it up the ass.
4
Now Palin was in full agreement
And pulling out a strap on said,
“Bend over, John.” That’s not what he meant,
Was his reply. “Get on the bed,”
Said Palin. And as she was stripping,
McCain could feel his asshole ripping.
“It’s only fair you should go first,”
Said Palin who seemed well rehearsed.
“But isn’t this against your preachings,”
He asked, exposing his crevasse?
“We’re partners, John. I own your ass.”
Outside the cabin his beseechings
Were heard by everybody there
But thought his “goddamns” were a prayer.

LIQUOR STORE STICK UP ( A RAP IN OTTAVA RIMA)

1
Clerk counted the cash; made a time-lock drop;
Fingers tell him "take it" but legs won't walk.
Near closing time at the Liquor Quick Stop,
When a whore drags in off the auction block.
Orient eyes say for a pint she'll swap
Whatever he wants from her private stock.
Clerk's wife and kids home snuggled down in bed;
While down behind the counter whore gives head.
2
Out on the street they call her Miss Saigon-
Mouth and pussy hot as a naplam bomb;
A war bride's baby whose daddy moved on;
She learned sucky-fuck from her Viet mom.
Pro at 14; was a cop her first john,
Used to be a grunt in the Vietnam.
Caught, dealing dope, she stuck her ass up bare;
Said: Cop, take a shot with your ground-to-air.
3
Down on her knees showing silicone tit,
Once a soft touch now insensible brick.
Her cat scratch tongue and lips and hand don't quit
Till she's sucked him bone dry and slurped his thick.
Her eyes smile up, but stare in her obit;
Handbags got a gun but she ain't that quick.
Very last thought before she's bagged airtight:
White motherfucker got it free tonight.
4
Drags her in a storeroom; dick still erect;
He ain't felt this good since he left Art Tech.
Tops in his class at the Special Effect;
The Movies said: Genius, write your own check.
Too much, too soon, and he totally wrecked;
Lucky that his lady studied home-ec.
Then staring down at delirium's titty,
He saw his road back to living Fat City.
5
Props her in a chair; wrestles off her dress;
Steps back and whistles at his late night guest;
Thinks: Doc did her tits was genius, no less,
Carved Botticelli's on a silk thin chest.
He bends down close pets her pussy's recess
Knows it was trophied in the old time West;
Sets in to skin it with a razor blade;
Now he's got a pussy scalp custom made.
6
He weaves the silky pelt through his gold throat chain,
A spoil of war in the human skin game;
Been played like that since the Abel and Cain;
"Victim" is History"s immortal brand name.
Each against all for the capital gain.
Justified Sinners make the Halls of Fame;
Like Natural Born Scientists in Nobel guise
Helped "give 'em hell" Harry make Nippon fries.
7
Clerk only wants the American Dream;
Doesn't give a shit its history's obscene;
Doesn't give a damn who he's got to demean
To get his credits on the silver screen.
Thinks: a whore, no matter how it might seem,
Just ain't human- it's a vending machine.
He hurries back up front to shut the store;
Then cleans the "change" she dropped at Death's door.
8
Time to start work: he ropes her ankles tight;
Hangs her head downward from a ceiling pipe.
Then slits her wrists with a razor blade's bite-
Got to drain blood before she turns to ripe.
Splits her flat belly; spills her guts outright,
Swabbing out the hollow using Handiwipe.
Rub a dub dub blood and guts in a tub
Thinks: I'm halfway back to the Country Club.
9
Cuts her carcass down; folds back her new crack-
Butchered piece of meat got to be repacked.
Lugs out a carton of Maxi Pad Pack;
Soaks it in rum make a taste your last act.
A wino said it's like drinking shellac;
Just what he needs to hold her gut intact.
Just to make certain her neck holds her head,
He scoops out her brain places pads instead.
10
Sealed with plastic tape from her breasts to clit,
Hangs her up again with an I.V. drip;
Booze filled veins start to harden like her tit;
Thinks: what a shame he can't take a last dip.
Suddenly though from his brain's snake pit
Crawls an idea from a snuff film clip:
Hard, he cuts her down, shoves his closest kin
Up her "dinky" ass till rigor sets in.
11
Sits down in a chair with the whore on top,
One hand grabs tit while its brother hooks twat;
Her asshole squeezes till his eyeballs pop;
It's time to pull out but his prick stays caught.
Pumps her up and down but she won't co-op;
His dick is stuck fast up her asshole's grot.
The bump and grind makes his semen explode
Which acts the enema on her last load.
12
His dick slicks free slimied sticky stink brown;
Grabs his ground-to-air glad it's safe and sound;
Cleans up her pile, wahes both of them down;
Now to get her dressed, get her posed hardbound.
Wrestles on her mini- the street deb's gown.
It's meant to hook the interest that banks compound.
Rich debs sell it at "till death do you part;"
While a street deb peddles it a la carte.
13
Lifts her from the chair then sticks up her ass
A long-handled broom helps her stand steadfast;
He smooths down her dress, makes her up first class,
But he can't hide the truth that her eyes broadcast.
Dark glasses cover up what he's brought to pass;
Now one last trick to make his icon last:
From her short black hair to her feet high-heeled,
He spray coats his sculpture with Scotchguard Shield.
14
Like Greek Galatea she thrills his pride;
But now the myth's been Americanized:
She's no sex object; she can't be a bride;
She's American woman idolized.
He's gone extreme that's pretty cut and dried;
But he's just a man Americanized:
He makes his money any way he can;
And now she's a star in the store's floor plan.
15
Hidden in the racks of the best champagne,
One hand holds a gun, the other a frame.
(No stick's needed now to help her feign
A threatening pose in the clerks con game.)
She's turned toward the wall, "pardon-me's" are vain
So you rub on past this deaf and dumd dame;
Your heart almost stops when you see her gun
Then you get the joke and you poke some fun.
16
His agent came and looked; said "I'd swear it bleeds.
What you've done only genius could conceive.
You've made from trash a figure that concedes
The desperate life of a modern Eve.
The gun in her hand shows where it all leads,
If you don't keep them locked in make believe.
You're back on the Movies' Most Wanted List;
But dump the body, boy, just in case it's missed."

PUS

McCain, Obama, Biden, Palin-
There’s got to be a better choice
Besides these four! There so banal in
The issues to which they give voice.
So how about the mortgage crisis?
Will they demand self-sacrifices
From banks or will they get cold feet
And throw us, homeless, on the street?
So many voters vote emotion.
No wonder issues aren’t discussed
Except perhaps for Palin’s bust
Which surely won her her promotion.
We want our leaders just like us
Whose heads are overflowing pus.

BABY-SITTERS

Do any wonder why elections
Produce the candidates we get?
They’re men and women with connections
They disavow as being dead set
Against. In fact in their campaigning
Year after year they go complaining
Against administrations that
They just can’t wait to copycat.
The candidates are all insiders
Who’ve come to Washington, D.C.
To help promote the powers that be.
They run as if they’re freedom fighters.
Of course that’s only counterfeit-
They’re really there to baby-sit.

VACATIONS IN AN EMPTY HEAD

Of course both sides will keep on lying
Until they’ve either won or lost.
Since losing would be mortifying,
They’ll tell their lies and damn the cost.
The bigger liar wins elections
By circumventing our reflections
And substituting in their stead
Vacations in an empty head.
Most liars use documentation
The way a forger plies his trade-
He uses truth that’s appliquéd
Enough to cause a defamation
Of character that when it’s slurred
Confirms what we would have averred.

A NEW IDENTITY

Identity is self-expression
Explaining who you are to me.
Politically it’s retrogression
If we divide by he and she;
Or if we lack the elasticity
To put aside our own ethnicity
And vote according to our class
Against who really wear the brass.
For class can be a unifier
That pulls together all have-nots
Against the corporate big shots
And puts them on a funeral pyre
Along with our identity
Except for one- the powers that be.

WHAT? ME VOTE?

Philosophy says when you’re voting
You’re duty is to do it well;
Or all you’ll end up is promoting
A country that will go to hell.
The trouble though with this election-
It’s slanderous with misdirection.
So how am I supposed to choose
Between two who were born to lose?
The candidates claim they’re all-knowing
But on the issues both men hide
Their views as if they’re classified.
So eeny meeny miny moing
Between Obama and McCain
Is anything… but not inane.

THE AVERAGE VOTER'S PROFILE

The U.S. is an abnormality
Where deep within its people’s soul
There hides the monster BESTIALITY
That waits again its leading role-
As once IT did enslaving “niggers”
Or killing “redskins.” Pulling triggers
Is now a legal contact sport
“Well-aimed” at women who’d abort.
These acts are sanctioned by the Bible
Which also sanctions killing gays;
And others who, against God’s ways,
Have slathered Him with filthy libel-
Defaming His son Jesus Christ
In whose name these were sacrificed.

JOHN McCAIN OBAMA

I sit here deep in contemplation
And wonder why our politics
Has led us to the desolation
Of who will win by dirty tricks;
With candidates who’d predispose us
To treat him as if he were Moses
Who’ll lead us to the Promised Land
If we will put him in command.
The likes of John McCain Obama,
Beholden to the corporate boards
Dispersing funds from out their hoards,
Will only deepen national trauma
Since both will finally privatize
Our public goods as enterprise.

HOBBES WAS WRONG!

What argues life is not a fiction
That thinking only makes it so?
With homeowners it is eviction,
Or when the levies overflow;
In old Japan it’s Nagasaki,
America has got Milwaukee;
And Islam has its butcher’s block
Where heads are lopped off in Iraq.
But most of all it’s human yearning
Expressed as if in waking dreams
About the ridding of regimes
Which seem so ripe for overthrowing
Because they’ve made our lives a curse
Where life’s a short ride in a hearse.

ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

If human nature were progressive,
Then we’d not fight for human rights
Against regimes that are oppressive
And profit from our human plights.
And countries would have constitutions
Protecting us from persecutions
Because of what we choose to do
As if we were a wrecking crew
When we oppose the POWER’S hypocrisy.
These claim to give a benefit
Which they know’s really counterfeit.
It’s time we fought for real democracy
Appropriating profits drawn
From out our well of brain and brawn.

EVANGELICAL BAPTISM

The universe is truly queerer
Than anything that we can know.
Pretending that you see it clearer
Because a god has told you so,
Amounts to naught but affectations
Upon the part of congregations
Afraid that life leads not to light
But to a dead unconscious night.
And so they go on idolizing
A god who’s brought them naught but strife
By promising an afterlife
If they’ll continue their baptizing.
And if their god is not adored,
They’ll baptize you by waterboard.

MAMMON

Since I was to the left of center,
Believing god did not exist,
The sign proclaimed I could not enter
Because I’d be on His shit list.
I asked for proof of “His” existence
And met abuse and foul resistance.
This was the house of God , they said,
As I’d find out when I was dead.
But isn’t that the way of churches-
You live your life for its encore
The other side of your death’s door
And can’t return from your researches
Reporting on your status quo
Which helps a church with its cash flow.

"REASON SHOULD BE DESTROYED IN ALL CHRISTIANS" MARTIN LUTHER

If Christians finally routed Reason,
Then we’d all lose our civil rights-
For surely they would count as treason
If speaking we should offer slights
To God the Father or Son Jesus.
Their congregants would roughly seize us
And keep us under lock and key
Imprisoned in a DMV
Until they’d once for all decided
What final punishment St. Paul
Would deem a proper wake-up call
To honor Gods that we had slighted.
Then finally in the name of Christ
We’d end up being sliced and diced.

RELIGIOUS MANIA

It’s urgent for uneducated
People to think a friendly god
Will listen and can be persuaded
That what they ask for isn’t odd.
The government, as well, likes praying
Since it keeps down the cost of paying
The market price of laissez-faire
Much favored by the billionaire.
It’s better folks collect in churches
To pray their god in their defense
Since praying measures malcontents;
And if they once find that their searches
Have brought them to the bitter end
They’ll surely go around the bend.

FOR JOHANNES KEPLER AND GYPSY ROSE LEE

When miracles are once admitted
Then scientific evidence
Is scorned by those who are nitwitted
And keeps the rest perched on the fence.
This clearly demonstrates religion
If once admitted just a smidgen
Reverses Darwin’s little bit
To show how man evolved a wit.
So all of you who spend time praying
For Jesus Christ to intervene
But find the calls on His machine
Are full, keep on though it’s dismaying-
Like piloting a rocking chair
It’s soothing though you get nowhere.

THE RAPE SCRIPT

According to a “rape script” writer,
A woman has some time to talk
Before the rapist jumps inside her.
She can throw up a mental block.
If she’ll just think not go boo-hooing,
He might consider toodle-ooing.
But in that time before he acts
She’s time to give him forty whacks;
Or, better yet, why not just kill him?
If not discouraged by discourse,
Perhaps he’ll yield to magnum force.
Then leave the scene. Let cops boot hill him.
If that’s too grim then take a knife
And let him argue for his life.

THE END

I’m far too old for more adventure.
My youth is gone. My knees are sprung.
My mouth could use an upper denture.
But still I struggle rung by rung
To get myself up off and running
To reignite my native cunning
When all I want to do is rest.
I’ve tried. I’ve done my level best.
My intellect is slowly fading-
I haven’t read a book in weeks;
Can barely write my rhymes’ critiques.
I’m thinking about emigrating
But have to earn my daily bread
Because I’m deeply in the red.

VAITY, VANITY....

If Huff Post bloggers in their postings
Had anything to truly say
Beyond their madam’s liberal boastings,
I’d say go on and fire away.
But liberals in their simplicity
Believe that politics' toxicity
Can be brought to its bitter end
By voting for whom they commend.
As bloggers they have recommended
Obama as their candidate
For piloting the ship of state,
Not realizing they’ve dead-ended-
Obama is a savvy pro
And all the rest is do-si-do.

K STREET

Will K Street firms help corporations
Achieve the influence they will need
To win the powers’ commendations
Of what they love most- raffish greed?
Who helps these men to get elected
(Or in McCain’s case resurrected),
If not the lawyers on K Street
Who’ve never yet backed some deadbeat?
Of course they always back a winner-
Republicans or Democrats
They’re all hobnobbing plutocrats-
The winner’s just the bigger sinner.
So corporations need not fear-
A president is their cashier.

SKID ROW

Conclude the ban on offshore drilling,
Bush argued, and the price of oil
Will drop. But Democrats weren’t willing.
Bush said that they would rather spoil
Our summer driving on vacations.
But what about the amputations
Of jobs that made the working class
Safe from the rising price of gas?
The Democrats claim it’s revealing
That Bush chose an election year-
No doubt to help McCain’s career-
To argue for the ban’s repealing.
While they debate which way to go,
We’ll still be living on skid row.

PAIN!!!!!!!

Most doctors work with dedication-
Except relieving end-life pain.
Why won’t they give me medication
To end it all. “No pain, no gain,”
Is fine for coaches; but a doctor
Should never play the role of proctor
To stop me cheating on my life
And ending all the tiresome strife.
The pain sometimes is so deranging,
It causes me such mental stress,
That I admit that I possess,
Or feel, a Jekyll/Hyde exchanging
Down deep within me. Deep inside.
And when it does, you’d better hide.

OBAMA(NATION) ECONOMICS

Barack Obama “loves free markets.”
But pledging not to shop Wal-Mart,
Why suddenly does he embark its
Spokesperson, Furman, Bonaparte
Of economical advisors?
Is it because he’s grown incisors
To better tear us limb from limb
After, in faith, we vote for him?
I get free markets for conservatives;
And Wal-Mart for the union vote-
It’s Nixon’s ploy: Pat’s “good cloth coat”-
But what about how he’ll preserve what gives
When we retire for four more years
And Wal-Mart’s “hiring” volunteers?

MAD MEN

Does anybody think it’s logical
That both Obama and McCain
Are absolutely pathological
In their desire to entertain
The likes of Milton Friedman’s doddering
About free markets or the slaughtering
Of people fighting in Iraq
Until we’ve fought them to deadlock?
We’re sitting on a Krakatoa-
(Obama gives us miles of smiles;
None from McCain since he’s got piles)-
Will blow us all to protozoa.
They’ll take us to the null and void
And then we’ll all be unemployed.

BORDER CROSSINGS

Should children of who are illegal
But born in these United States
Be sanctioned or be extralegal
And so abandoned to their fates?
Or should they be, with due solemnity,
Granted a citizen’s indemnity
From deportation to a home
They never knew so couldn’t roam
Away from just to cross a border
From Mexico or anywhere
Their parents didn’t have a prayer
Of living with some law and order-
Where they could start new family trees
And live with us for shopping sprees?

OBAMA'S ECONOMIC POLICY

McCain, Obama are freebasing
Their partisan solutions to
The economic woes we're facing-
Which goes to show there’s nothing new
With either candidates arranging
A system based on “free” exchanging
Of goods and servicing the debt
That falling wages helped beget.
So all of you high on Obama
Before you throw away your vote
Based on a promissory note,
Say how he'll end financial trauma?
Will, Clinton-like, the Man from Hope
Prove, finally, a rope-a-dope?

ANN COULTER'S DILEMMA

Ann Coulter can’t be castigated
By neocons since she’s their soul.
In fact she must be celebrated
And her remarks played down as droll.
But will she call McCain a faggot
Or some such thing would gag a maggot;
Or will she play the smarty-pants
And try Obama with her rants?
She hates McCain who out-competed
The likes of any she’d endorse.
But she can’t make him her main course
At least until he’s been defeated.
Of course he might not be since Ann’s
A neocon with Ku Klux fans.

CHRISTIAN SEX

Why is it that church Christianity
Has cast a pall on having sex;
For surely all know it’s insanity
To label it a triple X?
But churches think a boner’s treason
Is set against our godly reason;
And preach that semen passes sin
From Eve and Adam through their kin.
If only Jesus had been married
(Although for all we know he did,
For, born a man, he had an id),
Religion wouldn’t have miscarried-
Now Christian sex has been reborn
And lives successfully as porn.

PRISONERS OF WAR

The members of the John Wayne Nation
Aren’t limited to just the Right;
They’re all who’d trump a declaration
Of war but always ducked the fight.
This now includes both Bush and Cheney,
Obama, Clinton, and McCain. He-
(It’s wonderful how rhymes can out
The very essence of a lout.)
But what about McCain? War hero?
He never set boots on the ground
Until the jet he flew was downed-
The odds against that... almost zero.
I don’t know which should matter more-
We’re all their prisoners of war.

FOR"THE DUKE"(a.k.a. JOHN WAYNE, nee MARION MORRISON)

“ THE DUKE” was everybody’s idol.
Although he chickened-out of war,
He never stopped in his recital
Of values we were fighting for.
Who, to protect his home and hearth, he,
‘Gainst Commies, sided with McCarthy;
And argued using atom bombs
Against the Ruskies and Chicoms.
While other stars manned-up, enlisted,
The Duke ducked out on World War II
But “took the beach” at Malibu.
And yet his legend has persisted-
He’s still a hero to the Right
Who monger war but never fight.

CHANGES? (FOR YAHYA)

Republicans are all God-fearing,
While Democrats think Jesus died;
Republicans are pioneering,
While Democrats are sissified;
Republicans are out directing,
While Democrats stand by reflecting;
Republicans are all Marines,
While Democrats are closet queens.
Despite these many castigations,
Republicans and Democrats
Go hand in glove with plutocrats
Who run the major corporations;
And would elect someone brand new
So long as we get déjà vu.

KEEPING SECRETS

When classifying information,
The government looks out for harm
If it should leak. So allocation
Of secrets means you buy the farm.
But this has led to some dishevel
Of agencies at every level,
For once the secret has got told
The hearer dies by stranglehold.
Bush signed this law into existence
So he could certainly be sure
His secrets never went on tour.
But one day, needing some assistance,
He asked for information and
Was strangled on his Four-in-Hand.

FOR GLEN GREENWALD

The NEWS purveys such triviality
Important stories disappear.
When inundated with banality-
The size of Hillary’s brassiere,
Or that Obama’s always cheery,
Or that McCain looks old and weary-
You wonder what reporters do.
Do these folks even have a clue
That what we want is some addition
To talk of issues, war and peace?
But what we get’s a press release
Agreed to by the politician,
Or else his staff, which hides the stuff
He’ll use to screw us – under fluff.

THE SKYHOOK?

I used to be content just reading;
But wandering the land of books
(Of course, you’ll say the man’s gone bleating)
Convinced me I could fly skyhooks.
And so I thought to lend assistance
To those who offered some resistance
To what we called the status quo
So that it ended on death row.
I thought to make a contribution
In helping show what’s right and wrong,
And make a world where all belong.
That was my stony resolution.
If I’d known then what I do now…
But I’d have done it anyhow.

DECODER RINGS

Who says that campaign contributions
Have finally been brought into line
Must marvel at the convolutions
Have turned mere water into wine.
For any but a doubting Thomas,
You knew McCain would break his promise.
But what about Obama, he-
If he’s indeed the nominee-
Who promised change to weary voters
Who win elections but don’t count
Competing with a bank account?
Get out your fifties ring decoders-
He says it takes big bucks to win
And that he’ll change when he’s sworn-in.

IN HONOR OF MARY JO KOPECHNE

Ted Kennedy has got a tumor
That’s left his second family stunned.
By all accounts, he’s in good humor,
Although the tumor’s moribund.
The News will make it mandatory
That he’ll be this week’s cover story-
Unlike Obama or McCain
Whose private lives have proved mundane.
Ted couldn’t beat the likes of Carter
As presidential nominee
After Kopechne drowned at sea.
Who would have thought that he'd discard her?
So, Teddy, may you rest in peace,
Knowing she snatched the Golden Fleece.

POLITICIANS

A politician’s a survivor
Who’ll promise voters anything;
But like a hit-and-run drunk driver
Who knows his ass is in a sling
If caught, he proves a fertile liar
By offering a stupefier-
The one will claim he doesn’t drink;
The other that he didn’t think.
Believing that we’re all hoodwinkable-
The one the cops, the other us,
They kick up such an awful fuss
We’re ready to think the unthinkable-
The one that he should be let go;
While t’other one sits on death row.

STYLE

What’s happened to the “upper classes?”
They’ve so completely disappeared.
We still have lots of huddled masses;
But social structure’s always tiered
With upper, lower, and a little
With fatty tissue in the middle.
But this won’t work without a top
As in “the ladies born to shop.”
They’re hidden in the Style Section
Of Sunday’s New York Times where fetes
Are chronicled about “elites.”
One wonders at their circumspection?
My guess is that they’ve lived and learned-
They're better hidden than discerned.

TO VOTERS WANTING CHANGE

It’s foolish wanting sensitivity,
Especially at election time.
They’ll choose the one whose first proclivity
Will make him partner to their crime;
Who’s only slightly pathological
On subjects like the theological;
A man who stumbles right on cue-
A man the likes of W.
A man whom corporate investors
Feel confident that when he’s sworn
He’ll be a pawn they can suborn.
In short, who’s like the other jesters
Who’ve promised change to Jack and Jill
But buries their kids on Boot Hill.

MISOGYNY- FOR MARIE COCCO

If you would dignify misogyny
Without an answer, I suppose
Then you’ve helped loose its racist progeny,
The kind that hides on radios;
And claims it's surely idiotic
To think a Black man’s patriotic-
More subtly, of course, than that,
They’ll just say he’s a Democrat.
So why should Democrats keep quiet?
It’s, after all, about a change
To help Obama rearrange
Our politics. Then why not try it-
Who would call Hillary a whore
Why not go off like a claymore?

ROME IS BURNING

The campaign rhetoric’s deploring
Because it mainly doesn’t speak
About the candidates abhorring
A life that’s turning awfully bleak.
But really it is quite believable
That they should think this inconceivable-
Their money comes without a hitch
From people who are superrich.
If only I had just a little,
Say what McCain pays for a jet.
With even that, I’m out of debt. .
It’s said that Nero played the fiddle
While Rome was burning. So I say
Aren’t we a Rome and they blasé?

FOR NAN MOONEY

“She worries that a life of quality
Has faltered for the middle class.
I say to hell with her. Her polity
Demands it gets a boarding pass
To piggyback upon my riches!
To hell with them, the sons-of-bitches!
Who cares I built a second home
That’s larger than the Astrodome.
I’m so much richer than my parents;
Though, true, I started with a lot.
But, Mooney, here’s some food for thought-
By struggle, hard work, and forbearance,
I’ve risen. So don’t bellyache.
The middle class… Let them eat cake.”

GREED

I can’t believe it gets much better
With values falling to new lows.
Our hedge fund's managing go-getter
Has pumped up our portfolios.
He gobbles up distressed securities
And purges them of their impurities
Thus guaranteeing profits from
What leaves a poor investor numb.
It doesn’t seem to me unreasonable
That we be given title deed
To companies have gone to seed.
And at the risk of sounding treasonable-
It’s U.S. business at its best
When debt becomes a treasure chest.

FEEL THE LOVE

To show my love is Rapture ready,
I’ve given up on everything
Except for Jesus holding steady
Around me like a bathtub ring.
I feel His presence unrelenting
Inside my head experimenting.
I know His love was Heaven sent
Because I was malevolent;
But Jesus drove away my devil.
They used to tell me I was sick;
But having cut them to the quick
I’m happy now; can finally revel-
Because in Jesus I feel bliss
As once I did in Hell's abyss.

BACK AT YOU

What scares a modern politician
Is who s/he’ll have to satisfy
Before s/he ends the competition
And claims no others need apply.
For s/he’s developed a conviction-
Albeit it’s a perfect fiction-
That s/he can serve the people best-
All others are a paltry jest.
But just in case it gets aggressive,
S/he cultivates the powers that be
For dirt kept under lock and key.
So if opponents get excessive,
Then s/he can throw around some shit…
Until it’s her time to submit.

FREAKY

A politician by his nature
Will argue that it’s fair and square
When he perverts a legislature
And sells it to a billionaire.
For, after all, to get elected
Takes money else you’re disconnected
From power that, be well advised,
Has never walked around disguised.
It seems so but since your cognition
For politics plays absentee
But votes for idols on TV,
It’s freaky they still ask permission-
Since certainly you don’t know squat
Beyond what high school civics taught.

MOBY DICK

Now that George Bush’s reign is ending
The liberals would have you think
Obama has a patent pending
Will wipe away the Georgian stink;
Will put an end to moralizing
His end game- that of tyrannizing
The people out of civil rights
Brought on by terrorism’s blights.
But any who believe it’s ended
Don’t realize we’re in a fix
Promoted by a politics
That party hacks have both commended-
That folks are easiest to trick
When challenging a Moby Dick.

MARY WAS A SQUIRTER

My wife, god love her, dear Carlotta
Has read my posts and finds them lewd.
If I’d remain persona grata,
I must maintain some rectitude.
Must stop my everlasting roasting
Of Jesus, whom I should be toasting.
As well, the Virgin and the saints.
She’s tired of hearing my complaints.
Carlotta thinks that I pervert her,
The Virgin. She thinks I’m a sod
To constantly be knocking god.
If I say Mary was a squirter…
“Carlotta, no! Don’t cut me there
Or we can never have an heir…”

FOR COUSIN TOMMY

This verse is for my cousin Tommy,
Whom I recruited for the cause
Of working as an ardent commie.
In better days we were outlaws.
In those days we were in fine fettle;
So who’d have guessed we’d ever settle
In schools as teachers. Epilogues
Will say we died as running dogs.
What happened to the Revolution
We worked and strained to bring about?
We didn’t have the slightest doubt
We’d be there at the dissolution
Of Capital but now work hard
To pay the monthly Visa Card.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE VIRGIN AND ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA

When St. Ignatius Loyola-
The founding Jesuit- looked down
From Heaven on an ayatollah,
He said, “The man’s a very clown.
But won’t endure the constant flouting
Of Shiite law or women’s pouting
At husbands who think it’s obscene
To lick a pussy till it’s clean.”
Now overhearing this the Virgin
Looked down and said, “I’d authorize
Whatever strengthened family ties.”
“But pussy smells so much like sturgeon.”
“It’s true,” she said, “but near and far
It is the poor man’s caviar.”

GET OFF THE POT

You’ll think I’m being supercilious
In claiming that I just don’t care
For candidates who leave me bilious
After tasting their bill of fare.
But, honestly, they leave me barking
With all their talk about earmarking-
But always what the other’s done.
They haven’t moved beyond square one.
With almost two years of campaigning,
You’d think they could draw up a plan
That didn’t slop from out a bedpan.
So in the little time remaining,
I say that they should give some thought
To shitting or get off the pot.

THE MEETING

When Marx and Engels, Mao, Lenin
Were floating in the starry void,
Along came Jesus with a pen in
His hand and said, “You four and Freud
Claimed that religion was dementia.
But now that you’re off in absentia
Your followers are on the street
And I’m back in the catbird’s seat.”
Marx, who’d been dozing, woke up grumpy
And said, “That pen belonged to Paul
Who wrote you in as all in all.
Without it you’d be in a dump. He
Needed you for his earthly use
But all gods go the way of Zeus.”

THE MODERN POLITICIAN (2)

Beware the modern politicians,
Republicans or Democrats,
Who promises you free admissions
To watch them cut up bureaucrats.
But really s/he’s an opportunist
Who panders best to the jejunest-
For bureaucrats help regulate
The running of the ship of state.
They’ll put them in a mausoleum
Which gladdens many corporate hearts
And would be business Bonapartes,
Since no one’s there to oversee’em
As they ignore the lawful acts
Keep them from eating us as snacks.

THE MODERN POLITICIAN (1)

The promises of politicians
Are really only just a snare
Laid out by devious tacticians
To grab all those who in despair
So desperately need a hero
To lift them out from less than zero.
From there once in on the ground floor,
We’ll be living life to die for.
So Clinton, John McCain, Obama
Make promises to plight their troth
To booming economic growth;
To lift us out of war’s dark trauma;
To save us from foreclosure calls
By selling off our homes for malls.

THE MAN OF PEACE

If Reason is destroyed, then Jesus
Will reign triumphant over Earth
For reasoning will always tease us
About belief in virgin birth;
Or that he changed a jug of water
Into a jug of wine or, odder,
That after he rose from the dead
He didn’t drop in at Club Med
And rest up from his penetration
Into the deepest depths of hell
Surrounded by the infidel
Who offered him the consolation
Of staying dead so no amount
Of others died on his account.

FINAL ANSWERS?

When man invents religious symbols
And worships them till his last breath,
He hides his life away in thimbles,
And thinks that he’s avoiding death.
But life begins with dissolution
So hope you make a contribution
Before your dying day runs out
And worms crawl in and out your snout.
So, if you would get out from under
The thimble where your soul is hid,
Eliminate the “God forbid”
And live a life creating thunder.
And when you die if you should see
A god… then try and cop a plea.

THE OUTCOME

My god it’s like the Second Coming.
Conservatives have won again!
And mostly just because the summing
Of ballots voted by white men;
Mixed in with citizen Hispanics
Whose immigration status panics
Their families back in Mexico
Who worry that their status quo
Might be in danger. They elected
The candidate who had the sense
To keep them sitting on the fence-
The border wouldn’t be neglected
Would be beefed-up in point of fact;
But still, with wit, it could be cracked.

FOR KARL MARX

He argued that religious suffering
Is all expressive of protest
Against a world that needs a buffering,
Especially if you are oppressed.
Religion cries the heartless features
Inflicted on those “helpless” creatures
Who live hard on a worker’s dole
To keep alive body and soul.
To abrogate soulless conditions,
Religions’ flowers, adorning chains,
Must be discarded to make gains.
And then, perhaps, we’ll try renditions
On all who try to keep us down
So no one bows before a crown.

SIN TAX

Though shalt not criticize religions
Especially if you don’t belong
To those god-fearing tribes of pigeons
Whose avocations are so strong
They’ll bomb you with their awful droppings
Of Biblic and Koranic toppings
Designed to get you through the Gates
So long as you promote their hates.
To minimize their congregation
You must convert their devotees
With education, shopping sprees…
But never with a condemnation.
The only way to mute their threats
Is taxing them like cigarettes.

MANDATORY NICENESS (FOR EZRA LEVANT)

So now it’s been made mandatory
That everything I say and do
Must not infringe upon the glory
Of others. I must say, “bless you”
To practices I think are cheesy;
Or worse than that are downright sleazy-
Since others have a human right
That says that I must be polite.
I say genital mutilation
Is barbarism to degrees
Of magnitude not chimpanzees
Would practice. But civilization
Is always free to set its rules?
This is a human rights for ghouls.

THE RELIGIOUS ZEALOT

A zealot in his understanding
Can only see what’s straight ahead;
Presents himself as so upstanding,
He’ll never know it when he’s dead;
Cannot be raised above his level
Because he’s held down by a devil
Who keeps him grounded in his sins
Because in truth the two are twins.
Is always troubled with small scruples;
And scratching at these like an itch
He works himself to fever pitch
Until the one or two quadruples
And so inflames his tiny brain
He thinks God told him to raise Cain.

IMPOSTERS

Imposters are great undertakers;
But since their business is professed
In speechifying not as makers
Of policy, they’ve done their best
When after having made their speeches-
Which take you to the upper reaches-
You end by feeling somewhat strange
In wondering what’s meant by “change.”
That’s only as should be expected-
For any who’s a candidate
To take in tow the ship of state,
They first of all must be elected.
By that time though their politics
Is sailing you across the Styx.

CHRISTIAN COMPETITION

If being Christian is no longer
Sufficiently defined by deeds
But argues that we would be stronger
If we weren’t strangled by the weeds
Of others whose denominations
Can only offer us vexations,
Then, Christians, I say unto you
We pull them out, Muslim and Jew.
There’s nothing like a little martyring
To set these heathen thinking of
Our Jesus Christ, the God of Love;
And stop them from their venal bartering
Concerning what’s a sin or no.
They all are worthy of death row.

THE KISS ASS

A Kiss Ass feeds on others’ humors,
As is the way with parasites;
Not silent but with sonic boomers,
S/he praises you for your insights;
And pumps you up with laudatory,
A drug enhancing your vainglory-
Not sex exactly but a treat
To have another stroke your meat.
Whatever are your inclinations
S/he surely thinks they’re for the best
However much they are abscessed;
But’s deft at making alterations-
If s/he derives no benefit,
S/he’ll quickly dump you in the shit.

SOUND AND FURY...

A politician is a prater
Whose windy talk but signifies
S/he’s no more than a ventilator
Who goes about in human guise;
Who thinks s/he’s speaking when s/he’s saying
What donkeys do when they are braying;
Who trumpets as a Holy Grail
The garbage at a rummage sale;
Who flatters publics as their duty
Until, at last, they find they’re hung
By lengths of lies they call a tongue;
Whose final words come out their bootie,
As feces are foregone by farts.
These are the politicians’ arts.

RAPTURE READY

Believe me, Hon, I’m rapture ready,
For I’ve acknowledged Jesus Lord.
I know the days to come are heady.
We’ll all be playing shuffleboard,
While down on earth the Tribulation
Will fall upon our sinful nation
With all the force at His command
Until they reach the Promised Land.
But when at last it’s all subsided
Will we escape His attitudes
About our moral turpitudes,
The ones that get me most excited?
‘Cause what the hell’s the benefit
If angel wings don’t diddle clit ?

EXCERPTS FROM POPE BENEDICT'S SPEECH TO HIS BISHOPS

1
“… You cannot think it is appealing
For me, the Holy Father, to
See people waving flags, not kneeling.
They’ve got a secular IQ!
When will you turn this devilocracy
Into a bastion of theocracy-
Where Gospel preachers tortured ids
Are free to prey on little kids,
Without our paying all that money?
What is the latest body count
That’s put a stopper in the fount
That once produced our milk and honey?
If you would give your priests fresh starts,
They’ll sell these kids for body parts.
2
“Tomorrow I must pray with victims
Who claim that Holy Mother Church,
Despite that foolish Jesus’ dictums,
Has left them rotting in the lurch.
You do recall the Reformation
That almost caused our ruination?
And why? Because old Luther told
The poor we’d sell off sin for gold.
We need another Inquisition
Will rid us of these victims so
That we can fight our deadly foe
And wipe him out. Sent to perdition,
We can proclaim the Gospel news
Without the interfering Jews.
3
“While true we share the Holy Bible
We would by now have sole control
And done away with all that’s tribal,
That so enchants the Jewish soul,
If Hitler had been more successful.
At least our job would be less stressful.
Of course, we wish them all the best
In putting Islam to the test.
But so far they’re a total failure-
Provoking bombers far and wide
Now even on the distaff side
Which they must think beyond the pale. Your
Job should be to keep the status quo
With both sides playing tic tac toe.
4
“Until we have a Church solution
That rids us of what we deplore;
Where Catholics aren’t in dissolution;
And where the West’s at total war
As happened with the brave Crusaders
Who proved successful as invaders.
Who slaughtered Muslims and the Jews;
Taught folks to mind their p’s and q’s.
Remember that the Baby Jesus
Said that I come to bring a sword
To be acknowledged as your Lord.
My brethren, that would greatly please us.
Reunify the Church and state
So that it’s ours to say “checkmate.”

PRESCRIPTION (FOR DALLAS, WHO JUST DOESN'T GET IT)

When workers can’t afford prescriptions
Their doctors write them for their ills,
They may be liable to conniptions
That turn them green around the the gills;
And , finally, augers their impressment
Should be brought up for reassessment-
Why work to make the bosses rich?
Why not just drop them in a ditch?
Start over as appropriators
Of value that we helped create,
But holds us now like a dead weight;
Become our own emancipators.
Then we may make a final break
With health plans say “let them eat cake.”

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE OF RELIGION

Without a God, we have no master
Who helps us know what’s right and wrong.
To reach the God we need a pastor
But you must choose the very strong-
est priest, or preacher, imam, rabbi,
Who has God’s given gift of gab. I
Believe my life was on the blink
Before s/he taught me how to think:
S/he argues no belief in science-
I’m not descended from "a" ape.
Sometimes a woman asks for rape;
Believes a man needs self-reliance,
If he’s to rise to "thou shalt kill"
In helping pastor do His will.

MIDDLE EAT PEACE TALKS

A spider trapped in its own webbing
Was taunted by an irksome fly
Who triumphed at the spider’s ebbing
And thought to ask, “Before you die,
Aren’t you ashamed of your entrapping
My brothers in your deadly wrapping?
What is it that we did to you
You’d suck our blood for an adieu?
The spider said, “If you’ll come nearer,
I’ll answer but I’m short of breath
Because I am so close to Death.”
The fly flew in so he could hear her.
But got too close; was caught; buffeted,
The spider laughing as she preyed.

WITNESS WEAR

There is no part of all our culture
That isn’t taken over by
A preacher offering a cult cure
For values that s/he hopes will die.
Then born again when they're perfected,
As Jesus was when resurrected.
Take, for example, underpants
With “Jesus” over butt and lance.
As well, His name is stuck on panties
To keep pudenda out of reach
By putting “Jesus” in the breach.
The name acts as do vigilantes-
Protecting Miley Cyrus fans
From jumping in the back of vans.

FOR JOHN HEYWOOD (1497-1580)

If all religions were an opium,
I’d surely praise the friendly gods
Who in their wisdom sought to dope me numb.
Instead it's turned us into squads
Of righteous ravers. “Kill blasphemers,”
Shout out the preachers waving femurs
Who Sampson-like pile up the bones,
As bankers do their failed home loans.
Their struggle for superiority-
As rabbi, imam, preacher, priest
To mark the others as the Beast
And claim alone the God’s authority-
Just goes to show, as Heywood said,
“In church you’ll find that God is dead.”

FOR ALEXANDER HERZEN

Since all religions base morality
On doing what God tells them to,
They all develop slave mentality
To honor God, as is His due.
But passing on this foul instruction
Leads mankind headlong to destruction.
It’s true for Christians, Muslims, Jews,
More proper are the “don’ts” than “do’s.”
Unless, of course, “do’s” lead to killing-
Who honor God in different ways
Are sacrificed on holy days.
With priests, imams, and rabbis willing
Their brethren on, they’ve made a hell
Out of each other’s clientele.

FOR T-BONE

It’s come to this? We are “progressive”
Because we’d vote a Democrat
Who’s Black and doesn’t “seem” aggressive,
While smiling like the Cheshire Cat?
God save me. Where’s my digitalis?
Remember what it did in “Alice
In Wonderland.” It could beguile
With talk and nothing but a smile.
But we’re adults. Some are professors
Who should help students lift the cross
Of voting for another boss
Who’ll fasten on us like oppressors
Have always done. Have we gone mad?
The cat knew Alice surely had.

CONSPIRACY THEORY

“Just how far can the Constitution
Be stretched and bent to fit my will,”
Asked Bush, “ before its prostitution
Has rendered it completely nil?
There isn’t that much time remaining
Before some other will be reigning
Here, sitting in my office chair.”
Said Cheney, “George, now don’t despair.
They think Immaculate Conceptions
Are necessary for a God;
So why should Christians think of fraud
At our immaculate deceptions?”
What if they do? And we should lose?”
We do what Christians do. Blame Jews.”

ASK NOT...

Let’s see exactly how progressive
It is of me to cast my vote
For anyone who’s so obsessive
S/he’ll say or not what floats my boat.
Who’s honest, open, so appealing
I know their speeches aren’t just spieling;
Who’s not afraid to mop the floors
With generals and all their wars?
Who’ll do this best- Barack Obama,
Or Hillary, or John McCain?
Which one won’t be a ball and chain
That holds the world in frightful trauma?
Who is it I can count upon
To stop the U.S. Genghis Khan?

FOR THE BOARD OF ED IN WAYCROSS, GA. (AND FOR BETTY)

When nine third-graders were suspended
For plotting how to take control
Of "teacher" whom they thought intended
To turn their brains to casserole,
You must remember their fragility-
They had a learning disability
Which didn’t stop the little tykes
From planning worthy of the Reich’s.
And all because the teacher scolded
A friend of theirs, a little fiend
Who gathered cats he guillotined.
But naturally the District folded,
Insisting it was child’s play;
But sent the teacher on her way.

ORACLE (I)

I cannot say quite why I’m crying.
Perhaps so I’m not forced to look
At faces in the windows dying.
I’d rather read a comic book.
How did they wreak so much destruction?
It started out as dance instruction.
I only know what I’ve been taught.
But, listen. Here’s a caveat-
Be stone-deaf to new Aristotles
Who are a bunch of dunderheads
Writing the NYT’s Op-Eds;
Go clubbing with Brazilian models,
As if they were comrades-in-arms
While falsely tripping smoke alarms.

HOMELAND SECURITY, A TRIBUTE

1
One evening when Airport Security
Was on the job but understaffed-
Since bonders wouldn’t give a surety
Bond, fearing that they’d get the shaft
Because what Homeland paid a wander
Meant here today tomorrow yonder;
And, God forbid, at LAX
They bothered with the record checks.
While wanding down a woman’s body,
The wand gave off an awful shriek.
The wander said he’d need to peek.
The woman said, “I know karate
And if you dare to touch me I’ll
Forever alter your lifestyle.”
2
But hustled off by an inspector,
He locked her in a tiny room;
Told her to strip and then he checked her
When all she wore was her perfume.
Not seeing anything proscribable,
He wondered at the indescribable;
And looking up her pussy found
A dildo that he could impound.
He pulled it out. It was vibrating.
She laughed and said that when she’d sit
It would so stimulate her clit
Her fantasy would go x-rating;
And make a long and boring trip
Feel like she rode a rocket ship.
3
He told her that she could start dressing
When from her butt another crept.
This promised to be more distressing
Because it’s given where it’s kept
It’s bound to be a little messy.
“Don’t tell me, miss, just let me guess," he
Said. “ It’s meant to stimulate your…”
“The entrance to my doggie door.
I am a porno starlet training
For my first anal so you see
This dildo's like an anal key.”
“Enough,” he said, “with your explaining.
Just leave now. But I’ll keep these…plugs.”
And she walked out her load of drugs.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

There is no legal “cause of action”
For CEOs whose pay’s obscene
So long as there’s no malefaction
By boards. If they report the green,
There’s nothing left that small investors
Can do to managing molestors
Except perhaps to caterwaul
Go home and take two Tylenol.
Let me propose my own solution-
When management is paid outré
The CEO goes MIA;
Or, if we stay his execution,
It is because in his noblesse
He argues that his work’s worth less.

FEAR OF (F)LYING

With women who seem marriage partners,
A man’s less likely to have sex
Before the fourth date. But as hearteners,
She’s shown that she has great prospects.
At least that’s claimed by long-term studies.
While other girls are just fuck buddies,
As marriage partners women wait
At least a month before they mate.
It’s just like flying. Boarding passes
Aren’t handed out until you’ve passed
Inspections going nowhere fast.
But just as with those horses asses,
It finally leads, all in due course,
To having reasons for divorce.

REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSTITUTION (II)

The Founders wrote the Constitution
As a Gordian knot is tied;
Which means there’s only one solution
That we should follow as a guide
To loosening what they invented
To keep in place the malcontented-
Rewrite it so it implements
A program of some common sense.
There’s no need to be reverential
Towards politicians from the past
Who bound their slaves and held them fast
With reasoning purely prudential.
To cut that knot took civil war
And still we’re rowing with one oar.

PROMISES, PROMISES

A study shows that men are liars
As frequently as women are;
But women are the pacifiers
While men compete like boxers spar.
Men mostly falsify the predicate,
While women are concerned with etiquette.
It’s just whatever floats their boat.
Which brings me to why I should vote.
If both can be prevaricators,
To pick a man will do me harm;
While women who pour on the charm
Will promise that they’re mediators.
It doesn’t matter how they’re billed,
For either way they’ll get me killed.

(Mc)Cain

McCain was grubbing contributions
From the Republican elite.
He promised them the persecutions
Of Dems whom he’d turn to lunchmeat.
He’d stand forthright for law and order
And change his mind about the border;
As for campaign finance reform,
He now admitted ‘twas bad form.
He’d stick with Bush on global warming;
And as for the Iraqi war,
“I’m just the man to mind the store.”
It’s true that torture is deforming-
Sometimes it drives a man insane-
As God did Abel’s brother Cain.

THE EARS OF GOD

Reporters caught the W praying
And asked him if he really thought
That Jesus heard what he was saying;
Or if perhaps his prayers were caught
By satellites circling the planet
And filtered out since they could scan it?
George answered firmly with a “No.”
But “no” to what? God got info
Which meant a “yes” God heard his pleading.
“Despite what satellites might scan
They cannot read the mind of man.
Our satellites just aren’t mind reading.
They can’t hear what a man might pray...
I’ve checked it with the NSA.”

EARMARKS

Before Bush would sign legislation
That offered veterans some relief
From undergoing more tarnation,
They sign a statement of belief
That they were never truly nervous
About their time in army service;
That they would do it all again.
If Bush commanded, they’d say, “When?”
They’d march off proudly into battle
No matter missing arms or legs
With brains like soup or scrambled eggs.
And any who thought to skedaddle
Would pull the pin and claim their mess
Was due to freedom of the press.

IMPOTENT

When Laura Bush was on the potty,
She got the urge to masturbate.
But feeling this might be too naughty,
She wiped her ass and hauled her freight
To see George in the Oval Office.
And, catching him alone, said, “Boff us.
It’s fine for you to play at war
But all you do at night is snore.
Just once I’d like to feel your boner
Shoved up my pussy or my ass.
You used to drill for natural gas.”
Distracted, George said, “Get a loaner.
Or, better yet, try Cheney on
And maybe he won’t do Iran.”

DINNER IN THE WHITE HOUSE

When Cheney/Bush sat down to dinner,
They had the waiters leave the room.
“God knows,” said Bush “each was a sinner,
Though taken fresh from out the womb.”
Then Cheney said, About the mothers…?”
And Bush replied, “They fuck their brothers.
The kids are bastards of incest.”
Then Cheney said, “George, I’m impressed.
I like mine rare,” he added eating.
“To think how we have saved these kids
From being eaten by the Yids.”
“Our troops snagged this batch while retreating.
We had them butchered by a Serb.”
“These shoulders, George, are just superb.”

REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSTITUTION (I)

The fact that we’ve a Constitution
That’s treated like the Sacred Heart,
Means that we’ll need a revolution
So that we get a running start
At being governed by democracy
Instead of by an aristocracy;
So small states in their gravy boat,
The Senate, do not have a vote
That’s equal to or, rather greater,
Than states with populations that
Won’t fit inside a cowboy hat.
The Constitution like the Seder
Should be passed over then rewrit
So we elect a people’s twit.

STORIES FROM DANTE

When Dante was in Purgatory…
(More likely it was Satan’s Hell),
He heard a truly awful story
About a man who’d one day dwell
In land across the Western Ocean
Who’d show his god his great devotion
By conquering new Babylon
And after that he'd get Iran.
But when old Dante asked the sinner
What was so terrible that he…
The ghost said, “Dante, he is me!
I’m Bush. George Bush, the born againer.
Allah foresaw my awful crimes
And stuck me here in Tanner’s rhymes.

WHAT, ME WORRY?

When pols are drafting legislation
To regulate “free” enterprise,
They suffer pangs of desolation
That, in the end, always belies
The fact that they don’t want to do it
Because they think there’ll be less suet
Available for them to strain
To help them fight their next campaign.
But, luckily, for politicians
The corporations are so rich
That rarely will they pitch a bitch
For paying. Lobbyist technicians
Have funds enough to go around.
Too,… Congress is their breeding ground.

WHAT TO DO WITH DAVOS MAN

The global world that’s in the making
Is run on power by elites.
So shouldn’t we apply some breaking?
At Davos, where they hold their fetes,
They’ve formed a kind of politburo
That pays its people with the Euro
To push a cause that manumits
A world, they claim, is on the fritz.
But none of them has been elected
To make the rest of us eat crow
So why not try the old heave-ho
To those to whom we’ve genuflected?
To slap their crowns on upside down
And send them packing out of town.

FALL GUYS

1
It happened as George Bush was flying
Home from Iraq on Air Force One.
He’d been locked in his bathroom trying
To take a dump; and when he’d done
He stepped from out his bathroom closet
(He’d left behind a huge deposit)
To see the cabins emptied out.
No one responded to his shout.
But heaps of clothes, as he well-noted,
Lay scattered on the seats and floor,
Like sale day at a K-Mart store.
“My God,” he thought, “they’ve been promoted
And raptured up.” Then Tim LaHaye
Came stumbling in and looking gray.
2
“For God sakes, George, what were you thinking,”
Said Tim LaHaye, recovering some.
“They’re gone. All gone. In just a blinking,”
Said Pastor Tim, now looking glum.
“The pilots, too, are gone. You’ve slain us!
Because the stench from out your anus
Got loose through some small ruptured vent,
They needed air so out they went.”
“Their clothes,” asked Bush? “ It penetrated
Through everything, down to the skin.
It smelled in very truth… like sin.”
“And all because I defecated,”
He asked? The man just couldn’t see
That was how he made policy.
3
“Oh Lord,” LaHaye said, “what a scandle
That you and I were left behind.
How will our Christian brethren handle
The seeming fact that God declined
To give us, as good Christians, credit…?”
“Oh shut up, Tim. Let’s just forget it,”
Said Bush who rushed to take control
Of Air Force One, if not his soul.
“I have a plan for rectifying
The fact that God’s not proved our pard.
Remember I flew for the Guard.
“But Brother George,” LaHaye said crying,
“You can’t mean you believe your press?
You’ll land us in an awful mess.”
4
He did but it went undetected-
Their bodies never would be found.
The faithful claimed they’d been elected,
And lived in Heaven’s hallowed ground.
They’d both stripped naked, then, ejecting,
They’d left no bodies for inspecting.
For when Bush pulled the lever that
Ejected them, they turned to splat-
The seats fell out but with no power
To shoot them out the flight deck floor
The engines sucked them in and gore
Shot out the back, a bloody shower
With not a trace of DNA
To prove ‘twas Bush or Tim LaHaye.

THE NEW AMERICAN CREDO

1
I will believe that politicians
Are far more honest than they seem;
That all of them have high ambitions;
That none of them would ever scheme
To help a plague of corporations
Achieve their dreams of dominations
To be the worlds first parasites
That sucked the life from human rights.
That freedom is the harmonizing
Of rights and duties to a brand
However it may rape the land
So long as it serves merchandising.
All this and more I will believe…
Is someone laughing up their sleeve?
2
As well, I think, pending revision,
That freedom is what presidents
Must claim it is. It’s their decision
Who should be tortured for their bents.
A citizen should be a vassal
To presidents, though s/he’s an asshole,
Until the next election year
When, no doubt, s/he’ll sound the “all clear.”
Unless, of course, the next election
Might challenge what in policy
Is not considered good PC,
And takes it in the wrong direction-
For PC is the right or wrong
Of s/he who is, of all, most strong.
3
That government is never harmful-
Except perhaps when now and then
A citizen becomes an armful.
But they’re sent to a federal pen
To undergo the revelations
That makes them follow regulations.
Before this if they should trespass,
They’re taught with hard ones up the ass.
If prisoners are harshly treated
And that shows culture too hardnosed,
As Dostoyevsky once supposed,
Then government here should be feted
At least in Texas where a brute
Whom they can’t change, they execute.
4
We must have faith financial markets
Are saviors for the average man,
If only we would heed and hark its
Advice to save the pension plan
Of CEOs who are clutch hitters,
Although they can be orn’ry critters,
At least you know they’d never cheat
Or how could they survive Wall Street?
That they are free of regulation
Must certainly be de rigueur
Else they will be so insecure
They’ll never risk the litigation
Brought on by some investors’ suits;
Or Spitzer, prior prostitutes.

( to be continued )

NO TRUCE

Will any candidate elected
Be hostile to big business or
Are pols and business so connected
That only snarling civil war
Can separate the two? Dissension
Leads crookedly to intervention
When we, who are not worth two cents,
Have acted on our discontents.
And fighting off their exploitation
We throw off what we have repressed
And take in charge their treasure chest.
For don’t expect their abdication-
They’ve fattened too much off the goose
That lays their golden eggs. No truce.

WHOSE TREASON?

1
On every Sunday right wing preachers
Will preach that we should overthrow
The government because these screechers
Say god has damned Wade vs. Roe.
Because of this some are rewarded,
For standing up for lives aborted,
By lunching with the President
(And stirring right wing discontent).
And yet when Senator Obama’s
Black preacher says that god should damn
The likes of racist Uncle Sam,
Obama’s smeared with causing traumas
And charged with treason by the Right
As ballyhoo for its white knight.
2
It’s not that I’d endorse Obama;
But in the interests of fair play
The US suffers racial trauma
(Though right wing talk show hosts say “Nay”)
Completely out of all proportion
To what it suffers from abortion-
Aborted fetuses are dead
While Blacks must live whole lives in dread.
If anything needs more dilation
Than self-identity in race,
And I believe this is the case,
It is the fact of exploitation.
And here Obama surely fails-
Defending it for rich, white males.

FOR MIKE LLOYD

Our public schools and Catholic churches
Are running out of hope because,
As any know who’ve done researches,
They’re run by men and women scuzz.
When Cardinal Roger Mahony
And David Brewer get so stony
At scandals, both involving sex,
You wonder at their intellects.
Both try and hide administrators
Who see a kid, think s/he’s a beaut
And snatch what is forbidden fruit.
But back to church and school these nadirs
Of humankind again are placed
With children they’ve not yet disgraced.

THE MORALITY OF PROSTITUTION

What’s wrong, I ask, with prostitution
Except the fact that prostitutes
Will mostly suffer destitution
From selling their forbidden fruits?
With communist socialization,
They might escape their exploitation-
As first appropriators of
What’s offered for the price of “love.”
If women who have reached majority
Decide to sell it a la carte
And not as in “till death us part,”
Who are we that we claim authority
To make sex workers understand
That they’re producing contraband.

THE CULTURE WARS I

The culture wars as fought in college,
At Harvard, Stanford, Duke or Yale,
Produce a kind of civil knowledge-
With both sides at it tooth and nail-
While arguing the dark- complected
Cultures should always be respected.
Respect, it should be evident,
Won’t cost us rich folks one red cent.
We never speak of inequality
(The kind that keeps these peoples poor)
For that would make us insecure.
Would absolutely throw the polity,
That’s mostly poor, in such turmoil
They’d want our stock in Standard Oil.

ACCOUNTABILITY ?

If not so sad, it might be funny
To see a corporate CEO
Lose all the corporation’s money;
But when s/he gets the old heave-ho
S/he takes away a hundred million
And builds a Xanadu pavilion,
Retiring there to take a rest
Before s/he ventures her next quest.
What happened to accountability
That all the rest of us must face
Or live our lives in such disgrace
We can’t retire in sweet tranquility?
But look. The devil when he fell
Was sent by God to reign in Hell.