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?

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.

Labor Rites

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Science, Uncategorized, War and Politics

Every job will be automated until four remain:
lawyer, farmer, dentist, soda jerk;
whaleman, scrivener, and grocery clerk;
rabbi, car mechanic, David Blaine;
professional impersonator of Mark Twain.
The rest will be done by one Mechanical Turk
with an indefatigable appetite for work;
its million metal arms will never strain;
its million pinprick eyes will never droop;
of course, it’s operated by an actual man
from a windowless room in drowning Bangladesh;
he gets one thirty second break to poop
and eat his lunch before the beautiful tan
attack dogs are released to tear his flesh.

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.

Horse Feathers

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

Don’t ever start an email to your professor
with “Hi [first name].” He will take offense.
Unlike the world at large, his cloistered sense
of feudal order ranks mankind from lesser
beings to lords. Herrdoktor? Priest-confessor.
His ego’s delicate as it’s immense;
informal greetings puncture his pretense
of superior boredom. Unwashed rabble’s the oppressor:
yawping Christian names and slapping backs;
noticing the due dates on assignments don’t
line up with this week’s readings; asking for
extra office hours and a little slack
because their Starbuck’s supervisor won’t
let them swap shifts, and they’re very poor.

Byzantium

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Poetry, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

geriatric

Geriatric millennials born
between 1980 and 1985
are best positioned to lead teams that will thrive
in the hybrid workplace; they will never mourn
the lost kitchenette, or get mad at the porn
their OnlyFans teammates left on the shared drive
while fooling eye-movement monitors during a live
webinar; well-trained in irony and scorn,
they’ll do their boomer bosses’ bidding, but
half-heartedly; they’re busy making .gifs,
polluting the Slack with fake nostalgia for
the nineties, pretending they don’t mind the gut
they’ve got from crafty IPAs and spliffs,
barely forty at death’s beatific door

The Dude A-Biden

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soul

In the battle for the soul of America, democracy
prevailed. It hauled its agèd ass across the line
winking and grinning the entire goddamn time
like a dying parent, who, despite your plea,
has spent his retirement on the lottery,
commemorative coins, fake vintage wine;
still mean as hell and obsessed with rising crime;
mad at taxes he doesn’t pay and free
goodies he thinks that someone else has got;
terrified of change and terrified
that nothing’s gonna change except for worse:
here’s what his democratic soul is not:
in love, nor young at heart, nor quite alive.
Each waning angry moment is a curse.

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.