Everyday Madness

Ordinary everyday madness, the DOW is up, the DOW is down, investors are wary, investors are jubilant, the recession is over, the recession is just beginning, racism is a relic of the past, racism is embedded in our DNA.

The eagle cries and the raven squawks, a caterpillar must run a gauntlet before it becomes a butterfly, water wears down rock, stupid is as stupid does; Texas Governor Rick Perry has a nice head of hair but before long his Jesus shtick will wear thin. Mitt Romney believes that every dime a corporation earns (steals, siphons, extorts, you decide…) ultimately returns to the people – yeah – Mitt said that on one of his campaign stops. Which people? How much dough does Wal-Mart return to its grunt line employees, the very same ones, mainly women, who are encouraged by Wal-Mart to apply for food stamps and any other government assistance for which they qualify? How slick is that? Are those the people Mitt is talking about? Mitt wants us to think he’s a regular guy, a can of Bud and a ballgame Everyman, but he’s a millionaire like most American politicians and his view is marred by gilded glasses. Mitt thinks the rich deserve everything they have no matter how they got it, just as he believes the poor are responsible for their own fate, their own poverty, their own ills, their own health care, their own college tuition.

In gleaming glass-enclosed Christian churches God wants you, me, every body, to be rich and blessed with a nice head of hair. But many are poor and many are balding, so there is a difference between what God wants and what God delivers. Money on the table, blood in the gutter, Woody Guthrie is trading his guitar for a pistol and Mother Theresa is sharpening a machete. Tempting fate yet again, the armadillo sets off across the two-lane blacktop, just another crapshoot, another turn of the deck, another roll of the dice. Few win, most lose, ageless, timeless, back to the garden and the fall, the primordial swamp, the Big Bang, the meteor shower. Don’t forget, Mr. Bigshot, that you lost your virginity to a 300 pound whore in Tijuana. You’ve come a long way since college: house, luxury car, stock portfolio, purebred dog, trophy wife, young mistress, lovely children and a cholesterol reading below 200. You the man! America has been very, very good to you and the gifts keep coming. Generous tax cuts and free airline miles, the complimentary first class upgrade with champagne and strawberries. Hotel maids earning minimum wage pay more Federal tax than you do. You’re one of the winners.

Ordinary everyday madness, garden variety, as common as bird shit on a statue. A woman in Florida drowns her infant in the bathtub; a man in Texas rapes his daughter because Jesus told him to; ordinary and mad, mad and ordinary, madness from the pulpit, madness from the judge’s bench, madness in the maternity ward and the Governor’s office. Only the graveyards are calm and serene. The captain of the cruise ship has gone AWOL in port and the ship is drifting on the outgoing tide. The passengers are oblivious and the entire crew is below decks, drinking pilfered booze from paper cups and dancing to Lady Gaga.

Summer is almost over.

Poem: The Elusive Lady

My muse is on vacation tonight
Or maybe she’s dancing close
With someone else
She comes and goes
Here today, gone tomorrow
The biggest tease I’ve ever known
I reach for her
My need urgent
The well is almost dry and the words
Refuse to cooperate
I need an idea that will grab me
And hold tight until the demon is exorcised
By words on the page
Come back to me, elusive lady
Play fair for once

Burning

London burns for three nights running
Bottled anger and frustration spills into the streets
Sirens wail, smoke billows, broken glass sparkles
In the firelight
Hopelessness is a powerful thing

Standard & Poor’s passes judgment on Uncle Sam
And the DOW freefalls
Why S&P is given any credibility after the role
It played in the mortgage fiasco of 2008
Is a mystery no one bothers to explain

All eyes focus on traders in Wall Street’s casino
Which way will they lean when the bell rings and
It’s gambling time again?

Sirens wail, smoke billows, broken glass sparkles
In the firelight
Hopelessness is a powerful thing

China – America’s banker -- lectures the US on austerity
The way the US once hectored Mexico, Brazil and Italy
To make “structural adjustments”
And let the market rule
Ironic advice from Communists

The proverbial banana has found a home in our crumbling republic
Land of the indebted and indentured
Students buckle under college loans and a low wage future
Families choose between medicine and food, clothing and gas
The long-term unemployed pray to a God as deaf
And indifferent as the politicians in Washington

Sirens wail, smoke billows, broken glass sparkles
In the firelight
Hopelessness is a powerful thing

Poem: All Guns, No Butter

America is all guns and no butter
Big, bad and broke
But never too broke to spend more money
On guns and bombs than China,
Russia, France, and England -- combined

We’re masters of the remote-controlled drone,
The F-14 and the A-10, the Apache attack helicopter,
And the Tomahawk cruise missile;
Under the banner of freedom and security
We kill “suspected militants” and deny civilian
Casualties

Here at home deliberate neglect is our weapon of choice
Roads and bridges and schools and libraries
Are allowed to go to seed
Another sign of government’s failure and
Incompetence;
The public pond is systematically
Drained
Then handed to profiteers as political
Payback

Captive children of the Market God
We would rather self-destruct than pay taxes
For services the rest of the civilized world
Takes for granted

We’re an empire in name only, a swaggering thug
Living off past glory and hoary myths
Repeated endlessly by a corrupt, gullible
And cowardly media:

“Tax cuts for the rich equal jobs for the poor.”
“The free market will regulate itself.”
“Social Security causes budget deficits.”
“The Taliban is a threat to America.”

While the clock winds down and the sun sets and
Night falls on the American experiment
Imposters and posers, fakes and frauds
Make a mockery of representative democracy
Under the majestic capitol dome
Common ground for the common good
Is trampled beneath the jackboot of ideology

And our more perfect union
Is dying a perfect
Death

The Eloquent Ankle Grabber

The news is full of details about the debt ceiling compromise reached in Congress and my BP is moving into dangerous territory. Breathe, baby, breathe. Most of the reporting in the mainstream media is sloppy, warmed-over BS passed along as truth or wisdom, neither of which can be found in Washington D.C. today. Let’s be clear: this manufactured crisis is a new low point in American politics, an insult, a slur, an epithet against the people. Today the New York Times repeated the fantasy that economic “catastrophe” has been averted, even though the deal was based on extortion from extreme members of the GOP. The Times also stated that no deal might have triggered a new “recession.” Huh? New recession? The only people who think we are not now mired in a recession are the big shots at Goldman Sachs, a few nitwit economists on the payroll of right-wing think tanks, and maybe the hacks President Obama takes advice from.

I have written several times before about Barrack Obama’s weak spine and teeny-weeny testicles, but this man of empty eloquence has outdone himself this time. To put it in blunt playground terms: Barrack Obama is a pussy. In the face of extortion, he caved; in the face of overheated rhetoric, he capitulated; in the face of a terrible plan that will have dire consequences for the country, he channeled Jimmy Carter and at the same time moved right of Richard Nixon. How the fuck he managed this bizarre contortion is beyond me, but he did. The cause of the deficit is inextricably linked to Republican policies of tax cuts for the rich, a stupid, endless global war on Muslim terrorists, and the financial implosion orchestrated by Wall Street bankers and speculators. Instead of mounting a ferocious counter-argument from the biggest bully pulpit on the planet, Obama meekly bends over, grabs his ankles and begs for more of the same: “OK, boys, give it to me harder this time. Ram it up there. Harder. Faster. Make it hurt so good.” My grandmother once told me that Richard Nixon had the instincts of a Mafia don; as much as I despised Tricky Dick, I have to admit that he would never willingly bend over and take it up the ass.

Obama is John Boehner’s bitch. Obama allows congressional Republicans to line up and piss in his face. This isn’t the hope and change I voted for in 2008. Obama has moved far beyond being a mere disappointment; he’s now a joke and a disgrace. Candidate Obama bears no resemblance to the serial coward and habitual capitulator that occupies the White House. Might as well elect Sarah “Shit-for-Brains” Palin or Michelle “Homosexuality-is-a-Sin” Bachmann in 2012 and crash the republic all at once rather than bit by bit. Watching Boehner and Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell bitch slap Obama whenever they wish is painful. Why won’t the man stand up and fight? Does he really believe that there’s nothing he can do because the GOP controls one house of Congress – or is he, at bottom, a fellow Kool-Aid addict who believes that Republican prescriptions for the economy will help put people back to work?

Now that the burning question of the summer – will Harry Potter finally vanquish Lord Valdamort, save Hogwart’s and hook up with Ginny Weasley – has been answered, we need to find out who stole Obama’s soul and how we can get it back.