Penitent Murderer's Prayer [Week's News Poem, January 25, 2013]

Penitent Murderer's Prayer [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, January 25, 2013]

If atonement were a spell

Instead of rotten nerves

Flickering beneath shells

Of skin amidst the curves;

The past I see so clearly

Would alter with awareness—

Anger treasured deeply

Was permission to be careless.

I wish I never was

Because

I wish I never was.

“"I'm sorry for the crime that I committed," 16-year-old Moses Kamin said, moments before an Alameda County judge sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison. "I hope none of you forgive me for my crime. I know you all think of me as a monster or something else. ... I'm just going to fade away. I hope none of you remember me ever again."”

—Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle, Updated 2:42 pm, Friday, January 25, 2013

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Teen-who-killed-parents-Don-t-forgive-me-4224253.php

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Calvin Trillin Style [Week's News Poem, January 18, 2013]

Calvin Trillin Style [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, January 18, 2013]

This week's iambic news must rhyme the trite

With facts and names that fade when out of sight.

Did you hear about the trillion dollar mint?

An after dinner platinum coin we print

To bribe the sober headache aftermath

Of spendthrift ways; the pain of laughter's wrath.

Oh Calvin, any kid can write like you;

So why do you when verse's jobs are few?

Perhaps that's why the choppers never strafe

The people in your poems, why they're safe

Ensconced in paper sheafs inside your mind

Despite the desert heat, jihadikind.

I know your silly sort:

Quick to retort—

Both rapid

And vapid.

Well maybe we can talk about the guns

That don't work as Shel Silverstein-style puns?

I hear that Congress wants control.

A stack of parchment shall patrol

The empty depths of human wit,

Because the poets cannot fill it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsalsman/2013/01/17/debt-ceiling-gimmickry-is-unbecoming-a-rational-government/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/19/gun-lovers-freak-over-obama-s-executive-actions.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/algerian-reticence-spoils-us-strategy-for-region/2013/01/18/7af23fbe-617c-11e2-89a2-2eabfad24542_story.html

ps: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOYLIT!

 

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Influenza Allegory [Week's News Poem, January 11, 2013]

Influenza Allegory [Week's News Poem, January 11, 2013]

Influenza love story:

An epidemic allegory.

A child vomits virus cloud;

Recovers, fades into the crowd.

Influenza tragedy,

Is nothing more than comedy

That has lasted too long

And has the same corny song:

No no no!

Inside the subway car the millionaire

And the schizophrenic beggar share

A vent, are going in the same way,

Share destinations, the crowd, the sway.

“Influenza has officially reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with 7.3 percent of deaths last week caused by pneumonia and the flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.”

—Sharon Begley, Fri Jan 11, 2013 5:57pm EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/11/us-usa-flu-idUSBRE9080WD20130111

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Things We Know To Be True [Week's News Poem, January 4, 2013]

Things We Know To Be True [Week's News Poem, January 4, 2013]

Internet owner's manual:

Pages of rage,

Filled to the Brin with sin.

Don't be evil,

Be aggressive.

““Don’t Be Evil,” the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, proclaimed in their 2004 “Owner’s Manual” for prospective investors in the company. Despite widespread cynicism, criticism and even mockery, the company has never backed down on this core premise, reiterating in its most recent list of the “things we know to be true” that “You can make money without doing evil.”...On Thursday, after nearly two years of investigation, the Federal Trade Commission rendered a verdict: Google isn’t evil. ”

—The Line Between ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Evil’ by JAMES B. STEWART, The New York Times, January 4, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/google-finds-a-line-between-aggressive-and-evil.html

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