Several years ago some guy named Pinker
wrote a book, which said that human kind
has now become less violent, more refined.
I pictured him composed like Rodin’s Thinker,
but sitting on the can leaving a stinker.
Here’s the triumph of the counterintuitive mind:
to pitch the fruit of knowledge, eat the rind;
fish proud to have caught that hook and line and sinker.
Was last year the worst that’s ever been?
I doubt it. What’s a good year? What is bad?
History has no progression. It
only accumulates, and no one wins;
to think it otherwise is to be mad.
Care less. Do nothing. Fuck it, man. And quit.
Jacob Bacharach 
yeah, let’s get a lane
The rhyme scheme, like the universe, appears to be the victim of entropy, but otherwise, or therefore, the poem is excellent.
A rhyme *scheme*? This is a blue-ribbon rhyme *plan*.
“History has no progression. It only accumulates and no one wins; to think otherwise is to be mad.” Well, there are victories but they’re very transient, and history devolves into rather than resolve through their internal contradictions. Outside of that quibble, if it’s even that, the usual brilliance I admire from the Artist formerly known as the guy plagiarizing Immanuel Kant.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rodin+toilet&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=801&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=hm6lVK3IKtD1oATyrIHIAw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ
the words, “wins”, and, “wince,” (to say the least) seem to be quite intimately connected.
First of all the sonnet is excellent; you know your Petrarch. Second of all, now I will always think of “stinker” when I think of Pinker and I can perhaps someday go back to eating burritos. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201412/finding-wisdom-and-optimism-in-the-most-unlikely-places
First of all, thanks. Second of all, you’ll love this, if you’ve not read it: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/01/the-precious-steven-pinker