Bothfulness

One or the other.
Both.
Solemn oath.
Solitary confinement.
Russ Feingold.
Rheingold.
Barbara Boxer.
Boxer Rebellion.
Taiping Rebellion.
I Ching.
Spring fling.
Shoot your wad.
Johnny Wadd.
Holmes County.
Sherlock Holmes.
Merchant of Venice.
Venice Beach.
Omaha Beach.
Mutual of Omaha.
Mutual of Tokyo.
Tokyo Rose.
Gypsy Rose Lee.
Bruce Lee.
Li-young Lee.
Natura non facit saltum.
Saltation.
Sodium chloride.
Drinking-water fluoride.
Skin flora.
Skin of our teeth..
Skin flick.
Dental floss.
Ipanema Bikini.
Hydrogen bomb-test Bikini.
Edward Teller.
Edward Said.
Raed in the Middle.
Middle Kingdom.
Middle Passage.
Passage to India.
Bollywood.
Bali bombing.
The goddess Kali
Nicola Calipari.
Gay Paris.
Paris is worth a mass.
Mass energy conversion.
Mass media.
Propaganda.
Manufacturing Consent.
Consent without consent.
Commodify Your Dissent.
Descent of Man.
Decent respect for the opinions of mankind.
Sexual selection.
Intelligent selection.
Intelligent design.
Designer drugs.
Drugstore Cowboy.
Cowboy Junkies.
Brokeback Mountain.
Heath Ledger.
Cliff ledge.
Heathcliff.
Jane Eyre.
Emerald Isle.
Emeril Lagasse.
Michael Simon.
Lolita.
Lola.
Cost of living allowance.
Coca leaf.
Bolivia.
Simon Bolivar.
Paul Simon.
Simony.
Donatist.
Campaign donation.
Campaign reform.
Reform school.
School figures.
Figure skating.
Peggy Fleming.
Ian Fleming.
James Bond.
Junk Bond.
Collateralized Debt Obligation.
Junk stock.
Famous in the neighborhood.
Speak meaningfully.
Speak truthfully.
Speak bothfully.

Shouting Over the Band

Music so loud you can barely hear
above the distortion,
work hard at ignoring it as we
shout to each other competing for love,
but mostly attention.
One television, the big game.
Another, the latest war,
and in the back the pool balls
break. On stage the singer who has
sifted his life for importants, finds nothing
but love mislaid, greed
unlanced, hearts betrayed
by hearts forever unknown,
chances forever past,
lives unplayed,
undanced. The quivering
petals of blue-bells in spring,
the taut skin of youth brushed by feather-soft fingers,
linger only until the refrain
skirts to a minor key
we neither will nor dare attend,
as shouting over the band
we ignore, and become
the singer.

Homeless Kings

Remember,
all of the fiat
money in the world,
all of the watermarked, counterfeit-
protected, silver-threaded floating currency
fiat money in the world couldn't buy a simple
transistor radio. Not
for all the money in the world.
Before there was
radio.

And you didn't know
what you were missing.
It felt,
it felt,
it felt

much the same as now,
which is to say
you couldn't feel a thing.
Even when, like right
now, a hundred
or a thousand stations
bathe you in music and urgency
you can't hear. Soft.
Electromagnetic vibrations in the ether,
you can't hear.

Even homeless people can afford them now,
even homeless people are richer
than the transistorless kings
of yesterday. Living in used
cars, abandoned
factories, in subway
tunnels, and under urinous highway
overpasses,
the homeless are richer than yesterdays'
kings.

We call this
progress.


Wealth, once inconceivable,
like music,
once unhearable,
everywhere.
By fiat.

And grimy, unclean men,
friendless,
roofless,
loveless,
toothless,
patrol the streets devoid of shelter and saturated
in miracles,
paroled straight from mother's womb into this place
of placental predators.

And I wonder,
once you put down that TV guide,
just how well do you know
your next-door neighbor?

To Have and Have More

Found this posted at the Crisis Chronicles lately. Here's the text.

Bogart said to Faulkner “hey man,
pass me some of that single malt.”
Then turning to Ernest Hemingway he asked,
“do you think I’ve got a shot with Lauren Bacall?”
Well the story’s set in Cuba
but we can move it all to French Martinique,
It’s got these terrorists from al Qaeda
but in the screenplay they are much more elite,
In the novel it’s a “Not” you know, but
reality is a photo-op war,
for the base the point’s not having,
the point is just to have and have more.

Could be freezing, could be burning,
could be starving for just one bite of food,
you can stow them in a hell hole
with jailers all lascivious and lewd,
from the Bremer-walls of Baghdad
to troops murdering a 10-year-old in Ni’ilin,
making a living is illegal,
making a killing is not even obscene,
the rich are always covered,
but convulsing for an hour on the emergency room floor,
the uninsured discover what it means
for them to have and have more.

What to do about the poor,
“let them eat yellowcake,” she said.
Then Marie Antoinette Paris Novak Hilton,
she handed her her head.
Well Barack was such a rock star
in Berlin when his jelly donut moment came,
even though he wasn’t Gable,
everyone said he also wasn’t John McCain,
and where there’s blood on the tracks, you know
you just might find Al Gore,
‘cos when your country’s lost in the bushes,
all that matters is to have and have more.