$16.00 in the envelope today
My daughter put it in the gold plate
She also put 75 cents in the kids' plate
Bought the paper
W/ discrepant articles
One said women make 77 cents to the male dollar
The other said young women made 1.5 times as much as young men
Another article said 30% of teens are unemployed
And 50% of black teens have no job
Another article said no one wants the jobs
They want welfare
Stocks still not doing much
Employment down, national debt skyrocketing
My daughter wanted to sell something to me
For a dollar so she could get striped candy
I had no money so we ate green pepper
1.49 for the package of seeds
She spit it out and said never again
What is money
What is your relationship to it?
Is it a boomerang?
This election is about your money
Who understands it better:
The Republicans or the Democrats?
Obama or Bush? Angle or Reid?
Boehner or Pelosi?
Skull crackling with static electricity I reach for the lever!
(Poetry contest open until November 2 when the polls close at 9 pm EST. Money comments, but also comments about other top issues, in poetic format. Please, no more than 33 lines. Also, each participant can have one vote. You can't vote for your own pome. Voting to be held from 12:01 AM to 11:59 pm on the 3rd. Winner is political poet in chief of LS for two years -- title carries no responsibilities and has no benefits except bragging rights -- and is viable until next major election in 2012.)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
I feel so taxed
from being taxed
though my taxes
have relaxed.
Am mad at stuff
Don't quite know what
fckh8 can shove it
up its, but
it takes a comic
to stop the vomit
and say let's take
this hate and calm it.
It's dreck vs. dreck,
and heck vs. heck,
It's dingy Keith
against Glenn Beck.
And in the end,
my hectic friends
calm cool Obama
will win again.
nice subtle turn on the word
but
sunday morning zinger
brett
this election is about the psychiatric barometer
of the people
the guys with the white coats are
stage left
jh
THINGS GO DOWNHILL
Countries around the world smoking ruins
Shanties with pots of beans stewed tomatoes
Crinkled dirty fingers & children
Their hearts like bags of sand against overflowing rivers
Fish dying along the banks
Multiculturalism argues
We should be more like them
I sit in my chair and burp Diet Pepsi
Voter fraud in Ohio in 2008
Allegations of felonies
Never investigated
The house is intact,
The electricity is working,
Some taps leak,
I have a widow's peak.
Pumpkins on porches now
& a fine sheen on the morning grass
Schwann's truck goes by
Patrolling for customers
The fog is about to burn off
Revealing infinity
A last butterfly hovers over the barren garden
The bicycles in the shed
The tomatoes are gone for the year
Frost on the windows every morning
Great swirling eddies of stupidity
The alternating current of Democrats and Republicans
For the last two years
It's as if the country has been run
By kids w/ pants half off their asses
His vocal patterns
His awful chant for change,
Yes we can!
I can't stand his face
When he comes on I click the channel switcher
It's like the 8th glass of cranberry juice
The third persimmon
How can anybody keep him down?
I'd rather ride a bicycle backward
To third grade Christmas
A bicycle on the wires above the crowd dreaming of baseball stars
The economy goes to pieces
Families go to pieces
Churches going to pieces
My teeth decay and pieces chip
The dentist tells me it's normal
And glues 'em back in
"All cultures are equally disgusting!" The feminist cried.
The bums buy the elections
jerrymander demographics
Fire up race, gender, class
Character means you can throw your grandmother under the bus if it gives you traction
The toilet is stuck can you fix it
Shit sprays like Old Faithful every two years coating the electorate with fecal matter
As the population runs for cover
Who is behind all this?
Piss in the ugly old snow
The Giver is a novel about a dystopian society
It reminds me of Obama's healthcare plans
People I know have cancer
Including my mother
The spiralling economy
A perpetual motion machine
Dots & curlicues
Comes to a halt
Obama scratches his head
The left thinks he's Einstein
He does, too
Please, don't anybody wake us up from this nightmare
The love of meat loaf will change the world
this election is about poetry contests
yesterday i heard sarah palin pronouncing her poem on the radio
she was extolling the virtues of someone who would get us back on track and make washington a respectful place once again
her voice was cracking
she meant what she said
or at least she believes she means what she says she sounds like she believes what she means
this election is about 33 lines
it's about where to draw the line
it's about rhetorical WWW
it's about being kinder to
the people on reservations
it's about being kinder to our neighbors no matter how screwed up they are
it's about a line in the sand
this election is about changing colors it's about watching the trees go naked
this election is about finding better ways to be socially dysfunctional
this elections is about putting business in it's palce
this
election is about the rivalry between the compassionate hegemony of catholic ethical thinking and the wayward misery brought upon all of us by protestant experimentalism ( for lack of a better concept)
this election is about making farming and poetry the primary goal for everyone
utah phillips said
don't vote it only encourages them
sarah palin couldn't take anymore encouragement
she has a fryin pan in one hand a baby in the other talkin on the phone yellin at everyone fixin dinner shooting wolves out the back door window dreaming of russia
telling her husband what to do
calling in take out changing her shoes all the while calling a strategic political meeting together at the kitchen table
she's the new mom
an evolutionary aberration in a dress
this election is about the iron left on hot on the ironing board
In twenty-oh-eight, we voted for hope,
For the people, the nation we wanted to become.
We tore the ring of power from the hand of the incompetent.
We said "damn them!," and we damn well meant it.
In twenty-ten, will we vote for our fears, instead?
We will confuse our triumph with failure?
Will we throw the ring of power at the feet of our former masters,
And beg forgiveness?
Not me, brother, not me.
Sigh. One of the problems of poems like mine above is that they are fundamentally atomic acts of passion: they come whole and must be committed to immediately, or they are nothing. That said, a consequence is that the product sometimes wants a little polish. That is certainly true in this case, as the original poem had a few faults of wordiness and one transposition. With these faults addressed, I offer,
The Ring of Power
In twenty-oh-eight, we voted for hope,
For the people, the nation we willed to become.
We tore the ring of power from the hands of the incompetent.
We said "damn them!," and we damn well meant it.
In twenty-ten, will we vote for fear?
Will we confuse our triumphs with failure?
Will we throw the ring of power at the feet of our former masters,
And beg forgiveness?
Not me, brother, not me.
My ballot arrived two weeks ago,
So I can vote absentee in a district where I owned an eighty year old house that was
demolished five years ago,
Right after I sold it for
Five times what I paid for it.
I'll vote no on both measures that would abolish state liqour stores and no on the state income tax.
I'll vote for the incumbents, a lady senator who thinks tennis shoes look good with a skirt and a head shrinker congressman who's been there forever.
I'll vote against the jerk named Dino who thinks losing two gubernatorial elections qualifies him to be a senator.
All but two of the judges are running unopposed.
In 2008 we were rightfully angry
And so we voted for fantasy.
The coy unicorn demurs.
In 2010 we are still angry.
Angry that we were such fools
To believe in unicorns.
Hmm...
I might have voted for "The Sublime & The Ridiculous," but it didn't actually appear in this thread, so it's not so much disqualified as never-qualified.
I'm going to vote for jh's "Sunday Morning Zinger," whether it was intended as poetry or not.
i want to vote for kirby's poem for its utter audacity in defying the strict form of 33 lines
he just broke through the law like it was a paper fence
and that means something this time of year
if we thought things were stale in washington last year don't wait around to smell the rot this year it will be nauseating that's for sure
i am hoping that obama learned to play with a better deck with a better hand with a better deal with a better look over the shoulder into the well placed mirror
i mean the whole next year is just going to be waiting for the hangover to end all these people drunk on tea they're going to have to turn congress into a therapy session for a few months
please stand say your first name and tell the group how you got here
i think they're putting midol in all the water systems
if you're not hypnotized like most everyone else life is going to be very scary for awhile
republican populists
go figure
it's nice to know the righteous right really cares about the people
and a safe white society
skype is the answer
jh
Picklesworth, is my vote.
I liked Stu's poem. Brett was a good poem but too abrasive to my delicate sensibility.
At any rate, I suppose the election itself is kind of a split. 64 new house seats, which is the biggest switch since 1948.
Senate almost listed over to the Republicans.
If lieberman were to caucus with the Republicans it would be 50-50.
Some independents and freaky write-in votes, and other stuff: kinda fun.
Obama apologized for being closed off.
Kirby,
The senate is going to be split 52-48 or 53-47 blue, depending on how Washington breaks (our gal's ahead, but there's a ways to go). [Alaska doesn't matter, even though its undecided, because the race is between two R's.] Because the VP is Democratic, this means that 50-50 is actually 51-50 blue, and that's no fiction because Biden is of the Senate. So dream your dream, but one traitor isn't enough -- you'll need at most three, and maybe four. Honestly, we're more likely to flip Snowe, than you are to flip Lieberman.
Springsteen wrote,
"The poets around here,
Don't write nothing at all,
they just stand back
and let it all be."
So it seems here. The 2010 election was the division of the hour, bitter before, ambiguous after. If you have no opinion on it, you have no part in this country. Kirby gets a pass here, but what of the rest of you? This was the soundest part of Solon's law: if in the time of division, you do not chose, then you are no citizen. Yet where are the poets around here?
We have a screenwriter, a mathematician, a preacher, and a monk,
trying to make honest stand,
wounded, not even dead.
Tonight, in Kirbyland.
pulchrum deficitum
I think we have a 3-way tie between JH, my poem, and Picklesworth's. It was my fault that I added too many comments and this contest got obscured. However, the election got me blathering.
Shall we just move on? I am afraid that ultimately I have to agree with JH's ultimate comment on the thread.
Politics doesn't exactly draw out the beauty. Still, I thought Picklesworth's piece was tight, and had a unicorn in it. Unicorns are at least charming, even if he's saying we only thought we saw one.
Kirby, you have a certain aura of joy and wonder that is much needed. Plus you voted for me. That's good all around.
Post a Comment