We keep making the inappropriate pass

Drilling by heedless fracking
oil is pumped emetic
keeps refineries cracking
in a race frenetic

Now, not until 2030
spills and plastic clog our gills
Earth’s water supply fouled dirty
leaves us sipping noxious spills

Now, not only by 2080
in climate catastrophe rife
comeuppance merciless & weighty
Humans left to horrific strife

Unreflective on how affronts amass:
Hubristic Humanity so crass
keeps making the inappropriate pass
Mother Earth is a virtuous lass

+)
-2030 = read: twentythirty

Spare me the natter over hors d’oeuvres platter

Fumbling yet another glass
over hors d’oeuvre platter
spouting platitudes in mass
Spare me such void natter!

Such vain, self absorbed rattle
in verbiage feckless
midst milling about cattle
dressed in tie & necklace

Voices shrill, blaring
breathlessly ‘reporting’
onslaught unsparing
conversation-thwarting

How did we turn admass?
Why so untoward
when a subject impasse
brings silence awkward?

Time’s up, we may leave
just smile & swoon
Hardly cause to grieve
bye, until soon!

+)
-‘reporting’ = here: boorishly droning on about one’s own most mundane doings

 

Just slab on more lotion!

In 2012 Mitt Romney received strong applause when he said: “President Obama promises to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is … to help you and your family!”

Delegates went ecstatic
Thinking gelatinous
Attitude fringe fanatic
Logic calamitous

“Slowing ocean rise, no!
Me & us now, yes!
Go Mitch go, way to go!
He’s our guy, God bless!”

Rising heat & ocean?
Just slab on more lotion!

Self-entitlement’s fangs bared

Agony fills our bones
while minds racing, our guts churn
like crawling on coarse stones
For change our heavy hearts yearn

Social bonds no longer prized
irreparably frayed
Everything commoditized
trust & manners decayed

In Empire’s Wars & Celeb Cultures
self-entitlement’s fierce fangs bared
turning us into whiny vultures
Only poverty deeply shared

Little of wisdom debated
or of shared humanity
Neighborhoods fearfully gated
in self absorbed vanity

To slick pretense we got inured

Corporation stock ‘worth’ billions
while many down on their luck
CEOs ‘make’ untold millions
while others squeeze a last buck

Once solidarity discarded
those in need shall be derided
as irresponsibly retarded
their gripes dismissed as misguided

Integrity by now denuded
to slick pretense we got inured
How did we become so deluded
from justice so easily lured?

 

 

 

Brash opinions know not stage fright

Hoping against hope: Save my poor ear
not another repetition!
For who among us do care to hear
such runaway feeble fission?

Garrulity gone meteoric
in hapless nation dysphoric
while the gushing foamy rhetoric
soars in distortions historic

Brash opinions know not stage fright
or usefulness of sound bite
in election spectacle’s blight
accentuates all what’s trite

Those who opine show no contrition
for their spewing words pernicious
or for the lack of inhibition
on narrow paths injudicious

edited 12/04/21 1635

On Cruise of Illusion

M/V ‘America’ slipped its mooring
now tossing like a cork on roughest sea
Crew, brainwashed, chants: “Sea calm like flooring
we’re no sailor serfs but well fed & free”!

All but entertainment is a bore
so grant us bantering & glee
by those who us gullible adore:
The Celebs we so pine to be

But hold the laughs! Check the ship’s wake
the helmsman doesn’t know sailing
wake looks like a slithering snake
In bilges no one bailing

A nation on a cruise of illusion
course plotted by a Seasick Master
immune to Reality intrusion.
Just below horizon: Disaster!

Safe on the upper deck
proclaims The Power Elite:
“So what if looms a wreck
we own the whole lifeboat fleet!”

Wings feebly flapping, in armchairs flopping

Once perhaps eagles, now wobbly geese
ages passed since we looked strapping
Now spectators of silly & sleaze
in armchairs flopping, tongues flapping

In our sugar & fat fueled rut
guzzling, chomping fast food junk
outwards bulges that beach ball gut
no bounce left for cheery spunk

Not letting inequality
or climate calamity
spoil our fun & frivolity!
Busy on screens, can’t you see?

Rather ‘amusing ourselves to death’
than fighting for working democracy
we’re consuming, wheezing out of breath
in willful ignorant hypocrisy

+)
‘Amusing ourselves to death’ = (1985) book title by Neil Postman

Clogged compassion’s fountain

Some found driven to exert control
to pile up goods, to hold power
Others languish in more modest role
for just more time in the shower

While our own mole a mighty mountain
other’s mountain a measly mole
Clogged many a compassion’s fountain
merely sprinkles the beggar’s bowl

How come we keep hoarding excess
and coldly transgress for ‘success’?

A life un-examined

Socrates suggested that “the un-examined life is not worth living.” That was then, and it still ain’t. And here is how now:

She: “Recently been thinking a little about the Meaning of Life …”
He: “Honey, why we don’t we google it?”

Boundless affinity for distraction
in vain attempts to handle it all
knee jerks to superficial attraction
one click away or found at the mall

But to lessen Life’s steady pains
must we not all squarely face
how helplessly our vigor drains
caught in Reckoning’s stern gaze?

while our lives us increasingly perplex
by hi-tech growing evermore complex