Tag Archives: satire

NOW I SEE/PRISTINE

NOW I SEE/PRISTINE

It’s not
the Sistine Chapel

no,
more a pagan temple
more suited to
demon worship

having a lovely
forbidden cult time

God knows where
they got their hellish
iconography from
avatars
of extreme
bad taste

bet they didn’t get
it in a single impromtu
haul by
way of incognito
trip to Walmart

much mix ‘n match
mythology up
in fresco (alfresco)
as long
   as it conjures up
chaos, destabilizes,
vaguely terrifies

have
to ask the angels
(better angels
of all our natures)
regarding the sound
proofing
and how much
scream dampening

thick
as the armour on
a Tiger tank I guess
no one not invited
does not
need to hear a thing

and starting with Sistine
falling with
   absolute loss
of grace from there

now I see
(Oh, how I see)
what billionaires think
of in secret, in private,
in their self-
owned 747s, self-owned
off-shore islands
when they
hear the word “pristine”

and with that rhyme chime
time to draw our
paparazzi portrait
of what
Edenic landscapes, sexual
configurations
    float unfiltered but
fatally contorted
into theit imagination machines

with all that money  – – whisper
shout proclaim
that word
   for all eternity, for the
sum total of the poor,
shabby lifetimes
            of us in
the 99.9

with all that money
Cheops pyramids of money
nothing in
   or between Heaven and Hell
you cannot have, make real.

THUNK IT

THUNK IT

academics in the files?
who would
have thought it,
thunk it?

mirror me this
mirror to mirror
what is
the academy to
the narcissism
of ideas?

what reverse alchemy
at work here
turning gold
into base metal
turning base
metal into
something
far worse

turning billions of U. S.
into something unspeakable

turning
     the final dream of
community
into a confederacy of
Caligulas

and there as touchstones
sextants to
navigate such
progress

Professors of every
discipline and indiscipline
from triple X
to Zee

our Alphas, Betas
and outright Omegas

there on the island gowned
for the occasion
fiddling with
what bit they know of
intellectual apparatus

performing research
for the
    benefit of mankind on
the most unwilling of subjects

walking subtexts we
need to read
from below, behind
and between the lines

until, with
deadening “thunk”
the truth is right there

POOR OLD

POOR OLD

poor old
dystopia
what is
there
left to say

sadly, can
no longer
be science
fiction creature
of dark imagination

your evil
become so ordinary,
everyday, run
of the mill, super tawdry,
ultra banal

here is
Hannah Arendt
left
     totally gob-
smacked
  
nothing to add to
the discourse, not
a single
    cutting to
the heart erudite
contribution

to capture the moment
define the terrain

OVID

OVID

the pompous Patriots
scoreless
at half time

Seattle (smart city)
with their
blitzkrieg football
acing it
in our own
back yard

meanwhile
between Oz and Kansas
the corn still growing
as spears go, every
clutch of corn
by
rank and file
deep as a legion
tall as
a phalanx

but Empire troubled
by what it sees
out at half
time
rapping in Spanish
(language
closest to Latin)

worse, singing about
love and
community
not
fish, beer, trucks
and dogs
as quintessential
song lexicon

and preserving a
language
for the sake of
ablatives, declensions
and gender

spoke as it
are

vestal
as a virgin

from
the horse’s mouth

(the Empire that
gave us
Spartacus
also giving us Ovid)

TURNIN’ POINT

TURNIN’ POINT
“All you need to do
is swallow.” Josh Johnson

waiting for
something to push
an envelope

must have come
to the wrong place

basic chords, I presume
the guitars
are
in tune
       (not a lick, not a riff,
not a whiff of the blues)

paint drying slower to not
show up anything

and free speech put
to the test here, yes sireee,
twangibg lyrics that sink
to the bottom
of the bottle

giving dregs
a new name

and these
the musical
airs and graces need
to send out to, show
the world

the deepest metaphors
of the tribe imaginable

would
     tie up
with a ribbon, present
you myself

but the truck got stuck
truck got stuck

BOGUS

BOGUS

so this skinny old
withered guy

splurted out that the skiers
who called into question
the current state
of American

should be unceremoniously
stripped of their
national ski uniforms

which
     gets me, thinking
if this geezer is
so passionate about this
he should
   travel to Milan
strip the offending
skiers himself

presuming
   obviously that
he survive
the cold
    manages to
not drown
in the snow

such fake, bogus contrived passion
stuck in a glacier
not going to melt anything

poor, skinny, old
withered man

older, more skinny, more
withered,
infinitely
more bogus,
     than i am myself

SIR JIM

SIR JIM

for a moment
when Sir Jim
came in
to fix us
we deluded ourselves
it would be
Camelot

but turned out
much more
managed by
Mordred and Morgana
than reborn
Manchester United

still
   a key player short
and no free
bananas

no free lunches ever
as we stop-start climb
above fifteenth

we never expected you
Sir Jim to be
   thin and sparse and
tin
  man kind
of hollowed out

supposed
     to unite us all

but here you
are breaking apart, fragmenting

a team of squares and
round holes
       bits and pieces

no football logic, common
sense
      so must be

profit in it
primarily, exclusively,
in
   everything we do