VOLUME FOUR
Copyright © 2010 by Gary Bachlund All international rights reserved
"'One cannot both be a progressive and be opposed to pension reform,' he said. 'The math is irrefutable that the losers from excessive and unfunded pensions are precisely the programs progressive Democrats tend to applaud. Those programs are being driven out of existence by rising pension costs.' Crane added: 'All of the consequences of rising pension costs fall on the budgets for programs such as higher education, health and human services, parks and recreation, and environmental protection that are junior in priority and therefore have their funding reduced whenever more money is needed to pay for pension costs.'" Steven Greenhut, in "Progressives for Pension Reform?" City Journal, September 9, 2010.
Loudly doth opinions ring!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Let not facts judge anything!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Dawn we late, as failures spring.
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Too long we've trusted, comes the sting.
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Refute the irrefutable,
Deny the coming crunch.
Allege all is immutable,
And then go out for lunch.
Fa-la la-la-la, la-la la-la.
Loudly doth opinions ring!
Ping and pong, and pong and ping!
Loud come voices, anguishing.
Sing their song, coarse songs to sing!
Opinions loud go caroling,
Ringing song, mad songs to sing!
Drown the truths, yet falsehoods bring!
Sing those songs, raw songs to sing!
Take from all that we all have
And toss it to the winds;
Today it is a fiction's salve,
Tomorrow come the whirlwinds.
Fa-la la-la-la, la-la la-la.
Loudly doth opinions ring!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Let not sense judge anything!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Someone else must bear the sting!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Too late to fix, cramped hands we wring!
Ding and dong, and dong and ding!
Consequences tally up,
And comes the due, someday.
Programs will go belly up;
Tomorrow is another day.
Fa-la la-la-la, la-la la-la.
"The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910." In "Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain," Daily Mail, 18 December 2010
The emperor really has no clothes.
He's standing in a blizzard,
Yet waves his highbrow, thinker's wand
As if he were a wizard.
Just see how hot the snow is,
How much it boils and burns!
Heed what he says, what he foresees,
For these are his true concerns.
Naked stands his intellect,
Imperious, and mighty high.
A Charles-Jones-Gore, a prince of fools,
Cries out to prophesy!
Don't see, don't feel, don't think!
He's the only one who knows
The truth that blazes through the ice
Is his ardent heat which glows.
This emperor has bared it all
Beneath the blanket white,
And if one looks into his plans
They seem a swindler's sleight.
Did I just see him shiver,
Buck naked as a jay?
Perhaps it's getting colder,
On this white-hot English day.
"State Sen. R. C. Soles, the state's longest-serving legislator, was indicted Thursday on a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious bodily injury." In "State Sen. R. C. Soles indicted on assault charge," by Shelby Sebens, 7 January 2010
The anti-gun guy shoots a guy with a gun,
Which all seems rather queer.
Perhaps double standards are his sort of fun,
As the stories shout loud and clear.
A liberal Democrat pays his fine
And into obscurity fades,
Until the next news story and byline
Rouse yet more cannonades.
The anti-gun guy shoots his gun quite a lot
It seems, by a longer view.
Perhaps double standards are all he's got,
As the stories shout hullabaloo.
A liberal Democrat retired and rich
Hoped notoriety would fade,
But news reports the latest sports
Of some gay old escapade.
So off limits is much about this sordid tale,
The politically connected favors,
The seedier things which dovetail,
The seemingly askew behaviors.
The anti-gun guy shoots a guy with a gun,
Which all seems rather queer.
Perhaps double standards are his sort of fun,
As the stories shout loud and clear.
Hunting as a bloody sport
Can be bloody fun for you,
Until each hunted can resort
To weapons which they shoot too.
When playing fields are leveled,
Then play isn't always fun.
It's often just a matter of
Whose got the bigger gun.
Will you write rules for hunting
To make the game so fair?
Will you read them while unarmed
To the predator in its lair?
The nice and civil, the rules and such
Seem ever the best-laid thought,
Until the predator bites, inasmuch
As it's acting as it ought.
The world is just, a bloody affair
In all it does and must;
Rules for hunting remain unaware
That blood begets its lust.
Will you write rules for hunting
To make the world less real?
Will you read them while unarmed,
As your predators' next meal?
“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.” Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
No dignity is what governments have made,
As their public debt is never quite paid,
But rolled over and over in a rhetorical stew
To generations next, like a witches' brew.
No dignity is what governments have earned,
That have independence so easily spurned,
With debt and debt and ever more debt
Which is mounting up like a rising threat.
But tell all governments to live within their means
And see what howls such a comment gleans.
Why it's foolish! Wrongheaded! Harsh! It's wrong!
That's what they'll say, both loud and long.
Live with your means? What a load of crock!
We'll inflate our way out as the clocks tick-tock.
It's all a matter of cooking the books,
Though we're nothing like charlatans or crooks!
Live within one's means? How foolish! How dumb!
That's the line, by governments' rule of thumb.
But then comes reality, skipping along
And soon there'll come a real tough song.
Time's up. Why look! The debt wants its due.
Pay debt with more debt seems an illogical screw
Applied to its peoples by governments' plan
To enslave those not born, every child, every man.
No dignity is found in such a dark, little thought
Which brings nations to their knees all for naught.
The party was grand. The party was all.
And now comes repayment, and after, the fall.
"Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is 'not compatible' with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practised or taught in the country." Saeed Kamali Dehghan, in the Guardian, UK, 2 August 2010.
Music's not compatible because supreme leaders says it's so?
Then music is rebellion and must be quite a blow,
As melodies sing joyous loud like drumbeats from afar
To rattle little angry them with a tuneful repertoire.
The values of which most men sing are not their values grim,
But values which embrace God's joy, even in a battle hymn.
Split a woman's head with a showers of thrown stones,
But don't allow a dirging tune to disturb her dying groans?
Hang a little youthful boy, just because they can,
But never, ever harmonize God's music to their plan
For power over others to silence voices sweet,
As you threaten folks with your nasty little bleat.
Music's not compatible because you says it's so?
Then many Muslims the world around must also vote as no,
While you sing your song of stupid, though you cannot sing,
And trot out that unmusical ayatollah thing.
Music's not compatible because one imam says it's so?
Silly man! Muslims play music round the world ! Don't you know?
The game was o'er, as chess pieces flew
By upturning that board where a loss might ensue.
The cards were dropped from the hand where they hid,
As if this was better when there wasn't a bid.
The rules were changed to affect those who play,
For winners might have won in their unsportsmanlike way.
The debate was deemed o'er, as invectives flew
Because the losing side just might have been who?
Competition, some say, is an evil, crass thing
Unless they're the winner, whereupon they would sing:
"Hurray for me, the other side's whipped."
When cheating's a part of the argument's script.
In clear-spoken terms and by rules most agreed,
The losing side often embarks on a screed
Of "unfair, unreasonable, unjust" and more:
This is the way they'd settle their score.
When losing the argument, some think it best
To turn over the game board, spill the hand, and the rest,
And turn to thump on an emotional breast.
An argument postponed is no debate done,
Just ploy after ploy in a fabric cheap spun
To say that the loser might've probably won.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): "There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: 'Out. Off. End. Goodbye.' It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future." (17 November 2010)
Fascist is as fascist does;
One needs few definitions.
When one considers the iron fist,
It's time for premonitions.
That little bug spoke no restraint,
But tipped its blind ambition;
It sought to stifle each complaint
With fascist prohibition.
When words become its enemy
And opinion must be killed,
It's certain fascism's infamy
Runs pure, ripe, undistilled.
That fascists wear a fine disguise
Does not mean they're not there;
Rather, we see in fascist cries,
They hunger from their lair.
There's that bug inside of them
Which seeks to rule and reign;
This is their ugly stratagem,
To crush those who'd complain.
This is not what freedom seeks,
Nor what the free man wills.
But such a bug just stinks. It reeks,
Then rages, before it kills.
Should one have faith in such a bug?
Should one be loyal, true?
Or should one quickly pull the rug
Out from under such a view?
A free man with a free man's urge
Will not compliant be;
Fascism which plans its purge
Should be hounded up a tree,
And shown to all what rightly is,
That fascists are but thugs.
One needs no silly wordy quiz
To define such fascist bugs.While history shows us jack boot types,
We need to oft recall,
Before the boots came prototypes,
But fascists, one and all,
Who broached no opposition
And raged at speech so free
To justify its prohibition,
Choosing power viciously.
Fascist is as fascist does;
One needs no definitions.
When they presume the iron fist,
Bugs shed their inhibitions.Out. Off. End. Goodbye.
This is how fascists would have us die.
Good old obfuscation
Rears its hydra heads
To blather to each nation
And loose its vexing threads.
Clutter up the chatters
And mess with people's heads,
For all that is the matters
Is that logic is torn to shreds.
Dear old obfuscation
Three-card Monty's you;
Its "palm the ace" fixation
Hides its aims from view.
Maybe, yes and no way
Flow like ocean tides,
Shifting sands till doomsday
As clarity subsides
Into dreary obfuscation's
Webs of vast deceit,
With its many gray gradations
Where yes and no might meet
In knots tied Gordian tight
With chains of deep despair,
To shelter it from the light
Of truth's simple baring glare.
Frightened obfuscation
Runs to flee the light
For truth is like castration
To its stupid, macho might.
Cut off from its flight
Of fancy words and snares
It shows that rancor and its spite
Are all that it declares.
He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer,
Not even the sharpest spoon.
He wasn't the bright boy he believed,
But rather a full-fledged loon.
Yet fledged-full loony verve like his
Made him climb and scramble high,
Until one day his grip came loose.
Then, gravity did apply.
He'd been held aloft and aided oft
By other full-fledged loons,
Who full believed the time was ripe
For a leader of buffoons.
Consequences come to all,
To all as just to one.
Predicting them is part of life,
And sometimes oddly fun.
Such consequences rumbled by
To cries of great surprise,
The looniest of the loons laid low,
As reality clarifies.
Some loons will say that I've attacked
Their favorite, chosen child.
In answer to such thoughts as theirs,
More than theirs are herein reviled.
This riddle applies not just to one,
For more than one there are
Who prove themselves so loony
By fumbling for their star.
It is said by those among us
That one cannot polish shit.
A rather base conclusion, but
That's the sum and end of it.
"High school history teacher James Corbett, found to have violated a student's First Amendment rights last year by disparaging Christianity in class, on Saturday urged 'intellectuals of all political persuasions' to push back against the 'right-wing authoritarianism' that is eroding mutual tolerance and democracy in America. Speaking at a convention in Irvine hosted by the Orange County chapter of the high IQ society Mensa, Corbett railed against what he described as anti-intellectual conservatives who rely on 'submission' and 'cherished cultural myths' to maintain power and influence." In "Intellectuals must 'push back,' urges teacher sued by student," by Scott Martindale, The Orange County Register, September 4, 2010.
Cherished cultural myths include
The ones just baked today;
They are not all from recipes
Past centuries hoorayed.
Right-wing, left-wing chatterers
Speak myths which they believe
Including the myths of Left and Right,
Some served up to deceive.
Marx was one to peddle myths,
The Frankfurt School and such.
They also are our myth makers
Whose myths some teachers clutch.
A fellow teaching history
Should know the lessons well.
While old beliefs proved brutal,
The new ones brewed their hell.
One cannot prove that God exists;
Belief needs no proof for this.
One also cannot ever prove
The utopians' dreamed-of bliss.
The newest social myths, one finds,
Are failing left and right,
As they bankrupt nations, trample men,
With the same old bitter fight.
Who's in charge and who shall lead
Remain their arguments.
The newest cherished social myths
Are so often without sense.
That "all political persuasions"
Should "push" against the Right
Shows Mister Teacher's politics
Is all about the fight
By one side's cherished social myths
To wage faux-intellectual war,
For "all political persuasions"
Includes the ones he'd gore.
This is logic and lingo twisted
Into raging, silly rants
As Mister Teacher's history's is left,
His Leftism myth to enhance.
The cultural myths of Left and Right
Are myths, indeed, my friend,
And when one says one side's correct,
The other is a sinner's trend.
Cherished cultural myths are tools
Which make for cultural war,
Because that is what such myths all say
And what the myths are for.
Don't believe proud intellectuals
Who say they know it all,
For after all the haughty pride
Comes ever the well-known fall.
Cherished cultural myths include
The ones just hatched today;
They aren't all from recipes
Past centuries hoorayed.Intellectuals like him hold to myths,
Often not fully aware,
But that is most unkind of me
To note this truth, unfair.
Cherished cultural myths include
All theories and beliefs
Which must be held by faith in things,
As yet unproved motifs
Like creationism in all forms,
From the genesis to that dear Big Bang,
To Darwin's sweet theory as it evolves,
To postmodernism's tart meringue.
Folks believe in many things,
Even when they say they don't.
The ones who say they don't believe?
They can't confess. They won't.
But they believe, for all men do,
In some things they cannot prove.
Rather than confess them as belief,
They'd rather yours disapprove.
Which brings us back to that old game
Of cherished cultural myths
Which are worshipped still today
In the newest carved megaliths.
Cherished cultural myths include
The ones just baked today;
They are not all from recipes
Past centuries hoorayed.
All things in moderation, so they say.
It is, however, an empty word play.
Moderate Nazis were moderate men?
Moderate Maoists are moderate? When?
Moderate Chernobyl ruined a land.
Is moderate Communism a moderate brand?
Moderate synthesis twixt evil and good?
Is that how moderation should be understood?
Moderate Stalinists practiced genocide?
Is that moderation? Think well and decide.
Moderate millions killed as a choice
Gives moderation its deadly, dark voice.
Moderate Klansmen? Moderate hate?
Moderation is a word of moderate weight.
Moderate truth and moderate lies?
Such moderation poisons the wise.
Moderation in all things? How?
Moderate synthesis twixt then and now?
Moderation in all things often fails
For moderation is a logic which ails.
Principles and justice and honor and right,
These are not moderate, they put it to flight.
All things in moderation is pabulum small
When moderation causes man's greatness to fall.
'"Father," said one of the rising generation to his paternal progenitor, "if I should call this cow's tail a leg, how many legs would she have?" "Why five, to be sure." "Why, no, father; would calling it a leg make it one?" Edward Josiah Stears' Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) p. 46.
Just because you call it that
Can never make a dog a cat.
Just because you say it's so
Will never prove that high is low.
Just because you stamp your feet,
Cold won't equal summer's heat.
Just because you speak a name
Does not bolster every claim.
Just because you spout some word
Does not prove you're not absurd.
"Just because" is no reply,
And cannot easily answer, "why?"
Just because a word flies by
Is never proof it's not a lie.
Trust too much in words or men?
It's sure you'll be betrayed again.
"For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that 'scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.' Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all." In "Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images," by Declan McCullagh, cnet news, August 4, 2010
A tiny lie,
Like government,
Comes to spy on us.
It says they don't.
What's more, they won't,
Except they do, and thus
A tiny lie
Is government,
Which lies with callousness.
"The new requirements follow reports by The Times that Bell spent $1.6 million annually on just three city employees, including nearly $800,000 on the city manager. Council members drew pay for serving on multiple city panels, some of which met at the same time or for as little a minute." In the Los Angeles Times Blogs, by Rich Connell, August 3, 2010.
Three little Democrats rang a city's bell,
Which seemed at first to ring quite well;
Joyous was the sound, so rich and full,
To ears plugged deaf by political bull.
Three little Democrats pocketed change
As hope leached out in numbers strange
And debt increased and burdens swelled;
Then the bell rang sour and the people yelled.
Three little Democrats squeezed the bell's town,
With few first noticing, few to frown,
Until their excrement hit the spinning fan,
And then the three? They turned and ran.
Three little Democrats fattened on lean,
Are now are exposed to have been quite mean;
Hardened of heart, though three made rich,
Their greasy gravy train lies in the ditch.
Three little Democrats thrived a while,
On political pork and their common bile.
That's the way that that politics works;
Average Joes heisted by political jerks.
Three little Democrats are the iceberg's tip;
Titanic in scope is the scandals' grip.
Political servants and their parties feed
To teach us that politics is first about greed.
"China is struggling to contain social tensions, and anger over issues ranging from the cost of health care to a rapidly widening rich-poor gap in the past has exploded into violence." Reuters News Service, as reprinted in the New York Times, July 30, 2010
Social tensions are really nothing new,
And nothing seems historically askew,
For gaps between the rich and poor
Have always played the saboteur.
As always tensions rise and rise
Which should not come as some surprise.
Socialists lead themselves to wealth,
By politics' clever social stealth.
They claim things must be as they are
With the poor beneath each commissar.
Storm clouds gather in the yellowed skies.
So shall tensions such as these evermore arise.
Some people will, while some folks won't.
Some folks'll do, and some of us don't.
Some of us can, and some simply can't.
Some simply shall, while others simply shan't.
Others surely should not, but then some should.
Gosh, I wouldn't, while other folks would.
Men are made equal, so I hear said,
But from what I see here, I conclude instead
That some will be free, while some will stay slave,
Based lots on their choices from birth to their grave.
Icarus meets the sun,
And his graceless fall's begun;
Those myth-fired wings blaze brightly,
As the well-cooked goose is done.
Pinions lofted by lofty fools
Soar according to all the rules;
But the rules demand duly their due,
In maelstroms' whirling whirlpools.
Sound and fury cluster
After the boast and bluster;
Reach for stars? Grasp at straws?
From rooster to feather duster.
Wax wings melt and feathers toast,
Though each Icarus flies almost
To where his fable always ends,
Burnt, worn, false, sclerosed.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
Caldrons of slop,
Politics stirred,
Whipped up non-stop,
Worries absurd.
Cooking the news,
The stories, the books,
Lighting each fuse
And goading the kooks.
Solutions proposed
Add to the woes,
Power's disposed
To come to hard blows.
Worry and wanting
And waiting and waste,
Politics grunting,
But never shame faced.
Put them aside,
Far, distant, away.
Labor detoxified,
Through a worries-freed day.
Caldrons might boil,
News might explode.
But simply toil
Down a worry-light road.
Work independent,
Steadfast against lies,
Thought worries might vent
They shake not the wise.
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Never forget.
Never forget that legal
Is not always moral.
Never forget.
Never forget that power
Is not always might.
Never forget.
Never forget that need
Is not always want.
Never forget.
Never forget that government
Is not always good.
Never forget.
Never forget, for forgetting
Begins the cycle again.
Freddie and Fannie and Barney and Frank
"These two entities - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - are not facing any kind of financial crisis." Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, 2003.
Freddie and Fannie and Barney and Frank
Went up to the Hill for their money.
Fannie lost lots as the markets went tank
While Barney thought nothing seemed funny.
Freddie was swimming in ink bleeding red
As Fannie was floundering awful,
Barney hoped folks wouldn't think he had bred
The calamitous mess which was "lawful."
Barney was frank with the folks as he said
He'd never said quite what he'd said,
Lest we might confuse the words he had fed
To the gullible masses he'd bred.
This is not my crisis, and I am no joke,
For somebody else is at fault.
I meant what said, when I simply misspoke;
The fault lies with Randy John Galt.
"...the pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom." In "Arpilei Tohar", p. 27–28, by Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935)
There are horrors in this world;
I thought you should know.
You cannot save each victim
Nor battle all the foe.
You can do but little,
Yet little is enough.
If each would act his part
And call the horrors' bluff,
The world would make another step
As our liberty, our love
And peace advance yet further
Like manna from above.
But when one ear turns deaf
And when one eye stays blind,
And when some voice is stilled,
The world cannot be kind.
The horrors in this world
Shrink from truth and light;
They might win a battle
But are never in the right.
You cannot save each victim
Nor alone defeat the foe,
But you can do a little;
Thereby shall freedom grow.
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. " - Alexis de Tocqueville (French historian and political scientist. 1805-1859)
All men must be equal;
We'll see this made a fact.
If one's too tall, we'll cut him down
With an equalizing act.
If one's too bright, he must look dumb,
If one's too nice, we'll see him glum,
All men shall be equal;
We'll see this made a fact.
If one's too rich, we'll rob from him
As our equalizing act.
If one thinks independently,
We'll penalize such effrontery.
All men will be equal;
We'll see this made a fact.
There are, of course, some exemptions
For our leadership compact.
This might be seem a coup,
But we must be more equal than are you.
All men must be equal;
We'll see this made a fact.
If one complains, we'll mow him down
With our equalizing act.
This was foreseen more than a century ago.
Why reject this truth? What does history show?
Men shouting equality enslaved other men,
Imprisoned, tortured, murdered, and then....
All men must be equal,
Grows louder and grows shrill.
The lesson? The truth?
It's whatever those masters will?
If you stand against this tide, be equal to the lords
For that is the equality, what true liberty affords.
The masterful gasp with fear and rage with lordly fright
To find that true equality is greater than their might.
Let's borrow - a nonsense poem for these modern times
"The most disturbing aspect of West European performance since 1973 has been the staggering rise in unemployment. In 1994-8 the average level was nearly 11% of the labor force. This is higher than the depressed years of the 1930s." Angus Maddison, Emeritus Professor and economist, University of Groningen (1926-2010), in 2001
Let's borrow to aid some borrowers
Who are deeply deep in debt.
Let's borrow as we're the borrowers
And blind to debt-filled threat.
And when we're deep in trouble
And need a helping hand,
We'll look for others to borrow
To aid with what we've planned,
Which is....
To borrow to aid some borrowers
Who are deeply deep in debt.
Round and round the logic goes,
An insanely foolish bet.
This is not economically sensible,
But logically comes to its end
As borrowers fall upon their faces
While looking for some friend
To borrow to aid those borrowers
Who are deeply deep in debt.
Round and round the story goes,
Like a double-down daring bet.
"The Soviet Union was a very complicated state and if we speak honestly, the regime that was built in the Soviet Union... cannot be called anything other than totalitarian," he said. "Unfortunately, this was a regime where elementary rights and freedoms were suppressed." President Dmitry Medvedev, in "Russian president slams USSR," Agence France-Presse, 7 May 2010
Suppress their speech, and press them hard;
Freedom is but a cheap canard.
The collective knows what's right and best;
Dissent must therefore be repressed.
Regimes are central, power fed,
And by their wisdom men are led
To toe the mark and toe it well,
For as they know and as they tell
The total scheme is great and grand,
And not the little people's planned
Life of happiness and sport,
But of some other fearsome sort
Where speech is crime, and punished hard
And freedom's is a dark canard.
Elementary rights, you say?
Not when regimes would have their way.
Totalitarian powers turn and twist,And strike their blows with hammered fist.
Elementary rights cannot live,
When freedom is held so captive.It cannot be called other than it is;
Call it totalitarian? Take the quiz.
"I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back." Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886) – Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Wrong is right;
Say it strong
When you're affright
To say "I'm wrong."
Ignore the wrong?
No! Call it right,
And then erelong
Play out this sleight.
Wrong is right;
It must be so!
Rage on with might
And reigning blow!
Wrong is right,
Long say you thus.
Obscure the light,
But rile and fuss!
Your dernier cri
Awaits one day,
When few might see
You come to say,
"Wrong is wrong,
And that's a fact;
A pretty song,
Fallacious act.
Right was right
All along,
But I was affright
To say "I'm wrong."
A field mouse rummages in the fallen leaves,
As nations totter and mankind grieves.
A leaf buds out towards the warming light,
While interest groups grumble, grouse and fight.
A bee's hopscotch follows, bloom to bloom,
As social disagreements fuss and fume.
A stream carries off the winter's snow,
While anxieties multiply, "studies show."
A cloud passes over in glorious sail,
As men like dogs chase their own tail.
The seasons march in an ordered pace,
While nations puff with a pouting face.
The beetle scurries with his million friends
As doomsdays' seers see worlds' ends.
Rain follows drought, as in millennia passed,
But news just seems to rush so fast.
Galaxies dance in high heaven's vault,
While men argue over some stupid fault.
Alpha to Omega speaks birth to dust;
Yet still so many men with yet still so little trust.
A field mouse burrows and an eagle soars.Little men choose their little wars.
“Is it better to be a satisfied pig or a dissatisfied Socrates?” Anthony Flew (1923-2010)
A satisfied pig is a role I've done well,
But as crusty Socrates I can sometimes excel.
The problem is that I know them both,
And so that's my answer to what Flew quoth.
I'm a thoughtful, porcine, poor cynical chap
As both these roles seem to sort of overlap.
Satisfied with dissatisfaction is my life long claim,
And as long as I live, I suppose I'll be game
To sometimes enact that satisfied pig,
Then wallow philosophically when not too infra dig.
"The concept of common sense is largely rooted in hegemonic dominance." Attributed to anonymous commentator with the moniker, Snipzor, in blog post, 12 April 2010.
You swallowed his bait, his hook, and his sinker.
You might have swallowed his boat; what a thinker.
The way you've used words tells the books that you've read,
But you've proved your words are repeated, instead,
For thinking originally is to put old Gramsci aside,
And consider a moment that to him you're too tied,
As you prove yourself rooted in his hegemonic domain
Which repeats like a mantra, an odd phrase, a refrain,
All to sing of how cleverly read you might seem,
When you assert silly notions from an oft-failed scheme.
The lingo you use says a lot right up front,
And, Snipzor, I see you've some dog in the hunt
Which barks like a Marxist at plain common sense,
With a well-worn phrase as your limp-wrist offence.
To quote from the past with its errors you admire
Just proves yourself stuck in its hegemonic quagmire.
Is common sense so very uncommon to you,
That you'd rather swim in a Gramscian stew?
Cultural hegemony is a game all can play,
But when that happens the Marxists dismay
For when all will fish in the same running stream,
Then Gramscian hegemony is a fisherman's dream.
"I swear, it was really this large," you cry,
Your hands wide apart as if you did spy
The biggest old fish in the deepest of lakes.
But you've caught something else, for heaven sakes!It's smells like old rubbish you've dredged up, I pen,
Which has swallowed you, hook, line and sinker again.
You may well have that
proverbial heart of gold,
But So does the hard-boiled egg,
I am told.
You may feel that love
which folks vow cannot die,
But Your body will do so,
we know, by and by.
You may have that urge
to reach for the stars,
But Stars blaze with fire
and fire leaves scars.
You may risk it all
for the greatest of thrills,
But Sometimes the risks
become bone-breaking spills.
You may be quite certain
that truth's on your side,
But Outcomes unplanned
often hammer such pride.
You may, but you may not;
that's always in play.
But May you? Or not?
Time will tell, straightaway.
"How awful that the artist has become nothing but the after-dinner mint of society." Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
An after-dinner mint is sharp yet delightfully bittersweet,
For it is icing on one's cake when dining is complete.
For those with massive burdens who ache from woe to woe,
The notion of fine dining is not something they might well know.
An after-dinner mint completes a leisurely large repast,
And testifies that society has a cultured and upper caste.
For those who hunger, fraught with fear for what tomorrow brings,
It doesn't mean a tinker's damn when some soprano sings.
An after-dinner mint is made of tangy sugared stuff,
And those who get that far in life haven't got it tough.
For them the average Joe's daily grind is savored from afar,
And if you're having your dinner mint, it's upper crust you are
Compared to those who scrape and toil to earn some daily bread,
And never think about that mint or its prelude, a festive spread
Of foods and drinks that many folks will not have at their table
By simple reason that they can't, nor shan't; they're simply unable
To worry about an after-dinner mint which punctuates a feast,
For those who hunger this very day, of their worries that mint is least.
Is it awful that artists become their society's after-dinner mint?
No! how fortunate an artist's sweet work can be at least a peppermint.
"He who to enjoy Plato's elysium, / leaped into the sea, / Cleombrotus." Milton: Paradise Lost, iii. 471-3.
A better life awaits:
The fool is he who hesitates.
So says the fool philosopher.
All grass is greener there:
And cleaner too is all the air.
So maps the blind cartographer.
Let's rush on towards our ends:
For there awaits our dear, true friends.
So lures alluring Lucifer.
Siren calls sing sweet
Of comings lives far more complete?
The fool is death's conspirator.
Have such fools not seen
Life's joys, not death's? The gulf between?
Fools chose, but then they err.
Are there faster ways to get there?
Less strenuous paths to tread?
Fewer steps to the mountain top?
Easier ways to make bread?
Are there corners to be cut?
Does down and dirty work?
Will some do that which I will not?
Where do easy answers lurk?
Are there cheaper ways to get rich?
Simpler ways to get smart?
Lighter burdens when carrying a load?
Answering requires a start
On the diligent work of seeking
Without asking that corners be cut.
Easy comes hard, but the earning
Of Easy demands we answer what,
And why, and how, and when
Such questions are posed anew;
Then hard work makes Easy easy
And progress is furthered anew.
"There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven." Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Beethoven ripped an emperor's name
from his bright and brilliant third,
For honor due some new emperorwas simply too absurd.
Beethoven erred, believing words,when music sings out truth,
And learned thereby that emperors' wordsare too often a sharpened tooth,
To gnaw at freedom's lofty termsand deal in stealth with chains,
And cry aloud in outrage whensome mere composer complains.
The door to hope Beethoven sawwas made of smoke and mirror,
While real hope is sung aloudwhen to Beethoven we draw nearer.
Musicological logic in rhyme
speaks to such an affair
That thunders in his symphonies
for joyous freedom everywhere.
Checking in is easy, but checking out's a bitch.
It's a stinking pile of lunacy that scrapes each oozing itch.
It has all those silly answers, bright as night and clear as mud,
To consume its hosts like cancers, while spewing forth its flood.
Its party's simple masquerade hides behind its masks,
But with its bills so oft unpaid it runs, and begs and asks,
Who will pay for our mistakes? Not empty-handed us.
It must someone else that turns our stupidity to a plus.
That college of hard knocks lies just across the street,
Its doors gape wide -- no locks, stupidity must vote with its feet.
Attendance is just a matter of time, and time waits, calm, serene.
The classes challenge folks to climb up from their stupid scene.
Graduation is damn hard work, there's no avoiding that.
If stupid thinks that it can shirk, hard knocks will knock it flat.
Checking in was easy, and checking out's a bitch.
It's always a pile of lunacy that just deepens each seeping itch.
