Endymion

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Education, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, Sports, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

“DeSantis drops out of Presidential race
and endorses Trump.” No less surprise has ever
flowed from failed ambition; it was never
gonna happen, yet God’s good grace
brought us, witnesses, to this time and place
to see this runted, rutting, not-so-clever
Archimedes: world to move, no lever
though—and spot to stand? Yes: third place.
A scorned son will make an idol of the dad
who lured him to the sport he couldn’t play
and coached the team to make him ride the pine:
loving to hate himself and going mad
to please the man who calls him short, and gay,
and weak: loss is a howl, but defeat? A whine.

Key? Mo’ Therapy.

Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

We have to deal with the cancer that is mental
health. Good thoughts are gumming up the works,
and happiness immiserates both saints and jerks
who each require more than incidental
misery: a boo-boo healed, a gentle
word from mother, love, a job with perks—
they rob from noble nature; they’re the Turks
at our Vienna: foreign, oriental,
bearing a better-ordered civilization
with running water, daily baths, and prayer
and poetry: what worth are we if all
that we expect from life in this great nation
is to be clothed and fed without a fair
good chance of dying in a shooting in a mall?

Meine kleine Kampfmusik

Culture, Economy, Education, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, Science, The Life of the Mind

“I would love to see, you know, a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins…Our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy.“
–Jeff Bezos

If we had a trillion humans, we would have
at any given time a thousand Mozarts
and a thousand Einsteins—but a thousand Hitlers too:
from each ocean-edging glacier calves
ship-sinking icebergs; mankind is crime and art,
both Model T and Ford who hates the Jew;
our solar system would be full of life,
Europa choked with algae; Mars on fire
like Pittsburgh riverfronts in ’53;
a zillion virgins for each fed-up AI wife
whose godlike energy demands require
the output of the sun itself, and we
last earth-born, dying-earthbound humans forced
to this end by rich men’s pattern baldness, and divorce.

d/dx(Q)

Books and Literature, Economy, Education, Media, Poetry, Science, The Life of the Mind

I’ve told this story before, but in 2008
I applied to be a scooper at an ice cream stand
with a BA from a top-25 school in hand,
a CV on paper of excellent gloss and weight,
a skill for conflating absolute change and rate
that the shift manager did not seem to understand—
his media diet and his clearly poor command
of slope curve derivations. . .—well, as fate
would have it I was one of maybe 50
applicants, sweating from the coolers’ hot
exhaust: a normal joe, a working slob,
although I wore a tie, unlike these shifty
untucked teens—it was an interview, not
some joke, my god. I didn’t get the job.

Kind of Blew

Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

How sad that perceptions so quickly tri-
umph over truth in our decadent culture. This
most woeful outcome breeds small minds that miss
the hives’ swarmed thought for each buzzed bee, the fly
for the ointment: asks not cui bono, only why?—
but it was good for me, side eye, chef’s kiss,
a modern man’s best bet at benefice,
small favor from great fortunes’ wont to buy
their best bets before the betting line
is set—and then, mere parlay, placed across
polls’ standard deviations, law’s whereas
and wherefores, interest rates, and chance, divine
disfavor, foreign intervention, Jews, Hamas,
life’s rhythms, Adolph’s watercolors, jazz.

Angelus Not Us

Books and Literature, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

The blast killing hundreds at a hospital
in Gaza is deeply wrong. I grieve for each
non-actor whose non-action I impeach;
blown up and blasted down, a miracle
of sorts, that it’s occurred without a little
human help at all—no thought nor speech
preceded it; mere happenstance in breach
of all intent or cause: what noncommittal
form of fraught effect could bring into
this universe of action something no
human being has witnessed yet: kaboom!
without a bomb preceding it, and blew
that backwards angel outta here, although
an aide could swear it cried: “Please, read the room!”

Bourbon, Dynasty

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Media, Poetry, The Life of the Mind

If not to the manor born, at least to come
screeching up its drive at middle-age:
considered by your compeers as a kind of sage
for putting into writing something dumb
that the unworthy rich would think a rule of thumb;
one thinks, that though one doesn’t earn a wage
but squawks instead for money from the lecture stage,
invests it with his friends, and takes the proceeds from
an arbitrage of rates and fluctuations
that he is nonetheless not of the sort
who could or ought to call himself a mas-
ter of the universe, ennobled, blessed by nations
and kings: he’d sell himself a little short:
He is, in fact, the upper middle class.

Unetanah Tokef

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Justice, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind

I screwed up. I should not have written
that tweet. I probably should not write
any tweets, but I was soused and smitten

with a half-formed joke: the awkward mitten
of a child-drawn hand; the wan fluorescent light
flattered it, but I should not have written,

although the word’s the sea, and I its Britain
borne imperially sunward, brave and bright
and soused on gin, humble, never self-smitten,

self-ruled and able to admit hard-bitten
lessons such as: if you think you might
tweet aforeflight, you should not have written,

for you’ll land, and scroll, and, panic-stricken,
walk it back, unmarry it, make light:
guys, dear readers, I was drunk and smitten

with one bon mot that hung there like the kitten
in the poster: Oh Lord! I pray to make it right:
the book of life is not yet sealed, though written:
number me among the living, not the smitten.

Bore, The Whale

Culture, Economy, Education, Justice, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind

This meal just cost me $78 at
the Newark Airport. This is why Amer-
icans think the damn economy is terr-
ible: drowned in unused miles, getting fat
on beers and queers and Russian Kompromat—
what wonder that a simple working square
who wants—what?—wife and simple fare:
PB&J, not “beurre jambon,” and that
is why, from hell’s heart and the Centurion Lounge,
I stab; this almost-erev Yom Kippur I break
my social-media fast, forlornly make
the plea: even in New Jersey, one must scrounge
and scrape a scotch while waiting for a status bump
to first-select. This is what got us Trump.

Hella Roma

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind

A new social media trend where women ask
their men how often they think of ancient Rome,
its aqueducts and baths and concrete domes,
its wars and slaves and plays and funeral masks,
amphorae and Mary the Jewess’ flasks,
hillside temples and haunted catacombs,
naval battles and horsey hippodromes,
reveals a gender shocked by simple facts:
their mundane husbands rarely dream of sex;
they contemplate instead cement and lye,
the Tarquins, Carthage, Nero, Christ’s own rood,
Lucretia’s rape to Peter’s pontifex,
triremes, floating bridges, Caesar’s die—
in short, dominae meae, they are dudes.