Toylit

Friday, January 18, 2013

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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Friday, January 11, 2013

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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Friday, January 04, 2013

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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Friday, December 28, 2012

Fundamentalism [Week's News Poem, December 28, 2012]

We proselytize apocalypse;

worshiping doom

or its salesman.

“U.S. consumer confidence fell more than expected in December, hitting a four-month low as a looming fiscal crisis sapped what had been a growing sense of optimism about the economy.”

—Jason Lange, WASHINGTON, Reuters, Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:30pm EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/27/us-usa-economy-jobless-idUSBRE8BQ08P20121227

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Friday, December 21, 2012

The Sculptor Resists [News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, December 21, 2012]

Marble tears pollinate the tongue of boot,

Drift away, fertilizing every route

The Sculptor treads.

He cannot stop

Himself and stomps

The dust, his dread.

“In a rare appearance before national media, leaders of the National Rifle Association called on Americans to protect their children by putting armed guards in every school in the country. ”

—Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / December 21, 2012

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/1221/NRA-press-conference-Put-armed-guards-in-schools-video

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Friday, December 14, 2012

Dance of the Waterspout [Week's News Poem, December 14, 2012]

A gunman shot the kids away

To ride-off on the waterspout.

And every time the news obtains a tear,

I lift my arms and spin, then fall.

The world keeps spinning,

Nothing's free, not even sorrow.

I'll spin to see things clearly:

Swirling down the drain,

Nauseating (nauseous with migraine).

Just like DNA, a whirlpool,

A galaxy's edge, everything—

And I mean everything—

Is spinning out of control.

Of course I'll cry.

I am a waterspout.

“The gunman, who was believed to be in his 20s, walked into a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where his mother was a teacher. He shot and killed her and then fatally shot 20 students, most in the same classroom. He also fatally shot five other adults, and then killed himself inside the school. One person was also injured in the shooting.”

—JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM, NYT, Published: December 14, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html

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Friday, November 30, 2012

Metafiscal Cliff [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, November 30, 2012]

Metafiscal Cliff [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, November 30, 2012]

Beginning my descent smothered in air,

I missed the stair.

We all arrive at disaster,

Only, I'm faster.

Scrooge is only a partial exemption:

They remember the jerk, not his redemption.

I surmised that I did the same thing

And you will too.

“"If Congress does nothing, every family in America will see their taxes automatically go up on January 1," Obama said at a factory that makes Tinkertoys, among other things, in suburban Philadelphia. "That's sort of like the lump of coal you get for Christmas. That's a Scrooge Christmas."”

—Mark Felsenthal, Reuters, HATFIELD, Penn. | Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:51pm EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-usa-fiscal-obama-idUSBRE8AT0LH20121130

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Friday, November 23, 2012

Dirt Hunt [Week's News Poem, November 23, 2012]

Dirt Hunt [Week's News Poem, November 23, 2012]

My toes are expert hunters:

They snuffle in the humus.

Even my humerus knows

Whatever lost in the dirt

Regrows next season.

“Two people died and scores of people were hurt Thursday when up to 140 vehicles collided in in dense fog Southeast Texas in a pileup that left trucks twisted on top of each other and authorities rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage. ”

—NBC News staff and news services, The Associated Press and Reuters, 6:50 p.m. ET

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/22/15364379-140-car-pileup-in-texas-fog-kills-two-injures-dozens?lite

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