Two Diagrams [Today's News Poem, January 30, 2011]

Two Diagrams [Today's News Poem, January 30, 2011]

Are we atoms? A ball in our models—no nuclei, leave out electrons—
Yoked to our fellows in chains that distort our best properties—moles in a tube.
For example, I want to believe we are one, but I fear and divide us:
Whole by the faction and faction; religion, by piety; piety, doubt.
We are balls on the table, we're racked all together and shot by a player
Known by her aim as she shoots us in pockets, depositing each of us down
To unknown—so we cluster together and hope to survive that last eightball.

"But Mr. Suleiman, a former general, is also the establishment’s candidate, not the public’s. His appointment, and his elevation, if it were to occur, would represent not the democratic change called for on the street, but most likely a continuation of the kind of military-backed, authoritarian leadership that Mr. Mubarak has led for nearly 30 years, experts said."
—MICHAEL SLACKMAN, The New York Times, Published: January 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/world/middleeast/30suleiman.html

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The Main Course [Today's News Poem, June 4. 2010]

The Main Course [Today's News Poem, June 4. 2010]

The scales of the fish are of welds and of rivets.
Its gills are atomic, its fangs are its missiles.
And skipping the swells and the waves in migration,
It hunts for its prey—since the rule of the ocean
Is 'eat what is smaller.' Composite-hulled eagles
Observe from the sky, with their eyes made of lenses—
Their talons of gatling. A shark in the water
Was launched by a whale, and this shark drinks the bubbles
That form in the tide. With a turbine, it's speeding;
All teeth and no brain—and it's perfectly suited
To dine on the metal, to play with explosions.
The liquid is churning. The predators gather
Their forces together: the feast is beginning.

“It was not clear what action South Korea was seeking from the Security Council for the sinking of its warship, the Cheonan, which the South says was torpedoed by the North in March. But any Security Council action would have to be approved by China, an ally of the North, which holds a veto in the council.”
– Aubrey Belford, The New York Times, June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/world/asia/05korea.html

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