BUTTONED

BUTTONED

slippery slope
one Hell of
a logical fallacy

not sure I buy that
he said as
poles reversed
and all
went vertigo

over a bad word
and the terrible, Earth-
shattering damage — go
figure! — it cannot
be allowed
to do

but she is erudite, and
in the New Yorker, no less,
she has
made her case

but elegance is an achievement
will not stand
up to deconstruction

your cracks and crevices
are there
for the taking

rhetorical figures interrogated
made to stand on their heads

and here you are
touting the danger
of weapons of mass destruction
but throwing
your own little not so
weak hand grenade
into the mix
thing that democracy, humanity
can well do without adding
to their wounds, their woes
at this particular juncture

useful idioting yourself with
stylistic flourish so spectacular
finding yourself
(yet again) on these pages
grown
synonym
for suspect

nice little diversion from
the calamity to the very
concept and
its understanding, of
civilization

with every blind moment of
pure slaughter via
two thousand pound bomb

testament to
our world, new
reality no
sooner than lips
first got buttoned up

BECAUSE

BECAUSE

“if we don’t have
free speech we
have nothing”
    Glenn Greenwald

because
a shard hit you

standing in the wrong
place at the
wrong time

you want to stop
conflict, you want
to stop history
you imsist
on bringing to
a close
truly meaningful time

and you wheel out
your experts on
human pain and
sensitivity
to give us a
sickly-sweet
addictive narrative

which
   will kill
the idea

bring to a close
all forward trajectory
breaking the stranglehold
of elites
   and rebirth of humankind

TRUNK CALL

TRUNK CALL

there we have
the fight to eclipse
Frazier-Ali,
to make Tyson-Holyfield
look like
a walk in the park

there we have it
in a nutshell

in a
bombshell

in the light trunks,
fighting out of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
first amendment freedom
of expression

in the dark trunks, fighting
out of Death Valley, California
everything
that is going to make us
foaming at the mouth
great again
restore
   global supremacy whatever
the human cost

may
    the
best fighter beat the daylights
out of the dirtiest

BLOTTED

BLOTTED

the lie spreads
seeps into, flows
across the page

as soon
as pen hits the page
commiting such
magnificent untruth
to screen
and paper

you need
air-tight law
to protect the lie
from truth’s
unholy power

make sure it
feels safe

has the space
required
to enact its alchemy

turning blotted
copybook

ink spilled across
so many fronts
to rivers
     oceans

of blood
      (enough
to paint the world
twice over)