Billionaire Miasma [Today's News Poem, March 27, 2011]

Billionaire Miasma [Today's News Poem, March 27, 2011]

I don't care if you're famous, a billionaire Jesus;
Don't care if you think you deserve it—
You cannot convert this to adjective.
The language resists all your money.
True poets will carry the noun—
A whole fountain of language
Entombed in a mountain of ink;
While your currency blows with the wind
From your stomach, intestines and anus.
You are swollen with farts, you are floating on gas
And you circle the peak, but can never corrupt it.

"The signs of the coming apocalypse are many, but none are starker than this Web headline in the April issue of O: The Oprah Magazine: “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” Yes. Spring fashion. Modeled. By rising young poets. There follows a photomontage of attractive younger women — some of whom are rising poets mostly in the “I get up in the morning” sense, but all of whom certainly look poetic — in outfits costing from $472 to $5,003."
—DAVID ORR, The New York Times, Published: March 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/oprah-magazines-adventures-in-poetry.html

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Trickle-Down Dinner [Today's News Poem, January 18, 2011]

Trickle-Down Dinner [Today's News Poem, January 18, 2011]

Porcelain monarchy: wealth trickles downward,
Plumbing foundations—shares shit with mollusks.
Only the purest obtain such positions.
Angle it deeper, inject liquid diets.
Natural predators eat filth and like it,
Writhe in the excrement, crawl ever after.
Cannibals gobble up meat, shit—whatever
Thrones care to flush down the drain, feed me dinner!

"I intend to introduce legislation that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised. This would not only ensure the continued confidence of investors at home and abroad, but would enable us to have an honest debate about the consequences of our eventual decision about the debt ceiling."
—PAT TOOMEY, The Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 19, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576089963912388314.html

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Meat [Guest Political Cartoon by Seann McCollum, January 6, 2011]

Seann McCollum's origins are shrouded in mystery and conspiracy. Satellite imagery suggests he writes books and sells them here: http://www.lulu.com/antvsant. According to our Top Men, he goes by @syntaxidermist on Twitter and maintains a gallery of frequently updated art and writing here: http://carrioncall.blogspot.com. He's not one to gloat about past achievement, thus inducing others to gloat on his behalf. See how crafty he is?

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The Midrash of Faxes and Feces [Today's News Poem, January 6, 2011]

The Midrash of Faxes and Feces [Today's News Poem, January 6, 2011]

In the hills of Carmel where the dust coats the carobs
There's a parchment of dung, there's a fax in the grass;
And the cypress boughs fertilize foothills of worship,
And the goats drop their pellets for herders to salvage.
It's the place where the priests wrote their poems with feces
On the coprophage flesh of the lambs of the desert.
From the droppings of sheep to the mouths of the rabbis
Through the grass, in the dirt, in that rapture of pasture.
They have gilded uncleanliness, called it a Torah,
And have culled from their flocks just the skin of the scapegoat.
Should one study the excrement; study the shepherd
And his he-ass, his she-ass—his breath and his writing?

"And let it be said, on this second day following the convening of the 112th Congress, newly sworn members of the House shall stand and read aloud the Constitution of the United States. And so it was Thursday, as lawmakers took turns reciting each verse and article of the document. Republicans in charge of the chamber rattled it off with missionary zeal, as if in a school civics class. Democrats pitched in, but with seemingly less ardor."
—JIM ABRAMS, The Associated Press, Thursday, January 6, 2011; 11:23 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010602566.html

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