Boobie Preternatural Semi-Eroticism

(An episode from Fernando Po, U.S.A., a malignant opus in progress)

A gaggle of his sycophant
Stenographers convened
To quiver in his presence like
Some puppies never weaned
From off their mother’s suckling tit
Thus Dubya them demeaned

According to one David Brooks,
Dim Dubya spread his arms
To indicate “ideas” that
Had “breadth” among their charms
Which kept those in his audience
From sounding the alarms

The Boobie David Brooks, you see,
Disdains the thinking mind
And much prefers the glandular
Secretions of his kind
Whose little woodies stiffen when
George shows them his behind

Like David Broder gushing at
The flight-suit caper which
Once made him feel so “confident”
With each new pose and twitch
That “Top-Gun” George performed for him
With just one glaring hitch:

It seemed a little premature
To claim we had “prevailed”
When all the evidence to date
Had shown we’d clearly failed
And only rushed into a trap
In which we’ve flopped and flailed

Now over four long years have passed
Since Dubya did his dance
And senile David Broder swooned
Enraptured in a trance
Convinced that Dubya’s “movements” showed
A “learning” curve enhanced

Thus Boobies Brooks and Broder both
Seem prone to faint on cue
Whenever Dubya strikes a pose
Within their line of view
And glands into their boiling blood
Erotic hormones spew

Just like the Midnight Cowboy who
“Was formed in such a way”
To drive the women mad with lust
Till they would gladly lay
Upon their backs and part with cash
If Joe with them would play

Just so, George Bush the Younger wields
His “presence” like a tool
Inducing neo-cons to sing
Like pigeons on a stool
When George invites them to his room
To wet their pants and drool

What Joe Buck was to women, George
Is to “conservatives”:
A loser whose grand schemes have use,
Like bowel laxatives:
He cures their constipation with
The tax-cuts that he gives

Korzybski named it long ago:
The hypothalamus
Which governs how the thoughtless live
Without a strain or fuss
When glands secrete a dreamy drug
Anaesthetizing us

Thus “body language” intervenes
When eyes cut out the brain
Appealing to the lizard that
Keeps hissing its refrain:
“Don’t mind that silly cortex ‘cause
Its thinking just brings pain.”

And so the Boobies huddle 'round
The light and heat of fire
As Dubya mimes a tale for them
About his new empire
Where advertisers specialize
In selling dumb desire

But Brooks and Broder and their ilk
Find written words a bore
At least when others use them
To elucidate the core
Of concepts Dubya can't convey
By playing cowboy whore

The midday Crawford cow-guy thus
Performs his manic act
While undisturbed by anything
Related to a fact
Content that both his Davids will
Supply what he has lacked

They like the way he “crouches” when
He “swallows up the room”
Projecting “leadership” to those
Who inhale his perfume
Neglecting to observe that he
Has “led” us to our doom

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2007

Send in the Frowns

Someone recently remdinded me of a little lyric from the old (1973) song by Stephen Sondheim, "Send in the Clowns."

"Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here."

This inspired me to attempt:

"Send in the Frowns"

I love a farce.
Karl Marx did, too.
He said we get history twice:
Farce as Part Two.
But Tragedy first
Must slake its foul thirst;
So, Part One will do.

Isn't it grand?
That Shock and Awe!
Some looting and then civil war.
But, for the flaw
To really sink in,
We just need to skin
The last man of straw.

Argue the case.
Shoot for the moon.
Crusades in Lunacy led
By a buffoon.
Send in the Marines.
Police those latrines.
The Army comes soon.

Then we stay on.
Quagmire sets in.
The years pass and nobody pays
For the great sin.
Thus, in one's career,
"Advance up the rear!"
Becomes the true spin.

So, "Suck on this!"
"Don't fuck with Jews!"
Friedman and Goldberg now spit
Their juandiced views.
Just send in the tanks.
No need to say "thanks!"
Then black-out the news.

War on the poor,
Trapped refugee.
We'll teach those dumb Arabs a thing,
Since they can't flee.
Thus zionists claim
Apartheid's the same
As de-mock-crass-(see?)

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

A Yellow Bravery

Although I long ago swore that I would never write a single line of "hearts and flowers" verse, I have to acknowledge with much appreciation my old friend Bob Shelby whose own poetry inspired me to attempt a fifteen-line sonnet on the theme of Dandelions and whatever symbolic meaning one might want to attach to them. Hence:

"A Yellow Bravery"

A dandelion in the lawn
hides nothing from the jaundiced eye
of those who view askance such spawn;
who’d sooner dig it up to die
than see this vulgar volunteer
pollute with poetry the strain
which, fertilized with dung of steer,
conforms in green without a stain
of yellow. Yet – as passerby,
and sky above, and browsing deer
can all attest: this gaudy guy
lives in the open, not in fear.

To gardeners in their pruning throes:
Please leave behind a root that grows.
I’d know them all again, my woes.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

Diurnal Dialectic

Thinking of a stray lyric to an old song my mother used to sing:

I went walking through the park
Goosing statues in the dark.
If Sherman's horse can take it, why can't you?

... led to a brief meditation on day and night, night and day, and a:

"Diurnal Dialectic"

Before the dusk and after dawn,
Between the twilight edges of the light,
A race obscene to look upon
Continues on its mindless road to night.

From sundown until sunrise,
Confusing lust and love,
The poet's pornographic play
Embarrasses the moon and stars above.

Before the steak and after eggs,
Between the main and minor of our meals,
The question that our language begs
Asks what to do, not how a person feels.

From lights-out until sun-up,
Through nightmares; peaceful dreams;
And much disjointed nothing, sounds
A schizoid symphony of sighs and screams.

Before the going-down of day,
And after sun-up puts an end to dark,
The intervening hours stray
Like perverts goosing statues in the park.

From supper through till dinner,
Conflating dreams with thought,
The saintly sinners celebrate
What they have stolen from the ones who bought.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

Cozy Scandalous

With apologies to the shade of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his immortal poem "Ozymandias," I offer here a brief meditation on only the most current depredations of the Apartheid Zionist Entity upon those captive Palestinian Arabs who had absolutely nothing to do with the German/Christian persecution of Jews in Europe before and during World War II. For want of a better title, I'll just call it:

"Cozy Scandalous"

I met a refugee from Gaza Strip,
Who spoke to me with empty, staring eyes
Dumb words whose depth of pain I could not grip
With all the helping hands the world denies
While lapping up the lurid lies that slip
And roll so greasy off the practiced tongue
Of Zionists whose caged and wounded prey
Are told to flee and leave their dying young
To weep beside the corpses of their old
In darkened shattered former homes where they
Cannot refute the garbage we’ve been told
By glib Israeli liars trained to spread
A veil of darkness over crimes they’ve sold
As “Peaceful Co-Existence” -- with the dead.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

The Boobie Pledge of Subservience

(from: "Fernando Po, U.S.A." - a Malignant Opus in progress)

I offer my obedience
I pledge undying love
To any symbol formed to serve
The needs of those above
Who rightly feel that I deserve
The fist inside the glove

I stand and mumble publicly
With fear upon my brow
Lest some mistake my silence for
An insufficient vow
Let all who see and hear me know
How easily I cow

Authority need never fear
I swear I know my place
I pledge to take the gauntlet slapped
Across my beaten face
The Seizure Class knows I'll accept
Chastisement with good grace

About such things as freedom
I Have not the slightest clue
By birth and class it's come to THEM
I know that it's THEIR due
To hand me down instructions as
To just what I must do

And so I promise faithfully
To play my scripted part
Each day I'll chant Two Minutes' Hate
To finish, from the start
Until I love Big Brother from
The bottom of my heart

I swear to do as I am told
I will not think too deep
I'll huddle in conformity
Just like the other sheep
To take my whipping like a slave
And utter not a peep

I pledge to stand up every day
Within my schoolroom class
And mouth my mantras on demand
Without backtalk or sass
Until the program makes me a
Compliant, docile ass

I swear upon my loyalty
To stuff my head with fat
And place my nation "under" "GAWD!"
Supinely prone and flat
With me then going "down" "beneath"
And "lower" "under" that

I swear to go to Sunday School
Upon the public dime
Each morning in my homeroom class
I'll mouth my dreary rhyme
And if I leave out words
THEY can Indict me for my crime

I pledge and vow and promise that
I'll swear from dusk to dawn
And never fail to chant or moan;
To never blink or yawn
And with each cry of "GAWD IZ GRATE!"
My own soul I will pawn

The Papal bulls and fatwas tell
Me all I need to know
Which isn't much because I see
I've nowhere left to go
I swear to never set my sails
Against the winds that blow

The Popes, Imams, and Rabbis tell
Me what and where and how
The master's overseer tells
Me which row I must plow;
To toady, genuflect, and crawl;
To grovel, scrape and bow

I'll train to "hurry up and wait"
And do the Bulgar drills
To stand at rapt attention dressed
In military frills
Just point me and I'll drop the bomb
No matter whom it kills

I pledge and promise on my word
To do the things I ought
To work for lower wages
So my labor comes to naught
I swear to vote Republican
To prove I can be bought

The Party keeps us all at war
Which makes us quake with fear
And so we give up all those rights
Our ancestors held dear
Which saves our enemies the need
To take them from us here

But I won't think of bygone days
The past I'll just rewrite
I'll call my history "old news"
To make it pat and trite
Which sleight of mind will help me keep
Its lessons out of sight

With this capitulation I
Agree to sell my pride
Before I even own it or
It grows too big to slide
Inside the shabby, craven cave
In which I must reside

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005

Endless Precipitous Hasty Procrastination

I’ve heard the angry bumble bee buzz by
My ear, to leave me thinking with a sigh
How just a few more inches to one side
And I’d have lost an eye, my brain, or died.

Someone whom I had never met or hurt
Could well have left me lying in the dirt.
From somewhere in the tree line taking aim,
He barely missed collecting me as claim

To all that I had known and loved and been
As well as what in future I might pen:
A tale in rhyme of what Misfortune’s due
When dupes and tools of “leaders” misconstrue

Their duty to “watch over” and “instruct”
Those independent foreigners they’ve fucked.
But even pooches screwed can turn and bite;
Their “handlers” sick with hydrophobic spite,

From such “non-hostile” causes often die
In consequence of labor for a lie.
They kill us; we kill them; and so it goes;
For nothing but to hide the crime that shows.

The perpetrators of this folly know
That they’ve once chance alone: and that’s, “Go slow!”
In time, all memory they hope will fade
And then, once more, they’ll call a heart a spade:

More life to dig more graves that they require
To fill the minutes of their manic hour.
Upon the stage they strut and fret and then
Refuse to exit where and why and when

We tell them: “You’re not wanted. Time to leave.
You’ve stalled for long enough while victims grieve;
Our mothers, sons, and daughters -- fathers, too --
Want nothing more than nothing more from you.”

Yet still the ones who spread again war’s waste
Claim we should not act swiftly, or in “haste,”
To stop the drowning years and years astern
Of their Titanic passing: “Never Learn!”

Our rulers call “precipitous” all acts
Of sanity proceeding from the facts
That they deny or simply cover up:
A thin disguise capsizing in a cup.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008

A Vicious Circle Villanelle

Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.
The perpetrators of the crime command:
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

Their troubled foreheads, wrinkles deeply crease
With consequences that they never planned.
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

No logic brings intelligent release.
The unforced errors earn no reprimand.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The mounting costs leave few sheep fit to fleece.
From where will come the profit contraband?
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease.

Yet still, no answer to the sophist’s grease;
Those ancient fallacies the flames have fanned.
More dying, please! We can’t afford the peace!

The lies add up in thousands dead apiece.
The questions begged, both trivial and bland:
Once folly starts, it cannot ever cease?
More dying, please? We can’t afford the peace?

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008