Category: 2020 and after
Poetry written since 2020
Quit Your Bitchin’
I’m tired of hearing your climate rage…
and stop complaining about your age.
You’re just as incensed when it’s getting colder,
and nobody ever has to get older.
I’m your oppressor? How do you figure?
Did I say a word you consider a trigger?
Everything’s somebody else’s fault.
Disagreement constitutes verbal assault.
Your opinion’s as valid as that of Authority,
in spite of your rational inferiority?
You’re more indignant at the price of gas,
beer and what you use to wipe your ass
than at their effects on the Earth’s ecology.
Now you create a convenient mythology
that the “day 1 dictator” isn’t your fault
because you didn’t expect the assault.
Day One
(This is not really a poem.)
20 Jan 2025
Today Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Again.
After bragging about “grabbing them [girls] by the pussy.”
After being convicted of 34 felonies.
After being indicted for treason.
After saying several times that he would be “a dictator on day 1.”
How did this happen?
I feel compelled to try to understand.
I think it began with the Internet,
which liberated us all from Authority:
the great democratization of information,
that allowed each person to declare individual autonomy —
the right (nay, the duty) to trust our own instincts
and make up our own mind what is true, what is false,
what matters, what doesn’t,
what is necessary, what is not,
what must be done and what must not be done.
That is gratifying, but it is also a burden —
especially when applied to what we must all do or not do.
That’s not how it works.
Getting anything done collectively requires cooperation.
Cooperation requires negotiation,
and sometimes compromise: sometimes you have to have faith
in others’ good faith and the collective wisdom.
We no longer have that.
And so, both to get things done
and to escape the oppression of choice,
the people of the United States elected a dictator.
Lab Fever
(apologies to John Masefield)
I must go down to the lab again, to the lonely lab and the beam,
And all I ask is polarized muons, as strange as that might seem;
And the flashing lights and tangled cables and bright computer screen,
And a spectrum showing a signal that has never before been seen.
I must go down to the lab again, for the call of the muon’s decay
Is a wild call and a clear call that has great things to say;
And all I ask is a well-tuned beam on a tiny final focus,
And a magical sample steeped in theoretical hocus-pocus.
I must go down to the lab again, to the isolated life,
To the pion’s way and the muon’s way where science replaces strife;
And all I ask is a data plot that all can comprehend,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the owl shift’s at its end.
(For Rob Kiefl’s retirement party, 8 Feb 2025)
Rifracimento
15 November 2024 — in memory of W.B. Yeats
The fascist thermals rising once again
elevate the eagle on a vulture’s quest:
shred our legacies and serve the carcass
of democracy for scavengers’ breakfast;
loose the killers, give them tools
to execute your bidding on the innocent;
none with better judgement dare protest
while thugs tumesce with lust for dominance.
Surely a greater crash is coming;
surely the nuclear codes will come to hand.
A final war! The end of human plunder
may come soon enough to save the other life
with whom we share this small polluted sphere.
Bring it on! What we called civilization
was from the outset doomed, creating horrors
beyond imagination from our good intent;
building virtual cities to lodge monsters.
We thought a better world was in our grasp;
but every century the beast returns
to lift its disciples in its bloody jaws
and set them on the universe again.
If only this time could be the last.
The Rapture
I’m a’gettin’ set for Armageddon.
The Second Coming’s gonna be a gas.
Righteous folks’ll rise up into Heaven
while Jesus kicks some wicked Sinner ass.
Arabs and Israelis gonna start it.
It don’t matter which of them will lose.
You’ll rejoin your loved ones long departed
if you make a big donation to the Jews.
Oh The Rapture is comin’,
The Rapture’s on its way.
The Sinners are runnin’,
but they can’t get away!
Some friends of mine think Palestine
is only trying to be free.
Others opine that vengeance is fine
long’s it ain’t on you an’ me.
We all will shout, when the nukes come out,
“Spare us! We all are innocent!”
But there’s no doubt that it’s all about
the Judgement of Jesus that’s imminent.
Oh The Rapture is comin’,
The Rapture’s on its way.
The Sinners are runnin’,
but they can’t get away!
(10 Dec 2010)
Written in response to a news report about a Christian sect in the USA that was urging its
members to make donations to Israelis settling illegally in the West Bank, in hopes of bringing on
the Second Coming ASAP.
Incel’s Lament
The girls won’t fuck me. It ain’t right!
Looks like more wet dreams tonight.
The Good Book says it’s wrong to jerk,
but Man! I see those honeys twerk
and I can’t help myself, you see?
Why won’t they twerk it just for me?
Someday I’ll be a billionaire
and then they’ll learn to treat me fair.
I’ll become a TV star
and run a pageant – there you are!
They’ll beg me for it, don’t you know –
for fame and fortune, or for the dough.
And when I’ve fucked them all and get
too old and fat to do the deed,
I’ll run for President, and set
my sights on planting bigger seeds:
I’ll fuck the world itself and put
myself above the law and God.
And as I stamp my booted foot
you’ll cheer for me, you stupid sod!
Pond Haiku
Eight lotus blossoms,
the garniture of nature,
grace my summer pond.
Pellets strike water,
calling up to the surface
hundreds of goldfish.
Stillness at twilight:
heron standing on one leg
waits for a target.
The pond shrinks with heat,
leaving green algae billows.
The fish wait for cold.
(July 4, 2024)
PROFIT
Commerce is forever based on Profit —
on denial of the First and Second Laws.
No need to be an Economics prof; it
means transactions only get applause
when someone gets the best of someone else
and reaps a greater harvest than they sow,
while losers have to tighten up their belts
and cry in shame while profit-makers crow.
Ever since we dug up coal and oil
we’ve all been making profits off our planet,
using up the animals and soil
until there’s nothing left of it but granite.
It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.
Zero doesn’t have to be the sum.
There’s plenty if the fruits of labor go
to every one and thing, not just to some.
Cockroaches
In Florida “palmetto bugs” are in your face.
Hawaii’s giant flying roaches land on you.
Cockroaches are everywhere but out in space;
the German ones ubiquitous, and never few.
They seem to bounce right back from being stomped and squished.
They laugh at radiation levels that should kill.
They taste your gourmet meal before it’s even dished,
right after wallowing in steaming septic swill.
They have a lot in common with us apex predators,
devouring everything, our hunger never fed,
or with the agents of our commerce: creditors.
They will be here long after other life is dead.
They can survive ordeals that reason says they couldn’t,
or that, I sometimes feel, like Homo sap., they shouldn’t.
A Good War
War we know. We are comfortable with it:
kill or be killed, what could be simpler?
Relax into thoughtless endocrine storm
and enjoy the absence of choice.
Politics are harder. Choosing between contradictions
and accepting heartbreaking compromises
is too stressful. We’d rather make it like war,
demonize the Other and win at all costs.
Now we must face the cruelest test of all:
dealing with the physical consequences
of our addiction to comfort, convenience and profit.
Nature cannot be bought off by lobbyists.
We could easily save ourselves
if we could only make climate change a war,
identify The Enemy and plan its annihilation…
but wait, we’ve done that already!
How can we make war on destruction?
How can cooperation satisfy our bloodlust?
How can we all be on the same side?
How can we be what we’ve never been?