Friday, May 31, 2013

 
The Future of War

Those who underwent and
concluded How terrible!

Or How boring! never fit.
We must have heroes

to insure the continuance
of particular systems.

Not pantywaists
or lazy satirists.

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Thursday, May 30, 2013

 
Where To Put Anything

I live in a country where art has died
and gone to graduate school.* They

never know what size to make it. So,
fit it to the Military-Industrial Complex,

thus making everybody happy
not to be threatened anymore.

*sentiment from C Wilson, Slate

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

 

Generations

-Look! Enough! We got money; you guys, shit.
But a foggy product that might fetch some. Okay!
Who knows? Let the accountants talk, and we
will again. Right now there’s a pinball tournament
in our loft!

(in cab)
-These scrawny nerds with green teeth are the
new J. P. Morgans. God help us all!

-God bless us every one!

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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

 

Refusing to Join the Circus



-Put her foot down? When did she pull it up?

Closer in, Carl went at Dorothy.

-Your father warned me you were a mule, and he's
been proven right!

-Who's disputing? I'll remain the mule on this one.

-Ruck and Dilly get a check for a thousand each and
every month! What do we get from our stinkin bank?

-Very little. But at least we're holding on to what
we got.

-Okay okay, then just do me this favor. Let’s read
the stuff together again and...

-No use. I still won't understand it.

-Well nobody does, completely. So what?
Can you understand a check for a thousand
each and every damn month?

-Till it stops and they close all the phones
down?

-Now that's just nonsense! Why Reverend Chuck
and Brother Buster even mentioned it in the
church newsletter.

-Well that's a disservice to Jesus.

-Oh stop it! Join the Twenty-First Century!

Carl awfully hurt when they arrested Reverend Chuck
and Brother Buster at a service. FBI overreach
to be sure! Lawyer Hoddings thought they'd only
get a couple of years each as very minor players.

The leaders were on the run, leaving mansions
full of fancy paintings and all.

The worst thing he ever had to do was tell
her she was right. But wasn’t he just trying to...?

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Monday, May 27, 2013

 
"You! Of all...!"

So, she had it on him.

He toils; she snacks more than works.

In a year, he walks with the big guy.
She is let go. Part of a big purge.

She could still talk, but not so close.

The new girl minds her own stuff. That's all
there is to that. She won’t chub up.

The old one steps in front of a bus on her
way to her new job.

"Fate?" his deep side asks.

"Why not fat?" his joke one quips.

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

 
The Future of Misery

Biff and Carol went on to the film, even though it
wasn't Leonardo DiCaprio, but the fellow looked
like him.

The other couple wouldn't, she insisting, even though
Carol informed them of glowing reviews online.

Well, that'd be the last time to go out with those two! 
At work he seemed scattered and worried, and she was
a mule growing up and had gotten worse.

Carol told him that at the Fourth Street Club everyone
begged off any committee she was on.

At bedtime--they had skipped beers at Lefty n' Lil’s
because of the sour mood. Which the lame film
didn't help...

ANYWAY, Carol told him it was bad luck to talk about
another couple's troubles. But they couldn’t help it:
those two being a trainwreck heading for a
bigger one!

Biff's final thought before brushing his teeth--
taking a very long time to do it in hopes the
subject would die--"You know, in the old days
that kind of woman just made the whole town
miserable, but now with the internet...?

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Saturday, May 25, 2013

 
“The Porch of the Maiden”

Named by my father, who was well-read,
especially for the neighborhood.

She sat there of summer evenings and
never wore a shirt. She had been our tomboy,
angry organizer at our pickup games, exhorter
to get us to play with some directed passion.

All that ended with her porch gig, which
meant nothing when she resembled a boy,
but soon the little breasts were baseball-sized.

Her family eventually prevailed as she
never appeared there without crossing her
arms in front of her chest.

Then, in course, wearing a t-shirt, brilliant
white. Florescent before summer storms.

Soon, quite a surprise as she joined the
other girls, actually the girlie-girlie
contingent talking endlessly of boys,
and trading movie magazines.

She fooled us, too, by going to Commercial High
for the secretarial course. She, and a few others
in the city, though, transforming girls’ basketball
by playing a quick-passing, even driving, game.

Again her path diverged, being given a basketball
scholarship by Syracuse in the degree field of
Sports Management.

But she threw her queasy family a final joker by eloping
in her freshman year with a new graduate of that program.

They lived in a lot of New York towns after that, he doing sports spots for radio stations.

When female twins arrived, he, fortunately,
took over the management of a small FM outlet.

By the time he handled sports for a major
New York TV station, she finished her degree
at Columbia. But in Social Work.

She now works for an organization encouraging
young women to enter the sciences.

A very womanly woman to be sure, but one thing
never changed. The fierce brow.

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Friday, May 24, 2013

 
The Promotion

-Kip will never promote you.

-It's not all up to him.

-Then he'll stop you. He'll find a way.

-Wise words, I'm afraid.

-And why? Your record is close to great! Compared to the others, you...

-If it is, he'll find something else not so...

-Uh uh. Don't make it sound so rational.
He snap-decided when you first met. Stuck you
in the unacceptable box. Wrong school, perhaps.

-If he did--and it makes sense he did--then...

-You have two hopes. He goes. Or you do.

-He never will. Loves the particular power.

-Then you must. If you got a pair of balls!

-Why is it women want to talk of balls all the time?

-We have our reasons.

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

 
Short Names and Old Politics

Sen “Rip” had the facts and figures;
his nemesis, Sen “Alf” the same.

They fired them at each other for a year.
No compromise on legislation seemed
possible. Presidential appointments, the same.

Rip took a phonecall from his state's governor--
of the other party. A bridge to be named
for him. The nickname would be bad form,

however. So very formal ceremony with his
full moniker on humongous bronze plate. While

at this time, his senate opponent found out that
a rec center would carry his name, beloved
diminutive accommodated in quotes. Back

after dedications, they happened on a compromise
existing in The District. Favoring Rip somewhat, 

but one nonetheless.

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

 
Chinese Proverbs in America

If you don’t like your neighbor,
buy his child a drum.

The Tea Party has a drum.
And Boy is it bought!

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

 
Diplomacy

-Hold in place! The attack is off. A deal has been struck!

-When do we go home then?

-Never. You’re to do a 180 and attack our now-hated allies--back there Black-Marketing and worse. 

Why, let me tell you about...!

-Don’t! I’m a soldier, not a politician.

-That’s what we’re counting on.

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Monday, May 20, 2013

 
Hammered and Screwed?

Count your wry blessings.
For better devices exist

in the Toolbox of the Rich
& Congressional minions.

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Sunday, May 19, 2013

 
The Highwaymen

Pudge instructed Half-Loco in crossing.
“Make it close, so you can give the finger
to trucker.”

“You keep doing that and you misjudge one
day and they blot you up later on!”

Pudge laughed. "Ain't ever gonna happen that way."

He was right. He died in his sleep during a hellacious rainstorm. 

Next morning Half-Loco borrowed a cellphone from
maintenance guy picking up tree limbs, to tell
Social Worker Fanny.

She, at the Station later, to Desk Sergeant “Pip” Ryan:

“I'm afraid one of my homeless passed.”

“Yeah? When he shooda run or punted?”

“Is everything a joke?”

“Definitely!”

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

 
Giving Iowa a Try

Told it’d take time,
eventually found

a friend and
married her.

Kids came round
as they will. The church

portraits quite Rockwellian
throughout the lean years.

Started the first franchise
ever in his county. Then,
held on. The quiet scorn

of farmers rivals sophisticates
in rancor, but they dribble in now.

So, he has become a success.
For the summer air is beautiful
at a picnic for suppliers and

customers. Iowa remains,
however puzzling.

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Friday, May 17, 2013

 
Mushy Quarter

“That particular department is a dun nebulosity.
First instituted to give jobs to ne’er-do-well
nephews and vacant nieces.

You never dispatch an ideologue to head it up--
be like biting the wind. So parties send good ole
hacks, interchangeable.

Thus, scandal must be thin on the ground if you're
attacking it. And for what? What boils down to is an
office football pool!

They'll prove was started under one of our regimes,
anyway.

Find somewhere else to scratch the rube's itch for
scandal. I realize that waste, fraud, and abuse are
rare in Washington, but...”

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

 
The Outrage Industry

Well the other party
has done it yet again,

those grossest of pigs!
Not having learned etc.

If you can only send $10...TV
campaign against them
in the most affected states.


In the old burlesque, at
the sashaying entrance
of Madame La Zinga,

the comedian would spring
a mechanism in his baggy pants
to make a rod shoot up therein.

Pulpits railed at the nudity later
in the show when un-coy La Zinga
left squat to the imagination in

employing no mechanical apparatus
whatsoever. But the most unspeakable

clerical abhorrence at moral rot
was reserved for the comedic
simulation.

Finding a circular language
not to describe it proved
the industry then.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

 
Senator, Just Drunk Enough

“I say those things for the scratch-ass rubes.

And their pseudo-Constitutional fetishes
and Camp-Meeting bellows--many of both
to do with sex.

That's a quarter.

Leadership forces my vote for their concerns,
plus equally uncomfortable ones.

That's another quarter.

But half of the time I'm an Eisenhower,
Main Street Republican.

That's what I want to be remembered for,
not the gross puke.”

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

 
“My Family Gave Me Nothing

except, by a series
of legal accidents,
the barn of a  house.
 

Room after dripping room with
grim ancestors staring down
the years though

grimy frames. I auctioned off all
of it. Alien Nouveau
Riches
dancing at their

winning bid. How soon awful
odors will drift through the ultra

neighborhood! Framed personages
now claimed as theirs. It's all

from Gilbert and...
Solomon!”

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Monday, May 13, 2013

 
‘Gatsby’ renews interest in Jazz Age

New film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic
puts enthusiasts in a 1920s state of mind. -Wapo


 
States of Mind
 
My Mom and Dad,
speaks, flappers
bathtub gin. Sex,

real and imagined.
Here again? Not when

you find a professor
with a clipboard
in your hot bed,

or a Republican.

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Sunday, May 12, 2013

 
Two Woman Riff

-So many affairs I lost count.

-That's not a good thing.

-A remark sufficiently ambiguous, but...
the grave tone!

-It is what it is.

-Getting moral on me?

-I guess I am.

-Thought you were my friend.

-Maybe just beginning to be.

-Oh? So, everyday slut, or tragic heroine? Which?

-More the latter.

-Listen! That literary shit is okay, but not when
it affects you personally. Always a bad fit, anyway,
the fancy story to life.

-Perhaps I don’t know where either leaves off, but...

-No buts. This conversation–-as they say in 007--
never occurred.

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

 

Small-bore

When Nancy and  Babs
got back from Vegas, they

hinted at debauchery. Bad
stomachs would have been

closer to the mark, hav-
ing twice ingested mammoth

Two for Ones at the Whammo
Western Steak Emporium.

They finally admitted
to their intimate, Eileen,

of mildest flirtations
with Carlos, the cute

towel boy at the Pool
Bash the hotel threw.

(New bikinis, though, making
them feel bloated throughout.)

At any rate, the village gossips,
once having revved up, lusted

after juicier game than
these two girlscouts. They

demolished a few, but their
leader passed during her last
militant watch. After a year,

the groundskeeper, after des-
pairing of brown splotches

resistant to anything, covered
the grave with astroturf.

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Friday, May 10, 2013

 

The Anchor Manque

ponders gravitas whilst
dealing the bleeding lead
to bleeding hearts. So

does he aspire to Murrow
and Cronkite. But wouldn’t

really dare, save, a bit,
in twirling chatter at

the tasteless desk, which

vanishes like snow
on X's hot ass.
Weathergirl.

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Thursday, May 09, 2013

 

Free Inquiry

“I’m to moderate the damn panel! CSPAN no less. 

Well I got two Yalies, and one each Princeton and Harvard.

And a striving-strident academic broad from 

East Jesus Nebraska Normal School and Storm Door Repair Facility.

Okay okay, I’ll soften it. She’s Yale grad. But abdicated 
for the desolate prairie, cheapening the brand thereby.

I’ll give her a sentence or two for the hicks back home,
then cut her off. Quicker if she injects the feminism shit.”

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Wednesday, May 08, 2013

 
Our earlobes flare

out from the skull. It’s
how you can tell us.

When we go home, some
exclaim, “Oh it's EFs!
A thousand welcomes!”

As teens enthuse
“So-O cool!”

Others sneer “You fuckin low-
life despicable EFs better
watch your backs!”

We tell them Land of Free
and Home of Brave can
do better. They answer that

when they hear those words
from us, they reach for their guns,

since we’re turning revered
concepts rancid. 3-M

devises an invisible tape.
Some of us become acceptable

with it. Temporary step–-or so
our leaders assure. My two best
friends have already become Flats,

landed good jobs. Teppy waves cash
around after his first pay. “Does THIS
look like psychological damage?”

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Tuesday, May 07, 2013

 
New College President


-What I hear most about the present guy is that he’s beloved.

-Well now isn’t that just Apple Pie!

-Your nephew as a college president? I don’t know...

-Hey! The only qualification seems to be a doctorate. He got that, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you how. Though he’s not as dumb as a bag of hammers, he’s not much smarter.

-I hope he can act the part then.

-Beautifully! What he really brings is fundraising. Terrific at it. That’s the main job anyway. The scholar bit is wayyyy back!

-It just remains, then, easing the old guy out.

-He’ll go. For one thing he got one of those old fashioned pension things.

-Hasn’t been 401-K’od?

-Nope. Evaded that massive screwing. Therefore he can golf content in Boca or wherever.

-Most good pensions demolished courtesy of your legislature.

-MY legislature? Hyperbole! Well...does sound bad, but I guess it’s accurate enough.



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Monday, May 06, 2013

 

Positive Annals of Capitalism, Sort of

“Funny you should ask after him. Family chauffeur
for years and years. Little apartment above the
garage, never went anywhere without one of us...
quits! 


To open a pirate theme restaurant. With two
other chauffeurs, would you believe? Pretty soon
they have three of these foolish dens. Some kids
are wearing eye patches, even.

Long story short, piracy peters out and the
partners land five McDonald franchises
in New Jersey.

Yes, I agree with you. Confirms what we’ve preached
about ambition and hard work etc. Still, I can’t help
myself!  I’m sorry. Decent enough fellow of course,
but the wrong sort are getting rich.”

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Sunday, May 05, 2013

 

“Where Is Truth?”


asked jiving Pirate.
Blind, he switched

his eyepatch
for fashion.

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Saturday, May 04, 2013

 
Choosing a Proverb

Deeds takes Look for the silver lining.
Jips, ironist always, Look for the slivered binding.

She doesn't think much of that. Anyway, Registry office
okays hers, but his already taken by a man in Maine.

All those pine trees! thinks Jips.

Jips has to teleport there and meet him. Exact clone,
of course. But this other Jips simply nods and brushes
past into the machine and is gone.

So that's the deal? Well, why not try it here?  He asks the man 

running the store to tell him where he lives. 
Claims he has bumped his head.

Mr Orgonz explains he's delivering the goods
for a year’s order to him anyway, so why not
ride along in the thousand year old Chevvie truck?

After he helps the old man put the order away, 

he starts looking around the rustic cabin on the 
spooky lake.

Quite a good communications setup, so he messages
himself, his clone really. "Her face quizzy-weird since
u say Deidre. Likes Deeds."

Other Jips has books, he discovers. Must be old fashioned type. 

And bookbinding machinery. Soon the store man 
starts delivering some for repair.

Simple stuff he can figure out, but a few Bibles need
an experienced craftsman. So, he studies online with the same 

irascible Norwegian his clone had.

After a year, though Jips is repeatedly called a blockhead, 

the Norwegian posts a beautiful 
certificate at the general store. It’s in Norwegian 
and gorgeously engraved.

Orgonz  frames it and delivers many more books.

After a year also he turns on his old household cameras. 

Everything looks the same, as do Deeds and 
new Jips. Except she's pregnant.

He remembers jealously, but is too happy for it.

Long book short, little Deeds messages him from
time to time now. She wants to visit. Speaks of all
their lives as odd. Most especially that of her

parents! He answers that Life is indeed strange, 
but you go on from there.

She registers that as her proverb.

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Friday, May 03, 2013

 
Oh that Benghazi Rag

It’s hardly elegant
and never intelligent,
but see? it’s a sign,

and we hafta help our base
cretins stir the moonshine.

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Thursday, May 02, 2013

 

Hell yes, let's have another war!

Nine innings in a baseball game.
Already Star Spangled Banner,
and God Bless etc.

How flesh out the other seven?
Why, many more blinding hymns

to fish out of
the Patriot's Garbage!

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

 

Washington Correspondents’ Dinner


Ah the Glitterati!  Hardly
the reporters or politicians,

who’ve had over-
much excrement

hurled at them for such
a label. So, Hollywoods suck
up the Red Carpet instead.

It’s all of it what it is:
Flash and Gas.

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