Changing Commanders-in-Brief

The last guy-in-charge said, “Go shopping.”
This war, he said, wouldn’t last long;
Our victims, he swore, would repay us
For plundering them for a song.

In six months, at most, we’d be winners;
The enemy vanquished and fled;
And then, with our mission accomplished,
We’d leave them to count up their dead.

Our generals trained for the last war,
Their learning-curve zero or less.
In six years they’ll figure out something;
Just what, will be anyone’s guess.

They had them a “surge” in their payments
To “enemies” placed on the dole
So they wouldn’t shoot us so often
Because of their land that we stole.

The new guy took over, saluting,
A race that had already run
Its course, ‘cause the bungler before him
Had exploited all of the fun.

The new guy got rolled up like sushi.
He blew his chance early to leave.
More "surging" has just raised the death count.
What next does he have up his sleeve?

It sounded so good while campaigning:
One little “good” war for one bad;
Except that the Afghans hate bombings
As much as Vietnamese had.

Our generals, though, won’t admit it:
They’ve taken eight years to do what?
Yet somehow they think we’ll applaud them
For not knowing doodley-squat.

They say they need more stuff and faster
Yet won’t explain what they would do
Except to extend their disaster
By breeding more pooches to screw.

In common-sense language, the answer
Replies to their “more, more, more” rant:
“You would have, of course, if you could have;
You didn’t, therefore, so you can’t.”

The new guy Obama, like Dubya,
Thinks playing Commander-in-Brief
Means mission-creep “more” and saluting
The Pentagram treasury thief.

“A trillion a year?” Oh, who’s counting?
“And all for what?” Don’t be a bore.
“And who will pay?” No one, we promise.
It’s what we call slush-funded “war.”

Obama won’t ask the right question,
To wit: “What on earth have we ‘won’?”
Like Pharaoh, he thinks he can dictate:
“So let it be written, then done.”

He cried: “Yes, we can!” while campaigning,
This slogan he sold and we bought.
In office, however, he’s changed things:
Himself. Now he says, “We cannot.”

Our Wealth Care rules out Single Payer
Our troops must remain on patrol.
The votes don't exist in the Congress
That Democrats cannot control.

We gave him majorities, plenty,
Yet these he seems ready to blow.
Now Wealth Care and Quagmire have named him:
Commander of Old Status Quo.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

A Mistaken Pardon

(In the style of A Forsaken Garden, by Algernon Charles Swinburne)

In a time of deceit, in an age of unreason,
The frightened find faith in the fabulous fraud.
Divided and conquered in Fascism’s season,
The browbeaten buffaloed brandish their GAWD:
A weapon of weirdness when doom encroaches,
Whom preyed-upon pray to for jobs and a meal,
While the thief who thrives and the prince who poaches
Smile and steal.

The lies laugh loudly, obscenely spoken,
As time and the tides for an honest man wait.
If a truthful word should appear as a token
Of dawn, would the dark not retaliate?
So long have the meaningless mantras befuddled
The passive consumer in word-magic’s trap
That the ad-man’s slogan has even muddled
Simple crap.

The duped can’t see when their eyes won’t focus
On cynics who say what they know they don’t mean;
For duplicity serves as the principle locus
Of talking-point “dots” so arranged as to screen
The head from hearing no thing but the bellows
Of nothing much else than the noise we receive.
Should a thought intrude with its doubting fellows,
None believe.

And yet, as he falters, he still dissembles,
Since witches once sold him some trifling crumbs.
The one who lit fires in the forest trembles:
To Dunsinane Castle now Birnam Wood comes.
And those he kicked hardest while climbing higher,
Ascending to roost at the greasy pole’s top,
Guffaw as the Furies pursuing the liar
Reap their crop.

The law, as we’ve heard it expounded in verses,
Presumes us all innocent, absent a proof
Of guilt beyond doubt, as a long line of hearses,
Gives eyewitness testament, terse and aloof,
To death’s final sentence which no one can question
And from which no pardon can later on spare
Since Nature, despite any plea or suggestion,
Does not care.

Yet in our own country, of late, we’ve seen visions
Of what The Law means when the outlaws in charge
Proclaim ex-post-facto that their bad “decisions”
Require of them only remaining at large.
And subsidies, too, they demand for their “service,”
While helping themselves to whatever is left
As “bonuses” stolen while never nervous
At the theft.

While perched at the top of the heap, The Decider
Has chosen to pardon preemptively much
That courts should consider infractions wider
Than just misdemeanors like lying and such.
But too many judges, for lifetime appointed,
Who think of the Law as “semantics,” at best,
Enable our “leaders” whom they have anointed
Truly blessed.

The truth turns timid, afraid of facing
The gargoyle who grins at the trust now betrayed;
So why would the sheep ever think of replacing
The forces of fraud now against them arrayed?
While memories fade in a flash of forgetting
And what didn’t happen now screams that it does,
The perps blow their bubbles without fear or fretting,
Just because.

The talented traders of tripe roll in riches
Yet swear that – for taxes -- they haven’t a sum,
While Congressmen beg them to scratch where it itches
And unemployed men by the millions grow numb
To poverty, homelessness, debt and disaster
As fewer grow richer and more become poor
The fish in their feeding, ever faster,
Take the lure

Till the cows come home to the chickens roosting,
Till hens crow at sundown and pigs take to flight,
Till the world and its woes need a lot less boosting,
The touts and promoters will hype-up the fight
To customers, baffled, but only too willing
While Goldman and Sachs to the government turn
For more money, gratis, which then for a killing,
They can burn.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Fall and Autumn, from a child born old

(After reading Spring and Fall, to a young child, by Gerard Manly Hopkins)

Village priest, why this decrying
Margaret’s grief for gold leaves dying?
You tell her that, as young girls grow,
Hardened hearts will coldly know
And with few regrets or sighs
View an Autumn’s due demise.
Yes, she'll weep, but not grow wise.
For the Fall will look the same;
Sorrow goes by any name
When all sadness you conflate,
Misconstruing mankind’s fate,
Like an older child reborn
Not to celebrate, but mourn.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Ichthyological Metaphysics

When I need a word that rhymes with "fizz,"
A term that brings to mind an empty bubble,
I can always call on good old "is,"
And save myself the slightest bit of trouble.

When I want a noise that sounds like “fuzz,’
To symbolize a meaning I’ve forgotten,
I can do with nothing less than “was,”
Which changes “new” to “old” -- from fresh to rotten.

When I need the past for him-and-her
Or the subjunctive mood in doubtful cases,
Postulating that, and if, they “were,”
Joins fact and logic, and them both debases.

When I feel like heading to the bar,
But don't wish to examine my intention,
I can say my cravings simply "are":
For lazy drunks, the neatest word-invention.

When I wish to take off on the lam
To dodge the karma earned from lousy choices,
I can vaguely note the way I “am,”
Which tends to silence any nagging voices.

When I want to never look and see,
But jump instead at any mere suggestion,
I can ask: “To ‘be’ or not to ‘be’?”
Avoiding action through this pseudo-question.

When I need to shift from “now” to “then”
Because I’ve screwed the pooch for all to witness,
I can point to how things might have “been,”
And hope this covers up my own unfitness.

When I plan to dodge the sordid taint
Of life as it confronts the normal peasant,
I – like Tweedledee – say “isn’t” “ain’t.”
What else could prove the case with logic pleasant?

When I gather these inflections few
Into a “verb” that sums up disagreeing,
I speak bubbles as the others do,
And chalk-up ignorance to magic “being.”

When I swim in school I seldom sink,
But waste my time, like any son or daughter.
I just feed and float and breathe and drink,
While never taking thought about the water.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Mere Seeing

(After reading Wallace Stevens' poem "Of Mere Being")

Wallace Stevens, an attorney,
Switched careers and sold insurance
For a living.
Then upon a poet’s journey
He embarked, with no assurance
That forgiving

Readers would find him good enough.
With feathers fangled and dangled,
His bird in a palm
At the edge of space; golden fluff;
In nothing like reason tangled,
Sings an offbeat psalm.

Thus, "modern," which word suffices
To redefine for poetry
What will "free" it.
Whatever its aural vices,
We know it, like obscenity,
When we see it.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

Maligned Madam does Faux Noise

“And now we have, for our next guest,
A lady of the night,
Who has, for reasons none too clear,
Agreed to speak what we shall hear:
Some ‘answers’ meant to bring a leer
To lips that freely grin or sneer
When overhearing questions queer,
Profound, or simply trite.”

“We thank you, Madame Magdalene,
For giving of your time
To scandalize the girls and boys
With lurid tales of wanton joys
Supplied for rent to Jews and Goys
Entrapped by your seductive ploys
While honest men, your hapless toys,
Must suffer from your crime.”

“But au contraire! I say to you,
My bogus blowhard host:
I only serve your vain desire
And offer up what you require,
And, yes, I do it all for hire,
While you ejaculate, retire,
And afterwards feel only ire,
Or else the urge to boast.”

“I only see the truth too well,
And live by what I do.
I understand men’s vanity,
And lives filled with inanity
Till driven to insanity
By Murdoch, Fox, and Hannity
You use me like profanity
And swear: ‘GAWD told me to!’”

“But, Madam, what of Juliet,
Whose virtue fiction tells?
Does not her pure, Platonic love
Deflect the need to rudely shove
Some Romeo without a glove
Into an orifice above,
Below, or in the region of
Some pulchritude that sells?”

“Oh, no, dear sir! Such fantasies
Just fan the flames of lust.
As I have often told the priest,
My holes are not for sale, just leased
To poles whose sweaty palms have greased
My own with cash, and not the least
With ‘love’ for me, a meager feast
For wretched lives gone bust.”

“Then might I ask, Ms Magdalene,
About Ophelia’s tale?
You know, the Danish maid who pined
For Hamlet’s love: the crazy kind,
Both unrequited and resigned
To ambiguity; designed
By Shakespeare, meaning: ‘Never mind.
Such tragic love must fail.’”

“Ophelia, just like Juliet,
My case could never plead.
Because, as fiction, they – not we –
Exist for sport of men who flee
From nature -- like the urge to pee;
Who make up tales that don’t agree
(Except when offered on TV)
With what they really need.”

“So have you any final thoughts
Here as we end the hour?
Do you not have a heart of gold
Despite the johns that you have rolled
Together with your pimp who sold
Your services to young and old
Who wanted heat but got the cold
Of sordid sex gone sour?”

“Mais oui, Monsieur! but let me say
To males by us enthralled:
That we who ply the oldest trade;
Who make our living in the shade;
Who walk our alley promenade
Until our looks begin to fade
Know men will call a heart a spade
To get their ashes hauled.”

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Near Misses

I’ve heard the angry bumble bee buzz by
My ear, to leave me thinking with a sigh,
That just a little further to one side
And I’d have lost an ear, an eye, or died.

Someone whom I had never tried to hurt
Had almost left me lying in the dirt,
A victim of a patriotic plot
Designed to keep me tethered to my lot.

A stranger in the tree line taking aim
Had barely missed collecting me as claim
To all I might have seen and done; but then,
I lived because he missed, so I might pen

Some verse expressing puzzlement and rage
At why I served, like others of my age,
As dupe and tool of erstwhile statesmen dumb
Who beat the truth about the head till numb,

While spouting endless lies, both crass and lewd,
“Explaining” why those pooches they have screwed
Have turned to bite the bare and bogus butts
Of “strategists” forever stuck in ruts.

The game of saving face continues on
Because the ones who’ve left us all in pawn
To death and debt accruing each new day
Cannot envision any other way

To sell themselves as masters of our fate:
A missing meal served on an empty plate
Together with the bill, a perfect fit
For us, the only target they can hit.


Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Neck Deep in the Big Sandy

We now sink in a quagmire like
The one not long ago
In which we went insane and fought
A non-existent foe:
A Monolithic Communist
In Southeast Asia so
Determined to resist us that
We had make him go.

He looked like a Vietnamese,
This awful threat to us,
Whose very foreign nature made
Him frightening and thus
A perfect proxy for a war
Against a concept, plus:
He even lived a world away,
Which made him less a fuss.

Still, he prevailed, this “enemy.”
In time, we packed and went.
And since we never met him it’s
A wonder why we sent
Our youth to squander so much blood
And all that money spent
To buy a house we didn’t want
And couldn’t even rent.

We’ve come around to sink once more
Where no one ever planned.
Instead of Delta mud, this time,
We sink in desert sand
Because an adolescent twerp
Could not wait to “command”
Some troops behind which he could hide
His thieving sleight-of-hand.

But things have not gone well, of course.
Wars based on lies and fraud
In no time go awry and leave
Our legions mauled and clawed,
Marooned for years and trapped by those
Who – neither shocked nor awed --
Reserve the right to rule themselves
And name their own one GAWD.

With chickens coming home to roost,
Our “hawks,” like capons clipped,
Cluck mighty yarns to obfuscate
The fact that they have slipped
And fallen face-down in some shit
In which them fate has dipped
To show what happens when the dumb
Some booby-traps have tripped.

So now they stall and drag their feet
And hope to pass the buck.
They cannot “win,” yet fear to “lose,”
Which means they’ve gotten stuck
For knowing not what makes a train
So much unlike a truck,
And what makes gamblers lose when they
Confuse blind faith with luck.

They offer up excuses now,
Some new ones every year.
To kick the can on down the road,
They’ll peddle any fear
As long as no one questions all
That loot that they hold dear.
Examples follow, now, of what
We’ve come to see so clear:

We stay because of violence
That we cannot prevent.
We stay, inflicting violence,
To mask our true intent.
We stay so that the perpetrators
Never must repent.
We stay for any rationale
A baboon could invent.

We will not leave because we can’t
Acknowledge what we’ve done:
Destroyed another nation just
To have a bit of fun,
Convincing no one but ourselves
That “We are Number One!”
While promising eternity
To never cut-and-run;

Which cavalier vainglory and
Contempt for other lands
Has proved that power ought to lie
In someone else’s hands
Since we’ve abandoned reason for
Stupidity’s demands,
Secreting noxious hormones from
Our self-indulgent glands.

We stay because we stay because
We stay because we stay,
And have not one intention to
Reflect in any way
Upon the dumb decisions we
Make each and every day
Allowing war’s lewd profiteers
To keep on making hay.

The senselessness might puzzle those
Who once thought that they think
But now must face the music and
The awful fact they stink
At any form of logic, needing
Visits to a shrink
To straighten out crude fallacies
Revealed in blots of ink.

The psychiatric tradesmen say
That once a lie is bought
It then makes perfect sense to claim
That no one ever taught
The method of distinguishing
The concepts “is” and “ought,”
Implying that what we have done
Does not mean that we’re caught

In vicious-circle riddles
That contain no terms defined
In such a way that one might solve
Conundrums of a kind
That only fools would formulate
To muddle up the mind
So that the answers to our woes
No one will ever find.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

The Answer off the Table

The bankrupt brainless blowhard beast defies
The reason to contest stupidity.
Grown fat and lazy on its loathsome lies,

The perpetrating predator feels free
To gorge upon the surface spoils of war:
Domestic profit far as eyes can see

Where foreign puppets groomed to play the whore
Return a portion of their greedy gains
To congressmen who leave us poor and sore,

While death upon a target people rains
And soldiers into pudding pounded are
By roadside bombs. How little now remains

Of them and us who suffer while we spar
Against the bogus baby made of tar.

Our new commander in his briefs has bought
The dreary drug of endless, pointless fights
And thus cannot discern the Truth he ought

That Quagmire in its sophistry delights
In making men of straw, red-herrings, too:
Those lifeless foes whose fragile feeble slights

Prove easy for the brain-dead to outdo;
A dialectic dodge that paints "extreme"
On any choices obvious and true,

Which leaves decision "centered" in a dream.
The feckless failures flail about and flop.
With each New Year they COIN a great new scheme.

We hear of "options" on the table top,
Just not the one to clearly think and stop.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Sayonara, Caballero

On the morning of August 21, 2009, my great good friend, Stan Gildersleeve, passed away in Costa Rica (where he had moved to enjoy his last years) at the age of 73. We only met personally one time in San Francisco a few years back, but our acquaintance through intense Internet message exchanges spanned the last two American presidencies, giving the two of us unreconstructed "Leftists" more than sufficient reactionary imperial absurdities to lampoon. I will miss him more than words can say -- but I thought I'd try a few words in memoriam, anyway. He didn't speak Japanese, and I don't speak Spanish as well as he could, but I think he would understand my heartfelt meaning:

"Sayonara, Caballero"
(A farewell to my irreplaceable friend, Stan Gildersleeve)

I lost you, friend, the other day;
I never saw you leaving.
You got away before I knew
You'd gone beyond retrieving.

Oh, how I miss you, friend;
The older brother that I never had;
A fellow spirit, wiser, sometimes mad;
Iconoclast and engineer, a blend
Of anarchy and insight wild and glad;
A life too large for death to really end.

I never got to say goodbye,
There at the final curtain.
You went your own way in the end,
As you had lived, for certain.

So, now I’ll never know
What next you’d say or do because you thought
It better to contest what fools have wrought;
That we should seek the truth, not live to show
What all our greedy, grasping hands have bought;
That we should work to save, not spend to owe.

Without you, who will call Fraud’s bluff,
And give its lies a grilling?
Your passing leaves a vacuum: huge,
Without a hope of filling.

Still, I will do my best
To live my own remaining days as well
As memories of you will help me tell
The time left on the clock: the only test
To pass before the tolling of the bell
Calls me to join that vast, eternal rest.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

The Terrible Worm in his Iron Cocoon

Back in Counter Insurgency School -- before deploying to Southeast Asia with the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-72) -- our lifer instructors would read to us from our textbooks about "winning the hearts and minds" of our "little brown brothers," etc., etc. Then they would close the books and say, "Enough with the bullshit. Just grab 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow." Judging from the never-ending quagmires in IraqNamIstan, current military/imperial doctrine appears not to have changed or become the least bit more effective in the last forty years. Ungrateful foreigners just never seem resigned to having America invade, demolish, and spend decades occupying their countries. Who could ever have imagined that? In fact, the flat learning curve of invading Crusader armies goes back centuries in the Middle East, to a time when the locals had an accurate and colorful discriptive term for the murderous, metal-clad meddlers, namely:

"The Terrible Worm in his Iron Cocoon"

The terrible worm in his iron cocoon:
The knight in his armor enclosed,
Has gone off again on a global Crusade
Which has left his own country exposed.

His lines of supply girdle heaven and earth;
Expenses grow terribly huge;
While folks back at home find themselves unemployed,
Yet they shrug, after them the deluge.

Or so they suppose as the flood of lost jobs
Washes over their living room floors,
While off in Iraq, and Afghanistan, too,
Our troops break in through the front doors,

Then haul off the males in the household to jail
For “being of age” to resist:
A “crime,” we insist, ‘cause our saying makes “law,”
Enforced by the gun and the fist.

The troop in his tank behind sunglasses blank,
In his man-from-mars uniform finds,
That grabbing the native oppressed by the balls
Beats winning their hearts and their minds.

Now bankruptcy rules in the land of the fools
Where the terrible worms got their start
Then charged off to do what the world would soon rue
As not worth the tiniest fart.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

Thanks for Nothing

Benevolent invader of my land
How can I thank you for the helping hand?
Why, had you not come here with awe and shock,
Reducing my poor home to piles of rock,
I might have raised my children safe and sound,
But, thanks to you, I’ve laid them in the ground.

A wife I had, once too, but now no more.
She died one day while driving to the store.
Some nervous mercenaries that you hired
Screamed something at her once, then aimed and fired.
The bullet-riddled windshield told the tale:
That "freed" of life, our women need no veil.

Your generals have come so many times,
Yet never have to answer for their crimes.
Instead, promotion weighs them down with stars
But never, like enlisted men, the scars
Resulting from the bungling and sheer waste
Of thinking slow but shooting first in haste.

On nine-eleven, two-thousand-and-one
You got a taste of what you’ve often done
To countries that had never caused you harm
Yet still, too late, you sounded the alarm
And whipped yourself into a lather thick
So you could hurt yourself with your own stick.

Three thousand on that fateful day you lost.
Five thousand more you’ve added to the cost
Since then, which only proves that there or here
You act the same: in folly, rage, and fear.
In time, you’ll go back home to where you’re from,
To fight among yourselves, the deaf and dumb.

Too bad for all the carnage that you’ve caused
Who never thought or for a minute paused
Before afflicting us with your disease:
A plague of bankrupt bullies, fascist fleas,
Who, both hands outward stretched to beg a loan,
Continue "helping" us to shrink and groan.

You talk to pat yourselves upon the back.
Your actions only scream of what you lack:
The insight and intelligence to see
How much you’ve harmed yourself as well as me.
But just the same I’ll thank you to go home
Before you earn the fate that toppled Rome.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

Queen-of-Hearts Injustice

I wish George Orwell could have lived to see what became of the former Constitutional Republic just south of Canada. He would probably have said, "I already wrote this story two times: once as Animal Farm and again as 1984." Anyway ...

"Queen-of-Hearts Injustice"

Pity the poor policeman
Armed with his gun and his stick,
“Resisted” by some black professor
Who wouldn’t the cop’s buttocks lick.

They say a man’s home is his castle
Except in the U. S. of A.
Where soldiers and cops tap your phone lines,
Suspicious of what you might say.

They bust in without a warrant,
Expecting submission and fear;
And if you don’t grovel and whimper,
They’ll take that as “evidence” clear

That you’ve broken some law or other;
Like living “too good” for your race.
You see, some anonymous neighbor
Would rather you stayed in your place.

Iraqis and Afghans will tell you
Our thugs do the same to them, too.
Then come home and join the police force
Because that is all they can do.

So keep your mouth shut, black professor,
How dare you not pack up and move.
You’re guilty to start with. “They” say so.
Your innocence, you’ll have to prove.

If doubtful, just look in the mirror.
Take note of the color you see.
If not white, then you’ve got a problem:
Best known as the Land of the Free,

Where sentence comes first, then the verdict:
Whatever, whenever; no why.
No habeus corpus for dark folk.
Just vanish, then give up and die.

And don’t you dare call the dumb “stupid.”
It just hurts their feelings, you know;
Which might set them off on a rampage,
Their “virtue” to viciously show.

So don’t you go home, black professor.
You’ve no right to “hide” there inside.
No more than Iraqis or Afghans
Whose rights we have also denied.

No “safe house” for you and those Muslims
Who share the same heathen skin tone.
The fascists in power have warned you:
They’re coming, and you’re all alone.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

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

Here Come 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:

"Here come 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 no name
For theft they decree.

Christians and Jews
Love Son, fear Dad.
Muslims say their Prophet speaks,
For which they’re glad.
Yet what they all claim
To know they defame
Each time they get mad.

Here come the frowns.
Smiles disappear.
We’ve seen this act so many times
But still we hear
That this time the game
Won’t work out the same ---
Till this time next year.

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