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.

FOR BRAD

Is anybody really better
Than Cheney/Bush for President?
Aren’t each of them a tough goal setter
For making sure the world’s torment
Is harnessed so that every bitcher
Is slapped down so the rich get richer?
Obama, Clinton, John McCain-
You really think they feel the pain?
Or do they work for corporations
Who, after all, pay all their bills
To fatten up a world of ills
So that they do the renovations,
Based solely on the lowest bid?
Least that's what Halliburton did.

NOW THAT WOULD BE NEWS

1
Do any think the notoriety
Is merited? It makes me retch.
It says a lot about society
That Spears and Co. can etch-
With camera shots by paparazzi
Who swoop in like they’re kamikaze-
Upon our minds the common things
Like dining out on chicken wings.
It might be news if witless Paris
Was pictured with her granddad's watch
The fob of which hung out her crotch.
Or, better yet, this flighty heiress
Who when they gave her crotch a click
It was revealed she had a dick!
2
But either way the notoriety
Is so insulting when compared
To those who benefit society.
These airheads who have hardly bared
Their pussies for a peek-a-booing
(Not even offering a screwing)
Want glory for the ill repute
Of flashing their forbidden fruit.
Attention deficit disorder
Which means how quickly we forget
Who wears the current coronet
Can be revived with a ripsnorter-
Don’t want to be dumped with junk mail,
Then do some time in county jail.
3
Our first celebrities were preachers.
In Sunday services out West,
They offered us both double features
And chances to relieve repressed
Desires and instincts we kept swaddled.
But Sundays these, released and coddled,
Were given birth from out the wombs
Of preachers- our Orlando Blooms.
Imagine life in Oklahoma-
The endless days of endless chores
The endless nights of husbands’ snores
And wishing you were in a coma.
Except for Sundays when desire
Was lit up by the preacher’s fire.
4
For preachers preached about the sinning
The Bible damned as so much lust.
A woman needed disciplining,
Though how was never much discussed.
On lonely nights she’d see her preacher
And dream about his creature feature;
How she might take it well in hand
And lead it to her Holy Land.
But dreams demand our understanding
Especially when her husband’s might
Was dead before the fall of night.
This left the preacher last man standing-
And he could teach her discipline
And pray forgiveness for their sin.

( to be continued )
,

PRIVATIZING EDUCATION

1
You’ll ask why I'm antagonistic
To privatizing government?
It’s not just that I’m communistic;
But am a diehard malcontent
Who does believe that a democracy
Is better than an aristocracy
Of corporations who’ll pig off
Our taxes like a public trough.
Take Kipp and Green Dot Education-
With monies from both Gates and Broad-
Who argue schooling’s public mode
Is at the end of its duration;
And will be, too, if we give way.
Without a fight,they’re here to stay.
2
They base their plans on high stakes testing
Which likely’s a norm referenced test;
Which means, in turn, they’ll be investing
Only in children who do best.
And with them, education’s axis-
Which is a portion of all’s taxes-
Is siphoned off from public schools
So that what’s left looks like Kabul’s.
And then these self-fulfilling prophets-
Because norm referencing makes sure
Who does the worst are very poor-
Will gladly show how it pays off. It’s
Certain to give a new gestalt
To poor folks thinking: “It’s our fault.”
3
No doubt that being poor’s arresting.
But public education is
Supposed to help your kids. Investing
In schools as if they were a biz
By using public funds dismisses
Most poor kids down to such abysses
It’s little wonder that they fight
To get out of the awful fright
That passes for their education.
It’s teachers though should take the lead
In helping them escape the greed
That rapes the coffers of taxation.
But organizing teacherkind
Requires a union of one mind.

ON THE EVE OF THE OHIO AND TEXAS PRIMARIES

Should any care for our elections
When corporations pay the cost
And buy the candidates’ affections?
You don’t think you’ve been double-crossed?
Which one will stop the privatizing
Of government reorganizing
So corporations’ appetites
Won’t swallow up our human rights?
The rights to health care, education-
Which candidate’s the wherewithal
To stop them going to the wall
When they’ve received a fat donation
From companies that pay the tolls
So they access our lives and souls?