Decency, Modesty, Integrity, Even-handedness, and Excellence

for Merrick Garland, nominee to the Supreme Court

As a boy he made it through one Cub Scout meeting.
All the other kids had names like Derrick,
Toby, James; their dads had names like Merrick,
Russel, Palmer. Jewy Jacob’s fleeting
and failed efforts at befriending, then competing
with these flaxen youth? Loss. At best, a pyrrhic
win: to later tell real friends satiric
versions in which he quits; he’s not retreating
into buck-toothed shyness. Years after, tall
now, orthondtized, fit, and proudly queer,
still he feels a twinge when some vampiric
preppy is proposed as someone all
right-thinking people must support, mere
acceptability as panegyric.

Baron Scalia

Culture, Justice, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

Tony always believed in a certain sort
of intercessory prayer; ironically
each sainted martyr was a pharisee;
the letter was the spirit, he’d retort,
to the grace-besotted pleaders at his court;
was it wit? he was as chronically
mean as a country-club drunk, comically
self-indulgent as he’d wink and snort
that José, the barman, was a fag; he doesn’t
mean to be mean, his foursome buddies say;
that’s just Tony! He’d give you the shirt off his back,
well, anyway, he helped my kid out; he wasn’t
a ballbreaker; he made the problem go away;
good to his friends until his heart attack.

A Parliament of Fowls

Culture, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Things that Actually Happen, Uncategorized

So sore, ywis, that whan I on him thinke,
Nat woot I wel wher that I flete or sinke.

During the Middle Ages, people thought
that Valentine’s, or thereabouts, would mark
the date when birds paired off, each lark to lark,
each life-pair-bonded waterfowl not
quite sure their spouse would like the card they’ve bought;
should they’ve considered jewelery? trips? The spark
of a single season’s mating faded to the dark
mornings in winter; they woke together, fought
for the first shower and who would walk the dog,
who would make the bed and do the dishes
from the dinner that they’d thrown the night before,
while all the years became a catalog
of various compromises; yet one wishes
for this forever. The swans are never bored.

In Your Own Clever Way

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Poetry, Things that Actually Happen, Uncategorized, War and Politics

1) You in your own voice describe them as “muscular”

–Philippe Reines to Marc Ambinder

There’s nothing new here. We have known it all
since we grew out of our college commitments;
got our WaPo gigs; became assistants
to undersecretaries; bought our Falls
Church houses; unsolicited, got called
by Blitzer’s harried booker when a different
call-in pundit’s call was dropped. This persistent
shock that gambling’s going on recalls
that scene, you know the one, that quote I can’t
quite place my finger on; but why is it wrong
to give a little courtesy to those
on whom one’s access is dependent, grant
anonymity, bury a strong
lede from time to time, soften one’s prose?

Goldman Sacks Rome

Culture, Economy, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Things that Actually Happen, Uncategorized, War and Politics

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.

-Matthew 4:8

That’s what they offered.

-Hillary Clinton

The Spirit brought her out, and the devil said
some of these rider reqs are quite obscene:
a private jet and caviar in the green
room? We usually do business class instead;
a good hotel, of course, and comfy bed,
but a whole floor and a fleet of limousines?
eunuch attendants and a host of seraphim?
payment in blood? the final triumph of the dead?
She shrugged. Look, Satan, one accrues,
when one is such an avatar of ex-
cellence and obviously deservèd fame,
some costs and expectations; retinues
aren’t cheap these days; they require sex,
feeding, jobs, and booze to treat the shame.

Du mußt dein Leben ändern

Culture, Media, Poetry, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

“Very strong, powerful men. Young.”

-Donald Trump

Strong, powerful: men. Young. They come
bright-eyed and desiring all we’ve built
on the Manhattan bedrock and Mississippi silt,
long after our dead, gorgeous youth had run
off the Indians, French, buffalo; won
the West; their beautiful hands grasped the hilt
of the ploughshare-sword. Less masculine men, guilt-
wracked, longing for that smooth flesh, dumb
to their inarticulate desire to be near
this youth would open up the castle to
these hordes of lovely angels; but I, a man
old enough to be beyond such queer,
unusual wants, know better; I only rue
my lost marble, now an expensive tan.

Mourning Joe

Culture, Media, Poetry, Uncategorized, War and Politics

Hey Iran, you have exactly 300 days left to push a US president around. Enjoy it while you can. After that, there will be hell to pay.

–Joe Scarborough

He’s never thought
of himself as anything but a vessel for
the true sensibilities of the rich and poor
alike; he’s not

one to worry
about the particulars; let the news-
papers fret like little priests; in the pews
the people—sorry,

the real people:
they value simple common sense above
the effetely weak-kneed truth of things; they love
strength, hate evil.

So what if we began
the war, transgressed a border, armed both sides
against each other? The principle that guides
him: a man

must be a lion:
he wakes and knows exactly what he wants
for breakfast. “Consuela, two croissants!”
She’s Uruguayan,

maybe, legal
though, he’s almost sure. His car and driver
take him straight to the station. A survivor,
like an eagle

who’s come back,
no thanks, whatever you’ve heard, to regulation,
from a brush with what the dweebs would call extinction:
attack, attack—

he learned it on the last
if unopposed, campaign: never concede
a point—that’s what it really means to lead:
no brake; all gas.

For the Rest, Trump

Conspiracy and the Occult, Economy, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Uncategorized, War and Politics

Though in the wild he is not a Muss-
olini, or not quite, he has a dear-
ly bought and bald-headed public fear
that the old order’s order has shaken loose,
the locomotive stalled, the red caboose
has rolled off backward, feckless, foreign, queer;
the goggling passengers try to smile, sneer:
the question of ticket class is too abstruse,
and yet they have been left behind; they are
getting drunk and telling the waiter that
they’re going to have him fired, but their hist-
rionics never leave the dining car.
The bosses don’t care anyway. Back at
the station they quibble over who’s a fascist.

Made Flesh

Culture, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, War and Politics

“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

-Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, M.D., P.C

We are all flesh: we live; we die. The seasons
slip through our notice. My God, it’s Christmas! We
have only just remembered to trash the tree
from last year. Of all the brief reasons
to be glad, despite the body’s daily treasons—
its aching mornings and sniffling nights—they flee,
my thoughts, first, to this: that we are free
of immortality, which makes heathens
of the divine principalities, for they
can neither aspire nor want nor hope nor change;
they can’t make their fortune or lose weight,
and nothing escapes their notice: a single day
is a century. Their lives are intolerably strange.
They do not really live. Instead, they hate.

Paris, ailleurs

Justice, Poetry, Religion, War and Politics

Abundant peace from heaven, and life, for all
of us; but if not this, O God, if You
are real then grant us less, and if not, do
it anyway: that we will not fall
for the same false lessons as before; we will call
our mothers and email our friends; we’ll renew
our marriage vows and sex lives. We try too
hard to be more than simply good and stall
in our moral progress every time we think
we must defeat evil with will instead
of opening our doors and being kind, letting
our neighbors know our names, having a drink
with our estranged brothers, giving the dead
our Kaddish; those who killed them our forgetting.