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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

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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!”

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Hands off, TSA! Out of my way!

Valiant armchair warriors’ voices shrill
Treasury depleted by trillions
Hapless young soldiers sent to maim & kill
feckless foreigners by the millions

Though that ‘underwear bomb’ blew no hole
the Homeland Industry grows, rocks
A dud as well that ‘bomb in a sole’
still we’re here lined up in our socks

Here’s the ridiculous rub:
no more risk risk to fly
than slipping in your bathtub
Where did we go awry:

Distant countries laid in ruinous states
while TSA pats down our ample waists

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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

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Erstwhile souls debased

We’re wilting in complacency’s shades
lost in gutless conformity
On frequent refrigerator raids
indulgent of deformity

Lassitude has kept us callow
from solidarity strayed
Each morning’s fresh hue turns sallow
by torrid crassitude swayed

We’ll be found too light when weighed
our erstwhile souls debased
Surely this whole jam self-made
with gone sour aftertaste?

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Disingenuous words slither & slide

Aiming to take us for a ride
those disingenuous words
tenebrously slither & slide
pounce singly as well in herds

By blurred verbiage thronged
our attention grabbed
Bathos suffered prolonged
its contentions crabbed

Assertions spurious
cheery & braying
Assaults laborious
preying, dismaying

Spectacle precarious
in bombastic bouquet
All so faux gregarious
in dissolute decay

 

 

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Not a leader of men

I did not become that leader of men
that mighty lion roaring in his den

Not pumped up enough my ego
or perhaps lacking gumption?
Feeling too stiff in tuxedo
or bothered by compunction?

Feeling guilty of indulging
while others ail & tumble?
Loath to proclaim with chest bulging
while trying to fake humble?

Too deficient a Philistine
to travel by limousine?
Too concerned with the unforeseen
bored with intrigues Byzantine?

Or perhaps, putz
just lacking guts?

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Baritone, ‘Barrytone’

An insightful article on the Obama phenomena:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175816/
inspired this verse:

Unfounded self confidence
in pompous presumption
pretending at omniscience
while shows up compunction

His baritone oratory:
Delivery alluring
while hollow declaratory
doesn’t come across assuring

Stands with those on Wall Street
against the pitchforks
His White House found effete
fast fizzled fireworks

His bringing us cool pure fantasy
in hollow cowardly drama
“Change You Can Believe In” alchemy
darkly deepens nation’s trauma

How did we turn so immobile
erstwhile engaged citizens
indulging pursuits puerile
with baffling indifference?

Bowled over by his locomotion
hawking his brand of self-promotion?

+)
-‘change you can believe in’ = Obama’s election campaign slogan
-citizen = there can be no democracy without informed & engaged citizens
-compunction = uneasiness or hesitation about the rightness of an action
-pitchforks = I’m the only thing between you and the pitchforks”, the President told a gathering of big bank CEOs on April 3, 2009:

edited 04/17/22 0900

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Crispest of bleat without missing a beat

His pompous, facile verbiage soars
while lying through his gleaming teeth
The figurehead lets us down while scores
his Beltway knife loosened in sheath

His faux ‘Change You Can Believe In’ brand
once seductive consumer pitch
now shown up as empty, stale & bland
still serves the powerful & rich

A President so crisp & elegant
coolly projects noble sentiments
but were his soaring speeches eloquent
helpful for those in drab tenements?

One shameless, specious scheme of bait & switch:
Saying versus doing without a glitch

+)
The Beltway = metaphor (from it’s D.C. locus) for the Power Elite

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Traded snug solidarity for smug insularity

Hooked on voraciously soul sucking screens
in their eerie sheen ubiquitous
Been had by corporate marketing schemes
To celeb culture obsequious

No flirtation. Hit hard on
by forces hellacious
in consumer-tech’s brash con
its pursuits vexatious

Our culture predaceous, duplicitous
a future crashing in crassitude
in a society iniquitous
we languish feebly in lassitude

Been trading snug solidarity
for barbed & smug insularity