Uncivil War

Welcome to the new civil war.

It looks like chairman T has got the floor.
It’s not a filibuster, just overflowing bluster.
He’s counting on his side for a big score.
The bikers and militia are all armed,
and care no whit for those whom they have harmed.
Protestors in the street are naught to them but meat.
They see their lives as heaven-blessed and charmed.
The death toll is the new election tally.
An insurrection’s labeled as a rally.
The police won’t stop this war. They don’t care any more.
Our country might turn into one death valley.
We’ve now become the disunited states.
The rich have bad intentions on their plates.
There can be no true friends until this madness ends.
Meanwhile the bodies are piled up in crates.

Ode to Thunberg

Electricity. What a cool invention.
We used to have to heat by fire,
torchlight for attention.
Now we only flip a switch
and on and off goes power.
No more need of gaslit sconces
in the evening hour.
First came lights and then came stoves
and now, electric car. Uses multiply until
we’ve found we’ve come too far.
Destroying our ecology
was what we didn’t factor.
It turned out electricity’s not cool,
but a bad actor.
We must cut back. The sense we lack
has got us in a pickle.
The flood of watts has sealed our lots.
Must cut back to a trickle.
Pump up your solar and wind forces.
Nature can sustain.
There have to be some better courses.
Greta will explain.

So Over Par

Each birthday after seventy’s
like going over par.
The putts you dropped now roll aside.
Your drive does not go far.
The layups that were breakaways
since days when you were small
are now chased down by faster men.
You often eat the ball.
The hanging dinger you just hit
dies on the warning track.
You know you need some sit-ups,
but they always hurt your back.
A well-paced walk around the block
would surely do you good.
But your aching legs now creak
as if they’re made of wood.
Your life is on the champs tour now.
You play from shorter tees.
Nine holes instead of eighteen
will go easy on your knees.
And if you do at this age
entertain a sporting jag,
please, please, say no to football.
That’s the time for your white flag.

Wrest in Power

DDE ruled the land of the free.

He was born October fourteenth,
like George Floyd.
He helped win a world war,
had a decent golfing score,
so, it was Ike and Tricky Dick,
into the void.
Dick got nixed by JFK.
That was not to be the way.
He was the first of the big three
eliminated. How that grated.
LBJ chose not to run.
Who knows who held that big gun.
Dick got picked and then went after
those he hated.
When he finally got caught,
doing things he shouldn’t ought,
Ford stepped in, but he was
very lowly rated.
Jimmy Carter had some heart.
They attacked him from the start.
Ronnie snuck in underhanded.
Decency was then disbanded.
GHW came next,
straight out of CIA’s text.
Bounced by Bill for oil war,
Sonny George evened that score,
cheating out the real Al Gore.
Then eight years of Hope, Barack.
But good times ran out of stock.
In came DT for years four
feeling like more than a score.
After him, there’s nothing more.
Sad Joe, scratching at the door.
Parties broken, unclass war.
Climate just one crash in store.
Flat earth, flat line,
flat dash to the void.
Black lives. White lives,
it don’t matter.
Remember George Floyd.

Pink Slip

Mickey D’s not clownin’ any more.

Ronald’s been laid off, and is he sore!
His giant red hair wasn’t meant to scare,
but frightened little children to their core.
Killer clown with trail of beef behind:
hard to clear that from a youngster’s mind.
Kids know cow feed counts in climate change
and realize that Ronald’s not so kind.
It didn’t help he wore those blood red shoes,
his nose deep crimson as if fueled by booze.
He smells like burgers still, enough to make one ill.
A meat clown, as they say, is born to lose.

Seasonal Disorder II

All the pollen is gone from the flowers,
and the bees who had worked there for hours
have all disappeared. It’s just as we feared.
Fall has fallen and now nature cowers.
Cold moves in with a hint of first frost.
Losing plants will, of course, be the cost.
Leaves will flutter and pile, meaning in a short while
all the color we loved will be lost.
A long winter sees weeks dusted white,
glistening by day, reflecting at night.
Spring will seem far away, some time, April or May.
The return of the bees sets things right.

Uncle Sam Land MMXXI

America is a Fantasy Park.

The light side’s on the left.
The right side’s in the dark.
The Gates of Hell are in Las Vegas,
tourist destination.
And any city street stands
as a Mecca of Fixation.
In Old Folks Land, they stand in line
whole lives to reach their ends.
And young folks bred to live with toys
will always be best friends.
There’s Money Pits and Drunk Tanks
and an Army of Despair.
There’s places where the Poorest live
in comic disrepair.
Whirlpools of debt and Shafts of Graft
to rival Magic Mountain.
And in the Sheltered Islands,
it’s said there’s a golden fountain.

Newsscape 10/4

Surf City’s decimated by a big oil spill.

Bill Shatner’s going off to space.
He’s got some time to kill.
It looks like Mister Bezos this time
plays the role of Spock.
Perhaps they can transport the oil
up to some big space rock.
Pandora papers document
world leaders hiding wealth.
We’re yet to see if “Squid Game”
can be harmful to your health.
Yankees and the Red Sox
live to play another day.
Meanwhile, Tommy Kirk,
Old Yeller’s master, passed away.

Mister October

He slips in while the trees still have their leaves.
In fact, you might still be dressed in short sleeves.
Where green and lush abound, there’ll soon be on the ground
great piles of nature’s discards and pet peeves.
The temperatures he’ll drop down by degrees
might, by his exit, hint at the first freeze,
necessitating coat, at which point he may gloat,
and even float a few flakes on the breeze.
He’ll bring a questionable holiday.
Columbus was a hero in no way.
He’ll leave at Halloween. Cold weather is his scene,
a hint of winter’s hell you’ll have to pay.

Empty

Delete Red.

Green is new.
Sip with caution.
Poultry, too.
Watch that sunset.
Bail that lift.
What’s a Magi
With no gift?

Seasonal Distorter

This could be our last warm day. Summertime has gone away.

No more time for livin’ easy. Fall will descend, cool and breezy.
Soon the leaves will be aflutter. Piling in the lawn and gutter.
Green to yellow. Red to brown. Ending as sludge on the ground.
One last call for windows open. For eight months we will be hopin’.
Unpack blankets, heavy coats. On to shore come all the boats.
No more fresh air meals outside. Time to make the flowers hide.
Bare limbs waving like thin arms. Frozen temps and lesser charms.
Soon enough, there will be snow. Shoveling and plows. Oh no.
Dead of winter, painted white. Cold in daylight, freeze at night.
There’s not much good left to say. Summertime has gone away.

The Cruelty Factory

The cruelty factory is giving out rebates

for tortures unseen and ominous fates
For confessions extracted,
new law’s been enacted.
Makes pain mandatory.
It’s tied in with glory.
Passed in a landslide,
wherein a few died.
So, now you can line up for hurt at the gate,
unless you’re the type who would procrastinate.
The cruelty factory will cater to you.
They say pain’s your due.
Sadly, this time it’s true.

Hawk Spa

Thrown open are the windows and fresh banana peels to the crows!
The hawk has paid a visit.
After rains he frequently shows up at the top of the tallest tree outside my window,
where, first, he dries, sitting like a block, until, shaking, he begins to unruffle.
The branch is his occasional spa, where he stretches, does bird pilates,
salutes the sun, which appeared, after he did, and does some shoulder rotation.
After some head swiveling and neck lengthening, he’s ready for flight.
A long reach down to the leaves below and there he goes. Kick. Glide. Kick.

Down Tempo

My heart is scarred.
I’ve been disbarred
from life’s most supreme court.
I hope to squeeze some living in
despite time being short.
A car needs a new battery.
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me.
It’s not like I’ve become unwired.
Just spend more time being tired.
Hard to get a rhythm thumping
when the heart is hardly pumping.
There’s no dancing in the street
when the blood can’t keep the beat.
No use pondering my faults.
Just slow things down to a waltz.

Earth Daze

Ghost forests on the coast

and penguins killed by bees.
Looks as though this climate roast
will have us on our knees.
Hurricane debris piles up
and leaves an awful stench.
We’re bailing with a paper cup.
We need a bigger bench.
Antarctica’s large ozone hole
is bigger than the land.
The climate task needs trumpeting.
We need a bigger band.

Colossal Fossil

Let’s bring the wooly mammoth back to life.

It’s time we start to practice ‘de-extinction.’
Genetically reengineered elephants
would save the tundra. That is their distinction.
The herds would roam the Arctic
with its melting permafrost,
knocking down sun-stealing trees
where grassland has been lost.
The light-reflecting tundra
locks in carbon and methane.
Some bioethicists have called the idea insane.
But, what the hell, we’re splicing cows,
pigs, vegetables and fruit.
If woolies could stop climate change,
genetics becomes moot.

Clayton Moore (9/14/14)

The Lone Ranger did not age too well,

grew old living in a masked-man’s hell.
But, way before the cowboy hat,
he was a circus acrobat.
He modeled and did Air Force time,
then came the role that proved divine.
Young Jack Moore, name changed to Clayton,
got the break he’d been awaitin’.
First western made for t.v.
became a hit on ABC.
Silver horse and Silverheels
suddenly were great big deals.
He did five seasons of “Hi Ho,”
and then was told he had to go.
He would tour venues, always masked,
and did not cease when he was asked.
He was Lone Ranger to the masses,
cowboy duds and dark sunglasses.
Embroiled in a five-year suit,
fought hard once he got the boot.
And, finally, there was his name
on Hollywood’s great Walk of Fame.
He had four wives, but now he’s gone,
his ranch is found in Forest Lawn.

Chile ’73

The junta of General Augusto Pinochet

took control in a Chilean coup on this day,
deposing President Salvadore Allende,
whose own democracy was seen as in their way.
Some said this had the smell of CIA,
Dick Nixon, with his penchant for foul play,
was much opposed to any Marxist sway,
and friends of Cuba always had to pay.
It’s now been forty-eight years since the coup.
Allende wound up dead. They don’t know who.
Chile had gone democratic back in thirty-two.
Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Peru
in the sixties watched as military overthrew
elected governments as if they were a strain of flu.
Perhaps it was inevitable Chile would fall, too.
Keep this in mind as things unwind inside the U.S. zoo.

Planet Witness

Scientists, perhaps, have found a Planet Nine

to replace dear old Pluto, for whom we all still pine.
Could be a cold gas giant, much bigger than the Earth,
somewhere outside of Neptune, six times our planet’s girth.
If, indeed, it’s proven true, the naming could be tricky.
Pluto’s gone, but, in its lieu, this new one should be Mickey.