Tag Archives: satire

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

so these are
our great leaders
the one we asked for,
begged for, swore
binding oaths
we would give
our lives
in the holy
protection of

most sacred symbols
creme de la creme

steering Ship
of State between
Scylla and
Charybdis

charting the perfect
course to ensure
the entire crew gets
devoured by
the former
before the Ship
itself gets
swallowed by
the latter
pulverized into
microscopic
perhaps subatomic bits

no fear
no fear
     enough spin
doctors on the shore
think tanks well
bunkered
to call this
what it no doubt is:
perfect solution;
strategic victory

reassure us 100, 200,
3000% in our
our need

and yet
our poets and philosophers
(bless them) the ones
already marked for death camps
but presently well
and living

try to
get through to us
contact us to
tell us

all
  common sense
is now
gone to Hell

something so fucked up
about our evolution

and all our voting, political,
social, economic
and natural selection processes

centuries we had
to see
    for ourselves, live
and learn

tragedy we didn’t

THE DAY THE FUHRER LANDED

THE DAY THE FUHRER LANDED

the day the fuhrer landed
home land security and
immigration
    were put on maximun alert
rushed into action

terrified that there would not be
enough babies and flowers,
guards of honour

rapturous screaming crowds
to welcome Herr H
to his
final, true home

WITH EVERY DAMNED THING

WITH EVERY DAMNED THING

look what happens
when you put pressure
squeeze everything
you can out
of us ordinary humans

reduce the quality further
of our less, than stellar lives

force us
to turn within
find what
we can all bring
to the party

fish for and
snare
what stories. fables,
myths, legends,
and, dare
I say it?, poetry
that we are sitting on
that we
have always hosted

and, to give
supreme benefit
of the doubt,

try to
touch your heart

believing it not
irredeemable, for
argument’s sake

but of course, as you have
gathered, as we have
always gathered nothing there

bereft of empathy
devoid of
understanding, no
place
for anything but
profit and greed

and a polished ideology
premised on a need
to never let anyone
smell
let alone see (in
all its abject glory) such
ceaseless hypocrisy

at which
revelation

we sigh, close ranks, recite
poems, tell our stories

back to
work
putting pen to paper
hit you with every damned
thing we got

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