Sunday, December 31, 2006

Beasts of My Land

(after the style of George Orwell's "Beasts of England")

Praise the Lord and pass the bullet
Praise the Prophet; pass the rope
Crack the neck, then stretch and pull it
Praise religion; bury hope

Orwell said, "Revenge is Sour"
Not for those who tap the cask
Buy the bottles by the hour
Take a swig and pass the flask

Eye of newt and ear of frogskin
Dig a pit then set the stake
Chain the bear then throw the dogs in
Good Queen Bess will join the wake

Shoot the traitor; drown some witches
Burn the heretic real slow
Scratch the caveman where he itches
Basking in the good-feel glow

In the tavern, hold communion
Bread and wine a frenzied flood
Want to conquer? Spread disunion
Eat His flesh and drink His blood

"Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,"
Beasts of U.S.A. so fair,
Beast of Baghdad, Shiite firebrand:
Praise Moqtada, Bush, and Blair

Now without Saddam, who'll be next?
What excuse will you use now?
What transparent ruse or pretext
Will you make your sacred cow?

First tilt this way, then lean rightward
Back and forth, play both sides now
Throw them all in Bedlam's fright ward
They don't matter, anyhow

Place your sons upon the altar
Also daughters, friends, and wives
Parents, too -- and never falter
Praise your GAWD who feeds on lives

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2007

Friday, December 29, 2006

Moby Dork

(From the Terza Rima epic-in-progress: "The Triumph of Strife")

He fell asleep on watch and as he dozed
Some clever men decided to exploit
The glaring lapses that his naps exposed

So with some real panache and plans adroit
Some Saudis and their friends secured four planes
And flew them not to L.A. or Detroit

But into three big buildings’ window panes
Which brought collapse and loss of life extreme
A fact that never somehow quite explains

The subsequent developmental theme
Of mass destructive weaponry and such
That no one had designed into their scheme

Because they didn’t need so very much
Except for Dubya who required a crutch

You see, the fifteen Saudis dead and burned
Had shown with only some assistance sought
That sharpened stationary tools once turned

To service with some airplane tickets bought
Could neutralize a vast corrupt machine
Spread all around the globe with little thought

To what it could accomplish on the scene
When really needed for the home’s defense:
An absence and a negligence obscene

Presided over by a head so dense
That no amount of education known
Could teach to it the rudiments of sense

Thus only propaganda overblown
Could hope to mask the crime he would disown

Revealed as one unsuited to his job
Young Dubya had to make a choice and fast
For in his lap the fates would never lob

Another chance like this which couldn’t last
And so he hit upon a tried technique:
Into the future he’d project the past

Which might assuage the voters and their pique
By scaring them with what they’d just been through
As if it waited up ahead a week

And not already what the people knew
As part of history where them he’d failed
And for which failure he deserved the screw

A prospect at which Dubya truly quailed:
The only cure for that from which he ailed

He looked up in the sky and saw some dots
In whose unsteady twinkling he perceived
Disloyalty in cosmic symbol plots

Against the sun and moon which he believed
Existed but to mark his day and night
And so he sought to have the stars relieved

As mutineers against his Captain Blight
Who sailed the vessel Pipsqueak to its loss
For no good reason; simply out of spite


To demonstrate himself at last a boss
And not some tax deduction for dad’s friends
Polaris posing as the Southern Cross

He changes with no season till it ends:
A policy that pays no dividends

Traversing over often-covered ground
He names the starting-line anew then claims
That he has seen a path to the profound

A way to realize ambition’s aims:
A war to have itself so he can strut
Upon a stage too small for any names

That fifteen minutes doesn’t make a glut
Exhausting his one act, he plays a role
That ends in nothing flat and nothing but

A petty misdemeanor on parole
Which for a jaded audience of peers
Who benefit from all the loot he stole

Receives what he expects: some scripted cheers
While worthless-ticket holders offer jeers

The prefix “mono-“ hardly summarized
The artless mania that he portrayed
The image of “commander” that he prized

The pious son who knelt at night and prayed
To “higher” father-figures overhead
Who to his raving scant attention paid;

In whom a bored indifference he bred
Since he by habit good advice ignored
Not even Santa readying his sled

Could find a reindeer who could be implored
To make its mark and join a voyage damned
Because no navigator served aboard;

Because the crew with landlubbers was crammed
Then shut, recruitment’s door abruptly slammed

And so a ship of fools put out to sea
Equipped with rigging fit to sail a tub
A bathroom Bounty doomed to travesty

As Mr. Christian chose his toes to stub
Parading on the poop deck with no boots
His mission he proceeded soon to flub

Despite the sycophants in hired cahoots
Who swore to varnish each and every gaffe;
Who overlooked the raspberries and hoots

From those who clearly saw and had to laugh
As such pretentious Keystone Cops as these
Proposed themselves the ship of state to staff

To cruise the fires of Hell till they should freeze;
To reach the Moon and bring back its green cheese

Bullwinkle Moose would say, “This time for sure!”
And then would pull no rabbit from his hat
Before which act the squirrel would demur

By saying: “That trick never works!” and that
Persisting in such vain attempts to trick
Would only throw into the fire more fat

Which hardly made the Moose look deftly slick
Just only more inclined to postulate
That with another hat good luck might pick

A bunny, not the awful ungulate
Whose sharp hooves stomp magicians blue and black
Who heed not their own words: “Now concentrate ...”

As one more “new” “way” “forward” in Iraq
“Advances” us just two more old steps back

So sailed around in circles this lost raft
Propelled by swirls and eddies too severe
To navigate in such a ruined craft

That once had seemed impervious to fear
Bravado substituting for a chart
Now rudderless, off course, he can’t see clear

To bravely act a poorly written part
Except to brazenly puff out his chest
And claim “It’s not a science, but an art”

He fails in fact but says he did his best
Which in some private schools means “never mind”
And somehow translates to: “I passed the test”


For crony kids ordained to always find
Reward for nothing offered up in kind

This tale of Moby Dork has yet no end
For he who sought to wreak his righteous wrath
Upon a fleeing fish now cannot send

To know who placed the buoy into his path;
To tinkle, not to toll, him on his way
For one who simply could not do the math

No course-correcting calculations lay
Around for easy pickings floating by
Engulfed in fog, he saw no brighter day

But heard a chuckling ominously nigh
Not knowing he had reached his Brobdingnag
Where he, the tiny Lilliputian fly,

Would find the gods as wanton boys a drag
Who for their sport had cast him in their gag

For soon the erring boy would know the tune
Of Ahab’s lyrics written small and slim
For simple minds like his, a single rune

Compressed and summarized for such as him
Whose single concept, “war,” left only room
To entertain a prudish moral prim

Although he liked to say he felt no gloom
And slept without a nightlight, sound and well
Each day advanced him closer to his doom

As if bewitched by some enchanter’s spell
He bled his nation’s army thin and pale
While he devised more lies to try and sell

He bleached the white itself out of the whale
Which left transparency to tell his tale


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Flowers for Fallujah

(Something from the past two years that seems to have held up fairly well as things have only gotten worse in American-occupied Iraq.)

"Flowers for Fallujah"

As I've said in the past and keep saying
I have sat through this movie before.
Why, I even was cast as an extra
Before being shown the door.

And I've tried to remember those lessons
That I purchased with so much pain
And not see America do once more
What I now see it doing again.

As the siege of a city begins to take shape
And the killing in earnest begins
I remember those times when the darkness closed `round
And men started repenting their sins.

Now a President's dove in and broken his neck
Jumping head first into a dry pool
And with horrified onlookers gazing in dread
He continues to snarl, spit, and drool.

"I will never get run out of town," he exclaims
Having entered at no one's request.
And having been asked once politely to leave
He behaves like an ill-tempered guest.

"Since I broke it, I own it," he says of Iraq.
But Iraq's not some gift he can give.
It's a country with people who like to pretend
That they know best how they want to live.

See, our President thinks like a pottery shill
And supposes that broken means owned.
But the people he's broken don't like it that much
And suggest that he just go get stoned.

Like those freeloading days back in college
When cheering meant parties and dope.
And nothing but brain cells got wasted and killed
And a people could still keep their hope.

"But I will not feel doubt," he exclaims to himself
And his mirror reflects his resolve.
"I will stand firm," he says as his knees start to quake
And his "courage" begins to dissolve.

See, he'll never admit that he made a mistake
And change policy once it's gone bad.
He would rather be wrong and keep talking with "GAWD"
Than be right and go talk to his dad.


`Cause his dad ain't got strength like "the Lord," don't you know
And he only consults with the best
Like those voices at night that advise him to dream
And leave governing up to the rest.

And George Tenet told Dubya about the "slam dunk"
Which in basketball terms means "a cinch."
Like whenever the FBI measures a mile
And the CIA calls it an inch.

So those weapons we heard of that meant us such harm
Didn't really exist in the fog.
Just because he hung "vicious beast" signs on his gate
Doesn't mean that Saddam had a dog.

Yes, our spies sure know how to keep hidden
All the stuff that nobody should know
So they stamp it TOP SECRET and file it away
In a place where nobody can go.

Thus we keep seeing trees and not forests
And we keep seeing forests, not trees
While the young GI sprawls in the dust of Iraq
With his guts spilling over his knees

And the young GI dies when her tin car explodes
As she drives through a city in strife
Leaving only her unit and family to grieve
At the loss of another young life.

Still, the man in the White House he struts and he frets
With his hour on the stage nearly done.
To this idiot player the tale signifies
That the sound and the fury are one.

"We are here, `cause we're here, `cause we're here, `cause we're here,"
Goes the slogan from Vietnam days.
And we surely can't leave, because leaving would mean
That we'd found our way out of the maze.

Now, the Lord of all Love told young Dubya to smite,
So the boy smote Saddam on the head
But those ingrate Iraqis they smote Dubya back
And now thousands of GIs are dead.

The returns they diminish so quickly
When a billion or more you must pay
To destroy what the "bad guy" rebuilds in an hour
And makes use of the following day.

Like we learned in Vietnam - as some of us did,
How the debt into billions it runs
`Till the good folks at home have to give up their butter
Or else begin eating their guns.

Then the choices arise that no one wants to face
Because somebody's ox will get gored.
Politicians, you see, hate to give up their own
When they'd rather be looting your hoard.

So the tax cuts go draining the money away
`Till the last dollar's taken to flight.
Once again it's the rich ones who've started a war
And then run off to let the poor fight.

And Tom Ridge goes on flashing those color alerts
While the public works mowing the lawn.
"What, another attack of the `credible' type?
You mean `credulous,' don't you?" they yawn.

But the voters can rest in their comfort and ease
And continue like sheep in their flocks.
While the young GI dies in the dirt of Iraq
And comes home in a flag-covered box.

See, the "enemy" lives in that hell of a place
And, in fact, it is all that he owns
So he'll fight there and die there as long as he must
`Till the last flesh has left the last bones.

You can pound all the buildings to rubble.
You can kill all that can't run away.
You can kill and keep killing and then kill some more,
But the hunger for freedom will stay.

In America freedom means bondage.
In America fools run the show.
In America no one knows what the words mean
When the word-magic says, "stop" means "go."

And the Newspeak keeps pouring from out of the mouths
Of the spokesmen for nation and town.
Until sov'reign means slav'ry and choosing means chains
And swimming means freedom to drown.

So then keep them in darkness and feed them on shit
If you wish for your mushrooms to grow
And so shoveling shit's now the plan of the day
In America: last place to know.

But the Truth will come `round in the fullness of time
Like the rough slouching beast at the door.
Who keeps knocking and knocking and won't go away
`Till you've fed it your children, and more.

But the children don't matter, because as we know
The word "children" means "their kids" not ours.
So the "Draft" doesn't scare us because it means "them"
And not us -- so let's just tend our flowers.


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Friday, December 22, 2006

The Misfortune Teller

(After the style of the traditional Mad Song, "Tom O'Bedlam")

You can wish and wildly wonder
How best might you receive it?
The tale that you tell, as it fits so well
In the end you won't believe it
I have got a shiny mirror
In which yourself will see you
Reflections that glide on the other side
From your right your left will free you

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Any dime's worth you can offer
For you know it's true, all depends on you
Not the coin placed in the coffer

You have done some things you shouldn't
As any man will tell you
One look in the glass, it will come to pass
That you'll know what doom befell you
Have a look at your misfortune
The kind that never misses
A fortunate one who has come undone
Should have shunned Medusa’s kisses

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
For a penny or a nickel
As you know for true what they’ll do to you
Whom you’ve placed in such a pickle

If a crystal ball you've come for
You found the wrong location
The hole in the floor tells you what's in store
As the truth is my vocation
If it hurts, you've got it coming
Your karma you've acquired
From things that you did you have run and hid
But the weight has made you tired

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Any phrase or any sentence
For you know for a fact, that it’s just an act
If you never seek repentance

In the coffin of your craving
You'll find the feast and famine
You'll know of its rot when the dirty spot
You exhume and then examine
In his bunker your Rasputin
Some “enemies” he picks on
As the proper price of a sacrifice
To the shrine of Richard Nixon

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
For a necessary breather
For you know that’s passed, what you can’t recast
Not for sale or purchase, either

In the ages three in number
The present, past, and future
The buddhas appear to dispel the fear
Of the surgeon and his suture
To remove the arrow promptly
And wisely stop infection
Beats knowing the source of the arrow's force
But requires some introspection

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Look inside at clause and phrases
For your siren song has some spelling wrong
Like your plan to leave in “phases”

Like the Japanese amnesia:
The seventh of December
Once out of Iraq, you will not look back
For you won't want to remember
Like in Southeast Asia also
You couldn't bear to lose it
Once lost, though, you found it was worthless ground
Now you wonder who would choose it

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Any paragraph or sermon
For your “living room” you have used a “boom!”
Like the good and loyal German

It's begun to look a pattern
You first jump in then wallow
Once firing, you claim that you plan to aim
For the lesson you won't swallow
See the syndrome of your sickness
The symptoms of your sleeping
The signs of a boy who must have his toy
Or he'll throw a fit of weeping

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
For a lecture or a session
For a syndrome new you will need a crew
Dedicated to regression

See the lines that crease your forehead
The scalp that flakes and itches
See the rug that thins as your many sins
Come to nest inside your britches
Like the lice that crawl and vex you
The crabs they sideways skitter
While your albatross with its dead-weight loss
Makes a necklace with no glitter

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Any disinfecting grammar
For some syntax good might impress the wood
Like a nail hit with a hammer

See the chicken hawks around you
That cluck and glare and lay eggs
Do they need a boost coming home to roost?
Is the question that this day begs
Like the lemmings you stampeded
The rats now jump ship faster
With your little pail you had better bail
Or you’ll sink in your disaster

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
Some connecting prepositions
For a “to” or a “from” or a “by” or an “at”
Should confirm your superstitions

Have I shown you this for nothing?
Has any concept sunk in?
Does your fluffy head like some doughy bread
Need a glass of milk to dunk in?
Would a hot bath make it better?
With rubber duckies floating
You could try your luck passing on the buck
To the ones now grimly gloating

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
For some schadenfreude smirking
For a “one last surge” won’t relieve the urge
Of the duties you like shirking

In the thrift store he’s a cast-off
An honest, worthless leaving
A marginal man; ninety-nine-cent plan
But he’s safe from need of thieving
Unlike connected cronies
This citizen you’ve squandered
Since he has no cash to inflate your stash
And no money has he laundered

Come stay for a time, for a word or a rhyme
For the crime in which you revel
Down in Dante’s Hell they’ve reserved a cell
On your very own tenth level

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

A Munificent Travesty

(After the style of Robert Browning's "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came")

Upon a building’s rubble he once stood
Then raised a megaphone before his lips
And sent a message in the form of quips
To those he said had done his land no good
He would, he swore, avenge the neighborhood
On those who took advantage of his slips

He maybe thought that he would strike some fear
Into the perpetrators dead below
Some corpses burnt to cinders, smoking slow
Who one would think could hardly see or hear
His threats to kill someone that they held dear:
Identities that he could never know

Yet, still, the ones who did the awful deed
Had Saudi friends – and well-connected, too
Who from the coop straightforward homeward flew
No questions asked of those whom Dubya freed
A bull-horn set to mouth with all mad speed:
“This child will get Saddam Hussein,” he blew

The child apprentice knight errant set out
To prove his mettle in a grand crusade
While posing boldly; stern and unafraid
Advice from wiser men he chose to flout
Believing in a “higher” father’s clout
His earthly dad’s renown he soon unmade

In thrall to visions fed him in the dark
By courtiers who whispered in his ear
He thought himself the point upon a spear
Embarked upon an epic Sunday lark
Deployed to vanquish picnics in the park
On cakewalks such as this, what fool felt fear?

Somehow, he’d got his hands upon a toy
A power dark and dangerous to flaunt
But even worse if loosed upon a jaunt:
A game of chance played by a little boy
He threw the deadly dice; consumed in joy,
Both enemies and friends he chose to taunt

Whatever words he spoke, the press would buy
Although not worth the ink and paper cost
Whatever thoughts he gained he quickly lost
His “mind” as evanescent as a sigh
The word came down from editors on high:
“Portray him as the dew and not the frost”

So, unexamined outside or within
Child Dubya took to walking while asleep
Commander of his clueless castle keep
He sallied forth, his conquest to begin
With trumpet fanfare urging him to win
He rode up to a canyon wide and deep

This great depression had an entry sign
Beside which carving sat a lonely wretch
Who cautioned that an act of faith would stretch
Good fortune past its outer limit line
Advising reason rather less malign,
The wraith read warnings scratched into the etch:

“A child unto the darkened power came
Unbidden but attracted nonetheless
Too innocent of strife to bear the stress
Too inexperienced to know the game
Who entered with excuses long and lame
And smelled some blood – of whom he could not guess”

There at decision’s fork, he barely stayed
To ridicule the one who said “Go back!
Or turn aside for knowledge that you lack
Or else prepare to learn where you have strayed
Into those traps for you that Fate’s arrayed
Too late retreat; too early to attack”

Child Dubya to the crippled beggar lied
With every word that in his mouth congealed
Yet in the wretch’s glance he saw revealed
His own bedraggled bogus baleful pride
Reflecting back at him a taunting snide
That showed what he had from himself concealed

What opportunity lay here at hand!
What challenge for the world’s self-mocking elf!
No weaponry not stocked upon the shelf
No army not awaiting his command
No chance of any needed reprimand
Command thus issued orders to itself

In all the world he had no puerile peer
No younger child nor older fool compared
No losing prospect loomed and so he dared
To sail -- without a star by which to steer
Aboard, a blind Parsee to serve as seer --
With fluttered sails and shivered timbers bared

The sun came up just so that he could see
But then went down for feeling hardly used
In black of day he saw with circuits fused
No breakers tripped, and so the amps ran free
Which boiled his brain into a fricassee:
Stewed meat cut small like those whom he abused

The night came on so he could get more rest
Still feeling tired from all his daytime naps
Untroubled by his military flaps
With all the answers, he still failed the test
Despite all that his “higher” father blessed:
Like deadbeat sons who lose at cards and craps

With sunrise and with sundown impotent
To signal “charge” or sound a wise retreat
He lost a victory but won defeat
The moment he decided to relent
To every wastrel instinct that he spent
By pouring gas on flames to make more heat

The earth and sky and waters gathered round
To cheer him on, as his advisor said
Although his thought unwoven had no thread
No warp or woof to weave a fabric sound
His artless tapestry fell to the ground
For having neither rudder, wings, nor head

“Now stab Saddam Hussein!” he heard a voice
From somewhere undisclosed yet nearby still;
“And then upon his folk impose our will!
Call this ‘democracy’ and offer choice:
A Cadillac, Mercedes, or Rolls Royce?
To those who send the others off to kill”

”Those tolling bells that signal the alarm?
Pay them no mind for what do others know?
Who never had the chance this much to blow
Or millions such as we can bring to harm
Or billions we can squander on a farm
That never any profit has to show!”

“Like Ishmael and Queequeg on the town
We have no cause to pay them any heed
These Tom O’Bedlams out to score some feed
These crippled, mad Elijahs always frown
And warn us that with Ahab we might drown
Just syndrome-selling sailors gone to seed”

So down into the murky gloom he slid
Ignoring veterans of such a march
Who pointed to a cave door not an arch
Who saw the trashcan rather than its lid
Who knew the “bad guys” hadn’t run but hid
Who’d seen their friends laid out as stiff as starch

Yet childish Dubya sought a holy grail
Which he had heard lay free for him to find
But which instead made him its grist to grind
So he “decided” he would flop and flail
While “bad guys” poured some salt upon his tail
Which left him flightless; caged in his own bind

At any noble quest, he’d not succeed
Valhalla’s maids pick others from the field
Who fought the losing fight but did not yield
As much as him who gave in to his need
To mouth a motto, making it a screed
Employing symbol soldiers as his shield

Behind the sacred aegis of the troops
Whose nameless features saved for him his face
He found that they had marked for him a place
A sanctuary wherein he rode loops
Around on his bicycle through some hoops;
Where he could disappear without a trace

So as the wars he started fiercely blazed
He grew more insignificant each day
As his incompetence came into play
When seen in public forums badly dazed
He seemed outright and frankly simply crazed
His bafflement loomed large and on display

He kept insisting that he held the reins
No power had, he said, fell from his grasp
And yet events could only make one gasp
To witness all the petty, paltry pains
He took pretending that he felt no strains
As others tried to save him in their clasp

The bugle of the cavalry he heard
Sent on a mission, his bare ass to save
Yet this would not relieve but just deprave
Humiliating help has never cured
A drowning feline rescued by a bird
Who’d rule in Hell before be Heaven’s slave

Content with thoughts of predecessors who
In death long since had earned a fair regard,
No matter how he trashed the playground yard,
Child Dubya just supposed that he would, too;
And won with his wild antics no canard
Just Truth which will forever turn the screw

He’d sought a vast dark tower to accost
Whose terrors he proposed to vanquish quick
With slogans from which he could have his pick
In nightmare tempests soon he turned and tossed
Urged on to more mistakes by one he bossed
Left only with more endless wounds to lick

A travesty of such munificence!
So generous in its monstrosity!
A heaping helping of a perfidy;
Betrayal of a trusting innocence;
Converted now to just incontinence
The duped now see their own stupidity

Now who hurts worse: the liar or his sap?
As those fooled many times much more than once
Have now to face the corner as a dunce
And sit upon a stool with clownish cap
While knowing who has fed them worthless crap
And will again, as will all lying runts

For who has cleaned the leopard of his spots?
Why would success at lying make it cease?
No charges filed? No prisoner release!
Why think of spurting blood that never clots?
Or any corpse that in its shroud now rots?
Who now will dare demand a chance for peace?

Child Dubya to the Dark Power came and cried:
“At last, I can command while in my briefs
And steal not just like other tyrant thiefs
But more because the ones who’ve fought and died
And those upon whose freedoms I have spied
Like all good injuns, need commanding chiefs”


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Buffaloed Girl

(somewhat after the traditional song of a similar name)

Buffaloed girl, won't you come out tonight?
Bask in your fright; hide in plain sight.
Buffaloed girl don't you put up a fight;
Just dance to the right with the goons!

Buffaloed girl, don't you burn any flags;
Marry some fags; count body bags.
Buffaloed girl, wrapped in riches not rags,
Just keep raking in those doubloons!

Buffaloed girl, send our troops to Iraq!
Then leave them there! Don't bring them back!
Buffaloed girl, cover George Bush's back,
And scrape up a few more platoons!

Buffaloed girl, just stay out of the fray.
Keep your mouth shut! Keep making hay!
Buffaloed girl, while the cat is away
Just keep playing mice with buffoons.

Buffaloed girl, don’t you hear the troops cry?
Wounded for wrongs; dead for a lie
Buffaloed girl, look in everyone’s eye
And then soil your own pantaloons

Buffaloed girl, under Lieberman’s wing
Saving his job, that's the main thing
Buffaloed girl, you and Holy Joe sing
The duet of right-wing spittoons

Buffaloed girl, rail at video games
Focus group that; spout the right frames
Buffaloed girl, don’t you name any names
Just save children from their cartoons

Buffaloed girl, take a “listening” tour
If you don’t know; if you’re not sure
Buffaloed girl, voters like their fake “pure”
Like war debt that simply balloons

Buffaloed girl, when it counted you hid
Don’t try to lie. That’s what you did
Buffaloed girl, Dubya made you his kid
When you bought the crap that he croons

Buffaloed girl, your irrelevance mounts
Even in small, measured amounts
If “it” takes a village, by all your accounts
Then take “it” to Mars and its moons


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Saturday, December 16, 2006

A Boobie Murphy's Flaw

(From the in-progress epic of post-linguistic Comparative Misanthropology: "Fernando Po, U.S.A." )

He had the choice to not do this
But did it anyway
He had the choice to do it right
But chose to go astray
He had his chance to leave but then
Decided he would stay

He had the chance to choose someone
To manage his affairs
But got involved himself and chose
To split Iraqi hairs
He swore to save our country but
He wound up wrecking theirs

Their army and their government
He told to take a hike
He spoke of what he wanted but
Got what he didn't like
Each increase in the violence,
He called a little "spike"

He steered straight for the iceberg while
He swore he'd stay the course
Like Reagan playing cowboy, he
Sat backwards on his horse
Then found he had to float some loans
For Chinese to endorse

He said he would decide upon
Decisions he would make
He pledged real fiscal honesty
But wound up on the take
Ersatz in his sincerity,
He only looked more fake

He lied each passing minute till
The seconds' hand got tired
He praised unto the Heavens those
Embarrassments he fired
(Some makers of soup sandwiches
For kitchen help he'd hired)

He claimed he needed no one's help,
Then found he had to beg
He tried to act the tough-guy part
But really broke a leg
With chopsticks then he tried to pick
The bone out of the egg

He called himself "decider" which
In his mind made him strong
Once he decided, other folks --
He thought -- would go along
With no choice left but one, he'd still
Decide to do it wrong

He did so many damned things wrong
Since damned things he could do
He promised to do little good
But much for some damned few:
A lowered expectation since
About the age of two

He spoke of "crisp" decisions like
A salad knife or fork
Or how to differentiate
Some hamburger from pork
"Way-cool" decision making of
The kind made by a dork

He chose to take a chance on choice
And gambled with the dice
He labored like a mountain and
Brought forth some tiny mice
Then doubled-down the dead so he
Could lose not once but twice

He asked for no advice but still
He got some nonetheless
His "gut," he said, had told him he
Should still prefer to guess
And so he chose to flip a coin --
And made a bloody mess

His "higher father" told him stuff
That no one else could hear
His earthly father heard of this
And shed a bitter tear
That Big-Spook/Joseph cuckold thing
Made other things quite clear

He recognized no limit to
The credit card accounts
He thought that blood and money came
In infinite amounts
Which proved that when he weighed a life,
It didn't weigh an ounce

While citizens had nightmares when
He tried and failed to spell
He wanted to assuage our fears
That he did not sleep well
(The belfry in his head had bats
But not a single bell)

He journeyed to the future and
Came back with his report
He told us that when we were dead,
We'd get his last retort
Implying we should wait till then
And not his rule abort

He tried to go too fast, which meant
He managed to stand still
He swore that he would liberate
Which really meant he'd kill
A Boobie Murphy's Flaw, he can
Go wrong -- and so he will

The people only can decide,
And this he truly dreads
For he has heard of Romanovs
And rolling czarist heads
The just deserts for those who chose
To tear whole lands to shreds


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Friday, December 15, 2006

Boobie Bozo Bellicosity

(From the in-progress epic of post-linguistic Comparative Misanthropology: "Fernando Po, U.S.A.")

The creepy Joseph Lieberman
And Mad-Dog John McCain
Teamed up to send more troops abroad
And from their bodies drain
Whatever blood they hadn't lost
To bring these two some gain

These sorry Boobie Senators
Had bet on the wrong dog
Who couldn't hunt a single wart
Upon a single frog
Not even if the little toad
Sold roadmaps to his bog

King George the Worst had suckered them
Into a war gone wrong
He promised them a codpiece but
Delivered not a thong
Which left their little weenies shrunk
And hardly looking "strong"

Exposed as dimwit demagogues
Of evanescent heft
These weightless-wonder warriors
Got robbed by their own theft
They charged off to the right when all
The others had turned left

They thought that wooden-headedness
Made virtue of the vain;
Hobgoblins of consistency,
These little minds made plain
That tiny statesmen such as them
Seek shelter in the slain

The Theory of Contrariness
Obsessed this Ho and Hum
As Tweedle is to twaddle, John
Played "Dee" and Joe played "Dum"
And battled for the rattle of
Their silly little plum

Like sponsoring "amendments" that
No court would not strike down
They thought it safe to advocate
More GI lives to drown
Since ice would form in Hell before
That plot left Tinsel Town

This shouting at the howling wind
They thought made them look brave
For offering more sacrifice
That others wished to save
Which only made them seem like boys
Not old enough to shave

The fanboy fascist treehouse branch
On which they sit and saw
Has signs that read "No Girls Allowed!"
As if this lays down law
A double-dare for gravity
To prove both shock and awe

A feckless fruit of faithlessness
They offer up to eat
Which claims that all the dead and gone
Require still more dead meat
An appetite both ravenous
And never quite replete

This hunger fed will only grow
As nothing can appease
The lust of petty princes for
Some other lives to seize:
Laid down in mortuaries where
Upon a slab they freeze

Some time in solitary had
Left Mad-Dog John insane
And dedicated to the task
Of bringing others pain
His martial virtues he supposed
This way he could regain

He'd dropped some bombs, then crashed into
The victims of his crime
Who then insisted that he pay
By doing some hard time
Which only left him more convinced
Of war as peace sublime

But Holy Moralizin' Joe,
Likudnik Lieberman,
Had other countries on his mind
Whose interested plan
Required some young Americans
To hit the shitty fan

Not satisfied with subsidies
Extorted from his own
Ol' weepin' Joe would gladly throw
More death at what he's sown
Already, with some dead GIs
Not quite yet fully grown

Yet even as no Zionists
Patrol the Baghdad streets
Still Holy Joe would have GIs
Lie stiff beneath the sheets
So he can beat the drum for the
Israeli tune he bleats

By pounding hapless foreigners
Mad-Dog and Holy Joe
Sought each to serve his purposes
Through "thoughts" both bad and slow
Which demonstrated heedlessness
Of life they cannot know

Thus Mad-Dog John and Holy Joe,
The Boobie Bozo twin,
Set out to double-down the dead:
A blackjack bet on sin;
By losing even more GIs,
They thought that they could "win"

Of course, those dead Iraqis have
No role to play in this
Except to serve as extras in
A sick nocturnal bliss:
A senile wet-dream; two limp dicks
Too old to barely piss


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Boobie Listening Tours

(From the in-progress epic of post-linguistic Comparative Misanthropology: "Fernando Po, U.S.A.")

He speaks of swells and "surges" like
They have some potency
To leave impressions in a mind
In jail for vagrancy
He listens without hearing and
He looks but doesn't see

But still he puts on quite a show
Of looking like he looks
Like those who run for office while
Distributing some books
Designed to sell celebrity:
A line with barbs and hooks

He also likes to have it look
Like he is listening
While on a tour to have him seen
Appearing as a king
Who cares for what his subjects think
When he cares no such thing

Appearing at appearances
He speaks to utter sounds
Which noisemaking activity
His empty self surrounds
A comment on humanity
Beneath and out of bounds

In post-linguistic times like these
The cattle prod now serves
To jolt and stun intelligence
That normally observes
So from the sight of painful truth
The Boobie conscience swerves

It hurts too much to see no thing
Where something seems to be:
Transparent apparitions like
Those deserts in the sea;
Mirages in a mind made hot
By bogus imagery

Performing their experiments
On captive focus groups
The word magicians seek to find
The kinks inside the loops
Of wires crossed up in circuits that
Make Boobies jump through hoops

Some sequences of noises or
Some spell-marks on the page
Can often boil some Boobie brains
And put them in a rage
Inducing executions of
Some felon on the stage

And posing in some certain way
Drives Boobies 'round in ruts
Some glandular secretions seep
From heads to Boobie butts
Till "take a load off" means relief
From pressure on the nuts

To hold the arms akimbo and
Stare sternly into space
With nothing recognizable
As thought upon the face
Moves blocks of demographic votes
To shame the human race

By placing in high office one
Who knows no rhyme or rule,
Discredited disciples of
Dick Nixon made a tool:
A propaganda catapult
Aimed squarely at the fool

Repeating repetition till
The brain begins to numb
Shows method in a madness meant
To make the Boobies dumb
Techniques to which the Boobies proved
They'd willingly succumb

No study of the language helped
For Boobies would deride
Attempts by English teachers to
Some overview provide
"It's just semantics," Boobies jeered,
So meaning simply died

"You leave those kids alone!" they brayed,
Like donkeys in the pen
"Why we've been speaking language since
Before the age of ten;
And Uncle Jim-Bob never had
To tell us where from when"

"It all depends," the Walrus said,
"On what you mean by that;
Not what you mean when you say 'is,'
But what you mean by 'fat'
Does 'fat' mean 'dumb and happy' or
By heart attack laid flat?"

Or does the use of expletive
Constructions queer the game
By puffing up bad grammar with
The empty and the lame
With things that look like nouns and verbs
Deserving all the blame?

"It is just what it is," he claimed
"I said just what I said.
You'll know just what I mean some day
Long after we're all dead;
Which means you've just allowed me to
Evacuate your head"

"Hee Haw! Hee Haw! I fooled you good!
Now don't you feel ashamed
To realize that I know what
To hit where I have aimed?
And all the time I skated while
Some innocent you blamed!"

"That's got to chap your ass, I know;
But here's the better part!
Now that you rightly feel betrayed
I'll demonstrate the art
Of rubbing in the lesson so
Get ready: let us start …"

"You can't admit how easily
I took you for a ride
I've got the key to you and that
Has gotten me inside
Down where the lizard lurks
With all your vanity and pride"

"The mammal cortex in your skull
Can sometimes work or not
Depending on the use it gets
Or if it goes to rot
Assuming without questioning
The Boobie monoglot"

"You speak one language, so you think;
Although too loosely used,
A word like "think" can only show
The organ you've abused
Combining neural nets into
One neuron tightly fused"

"But, anyway, the Carpenter
Has made of me a dunce
Who blows your brains out endlessly
Without reloading once
A single-bullet sloganeer
Who shills for whom he fronts"

"This makes me look the cynic, sure,
And not the simple sod
That I portray on TV sets
Before the gawking clod;
But put a flag behind me and
The Boobies think I'm GAWD!"

"Like Oz behind his curtain, Dick
Designs the things I say
Projecting me commanding all
My statues made of clay
Who do just what they're told and will
Until their dying day"

“I could have grown up poor which would
Have put me to the test
I could have gone to serve in war
Like many of the best
But since I chose my parents well,
I got to take a rest”

“I know it sounds unsportsmanlike
To rip off those in prayer
With heads pressed to the pavement and
Their asses in the air;
But what thief could refuse to lift
A wallet here and there?

“I didn’t make the world this way;
I take it as it comes
I only set them marching off
By beating on the drums
That means I get to eat the cake
While they fight over crumbs”

"Thus ends the lesson, Boobies, so
Go home and take a nap
You'll soon forget and then I'll have
You eating from my lap
The usual arrangement for
Dispensing you your crap"

So as the tour continued, George
And You-Know-Her alike
Pretended that they gave a shit
And spoke about a "spike"
A "surge" implying "more" troops now
Like fingers in the dike

Just why the dike had sprung those leaks
The touring Boobies knew
But since they poked the holes themselves
Their fear of flooding grew
How could they get to higher ground
Among the chosen few?

The answer lay in moving fast
Creating quite a stir
A spasm of activity
Resulting in a blur
A cyclone storm of bullshit meant
To mask the flying fur

Appearances deceive, they say,
Thus more and more appear
To tour deceptively in hopes
This way they'll dodge the spear
Now cocked, and aimed, and set to throw
At their buck-naked rear

Transparent touring two years out
From when someone might care
Has absolutely nothing much
To do with burning air
Or bodies piled up in the morgues
'Cause we went "over there"

Which sort of makes it all too plain
Why daily hundreds die
It all comes back to Boobies who
Go fish while others fry
Our "leaders" take for granted that
We'll wait for their next lie


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Boobie Last Chance Scenarios

(From the in-progress epic of post-linguistic Comparative Misanthropology: "Fernando Po, U.S.A.")

The Boobies of America
Designed a warfare state
Or rather, simply let it grow
Till it became their fate
They never knew what laid them low
Till it was far too late

The ones who fed on Fear Itself
Required a bogeyman
To terrify the children so
That they from shadows ran
And never turned to face the fraud
Sold them as Heaven's Plan

They conjured Symbol Soldier as
The blindfold they would need
To keep from view their appetites
In all their naked greed --
Misfortune-telling Boobies found
That none would pay them heed

These prophets without honor in
No land except their own
Would chant Cassandra's message to
The power on the throne
Which simply disregarded truth
As old news overblown

George Washington told Boobies that
They shouldn't get entrapped
By clever foreign puppets who
Had Boobies clearly mapped
As erstwhile puppeteers who played
With string until they snapped

But Boobies loved to fondle rope
With which they'd often wrung
Confessions from some Boobie necks
And witches highly strung
Until the executioners
From their own gallows hung

Yet Alexander Hamilton
Said he had found a way
To muzzle standing armies with
Too much to do and say
Just meet at two-year periods
And cut off needless pay

But in some intervals of years
With peace supremely blessed
The Boobies failed to concentrate
On demagogues obsessed
With reasserting tendencies
That always recrudesced

Dwight Eisenhower told the tale
As he walked out the door
Not that it seemed to bother him
When he patrolled the floor
What wisdom Boobie statesmen speak
When few care any more

Embarrassed by the Soviets
Who put a man in space
The Boobies of America
Found egg upon their face
It hurt them so to find themselves
In solid second place

So then for once in their career
The Boobies acted smart
They saw the need to educate
In science, math, and art
Then sprinted to the Moon so fast
That few had seen them start

But bored with doing something grand
The Boobies looked inside
To find an emptiness that called
For bragging, bumbling pride:
Reactionary panic geared
To conquer and divide

The Boobies loved to spout clichés
Connecting up the dots
A simple game that they had played
Since they were little tots
Assuming as they did that this
Revealed some hidden plots

The warfare welfare monolith
And its expanding girth
Exhausted all resources in
The nation of their birth
Till Boobies neither knew the price
Nor what the beast was worth

From North and South no threat appeared
To East and West: just fish
The waters and the weak inspired
No Boobie death to wish
No danger left the Boobie kings
With no real dirt to dish

In terror at apparent Peace
The Boobie princes bawled
They'd longed to play Napoleon
Since on the rug they crawled
Their lust for misadventure made
Them jump each time it called

They said they needed "one last chance"
Just like the one before
Akin to others they called "last"
Till "last" became a bore:
A muddled Boobie meme that had
No meaning anymore

They say they'll need just "one last chance"
Before they need the next
Yet all of their "last chances" leave
Them in a funk and vexed
Unsure of why their "last chance" schemes
Just leave them more perplexed

They make great show of movement that
Retraces covered ground
Moonwalking on to Mars they claim
The answer to have found:
A way to blast off into space
Without making a sound

So as the last becomes the next
Before the last next last
The Boobies start to go around
In circles very fast
And spiral down the drainpipe from
The present to the past

The "last chance" moron monarch meant
To eat the cake he'd have
If given one last chance he swore
Some glaciers he would calve
To wound the world with endless war
That no known grief could salve

The chief commanding Boobie belched
And promised he would show
Some "victory" for all his waste
Just when, we'd some day know
Most likely when above his corpse
The graveyard grasses grow

It's all the same to him, it seems
No urgency applies
He hasn't seen his friends made food
For swarms of hungry flies
Or all his relatives laid down
Where even darkness cries

The ghoul's own gift he gives himself
And this he gladly gets:
Some slaughter on his plate piled high
With nothing he regrets
He sees Pandora's demons as
Domesticated pets

And so before he dines again
On one more "last chance" meal
The Boobie in command decides
What he intends to steal
From off the menu of the poor
Whose nightmares he's made real

A cell without a nucleus:
Some clueless cytoplast
Metabolizing meaning like
Assistants that he gassed
Commander Boobie's next plan reeks
Of what he's eaten last


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Consistent Hobgoblins

(From the Terza Rima epic-in-progress: "The Triumph of Strife")

Adored of tiny statesmen and divines
And often of philosophers as well
A foolish false consistency opines

That on a change of course we should not dwell
For as the iceberg lies just straight ahead
To spin the wheel would turn into the swell

And miss the chance to sink and wind up dead
Which every seasick passenger prefers
To spending one more minute in the head

At thoughts of which the queasy stomach spurs
Revolted retching on the deck and rail
The crazy captain from this scene infers

That straight into the ice he'd rather sail
Than see his ship a stinking vomit pail

Some wise men tried to give him sane advice
But since he hadn’t asked for it, he frowned
He wished play with fire, not deal in ice

And so with burning hair his brow was crowned
Upon the flaming lakes that he had lit
The grinning goblins leaped and danced around

In celebration of his lack of wit
That them had loosed upon a prostrate land
To do as awfully as they saw fit

Precisely the reverse of what he planned
In irony, as ice will quench the fire
His only choice left him no other hand

Like Hobson’s single horse let out for hire
He picked the road that led from worse to dire

Consistently convinced of his success
This wooden-headed statesman’s little mind
Could see no wrong in stupid stubbornness

Nor could he any flaw or defect find
In policies that caused a world to blanche
As shoelaces he knotted in a bind

The bleeding of his troops he could not stanch
And off upon assistants he would fob
The work that he would bring home from the ranch

Which let him take vacation from the job
Whose lightest duties seemed a heavy toil
The schizophrenic double-thinking slob

Upon the waters spread a slick of oil
And with a blowtorch brought it to a boil

He said once he was dead we'd get it right
But since we've got it right, that makes him dead
Which puts some pointed teeth into the bite

Of claims that he has nothing in his head
For whispers softly entering his ears
Come out his mouth with little really said

And what goes in his eyes soon disappears
With no connection made to lights inside
A starless void through which an echo steers

A slope down which the changing stories slide
A lifeless bulb left plugged into a lamp
A disconnected battery that died

For never charging up a single amp
He now deserves his own "rejected" stamp

But Emerson said also that the book
Is made by its good reader if it's good
For he will find with practiced, piercing look

The monk or engine underneath the hood
Identities deposited like gold
For him the author clearly understood

Who knows how to discover and take hold
Of independent thought which plainly sees
The one who never purchased; only sold

Who only borrowed; never paid the fees
Who never once auditioned for the part
Or knew of truths and their discoveries

Who always put the horse behind the cart
No equal, but a lesser mind and heart

Yet still the thousands die because of two
A pair to which no hand should ever draw
Who covered up the necessary clue

To what they meant by terms like shock and awe
Or shuck and jive: the old Vaudeville soft-shoe
Who with their war our pockets pick and paw

While all the time the troops pass in review
Deploying once again to stall for time
As witches on the heath concoct a brew

For Gollum and Macbeth, a riddle rhyme
Fortelling only honest, trifling sums
Betraying consequences more sublime

The goblins sneer and smirk with bleeding gums
Consistently they moon us with their bums


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Slaughterhouse-Two

The rancid, ahistorical regime of Sheriff Dick and Deputy Dubya has now become completely subjunctive; or, as Tweedledee would say: "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't." Got that?

Unable to recognize, admit, or engage present reality deriving from unforced past error, the defunct duo has gone again and again to the future where nothing has happened yet so anyone may freely "report" back to us their time-travelling adventures as if what they only imagine has actually taken place. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, "If ....."

The other day, for instance, George of the Bungle slammed into another rhetorical tree, so to speak, when he "became unstuck in time" (as Kurt Vonnegut said of his fictional character Billy Pilgrim) and told us that "after I'm dead, they'll get it right." As usual, he did not pause to ponder the implications of such a remark, but I immediately grasped its true significance and began another "exploratory" (as You-Know-Her would say) poem with:

He said once he was dead we'd get it right
But since we've got it right, that makes him dead
Which puts some pointed teeth into the bite

Of claims that he has nothing in his head
For whispers softly entering his ears
Come out his mouth with little really said

And what goes in his eyes soon disappears
With no connection made to lights inside
A starless void through which an echo steers

A slope down which the changing stories slide
A lifeless bulb left plugged into a lamp
A disconnected battery that died

For never charging up a single amp
He now deserves his own "rejected" stamp


Dead man walking. Dead man talking. Dead man squawking. Dead man balking. Dead man dead. Yes, I think we've got this wrong man right.

So, now for the necessary replacements. No one should keep dead and worthless employees on the payroll if that means bankrupting the firm. Sometimes even Republicans get tired of the owner's two catatonic sons stinking up the family business boardroom. So, do Dick and Dubya, the Slaughterhouse-Two, go quietly like good little corporate "team players," or do they want to make their exit as messy and midieval as their ruinous, rancorous reign? In the interest of efficiency and economy, then, if not of justice and prudence, we have to make some cuts where the rotten deadwood starts -- like at the top of the prevaricating pyramid.

Trust Billy Pilgrim on this one. He has seen the future and for some reason having to do with red-faced embarrassment, it contains no mention whatsoever of the Slaughterhouse-Two: Richard Bruce Cheney and George W. Bush -- just like those Japanese schoolbooks that whitewash the whole self-inflicted disaster of the Pacific War by saying, in effect: "Japan somehow became unpopular; and then some bad things happened; but the future looks so much better now." Really. The future feels humiliated that we happened, so it has thought best not to mention us at all. The land that forgot time -- again -- thus becomes the land that time has two truly bad and bogus reasons to forget.

Monday, December 11, 2006

A Profligate Parable

(From the Terza Rima epic-in-progress, "The Triumph of Strife")

None dare approach with tidings of bad news
But only sycophants who mew and purr
Unwelcome any hint of other views

The wise have spoken and the wise concur:
The pride has come before; now come the sprawls
In him no thought or question may occur

In trouble now, he waffles and he stalls
This bubble boy who leaped into the fray
Inside the trap, he finds a creep that crawls:

His time a petty pace from day to day
His once-accomplished mission quite a feat
He sees no option other than delay

He can't advance and yet he won't retreat
So on his grill he roasts his own dead meat

He did the thing he came for: rob the purse
Of future generations yet unborn
No surplus funds, just deficits and worse

He's left to those who'll someday feel forlorn
When paying for this braggart and his bloat
Like sheep whose wool from them is deftly shorn

Before they've even grown it to a coat
The cows he milked before they ate their hay
Less like a rancher than a farmer's goat

He ate whatever plenty came his way
Then ordered up some more so he could gloat
About the fact that he would never pay

He sank for our posterity the boat
His predecessor left for him afloat

No steward, he saw nothing fit to save
"Fiduciary what?" he scoffed and spat
Conservative means more green grass to pave

To feed the wealthy lean to make them fat
The rich will work for more, the poor for less
Incentives, don't you know, are where it's at

Forget about the awful fiscal mess
Someone will come along to clean it up
No need to say you're sorry or confess

Just leave them drinking from an empty cup
Or eating plain potatoes boiled or fried
He does the hard work, screwing pooch and pup

"What's mine is mine," he sniffed, self-satisfied
"What's yours, negotiation will decide"

Procrustes had a scion unredeemed
Who thought: "One-size-fits-all should cover it"
He stretched or hacked ideas while they screamed

Until at last into his head they fit
Reactionary recrudescent riffs:
Compressed into a solitary bit

A unitary CPU for stiffs
Computing one analogy to flog
Like Mister Toad careening over cliffs

Who plunged the car into a stinking bog
Where crocodiles and snakes looked on amazed
And then fell to devouring the frog

Which proved that small amphibians once dazed
Leave reptiles unafraid; indeed unfazed

So now once more Macbeth has murdered sleep
And dreaded nightmares keep those souls awake
Who find themselves too scared to make a peep

Lest any noise alert the ones who take
Whatever in the dark they wish to claim
A life, some fun, or just a garden rake

Those things that go "bump" in the night can maim
So Baghdad cringes as an evening falls
While talking to himself, he dreams of fame

Which begs the question if he talks to walls;
But rather: Do they answer, all agog?
At such a sight so awful it appalls

Too good to pet or beat the drowning dog
He stays the course he curses, in a fog

A profligate, this son sowed waste like seed
He took his harvest first; left planting last
Someone had always come to fund each need

So he consumed his capital too fast
Where others would invest for a return
He took returns up front as would his caste

A pampered parasite who likes to burn
A hundred-dollar bill to light a toke
Some elderly portfolios to churn

To milk commissions from the needless smoke
Above two lands he left a smoggy pall
Of debt and dying as his motto croak

Upon his office door he left this scrawl:
"I added nothing; I just spent it all."


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Lunatic Leviathan

The Lunatic Leviathan has burst
The bonds that once constrained its mighty lust
Let loose upon the world to do its worst
It tramples under foot whole lands to dust

Beneath its awesome wheels this Juggernaut
Would crush devotees leaping to their doom
In ecstasy that, should they die for naught,
The monster's myth would shroud them in its gloom

Mad martyrs many glimpsed the bloody plan
They'd heard of virgin harems in reserve
Awaiting only suicidal man
His adolescent fantasies to serve

But as with any contract at its edge
Good Mephistopheles has finely drawn
A tiny line of words that marks the hedge
Redeeming back the promise left in pawn

For virgins by design are not the kinds
Who do those carnal things young men require
So for eternity the martyr finds
Around him only unfulfilled desire

And as Macbeth learned, torturing his mind,
The instruments of darkness do refine
Truths only of inconsequential kind
To bait the hook upon which fools will dine

Fools take the hook, though, aiming for the bait
For making om'lets means to break some eggs
Then for the promised om'let they must wait
Till someone finds a cook who'll fry the dregs

This catastrophic graduated plan
Means jumping in the sea without a doubt
Then, later, taking time to try and scan
Horizons for the leisurely way out

For having jumped so quickly in the drink
It would not do to seem about to drown
Because we cannot either swim or think
And have no wish to take the long way down

Like Gulliver staked on the shoreline sands
Of Lilliput by many tiny ropes
Wove diligent by many tiny hands
The giant lay subdued by tiny hopes

But when some tiny Lilliputian list
Of schemes to use the giant set him free
He saw a palace fire and on it pissed
Which left enraged a tiny majesty

Although he sipped it from a bitter cup
Fame's taste would Yamamoto's plan involve
For he had dared to wake a giant up
And fill it with a terrible resolve

Some years ensued when much of proud Mankind
Decided to destroy what it had built
And after which Leviathan would find
Itself almost alone armed to the hilt

Then sated with its fill Colossus slept
A glut of slaughter piled upon its plate
While orphans bawled and widowed women wept
And ruined cities smoldered in their fate

But soon again the beast began to stir
As hunger gnawed, Leviathan smelled meat
And craved saluting soldiers shouting "Sir!"
And wished to feed on fear and horror's heat

In boredom at domestic peace profound
The Lunatic Leviathan slipped free
And went careening over sea and ground
Enraptured by its own insanity

Somehow it had inhaled a viral strain
Of vicious virtue needing a Crusade
To spread abroad the anger, strife, and pain
That its own misery for it had made

Like elephants stampeding down a street
Lined on both sides with tiny China shops
The damage done cannot be called discreet
Since raging protest rings and seldom stops

But Lunatic Leviathan had thought
That if it charged around and broke some more
That somehow that would mean that it had bought
All the unbroken China in the store

Yet when proprietors demanded cash
To pay for all the broken merchandise
The Lunatic replied that he would crash
Into some more if they did not get wise

This threat implied the old "protection rent"
Where thugs would offer safety from "that guy"
And when the victim asked what "guy" he meant
They'd say: "The ones you're looking in the eye"

Extrapolated to a larger scene
Protection rackets need an Army vast
With soldier-cops equipped and really mean
And tribute funding so the scam can last

But as the Lunatic has done the math
It pays for all itself by buying thrills
This means its children have to take a bath
Financially, by paying future bills

So as we wish to be your noble friend
You'll do the things we ask if you know best
And pardon us if we proceed to bend
Your legs and arms and necks at our behest

For as we only wish the best for you
You'll never question why we just don't leave
We've weakened you so badly now, it's true,
That if we left no doubt you wouldn't grieve

The Lunatic Leviathan felt pain
At not achieving all that it desired
For in its tiny schizophrenic brain
A bureaucratic bungle had been sired

Despite enormous strength the giant fell
For it could not coordinate its feet
So that the left one and the right as well
Could every now and then the pavement meet

Its size and bulk alone required a head
Containing thoughtful matter that could guide
And not reactionary mystic dread
Or panicked fear of those who lived outside

But Lunatic had not this fund of lore
Nor did it wonder what its eyes should see
But only did as it had done before
Whatever that had started out to be

Inertial Guidance proved the proper term
As unreflective ego spun its top
With pride and passion ever set to squirm
And wrestle never knowing how to stop

The mighty aircraft ship that carries planes
Once underway can scarcely ever turn
So thus it sticks to its appointed lanes
With no new courses left to choose or spurn

The Baby Boomer cohort got its name
From having been conceived in time of peace:
A brief respite from war that put the flame
To every land from China through to Greece

Returning soldiers from their far-flung fights
And sailors, also, from their ships at sea
And airmen, too, descended from their flights
Soon procreated their posterity

And as the Babies played, their parents slaved
They toiled and built and spoiled their growing brood
They sacrificed themselves and all they'd saved
For offspring who received this as their food

But when the Booming Babies came of age
Colossus had again begun to glare
And hunt about for some new needless rage
In which it could the reckless young ensnare

It found some in a jungle far away
Where abstract angst and fear itself conspired
To scare Leviathan into its sway
And trap it there to leave it deeply mired

This, wealthy Baby parents could descry
And so as to protect their own preserve
They coined Selective Service alibi
To choose the ones who would not have to serve

The poor and black and brown who could not hide
Were vacuumed up by Draft's relentless maw
To satisfy Leviathan's vain pride
Selective Service caught them in its draw

Thus did the Boomer generation split
Into the demographics that defined
Its better and its worse components fit
For service or avoidance most refined

But this time as the quagmire petered out
In `one's and `two's survivors filtered home
In secrecy and shame lest any shout
The "loser" name at them while mouthing foam

And so as not to learn the lesson bought
By those who bore the scars of service raw
A "syndrome" was invoked to mask the rot
That covered up a rancid, reeking flaw

For lessons unlearned have a gruesome way
Of teaching blood and sweat and tearful toil
They come around again to have their day
Exacting death's tuition as their spoil

And now those Booming Babies who once ran
Have wormed their way atop the greasy pole
And done once more the only thing they can:
Like shove some luckless soldier in a hole

Caught up now in Leviathan's demise
They seek in desperation to defray
Their debt to soldiers of a greater size
Who asked not to be used in this foul way

But symbol soldiers serve to shield the few
Who screw them if a single chance they get
Behind this conjured image brave and true
Hide some, "supporting troops" who've not died yet

But Lunatic Leviathan needs air
For it has gotten strangely out of breath
In snuffing out young life both strong and fair
It now begins to fear for its own death

Bewildered Boomer Babies now must face
The consequences of their childhood long
Few slaving parents now live to efface
The consequences of their siren song

The party life has now begun to drag
Prolonging adolescence hasn't served
The solipsistic urge to boast and brag
Our nation from its proper course has swerved

The "tough guy" Boomer Babies now lament
Those Rambo TV movies they imbibed
Their foolish gamble now cast in cement
Has left them looking weak and circumscribed

With guns or butter choices drawing near
They chose them both for they could not decide
Against the free-lunch concept they held dear
No matter how much scarcity applied

Like those who on their glowing screens portrayed
Stern visages of competence and strength
Cheerleaders for the bait-and-switch brigade
Appeared to offer latitude and length

Such emptiness as this no world had known
Where lollipops and legions mingled free
With schizoid paranoia fully blown
And greedy thieves inside the treasury

And hapless, harping, harlots followed camp
To service all that empire seemed to need
In time with contract carpetbaggers' tramp
The "gold rush" on itself began to feed

But somehow ingrate Caliban perverse
Prospero's lofty language learned too well
He profited by learning how to curse
And told his would-be master: "Go to hell!"

As Brutus spoke of time and tide that swerves
In the affairs of men which ebb and flood
The wise one takes the current when it serves
Away from shallow miseries and mud

Omitted, though, the voyage of their life
And all their ventures ill-conceived or worse
Are lost in vanity and useless strife
While they their repetitious lines rehearse

Now as Macbeth sits sulking in his pain
By men not born of women white impaled
The Birnam woods have come to Dunsinane
And all his prophecies have simply failed

Still soldiers in the desert sands adrift
Deserve a human homeward helping hand
Marooned in mayhem, needing now a lift
Out of a thankless, lethal foreign land

But while we dither dainty, doubtful, daft
With no concern much less an urgency
Our soldiers in the desert get the shaft
And lose their lives and limbs with certainty

Now struggle for the narrative begins
How soon can they the future lesson frame?
Lest held to answer for their many sins
The perpetrators can't escape the blame

This will require amnesia once again
A "syndrome" to blot out recall of loss
So in the future they can make some rain
To lubricate the luster of their boss

Who'll hire them as consultants back once more
To feed upon the public's helpless itch
“Strategic introductions" they adore
As means to peddle influence till rich

The Congressmen convened to boast their views
No "timetable" for leaving, they avowed
Which told the people what was hardly news:
No measurement of progress was allowed

For if the government could clearly plan
To do a thing and then complete the work
What hope would this not conjure up in Man,
Who'd only ever seen the beast berserk?

So bloodied soldiers still will bear the load
While Congress bloviates and stalls for time
And kicks the can on down the endless road
Till Congress can consume our last damn dime

Like rats that scurry from a sinking ship
The righteous chickens now would fly the coop
In their own droppings now they slide and slip
Their hawkish glare now fixed on their own poop

The wars of Peter Parkinson now rage
Incompetents fail upward to the top
And war expands to fill an endless age
Since no goal sets the limit when to stop

The Lunatic Leviathan now squats
And defecates on what was once a name
Which now defines no more than blood that clots
Upon a wound that serves but to defame

As ever, though, the symbol soldier tries
To do his job and through the madness strive
Forever to recall his friend that dies
Thus keeping him in memory alive


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Bring Home the Buy Time Brigade

The Buy Time Brigade is busted
It's run out of money and luck
The guy at the top can't be trusted
Because he does not give a fuck

He starts with his missions accomplished

After which he unravels the gain
Then with no rock unthrown or dirt un-dished
He covers up losses and pain

Commanding, Commandments, commanded:
He's fallen in love with command
Stone deaf to how he's been backhanded
By voters and their reprimand

The people don't like what he's doing
They've told him both time and again
They're tired of his endless pooch-screwing
They want the war over by ten

That's minutes, or hours, or bedtime
That doesn't mean weeks, months, or years
For those who don't listen, it's dead time
Like getting tossed out on their ears

The blood and the billions have vanished
It's time for the twerp to atone
To Dante's tenth level he's banished
A new low for just him alone

Or maybe Dick Cheney will join him
To smirk at his armpit and sneer
Which Dubya will take as a coin hymn
A chant to make money and cheer

The Fig Leaf Contingent from Asia
Has come back again to be heard:
"Fuck him and his fucked-up Fantasia!
No Lyndon Baines Bush: Texas turd!"

And no more from old Tricky Dickies
Those Kissingers, Nixons, and Fords
The vampires who left us with hickeys
From bleeding our necks for their gourds

Just cut off the money and maybes
Just quit all the stalling for time
We don't need these rats with their rabies
To rob us of our last thin dime

The Buy Time Brigade has no reason
Except to die fighting for zilch
To parasites we're open season:
Our pockets and veins they will filch

Their greed knows no limits too hyper
Yet before all our regiments fade
It's past time to pay off the piper
And bring home the Buy Time Brigade


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Soldier's Soldier

Scapegoat of the king's ambition
Hostage to the prince's crime
Sent upon a madman's errand
Soldier of another time

Sworn to do as he is bidden
Not to think of why he came
From himself his purpose hidden
Soldier by another name

Searching for a mystic evil
Ever just a war away
Always beaten, not defeated
Back to fight another day

Battles always won, but cheated
Of the promised victory
Never lost but just depleted
Army of our history

Kill the chicken; scare the monkey
Centipede is dead, not stiff
Off to far Cathay he marches
Soldier diving off a cliff

War not done but just abated
Peace the only thing to fear
Power's hunger never sated
Soldier's orders never clear

Dragon's teeth by Cadmus planted
Sprung from battle's plain full grown
Men who kill them all if doubtful
Heathen gods will know their own

Burn the village, clear the jungle
Save them from themselves at least
Make excuses for the bungle
Soldier then becomes the beast

Wounds still fresh and redly bleeding
Bound up with a filthy rag
Something shapeless once a husband
Stuffed into a plastic bag

Squatting in the dusty swelter
Widowed woman once a wife
Never more to know the shelter
Of a tranquil married life

Head thrown back in boundless grieving
Mouth agape with soundless woes
Tears and snot now glisten, mingling
Coursing down from eyes and nose

Anguished face a tangled curtain
Clotted, matted, raven hair
Almond eyes with sight uncertain
Weeping pools of deep despair

Do not knock this war we're having
It's the only one we've got
"Better Dead Than Red," we tell them
Mouthing slogans; talking rot

Fight them over there they tell us
Rather that than fight them here
Just invent some casus bellus
Danger's best that's never near

Ozymandias' sneering statue
Crumbled in the desert bare:
Look upon my works, you mighty
See their ruin and take care

Told to teach and be creative
Soldier eager, bright and young
Learned instead and then went native
Speaking now an ancient tongue

Only they will now receive him
Who see not his bloodstained hand
None will hear for he can't speak it
Stranger to his own lost land

Bringing with him what he carried
Losing only what he bought
To the cause no longer married
Soldier doing what he ought

Shipped away like so much baggage
Not to choose the things he's done
Often bad and sometimes better
Soldier not the only one

Now he comes home like the others
Breathless lips and eyes shut fast
Lain to sleep beside his brothers
Soldier's soldier to the last


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Syndromes of Wisdom

"You must not invade Mother Russia," it's said
In the vast, bitter wintertime cold
Napoleon, though, thought he'd figured a way
So did Hitler, or so we are told.

"Do not get bogged down in an Asian land war,"
So they once taught cadets at West Point
Not that France or America listened, of course
Till their noses got wrenched out of joint

"Do not spit to windward," the sailors will say
Or you'll get the snot back in your face
Not that landlubbers heed these instructions so wise
Which accounts for their loss with no trace

"Do not use a puppet to run your affairs"
If you don't know the nature of string
With two ends, you know, it can pull either way
As the bad puppet chorus will sing

As they train the young dogs not to shit where they live
And the cats not to pee on the rug
So America ought not to jump in the hole
That it has only recently dug

Latrines have their uses, but swimming ain't one
Not unless you like stinking and slimed
So America ought not to dive in the ditch
Out of which it has only just climbed

We haven't yet found our way out of this mess
Still, before any learning can start
All the ones who so brazenly lit the last fuse
Seem to fear that we might lose the art

They've gone back again to the tried and the trite
Seeking slogans to mask their retreat
In a panic that soon we won't do this again
"Isolationist!" now they repeat

In the land of the blind rules a king with one eye
Whose perspective is greatly obscured
Like the fabulous realm of the learning impaired
Where the people know only one word

The sunken investments run deep, far, and wide
And to give them up now would be bad
Never mind all those kids with the lost legs and arms
We must not make the stockholders sad

The headstones grow grim in the grass ‘round their graves
As the rows of their ranks slowly fill
While the numbers and dates tell a story of lives
Ended short, not for good but for ill

What remains of their bodies lies buried away
While their souls through eternity fall
Leaving only their memories fading in friends
And their names on a black-granite wall

They bang the drum slowly; they play the horn sad
They preach and console and reprise
Their denials that youth really dies for the old
While the story the statesmen revise

Now furious fear flings more sand in the face
As the trial balloons litter the sky
Once again it's a "syndrome" to think of the waste,
To remember, and understand why

What kind of a people would coin a cliché
Using "syndrome" to lie and appease
All to cover a wish to make wisdom passé
Just a symptom of one more disease?


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Dumb Peyote

(From the Terza Rima epic-in-progress: "The Triumph of Strife")

The leper knight erroneous has erred
Mistaking might for right he wrongly thought
That "errantry" meant any deed he dared

As long as others paid for what he wrought
No costs to him in any case accrued
Who robbed the future for the now he bought

An irresponsibility imbued
From childhood: early, middle-aged, and late
That never grew but only came unglued

When all his haughty hype dissolved in hate
Because the minds he lit on fire then burned
Consuming meals that no one ever ate

While others got the bill for what he earned:
Some lessons only stated, never learned

Connected to the teleprompter crawl
Some moving lines he labored to pronounce
But what began as boast became a bawl

For on his lies he feared the truth would pounce
If ever he acknowledged what all knew:
That any check he wrote would quickly bounce

As he had made deposits small and few
To fund his overdrawn Crusade account
Compared to princely sums that he withdrew

No actuaries told of an amount
Offsetting compound interest as it grew
A hemorrhage erupting in a fount

A punctured fiscal artery or two --
His lookouts on the stern cried: "Thar she blew!"

His rotting nose and ears and finger tips
Left him no way to smell and hear and feel
So with his face he launched a thousand slips

Forgetting only first to lay a keel
He swung a champagne bottle at some air
Thus christening his fantasies as real

While in the Hellish Land grief and despair
Resulted from the dreams of this rude runt
Who saw a darkened cloud and called it fair

Who tried to score but found he had to punt
He played at pope and captain from his pew
His life behind him, only less in front

No Starbuck, he wished only for a crew
Who did not fear the whales that wise men do

His white whale hunt produced white elephants
And albatrosses hung about his neck
Which even bought-and-paid-for sycophants

Described as nothing but a total wreck
Like Ishmael left floating on his box
Alone upon the waves a tiny speck

The witness shook his fist to curse the pox
That serving such a madman made his life
Adrift with only seabirds in their flocks

To hear his telling of the sorry strife
An audience up in the air above
Whose cries much like the whistle and the fife

Accompanied the lyrics telling of
A ship sunk by stupidity, not love

This Dumb Peyote, armadillo ass,
Set out to wrong all rights that ever were
And championed Medusa, maiden crass,

Who turned to stone whomever looked at her
While he with terror's windmills vainly strove
By catapulting propaganda slur

At any that took note of how he drove
The ship of state off course and onto rocks
As cronies drained the country's treasure trove

And cut their taxes; boosting up the stocks
Of his own self-selected VP pick:
A Search-and-Pinch-'em turning back the clocks

To tell a time of former torments sick
Before his basement shrine to Tricky Dick

Thus as the scrolling sounds too quickly sped
From right to left before his thoughtless gaze;
Through empty chambers nestled in his head;

The one who would command stared in a daze
At chicken hawks now coming home to roost
And rats deserting courses that he stays

From his collapsed Crusade he gets no boost
Yet in the bowels of a bunker crypt
A constipated comrade's colon loosed

And whispers of some slogan-schedules slipped
Leaked out to lubricate the greasy pole
With blood from all the victims they had gypped

Who in the hanging wish to play a role --
A little slop of horrors in their bowl

So Dumb Peyote, leper knight errant,
Tried playing captain Ahab, too, and more
But as he couldn't read, spoke only cant

That others wrote and which he only swore
While trying hard to play the common sort
Who didn't mean to be the crushing bore

Who every conversation will abort
Like landings turned into a fiery crash
Because he has but only one retort:

"I'll have my war; you pony up the cash!"
To which the opposition says: "Why, sure!
We'll gladly let you handle all the stash."

Thus ever leper knights spread their manure
From whose infection none have found a cure


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Friday, December 08, 2006

Asinine Ambivalence

"Maybe or Maybe Not"
A poem insearch of New York Senator You-Know-Her (With apologies to Rudyard Kipling who wrote "If")

If you would lose your head when others wouldn’t
And let polls do your thinking when you won’t,
If you could trust George Bush when wise men couldn’t
But still excuse his lying when they don’t,
If you can wait for someone else to lead us,
And being led yourself, follow behind,
And, living large, dine with the ones who bleed us,
Yet never seem to pay us any mind;

If you’re content to make George Bush your master,
If you can slink away to his estate;
If you can turn Triumph into Disaster
And treat Joe Lieberman as your blind date;
If you can bear to hear the lies you've spoken
Straightened by truth to make you look the fool,
Or watch what former Democrats built broken,
While right-wing cynics use you as their tool;

If you can make one heap of all our army
And risk their lives on one throw of the dice,
And lose, and cover up by speaking smarmy
And blame somebody else by talking nice;
If you can show no heart or nerve or sinew
Yet serve your own self even as you flee,
And so put out when there is nothing in you
Except the sign you wear which says: "Kick me!"

It could be that someone will come to teach you
Some braver soul, perhaps, will show the way
Maybe an errant vertebra will reach you
Perhaps your spine will stiffen one fine day
You may, perhaps, or maybe you won’t, either
Perhaps you’ll skitter further to the right
Like other chicken hawks, you need a breather
Before the next time that you take to flight

With luck, we won’t lose more than three each day now
Perhaps only a dozen died this week
It could be you’ve found some cool way to say, “Wow!
Just look at all that ‘Victory’ we seek!”
You could have chanced to find some Chinese money
To borrow from our children for your war
Maybe you’ll visit good King George, your honey,
And pledge your party as his loyal whore

You and the press have sure played Rip Van Winkle
And gone to sleep to wake up out to lunch
While vampires on our “values” loudly sprinkle
Invective while continuing to munch
Yet still you quake and quiver at the vision
Of greedy bats out after our last dime
Upon our necks they make a new incision
While you prevaricate and stall for time

While Cindy Sheehan shows true grit you wobble
And, like the wildebeest, hide in the herd
Content to let the lion chew and gobble
On others’ children – all without a word
Perhaps you’ll dodge a vote and so we’ll stay in
Most likely you’ll decry some burning flags
While soldiers die you slither on your way in
To Senate chambers famed for bogus gags

No doubt you’ll raise more funds to sell your virtue,
And kneel for kings to lose the common touch,
While only friends but not your foes desert you;
Because you’ve asked too little for so much,
You’ll likely fill the unforgiving hour
With only sixty seconds' worth of work,
And still expect the Earth for you to flower,
Which maybe will not happen now, you jerk!


Michael Mury, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Boobie Unconscious Projection

The Boobie Grand Ventriloquist
Put on a sight to see
He showed just how projection works
And did it all for free
(Except for a "donation" that
He called "gratuity")

A giant statue sat on stage
As huge as any tree
A little man then sat upon
A giant wooden knee
And threw a voice out of himself
Like it had come from "HE"

In normal tones of voice this man
Impressed no one at all
But when he shouted "GAWD IZ GRATE!"
A hush consumed the hall
And into Boobie minds there seeped
A sick miasmic pall

The statue never moved an inch
As wooden things don't do
But on its knee the little man
Had started turning blue
(It seemed that he had held his breath
And counted up to two)

"Don't let him die!" the crowd beseeched
In rapt insanity
Then color came back to his face;
He breathed more easily
(It seemed that he had exhaled once
He'd counted up to three)

"HE heard your prayers!" the man rejoiced
"As you can clearly see!
And what is more, you'd best believe
That HE looks out for me.
I'm just HIS trusted messenger
Who brings HIS plans for thee."

"I cannot move but by HIS will.
I serve at HIS command.
This BIG GUY that you see right here
Would rather not demand;
But if HE has to, then HE will;
So here's what HE's got planned ..."

The little man brought down the house
And as the curtain fell
The Boobies clapped and danced and sang
Enchanted by the spell
They'd all heard GAWD HIMSELF dispense
Commands that went down well

In Boobie red-state USA
The trick works quite the same
Where Boobie George has jury-rigged
A "GAWD" that "hears" its name
Invoked each time that Boobie George
Desires to light a flame

But out in "heartland" USA
Where trees and acres live
A different symbol scheme requires
The Boobies to forgive
The Boobie George's brain that leaks
Much like a mental sieve

You see, with all the things gone wrong
At home and overseas
The sacrilegious thought might grow
That GAWD had heard no pleas
From wounded, dying soldiers or
Those looted Iraqis

So bumbling Boobie George ginned up
A Rube Goldberg machine
That cranked out TV symbols of
A patriotic scene
Implying GAWD had exercised
HIS choice to intervene

One symbol looked just like a flag
The old Red-White-and-Blue
But blown up to gigantic size
So none would miss the cue
That GAWD and FLAG had just conspired
To make one thing from two

The GAWD-FLAG that George had designed
Contained no flaws or blights
Its crude associations let no
No mind elude its slights
As Boobies found their simple thoughts
Compressed to rude sound-bites

The image of the little man
In GAWD-FLAG's awesome lights
Consumed the Boobie targets who
Could not escape its sights
It hit them, like the sailors say,
Between the running lights

And Boobie sailors in the crowd
Went psycho -- lewd and hushed:
They spent like drunken Reagans and
At Cheney's language blushed
They didn't know to go hog-wild
Or just feel simply crushed

And Boobie soldiers looking on
In groups of two's and three's
Morphed suddenly in Photoshop
To number as the bees
That swarm about a honey comb
Adoring queens who tease

And Boobie airmen out on leave
From their academy
Felt suddenly compelled to stop
Harassing property
Preferring to assault fellow
Cadets, both he and she

And Guardsmen working at the jails
Saw all of this and more
They took it in and then commenced
To beat their charges sore
Why not, when all their leadership
Had gone to sleep to snore

Associating little man
With GAWD-FLAG has its price
Convincing fearful Boobies that
They needn't act so nice
Combining fright and power to
Turn humans into lice


Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005