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.

Beauty School Cop-Out

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Education, Media, Poetry, Science, The Life of the Mind

Young men today feel they must be six
feet tall, make six figures and have six inches
downstairs to get with any basic binches
whose blonde ambitions won’t put up with dicks
or dudes too small and weak to make the Knicks:
picky as cats and flighty as flocks of finches,
they will eschew the sexual-nuptial cinches
of poor short men with decent politics,
a loving nature, kindness, murderous rage
that they were once passed over for the prom,
a perfectly normal love of firearms,
a set of calipers with which to gauge
which race should rule the rest, a wonderful mom
who’s reassured it’s no call for alarm.

Snoozin’ Sontag

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, The Life of the Mind

I have determined that generation Z
doesn’t believe in criticism of any kind;
they haven’t the discipline or habit of mind;
their brains are poisoned by too much irony.
None of the foregoing applies, of course, to me.
I only read text that’s found between the lines
and ferment images as grands crus wines
derive from simple grapes. They flee from me,
these stupid kids, these motherfucking geeks;
they won’t pull up their pants; they won’t improve;
they do not say their daily affirmations;
O Muse! in whose once mighty song one seeks
interpretations enough to fill a Louvre
with the prized wall texts of all the modern nations!

Oh, Yay!

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

Amid the attacks on the 2023
SCOTUS term I started reading the
significant decisions, and: I liked them, duh.
It’s true they don’t pertain at all to me:
I haven’t got a womb, and I am free
from past discrimination’s algebra
of sundown’s trade for safety, inshallah;
I am not married, but could always be.
Hysterics is the art of wanting more
than past tradition binds to boundaries now
so well-won, worn, and granted they are no
more needed: what present-sounding horror
can cakeless fags, and Blacks, and pregnant sows
claim that’s worse than my discomfort, bro?

Minecraft Kampf

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Education, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, The Life of the Mind, Things that Actually Happen, War and Politics

Whenever I’m on a career advice panel
for young conservatives, I tell them to
avoid, if possible, the rootless Jew;
and jokes that use the N-word more than two
dozen times; extolling Hitler’s blue-
eyed soldiers for the zillion Slavs they slew;
that rib-born woman is God’s after-chew;
or Atomwaffen’s Twitch your favorite channel.
O, son-born sires of sons of Edmund Burke!
Thou must in this needs be but more discreet:
do not DM your friends what you believe—
that rape is good, or Hungary over Turk,
that Christina Pushaw ought to show more feet.
The left’s perversions, you cannot conceive!

Platyrhynchus

Culture, Education, Poetry, Religion, Science, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

Congress must join the AI revolution,
feed every thought it has into a box
that talks the way a congresscreature talks:
mirabile binomial distribution,
concatenating prior elocution:
a talking ducklike ape of real ducks’ walks
that you, recumbent turtles, see as flocks
of fowl in flight instead of consecution.
The ducks themselves are flying overhead.
Their unsemantic calls inure to no
rack of sweating servers; parliaments
of mallards lived, flew, swam, and bred
themselves anew—no need to beg and grow
backwards out of dire senescence.

Fishers of Men

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Justice, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.
–Justice Samuel Alito

And I was asked whether I would like to fly
there in a seat that, as far as I
am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.
O! Pale Alaskan sky! O! noctivagant
permafrosted critics of the fourth estate
who would tear down the stars to punish great,
deserving men: dear honest, worthy friend
I barely know—Temerity! to send
to me, mere umpire, damned and stinking sulphurous
lists of did I this? or did I that?—
What man, born under Christ’s blood-borne domain,
his rod in hand, a Peter, under fulgurous
flashing sky, would let some man-shaped rat
inquire about pecuniary gain?