Wise Men

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

In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong,
and, in the bifurcated politics
of urban genderqueers and rural hicks,
of fetal stem cell bans and legal bongs,
of floury tiktok wives and boys in thongs,
in this American moment: nothing sticks;
the self-destruct device’s timer ticks
toward zero hour, and the nearing thundering song
of risen oceans lapping Appalachian
foothills murmur in our dreams, and wake, and speak:
human failing or God’s grim judgment day?
Reason, duty, kindness? Fickle fashion.
Fairness compels: in equal measure seek
to talk too much with nothing at all to say.

Now More than Ever

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

Men my age are horrifically boring. I don’t
care about cars or home renovations or
sports; prefer the old god behind the forest door,
who dreamt the world that was as real before
your young creator rent the sea from shore,
and lit the sun, made worm and dinosaur,
made fish and pelican, made tree and spore;
what pitiable prayers you late-born menfolk pour!
what once was song is now but retch and snore,
the dying gargle of a maze-mad minotaur
whose quarry fled the coop. Well, I set store
by ancient worlds, and sadder men, who tore
their hearts in two for every friend; therefore,
I can’t connect, by which I mean: I won’t.

And You Shall Love

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

“If you do not drive your neighborhood or region, what form of adult mastery and knowledge are you seeking in its place? If you do not drive your country’s highways and byways, what path do you have to a nonvirtual experience of the America beyond your class and tribe and bubble?” – Ross Douthat

If you do not drive your neighborhood
or region, what form of adult mastery
and knowledge are you seeking in its place?
What dallying god of degenerated pace
shall plaster his defunct phylactery
on your pedestrian brow, and call it good
to bike to CVS? To what worthless
walk in the woods or chittering crowded train
would you avail yourself in prayer to seal
your social order? Yet behind the wheel
of some bland Hyundai running reds on Main
you become yourself a god, mirthless
and grand: infinite; callous; cruel
as a child roused too soon for middle school.

Twilight

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

Kristen Stewart is developing a gay
ghost-hunting reality show with a friend;
a paranormal romp through mortals’ ends,
the pure aesthetics of the soul’s last passageway
to poltergeist from final mortal day,
unclothed but for this season’s bedsheet trend—
now season after season; death transcends
even Paris’ runway protégées
and turns each twist of scarf and knot of belt
but into susurrus of spooky sound,
a cloth moved without breath, a leather snap
that’s searing like a whip on flesh; the felt-
like softness of an apparition’s hellbound
burrowing in your body like a spinal tap.

Bitter Angels

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

“Rationality is uncool,”
he laments; “it isn’t seen as dope, phat, chill,
sick or da bomb”; no attribute of will
is more unlikely to be deemed “to rule”;
it’s like an outcast in some middle school.
You cannot even argue that you cannot kill
in pure percentage terms sufficient mill-
ions of men to match the Earth’s once miniscule
murder rate; Cain’s Abel was one full quarter
of the world, for instance; wouldn’t you rather take
the odds in Auschwitz with those awful chances?
It’s fall. Across each campus days grow shorter;
undergrads still kiss and fuck and fake
enthusiasm for science’s romances.

Chicxulub

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Justice, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, Science, The Life of the Mind, Things that Actually Happen, Uncategorized, War and Politics

When exactly I should retire, or will
retire has many complex parts to it:
a chronometric set of gears that fit
through genius acts of unimaginable skill
and ratios whose maddening math would fill
vast desert racks of servers cooled and lit
by carbon burned by who came after it.
What tyrant lizard left by being ill,
or turned from prey to watch a meteor
descending through the North-American sky?
The seas may boil; the air itself may burn;
the liquefying stone may crack and roar.
A life’s lived best not knowing it will die,
instinct alone, and never paused to learn.

High Genes

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Education, Media, Poetry, Religion, Science, Uncategorized

“More and more I find bathing to be less necessary.” -Jake Gyllenhaal

More and more I find bathing to be less
necessary; and I also think that there’s
a whole unbathèd world of finer hairs
and better skin, oil-anointed and blessed
like holy Israelites, or lettuce dressed
in vinaigrette as tart as winter air.
Don’t let the water catch you in his snare,
drowned Neptunian depths of scrubs and soaps,
skin pricked and puckered as a pickled bean,
good humors leeched and sunk like sand and grit.
God would not design us thus, one hopes:
his loving procreative beings are clean,
black nails or not, green knees, or greasy tits.

Sefer Yetzirah

Books and Literature, Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Education, Media, Poetry, Religion, Science, The Life of the Mind, Things that Actually Happen, War and Politics

Capture

An expert I spoke with highly recommends
that America needs to appoint a reality czar:
no more lying to your buds at the corner bar;
the rack for all of your weirdo Facebook friends.
Plenipotentiary in all his means and ends,
affixed to Christlike truth like the wise men’s star,
remit of heights and depths, the near and far
corners of creation, where time or being bends
beyond the expanding cone of present light,
the baryonic effluence of matter, and the dark
deep gravities of truths unseen, unfelt,
perfectly wise and gifted with prescient sight,
Osiris, God, ayin sof, and holy ark,
proclaim on high what he who smelt it dealt.

Memento Satori

Conspiracy and the Occult, Culture, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

“Donald Trump is alive and well,” I tweet:
his consciousness ensouled, his self intact;
his electric embodied being able to act
through his body’s marvelous machine: to eat,
to see, to breath, to speak. His heart? To beat.
His appetites are those a dead man lacks:
McDonald’s lunch, a lower income tax:
Hereby commend to you, O Lord, through the fleet
swing of the autumn sun across the sky,
quadrennial November’s bare-branched swoon,
this declaration: we have claimed a state
of still existing, having not had to die,
nor disappear, nor leave, nor settle soon
for this early ending coming yet too late.

Chasing the Clouds Away

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

Shapiro

Are the muppets biased to the left? Of course. That was
the point of Sesame Street, as I discuss:
provocateurs like Snuffleupagus
preach Maoist leveling while Ernie does
his LGBTQI-best to shove
both his and dear Bert’s sinful “love is love”
anti-Judeo-Christian cant at us,
telling mere children, “Mom and Dad are sus.”
Hashem forfend! Miss Piggy may be trans,
sharing Kermit’s bathroom and his bed;
Statler and Waldorf swooned for Hamilton;
Big Bird’s Khmer cabal now favors bans
on “racist” speech; The Count is dead
by firing squad for saying one is one.