My Green-Eyed Dagh

As a child, growing up just 11 miles north of Boston, when I dressed for early morning mass on St Patrick’s Day, my Polish-speaking mother would straighten a flimsy little wire & thread shamrock on my lapel as I went off. As I got older, I liked wearing it less, finally protesting “Look, my eyes are green, aren’t they enough?” (Hers were green, too, but she was wholly Polish.) But no exemptions from overt Irishness were to be had in 'greater' Boston. My father, born in Glasgow, was (perhaps) partly Irish, his father being named Francis and an R.C. but I never pled to being Boston-Irish & won’t start now on the West Coast; San Francisco does Paddy-up, nowhere equal to Boston, New York or Chicago, with their large Irish-American communities. Here's an infra-NYC joke: "What's 5 miles long & has an asshole at both ends?" (The St. Paddy's Day parade!)

Focus: Money

The economy grinds to a halt;
the halt grinds a powder;
the powder grinds a lens;
the lens focuses on money;
whose? Even yours, now.

(13 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)

RUSHing

RUSH sniffs the tips of his manicured fingers, stealthily reinserting them deep into the well of his inspiration, craving a bubbly high-colonic to purify his thinking: “My load’s much greater than the masses know,” he whispers, afraid it might be heard beyond the neo-hard castle of EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) where {{reson@nce}} validates all. Caught by a wide-angle lens, expanding full-width in fascistic black, faking hipoidal pump-action, he is pitifully, transparently condemned 2B a radiobe@st.

Countdown

"How will you explain Daylight Savings Time to your cat?" asks Ivo, saying Congress may pass a law that it only apples to states with names of more than 2-syllables. I explain: "Reggie's time-agnostic. He can really only distinguish analog day from analog night."

Last night, packed into NASA Ames Immersion Center (Mt.View), Ivo & I watched the Kepler liftoff at Canaveral, surrounded by scientific graybeards & multi-ethnic families with teenagers, witnesses to galactic history...beside me, Dr. Ginny Zeitman (NASA), joined the hand-clapping countdown as I sat on my hands...

CHENEY raves alone

CHENEY raves alone
on the porcelain throne,
damning Obama’s blood
as lacking real manhood:

“Real men can disagree
about what's tortury,
but only communists
cancel war-contracts!”

CHENEY will retire
to Dubai to the heart
of Haliburton corporat,
protected by Black-
water Men in Black.

“I am who I was & am;
I am the realer Man!”
CHENEY boasts alone.


(05 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)v5

People no longer

People no longer
ask me about Carolin
as tho they’ve just heard she’d died.

Those who need to know, now know;
the rest of the world will have to be told
in every way I am capable of:

On You Tube: Chef Carolin
crafts a Crème Marie Louise
as I sweatily sous chef her,
for as long as You Tube exists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkDKecx2ZKI

Material irony: Carolin
really didn’t like chocolate
& only chose it out of sheer bravada
because chocolate impresses people,
always has & always will.


(06 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)v5

Ri$ing Expectation$

A child bends over to pick up a penny,
an adolescent, a Benjamin,
a banker, a billion, expectations
just about equal: Where’s the next?


(05 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)