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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Courtroom Surprise [Today's News Poem, June 18, 2010]

Courtroom Surprise [Today's News Poem, June 18, 2010]

The accused takes the stand and the jury's engrossed
With the evidence offered. I notice the disks
In the dust on the panels of wood as they roast
The defendant. The judge and his gavel are brisk.
Then I notice his beak and the jury is filled
With the tendrils of something too human, that reach
For my warmth and I shout as the ink they have spilled
Wets my waist. They are swimming in ink and each
Of the tentacles grasps at my body and pulls
Me apart in a frenzy—they feast 'til they're full.

“Embattled BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who endured a ferocious daylong grilling this week on Capitol Hill, was replaced Friday as the point man for the day-to-day response to the gulf oil disaster, a move that drew praise from BP critics and suggested the company was growing increasingly concerned with damage to its image. ”
– Walter Hamilton and Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2010, 4:56pm
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100619,0,1365994.story

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All Text is Born Senile [Today's News Poem (Sonnet), May 25, 2010]

All Text is Born Senile [Today's News Poem (Sonnet), May 25, 2010]

Memory locked in the cabinet's waiting...
Dust may inspect what the ledgers have hidden...
Ink has no secrets. Its lover is baiting
Curious eyes; with a body forbidden.
Paper's enticing, inert yet attractive.
Passion with posture—its poise is its mettle.
Leaping the keyboard to folders marked 'active.'
Pages are athletes before they can settle,
Aging in boxes of metal, in folders.
Lonely—they whisper their letters to strangers.
Senile from birth they confess to the holders
Memories pages recite. And the danger
Of burning: the last of the acts of the curling—
A last pirouette—and the memo is whirling!

“BP Plc told congressional investigators on Tuesday that pressure tests on a drill pipe showed a fundamental mistake hours before the deadly explosion that caused the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, a memo released by two congressmen showed.”
– Timothy Gardner editing by Philip Barbara and Bill Trott, Reuters, Wed May 26, 2010 12:26am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64P0JS20100526?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

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