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.