You Know Something's Not Right In Our Heads: The Syria Syndrome

When Uma Thurman’s Kill 
Bill’s car stunt crash that might 
Have decapitated her in 2003 
Gets more live coverage 
Than the twisted 

Lifeless 
Truncated 
Bodies 

Of kids blasted 
To pieces before 
Unbelieving eyes 

Every 
Living 
Day. 

Mean Times Iconoclastic

“What’s to be done or said in the meanwhile I don’t know, 
and what is the use of poets in a mean-spirited time?” 
—Friedrich Hölderlin, from “Bread and Wine” 


At such times, the true 
Believer’s mind believes

The eye can 
Take in only so much, 

And wonders if what 
It cannot see 

Otherwise is likewise as 
Unbelievably shattering, 

To say the least. 

One Scrambled Alter Ego Sandwich To Go

Y’know, dude, 
You don’t have to 
Put yourself out, 
Always asking 
What it is I want— 
It’s plain as the egg 
On your face— 
I want you to be 
A hard-boiled customer 
Who knows exactly what 
He wants—that’s your order— 
Try sinking your teeth into that.

King of the Mountain's Fantastic Leaps and Bounds

Trudging to grade 
School with their heads down, 

His two older sisters well ahead 
Of him, the boy spies 
The small beckoning

 
Hardened mound of sand 
At the abandoned building 
Site the girls have chosen 
To ignore, and which after 
Dashing at the speed of light

 
For all of twenty yards 
Yelling his head off, 
He now leaps from base 
Camp to the summit 
In one superhuman bound— 

 
Demonstrating once again, 
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen 
Of the Faculty of Cognitive 
Sciences, that learning by rote 
Was, is, and shall forever be 
Solely for the pedestrian 

Earthbound. 

Bliss

To fall 
Asleep next 
To your snoring 

Five-year-old grand- 
Daughter on 
Your right 

And your wife 
Sawing wood 
Next to her, 

Goodnight.

 

Art of the Deal

You keep telling me 
Having money’s hard 
Work and to make 
Do with what I’ve got, 
Which must be a lot 
Easier if one’s not 
A have-not—so what 
Say you slip me that 
Ace up your sleeve 
When I’m not looking 
And make believe 
I’m hard up as your lot. 

#Me Too

1. 

After lopping off 
A limping male 

Poetic limb or two, 
The liberated 

Muse’s shark-like mouth 
Cannot be said to be 

Sardonic, nor her smile ironic, 
Though some macho moronic 

Poets have gone so far 
As to call it romantically 

Emasculating— a void, 
A fathomless, yawning abyss. 

2. 

With all due respect 
To the free- 

Loving unfaithful 
Beastly romantic 

Percy, if Mary were 
Here, I’d surmise 

She’d find nothing grotesque
Or amiss with this fantastic script— 

After all she was 
Nobody’s monster, just 

Frankenstein’s perfect 
Ms.