Muddled Class Set-up
Image
Reply
Tag Archives: Politics
Tipping Point
The tectonic plates shift unceasingly beneath
the patter of our striving.
True to deeper dictates, the plates merge
motion into directions
each opposing the other—in a slow, mad whirl.
On the surface we chase happiness
as if it existed
in skirmishes won, in profits gained
at anyone’s expense—if we can bend
their wills and means.
What we call parties of politics
mirror the bloodlust shared
by men and rats
blind drunk on dark passion
when it suits them.
Facades of civility long nurtured
erode along a road paved
with short-term everything:
money resounds loudest when flung
after bad.
Climates of creeping entitlement,
promises made when it was easier
than not promising
come due, then overdue,
and are then exposed as shams.
New Himalayas, scaled to fit
our swollen views of self,
raise themselves among us
blocking all possible views of
shared humanity.
The solving of problems, always last
choice among us when empowered,
gain purchase and are then
discarded in orgies of name-calling
for what we dare not name.
Dreams purchased on the never-never
come due, and dilute, then,
into reappraisals
of what survival will entail
as we all buy guns.
The tipping point of a species,
this time our species,
breaks on the edges—
the conflicting, searing edges—
of the churning tectonic plates.
State of the Union Menu
‘What you need,’ said the Dragon, ‘is a way to eat your poor.’
‘We already have that, but it’s indirect,’
the Senator answered, wiping off his chin.
‘We bleed them with low pay or, better, none.
When they weaken, we brand “lazy” on their foreheads.
Those who die out deserve to. Not insured.
After I left it, we added the middle class
to our menu. Strangely, we have less to eat.
Just you and me, eh, Dragon. Who blinks first?’
Reelecting the Villains
Poeticising. Dreaming in the Word Mill.
Kaleidoscope-colliding observations.
Scenes sharply seen seem seamed with those imagined.
More esses than a snake can shake a stick at
go moseying along so slickly, that could Moses
see them shifting shape, he’s think his own trick poor.
To trick the poor into voting for reelection
of the villains who impoverished them last time
and other subjects mastermind the poem
that won’t get written. I’m poeticising.
Election Dayse
The goats go from the sun to shade
and those with collars nibble grass
while their kids, uncollared, pass
along the paths their elders made.
The voters vote in every town
while those who own the wealth of Spain
show an interest or feign one
in how the votes go down.
The almond and the medlar trees
shade the flock of goats and sheep
and frame the fields where shepherds sleep
off lunches of light wine and cheese
Miami eats the Everglades.
The hot swamp’s old talaria,
mosquitoes and malaria,
can’t match the workmen’s boots and spades.
A goat springs from a terrace wall.
A wasp eats an entire bee
except its eyes and one bent knee.
A sheep can’t cope and takes a fall.
The votes Dade County owners count
are those that help them win
the war on nature, do it in
and build a better bank account.
Dogs fight each other for a yard
that one of them is tied in
Bees build a hive in earth that’s hard
in the field where sheep get dyed in.
We fly down south and order goat.
We buy the best-priced dream.
We laugh that we don’t need a coat
and eat fresh figs with cream.
Elector
Image
Society News
He chipped and putted down the pristine fairway.
She climbed the rock face scraping hands and knees.
His money grew more money while he showered.
Her research cured a terrible disease.
His caddy’s Caddy zoomed him to his Bentley.
She mountain biked to the college where she taught
methods for reducing children’s pain.
He bought politicians friendly to his whims.
Cicada Song
I hear old news: each new cicada’s song
repeats scraped notes with no change I can hear.
Fidelity a million years can’t wrong
rings through the muted trills that reach my ear.
When dinosaurs watched forest birds appear,
cicadas sang this song. These are the notes
that serenaded Celts who shaped these moats
in years when Rhône and Nîmes had Stone-Age names.
While I react to terror’s newest ‘votes’
cicadas string their chants on ancient frames.
I’ve read a plane’s been downed, all fliers dead;
each death a tragedy surviving news
that seeks and signals madness, till it’s read
and superseded. Widows take first views
of loneliness, and red-cold rage pursues
newly-childless parents as they wait,
unseeingly, at the arrival gate
for this, another flight that won’t arrive.
Cicada song and human news both grate
upon my ears, and ask why I’m alive.
I walk alone into the careless wood
and claim some shade, sit on a rough-stone wall
I share with ants and katydid. I should
find peace. It’s hot. Cicadas call
in rhythms in which angry bombers could
imagine calls to action; or a parent might
hear announcements cancelling that flight
her children should have missed. They’re dead.
Old news. Cicadas stop their song at night:
the silent time that we survivors dread.
Earth Tourist 