HOME INVASIONS

Elections are like home invasions-
The minute you turn on TV
Your home is filled with pols whose suasions
Want you to vote them nominee.
You could turn off the television
But sit there trapped in indecision.
And while you do you’re overrun.
You can’t fall back on 911.
Now, listening to their histrionics,
You’re overcome and so you vote
To buy their promissory note.
Then while you’re sipping gin and tonics,
They’re back again and like King Lear
You find yourself out on your ear.

SOME MIXED METAPHORS ON IMPERIALISM

Who cares if we’re a superpower
If that means that we get to kill
All those not in our ivory tower
Atop our city on the hill?
It started off with independence
And ended with us as defendants
Who parcel out electric shocks
To who sits in the jury box.
What profits us to go flag-waving
And say it stands for equal rights
When we distribute human blights?
Yet don’t believe we’re misbehaving
When we elect us pols who tend
To treat the world as “as man’s best friend.”

THE UNIVERSAL "OUGHT"

1
If Democratic voters rallied
For principles not candidates,
Then all the pols would have been Ali’d
Or pounded punchy. No debates
Will ever bother to uncover
Why we patrol the earth. We love her?
Now there’s a laugh. And here’s one more-
What happened to make love not war?
It’s been around awhile. That issue
Defined a generation that’s
Been vilified as democrats.
Now all that’s left is dead scar tissue
Reminding us of why we fought-
To free the universal “ought.”
2
As in a principle generic
Consistent with our human rights;
Eliminating acts barbaric
Promoting only human blights.
Take, for example, exploitation-
Eliminating its causation
So that the workers’ status quos
Go far beyond the CIO’s
Of adding pennies to make dollars;
But taking business in their hands
Force capital to make last stands;
And celebrate with hoots and hollers
As workers think what they will do
When value makes its new debut.
3
If you think this but Marxist folly,
Consider that it’s not been tried.
Marx would have said we’re off our trolley
If we thought he had rectified
All problems posed by social justice.
The old man surely would have cussed us
If we claimed exploitation’s root
Was, gardenlike, forbidden fruit-
When really it’s one cause of many.
While certainly a cause of pain,
Life’s problems are a daisy chain.
As others argue, nota bene,
If we seek justice once for all,
Then look to Plato or St. Paul.
4
( to be continued )

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

Who thinks that Hill will stop the warring
That Cheney started in Iraq,
Must think that Bill will stop the whoring
That charges his atomic cock.
Who thinks it will be by Obama
Is channeling the Dalai Lama.
Though Edwards is against the war,
It’s still his vote we're paying for.
I say we boycott this election
For all the candidates are true
To waving flags red, white, and blue
Above the globe till Resurrection-
Which might be soon, to say the least,
Since Empire’s Mark (is) of the Beast.

POLITICAL LOYALTY

To think that voters get excited
Because their candidate’s no friends
Who’ve not come close to being indicted.
But that’s before THE MAN ascends
To office where inflexibility
Needs service by malleability.
If conquering requires a stoop,
Then s/he’ll need friends who’ll play the dupe.
The Clinton/Bush administrations-
Both governors who left the South
By talking out both sides their mouth-
Avoided their incarcerations
Because a friend fell on his sword.
More than St. Pete did for his Lord.

THE TRAIL OF TEARS

Here’s hoping that no more emotion
Will filter in to Clinton’s spiel.
It might have helped her self-promotion
But really what did it reveal?
Did it reveal her fortifying
The same ground Bush did, justifying
His sending soldiers to Iraq
To prove we’re still cock of the walk?
It’s all a bunch of jabberwocky
With body language neocons,
Protecting inner Genghis Khans,
Have always used when things got rocky.
What’s new will be her tears of grief
If Clinton’s Commander-in-Chief.

ELECTION DAY - IOWA, 2008

There is no time like an election
For citizens to seize the day,
Expressing all their disaffection
At politicians' appliqué-
I mean the bullshit they are smearing
On TV screens, electioneering
So they can ride the gravy boat
They’ve bought and paid for with our vote.
They’ll all turn out as double-crossers,
Especially ones like old Ron Paul
Who’d do away with city hall.
(But he was left by flying saucers.)
The rest of them deserve our Rome’s
Power. If only we had catacombs.