Bullet doux

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia, engraving, 1514

Disoriented, brain-fogged, down at the mouth,

I consulted Dr. Despair, my longtime quack,

who swiftly put a finger on the case,

an acute autoimmune reaction to Western Civ.

Aside from aspects of the global South,

there’s not much left that I can hack or face

—I'm allergic, above all, to all talk of “race.”

“No worries!” grinned the furibund toubib,*

prodding me amiably under my missing rib.

“Never fear—you'll not for very long suvive!”

*French slang for “doctor,” from Arabic ṭabīb.

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Dishonest Dreams

They who in folly or mere greed

Enslaved religion, markets, laws,

Borrow our language now and bid

Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.

It is the logic of our times,

No subject for immortal verse –

That we who lived by honest dreams

Defend the bad against the worse.

—C. Day-Lewis, "Where Are the War Poets?" (1943)

What might I add to this at best

—for ’43, that spiteful year,

At least its logic yet possessed,

To guard against unwilling fear?

Dissimulating whence from hence

In crucifying common sense,

We take and cannot spare a fence:

Our dreaming knows no recompense.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Famous Last Words: The Democratic Candidate

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

—Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” (1835)

They left them there—but never called them, early or late, upon the morn;

for them no trumpet-sounding summoned,

who’d slickly offered to conform.

They could have spun spondaic meter,

but lacked the needed scanning time,

and, finally, could not be bothered,

as long as things could kinda rhyme.

’T was the world, the funny old one they had cherished in their youth,

long, long ago—before they learned the poxy truth:

You can’t win if short of money—a stash of cash is present proof!

The fix is in! It's senseless holding your own stupid self aloof!

Tuesday, April 8, 2025