Three Haiku for the Body Politic (2018)
Republicans and Democrats alike must serve their benefactors Two-party system makes branding differences easy to market How far we stray from humanistic ideals when money corrupts all
Category: Poems
Poem: The Guy in the Seat Next to You [Dodger Stadium Suite]
The challenge for a poet at the ball game is a triplicate predicament. He must not swoon over the greenness of the grass. He must not view every little lovely detail as a metaphor waiting to be transcribed for posterity. He must not recite rambling stories with no discernible point except to subtly imply it...
Poem: Fine Fellows
These fine fellows with their wattles and their medals Their jiggling jowls and joyless eyes Broadcasting breaking news from the feeding trough Where these fine fellows congregate and cogitate These alphamen oozing oleaginous charm Any cute ambitious telegenic girl with a healthy appetite for achievement Could hardly resist How unpleasant and unkind and unthinkable really For...
Jersey Limericks
There once lived a man from Secaucus (the part of New Jersey that’s raucous) His house was a dump Befitting a chump Intending to insult and mock us His dream was to live in a tower Symbolic of great phallic power A spire so tall The masses would crawl And grovel and moan and cower...
Poem: The Mussel Divine
How maddening to our friend the mollusk subjected every day to that most callous of clichés haunting a bi-valve’s life. Happy as… Each time the bitter oath was uttered, our friend the mollusk shrunk inward, as if he could escape the narrative of fate. If they only knew, he thought. No one should...
Poem: To a Progressive Friend Frightened of Progress
Your righteous race to accumulate Good Karma Requires making love And opposing hate This noble social justice quest cannot carve out exceptions To the covenant Between your values and yourself You cannot advocate for the homeless While cheerleading for the Wall Street Banks that put people out of homes You cannot advocate for Peace While...
Early Spring Haiku
Garden paradox: no February blossoms without climate change.
Valentine’s Triolet
Why is this day unlike all the others? Wingless romantics pierce hearts, like Cupid, Who’d make love all year, if he had his druthers. Why is this day unlike all the others? We pair like doves, no need for another’s. Together we’re giddy, deliciously stupid. Why is this day unlike all the others? Wingless romantics,...
Poem: Life Sculptor
We don’t author our biographies. We sculpt them, chipping and chiseling, peeling back the onionskin strata accretions of time, calcified history. The layers of remaindered remnants. What’s been piled on previous to our arrival taunts just beyond our reach, like the inscrutable object of desire who can’t and will not ever requite our boundless love....
Poem: The Right Kind of Person
If you’re the kind of chappie who believes in predestination, a Calvinist narrative to be unspooled one frame at a time, this poem is not for you. If you are the kind of lassie who believes in free will, a steadfastly laissez-faire Locked fantasy to be imagined and enlivened one moment at a time, this...
