The Inflated Style as Euphemism

“I think no commander ever is going to come out and say ‘I’m confidant that we can do this.’ I think we say you assess, we believe this is, you know, a reasonable prospect.” — General David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan (since promoted to head of the CIA), regarding his mission objectives and his prospects for achieving them.

“The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism.” George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.

Which leads to thoughts in verse regarding:

“The Inflated Style as Euphemism”

The general has started talking funny
Like, never stating what we can achieve.
Instead, he babbles jargon for the money
Which means he never plans for us to leave.

We’ve been there now so long that few remember
How many times we’ve heard the same old song.
Our plans, those scruffy foreigners dismember
While we proclaim that we’ve done nothing wrong.

The president has donned his bomber jacket
To have his picture taken with the troops:
For conquerors, cheap tools that serve the racket;
For statesmen, simple patriotic dupes.

Our presidents and generals have blundered
And now can only stall for yet more time
While citizens back home whom they have plundered
Refuse to see the nature of the crime.

We went to “war” with tax cuts for the wealthy
And exhortations to consume and spend.
Now broke and begging from the thieving stealthy,
Our leaders promise this will never end.

Our presidents and generals stage dramas
And wave the bloody shirt while spouting gas
To keep us safe from peasants in pajamas
And poppy farmers smoking hash and grass.

We did this once before in Southeast Asia
As names upon a granite wall attest.
The country, though, prefers its euthanasia:
The laying of all memory to rest.

So let us listen raptly to the latest
Inflated euphemism coined to quell
The slightest thought that we might be the greatest
Bullshitters of whom history can tell.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2010

Boobie Top-Down Class Warfare

Written six years ago but just as relevant today: the unfolding saga of America reducing itself to passive intellectual incarceration, mesmerized by the moving colored images emanating from a glowing television screen; like the island aborigine Boobies cut off from the world's cultural mainland; like prisoners kept underground who can only see shadows dancing on the walls of their cave and not the marionettes and puppeteers on the elevated stage behind them who produce and cast the shadows that they mistake for reality. In the accelerating economic insecurity enveloping so many Americans today, we can see the usual and historic:

Boobie Top-Down Class Warfare

(an episode of Fernando Po, U.S.A., America's post-literate retreat to Plato's Cave)

It happened back in Vietnam
Some two score years ago
When those within the upper class
Declined to serve, and so
They coined Selective Service to
Select who wouldn't go

They called themselves the brightest and
They called themselves the best
And then they sent their countrymen
Into a hornet’s nest
But not themselves, of course, because
They’d passed the privilege test

These parents of a George and Dick
Thought communism bad
But worried that some other lands
Would find it not as sad
As slaving for the rich ones whose
Rank greed had made them mad

So sympathizing with the rich
No matter what they did
The parents of a George and Dick
Sent someone else's kid
To fight the dreaded communists
No matter where they hid

But not their George and Dick, of course,
They couldn't spare the time
And Vietnam seemed far away
Immersed in war and grime
An atmosphere too turbulent
For orchids in their prime

These studly hot-house orchid types
Worked hard to dodge the light
Their parents helped them jump the line
To keep them out of sight
Arranging for deferments that
Would keep them from the fight

And so the years of war went by
And communism won
Which had exactly no effect
On those who had the fun
Of skipping out and turning tail
To take off on the run

Soon Vietnam recovered from
The blasting it had got
And communists turned businessmen
To hatch a common plot
With those who liked cheap labor
And cared less why some had fought

Still some remained embittered by
The waste made of their lives
And swore they'd never live again
Like worker bees in hives
Content to feed the rich who dined
With sharpened forks and knives

But Boobie schools taught only fraud
And fiction to the young
With fantasy and fables coined
To see the truth unstrung
Till history became a fog
That never bit or stung

On schedule, Boobie Dick and George
Found Politician Town
And learned that pandering for votes
Could win some safe renown
Affirmatively actioned up
They never could fall down

The millions seemed to flow their way
And stuck to them like paste
They spent what others raised for them
With no thought for the waste
Since someone else's money had
The sweetest sort of taste

They made a deal between themselves
To do a pantomime
With Dick to do the thinking while
George mouthed a lisping rhyme
And so with the Supine Court's help
They grabbed for our last dime

The Boobie George then tripped and crashed
Into this truth sublime:
That Boobies hated freedom and
Considered it a crime
Dick told him then what he should do:
Just work them overtime!

With not a moment left to think
The Boobies wouldn’t know
Where all their beads and shells had gone
Or why they couldn’t show
A single thing as evidence
That they had labored so

Once George and Dick gained access to
The treasury’s largesse
It hardly seems surprising that
It soon contained much less
A fact which few observers seemed
To think of with distress

But "stupid is as stupid does,"
The stupid do and say
Confronted by a wealthy thief
They genuflect, then pay;
With eyes and minds shut fast like that
They make such tempting prey

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

The Circus that Wouldn't Leave Town

"During the intervals between elections the political existence of the citizenry is relegated to a shadow citizenship of virtual participation. Instead of participating in power, the virtual citizen is invited to have 'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them." -- Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.

Which leads to a terza rima sonnet concerning:

"The Circus that Wouldn't Leave Town"

From time to time, the circus once arrived,
Quadrennial in its appointed rounds.
Yet somehow it has artfully contrived

To never leave -- bombarding us with sounds
And sights so lurid and insistent that
Whatever tripe The Candidate expounds

Begins to clog the arteries with fat,
Inducing aneurisms in the soul
Through endless touting of a puerile spat.

Consultants endlessly conduct a poll
Which tells us what they wish for us to hear:
That folks like us will play our scripted role.

Commercial ads have made that crystal clear.
If only fright were all we had to fear

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2012

Boobie Transferred Nationalists

Written five years ago, but even more appropriate now, given the recent passing of Christopher Hitchens, who couldn't make it as a writer in his native England, but who successfully emigrated to America, where lower literary and intellectual standards prevail among the jingoists. So, with a nod to George Orwell's essay Notes on Nationalism:

"Boobie Transferred Nationalists"
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A. -- America's post-linguistic retreat to Plato's Cave)

The jingoistic national
As Orwell named the type
Enlists to fight a brand new cause
Depending on the tripe
Unstable and transferable
To any nutty gripe

Beginning on the Left and then
Careening to the Right
Then back and forth to land again
In someone else’s fight:
Tobacco smoke and alcohol
Obscuring little light

Equipped with English accent and
A schoolboy’s stock of slurs
He finds another country where
A thought sometimes occurs
But too infrequently to catch
The speech his thinking blurs

This transferred British Boobie swore
That he could not descry
As single solitary soul
To whom someone could lie
And having written thus he changed
The color of his sky

Whereas in the United States
On any given day
The polls show vast majorities
In each and every way
Believing lies and hype designed
To lead them all astray

So some remain to lie to if
Someone will tell the lie
Credulity has never known
A limit, and here’s why:
Americans just want to think
That thought does not apply

This Boobie Hitchens claimed a rape
Had transpired long ago
Involving Boobie Clinton and
Juanita So-and-So
(Revulsion retroactive and
The “proof” ex post facto)

Not just content to sling this crap
The Boobie Hitchens swore
That his friend Ahmed Chalabi
Would tell the truthful score
About Iraq -- if funded with
The wages of a whore

And wanting so to play the role
Of Papa Hemingway
This transferred British jingoist
Talked tough in his bluff way
But found the rich were just like us,
Except for better pay

So signing on with Boobie George
And Dick and Don and Paul
The Boobie Hitchens quickly learned
The bitter taste of gall
As Ahmed’s paid “intelligence”
Turned rancid after all

For who on earth would think to trust
A bank fraud on the lam
Who frequented casinos while
He “fought” the bad Saddam
For years in sumptuous exile
Funded by old Uncle Sam?

Yet now that none of Ahmed’s tips
Have turned out to be true
The Boobie Hitchens holds his breath
And threatens to turn blue
Since no one but his fascist friends
Cares what he wants to spew

Thus duped and with his knickers down
He blusters for his bread
The pooch he screwed so baldly has
Climbed back into his bed
With Blair and Bush: three poodles screwed
By their own pooch instead

So if you want to find someone
Who’ll credit any lie
You needn’t search much further than
This British Boobie guy
Who’ll wind up any wingless bird
And then just let if fly

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Boobie Counter Insurgency

(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America's post-linguistic retreat to Plato's Cave)

If offered help you'd best refuse
For if you should relent
They'll draw an arbitrary line
Through problems transient
And complicate them all so as
To make them permanent

They’d like to spend a “night,” they say
To get inside the door
But after years you’ll find them fast
Asleep upon your floor
In no apparent haste to end
Their stay that you abhor

Like suitors of Penelope
They make themselves at home
In yours – till you will marry them
Or read to them a tome
That ends when brave Ulysses comes
From back across the foam

They start with talking of a “race”
But just as a pretense
Once underway, the “journey” talk
Begins to change the sense:
“Accomplished” missions leading to
No perfect in their tense

A hanging concentrates the mind;
No hangings, the reverse
When no one hangs for screwing up
Results become perverse
Rewards buy more incompetence
And gild the golden purse

Incompetents attract their ilk
They know no other kind
And so they concentrate like sludge
A residue refined
To gum up all the moving parts
And leave them in a bind

The Law of Parkinson explains
Bureaucracy’s demands
Just make more room to make more work
For still more willing hands
There’s room enough for everyone
When all the yeast expands

The Peter Principle sets in
And all float to the top
The good get out; the bad stay on:
Promotion will not stop
It doesn’t matter what they do,
Or how they fail and flop

“You fuck up then you move up” goes
The slogan of the day
Republican philosophy
For how to make some hay
Insurgencies have payrolls that
Would tempt a Kenneth Lay

To “counter” the insurgency
You first put on your crown
And then “elect” your puppets till
You start to spiral down
To end up with the worst of all:
George Bush and Michael Brown

Great nations, so the saying goes,
Cannot fight little wars
It just makes them look little
Like the whores that staff the bars:
Those widowed native women folk
Whose men died for our cars

We had to have the oil, it seems,
To make our gas and fuel
No matter that the price has soared
While Halliburton gruel
Fed to the troops to keep them fit
Has made them mean and cruel

But when a bloated, idle firm
Has little real to do
It either lays employees off
Or makes a pooch to screw
Then buys up some screwdriver stock
With options for a few

And then consultants come to call
To market mantras cool:
Some jaundiced, jaded, jargon jive
To mesmerize the fool
Which Dick and Don have taught to George
To make of him a tool

The trophy chief executive
Requires the use of sound
A propaganda catapult,
Some noise he needs to pound
He doesn’t have to know “above”
From “under” or “around”

Deciding to decide he picks
Decision as his guide
He chooses choices chosen for
The options that they hide
He puts them “on the table” then
Onto the floor they slide

He turns both tides and corners and
He chews gum as he walks
Then chokes and stumbles, yanked by strings,
As his bad puppet balks
Refusing to “eliminate”
The “enemy” he stalks

Technology will save the day
Or so we have been told
Our vastly overpriced machine
Will keep away the cold
Although “insurgents” wreck it with
“Improvisation” bold

The war to have more war again
Has made war without end:
Careers for all the supple ones
Whose rubber ethics bend
Until their “honor” turns to rust:
A blood-stain’s reddish blend

But why not send some campaign staff?
Those smarmy puerile jerks
Who masturbate to thoughts of “war”
With all its rank and perks
Who find “good bidness” where it “is”
And who cares if it works?

They’ll camp inside the castle walls
Some hamburgers to munch
And never go outside the wire
To brave the deadly crunch
While talking tough about Tehran
Where they’d be someone’s lunch

The days and weeks and months go by
With more excuses still
For why the costs keep rising while
The “enemy” we kill
But, What the hell? It’s free-lunch war!
The kids will pay the bill

Republicans can talk a fight
Until the buildings fall
They then attack the innocent
And squawk a shrieking squall
Producing only years of talk
To cover for it all

So “Hell is on the way,” alright,
Dick Cheney’s vow fulfilled
They fell asleep on watch and got
Three thousand of us killed
Then ran off half a world away
To have some oil wells drilled

In only six more months of this
The numbers will accrue
To show we’ve lost three thousand more
With no apparent clue
Explaining why we’ve spent more time
Than fighting World War Two

We used to have great enemies
But now we’ve only small
We shot a cannon at a wasp
Collapsing hive and hall
And now upon our bee-stung ass
The insects swarm and crawl

We’ve bought another cannon, though,
Because it makes more bang
And generates huge profits for
The ones who hire the gang
Who, when the sand gets in the gears,
Ignore the clunk and clang

The blowback, though, comes round in time;
No one has yet escaped.
Vietnamized; Iraqified;
Corrupted by the raped,
The “victors” thus are vanquished by
The monkeys that they aped.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

George Armstrong Custer Bush

(First written on 7/2/2005 after reading that America's criminal invasion of Iraq had acquired a "new, improved" -- meaning, recycled from Vietnam -- military metaphor to explain it all: namely, "fly paper." See: the flypaper American GIs offer themselves to the "enemy" flies who then stick to the flypaper GIs until the whole sticky mess -- used up flypaper and dead flies -- gets thrown into the trashcan of history. See? No? OK, then, consider what still looks for all the world like the grim story of George Armstrong Custer revisited.)

Shades of Dien Bien Phu and the Little Big Horn!

Now I think I get it! President George "Deputy Dubya" Bush really did have a strategy when he invaded Iraq over two years ago. Yes, and you unbelievers thought he just blundered into a bloody quagmire with his empty head stuffed solidly up his butt. No way. The man had a plan!

Just like the French at Dien Bien Phu or George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn, or Ronald Reagan's Marines at the Beirut Airport, Deputy Dubya decided to send his troops down into an indefensible hole in the ground and "bait" the enemy into coming after them. Then, when the American forces found themselves surrounded, they would just wipe out the enemy all around them. What a genius plan!

In a repetitive and totally inane speech the other day, Deputy Dubya reminded us of why foreigners consider Americans among the dumbest people ever to walk the earth. Even aside from trying to pull that discredited "9/11 = Saddam Hussein" canard for the umpteenth time, the really stupid bit came when Dubya the Dullard let us in on his clever scheme to invade a country that didn't have terrorists just so he could create a country that did. Now that the "terrorists" who didn't exist in Iraq under Saddam Hussein now do exist in that country (with Saddam Hussein in jail for the past year), the killing of Americans and Iraqis can just go on and on and on because .... well ... because ... well ... BECAUSE IT HAS ALREADY STARTED! You see, in American logic, starting something justifies doing what you've started doing once you've started doing it. See? Hmmmmmmm? How can anyone expect Americans to stop doing anything stupidly suicidal once they begin doing it? Hmmm? Doesn't that make perfect American sense? Hmmmm?

Canon-fodder British soldiers in World War I and American GIs in Vietnam had a slogan for this kind of self-referential, tautological strategic tail-chasing: "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

See: as "big-thinking" American domino theorists like Henry Kissinger keep telling us decade after decade, our friends won't respect us and our enemies won't fear us if we stop acting stupidly! Don't you see the logic of it? See: "big thinking" American domino theorists simply assume that our friends respect stupidity and our enemies fear it. Why do you find this so hard to understand? And stop laughing!

Early in the Vietnam War, genius American generals used to laugh at the French generals for putting their troops into that hopeless trap at Dien Bien Phu where the Vietnamese wiped them with artillery firing down from the surrounding hillsides. Then the genius American General William Westmoreland put his troops into a trap at Khe Sanh where a whole bunch of his troops got royally hammered by the surrounding North Vietnamese -- while other Vietnamese guerrillas simply walked around the pinned-down Americans and blew up most of the major cities to the South. Actually, this "use ourselves as bait" strategy has an even earlier history among genius American generals: like when General George Armstrong Custer cleverly "baited" thousands of Sioux Indians to come wipe him out at the Little Big Horn River. What, one must ask, induces genius Generals to do such monumentally stupid things? Does it come with the rank?

George W. Bush cleverly avoided service in the Vietnam War where he might have learned from all the stupid things our former Presidents and generals did there. But noooooooooooooo. He had to hide out (at least part of the time) in a champagne National Guard unit that never engaged a single enemy airplane in mortal combat anywhere in the skies over Texas. Now, when he finally gets to live out his wildest fantasies as Commander-In-Briefs, he figures he'll just send the American military into Iraq where they can create "terrorists" and then "bait" them into killing Americans day after day after day. He calls this "strategy" the "war on terror." See: first you create terrorists and then you dare them to kill you. See? Republicans understand this "reasoning" intuitively, even if they wouldn't think of risking their own children's lives putting it into practice.

Anyway, you unbelievers out there had better learn a whole new level of respect for George Armstrong Custer Bush. You may think he lacks intelligence and experience, but that only goes to show how little you understand the power of Republican faith in fantasy! Just keep dreaming along with Deputy Dubya Bush and a miracle will happen any day now. If it doesn't, who cares? Dead flypaper GIs tell no tales.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005-2011

Congenital Stockholm Syndrome

He started by giving up quickly,

Surrendering early his case.

He offered to kiss their asses.

Replying, they pissed in his face.

Their urine, he thought, tasted strangely;

Yet not at all bad to his taste.

He'd gotten so used to it, plainly.

Why let such a drink go to waste?

The people who voted in favor

Of him and his promise of “change”

Now see in his many betrayals

A poodle afflicted with mange.

Each time that the surly and crazy

Republicans out for his skin

Condemn him for living and breathing,

He graciously helps them to win.

He’ll turn on his base in an instant

With threats and disdain and neglect

While bombing some Muslims so Cheney

Might thrill to the lives that he’s wrecked.

A black man in love with apartheid

He offers his stalwart support

To zionists and their extortion

With “More, please!” his only retort.

A masochist begging for beatings

Obama takes joy in abuse

Receiving just what he has asked for

Which makes him of no earthly use

The little brown men that he’s murdered

In homes far away from our land

Bring profits obscene to his backers

Who give him the back of their hand.

 

Obama seeks praise from the vicious

Republicans, no matter what.

He suffers, apparently, nothing

So much as his need to kiss butt.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2011

Peacock Pugilism

A terza rima sonnet in dishonor of America's most recent President to win the Nobel Prize for Peace:


The precious peacock poised upon his perch
Perspires profusely, pondering his plan.
In short: he must decide which way to lurch.

Not if, but when should he attack Iran?
How best prepare the public for this strike?
Which lies to tell, the flames of war to fan?

From where the ruler sits, what’s not to like
About the usefulness of nameless fear
And heads of Muslim preachers on a pike?

Self-satisfied, he grins from ear to ear
Reporting proudly of his latest kill.
No charge, indictment, trial, or verdict clear,

Just fiat disappearance, Newspeak swill:
Iraq and Vietnam -- again and still.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2011

After the Banquet in Baghdad

Hearing President Barack Obama promise – again – that all remaining American military forces would (after almost eight years) leave Iraq within the next two months, I recalled something that George Orwell wrote in his essay entitled, Catastrophic Gradualism:

"There is a theory which has not yet been accurately formulated or given a name, but which is very widely accepted and is brought forward whenever it is necessary to justify some action which conflicts with the sense of decency of the average human being. It might be called, until some better name is found, the Theory of Catastrophic Gradualism. According to this theory, nothing is ever achieved without bloodshed, lies, tyranny and injustice, but on the other hand no considerable change for the better is to be expected as the result of even the greatest upheaval. History necessarily proceeds by calamities, but each succeeding age will be as bad, or nearly as bad as the last. ...

"The formula usually employed is 'You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.' And if one replies, 'Yes, but where is the omelet?' the answer is likely to be: 'Oh, well, you can't expect everything to happen all in a moment.'"
Hence, a few lines of verse:

"After the Banquet in Baghdad”

With their tails tucked proudly 'tween their legs
Advancing towards the exit march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
No promised omelet, just the broken eggs?

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2011

America the Dutiful

In the Land of the Fleeced and the Home of the Slave
Where the cowed and the buffaloed moan
Where seldom we find an inquisitive mind
And the people pay up with a groan


While at home on the range when the firing begins
Not a word of encouragement sounds
The temp workers leave for their other day jobs
And the cops and the guards make their rounds


When the rich ones start wars that the poor have to fight
And the chickenhawks glare as they cluck
The recruiters hold raffles and promise the moon
In the neighborhoods down on their luck


Where the clouds hang around for the length of the day
Casting shadows and fear all around
A lost mother grieves and starts haunting the land
Having just laid her son in the ground


As the war against someone somewhere at some time
Never quite seems to end or conclude
War itself becomes reason for having this war
Leaving no room for thought to intrude


Unreported out west by vacationing scribes
Seeking rest from Access Mentalpause
The tombstones in Aspen turn up all at once
Having roots that connect with their cause


Now the Fig Leaf Contingent has answered the call
From a time long ago it's returned
Once again to buy time for the guilty to mime
More excuses for lives that they've burned


So the dead really died so that more dead can die
Goes the "logic" that once more holds sway
Understanding, the Fig Leaf Contingent steps up,
Packs its gear and then marches away


Late at night out on runway strips hidden and dark
Where the citizens can't see what shocks
The Contingent comes "home" one-by-one, all alone,
In a wheelchair or flag-covered box


So the long-promised "victory" ever recedes
As the Fig Leaf Contingent fights on
Keeping faith with the faithless who've ordered its doom
Like a poorly schooled chess player's pawn


In the dutiful land of the fruitcakes and nuts
Where the sun shines between the two seas
The hills in their lavender majesty stand
Unaffected by men's howling pleas


For to go with no reason where no purpose calls
Leads to nothing but more of the same
Till the Fig Leaf Contingent's utility fails
To deflect any more of the blame


And since something was lost surely someone has failed
Only whom could those proud persons be?
Not the chickenhawks glaring and clucking for war!
Not the neo-new, know-nothing "we"!


As the first mate harpooner admonished his crew
In the mad Captain Ahab's vast tale
He would not have along for a ride in his boat
Any man not afraid of a whale


For the ocean is great and my ship is so small
And the winds blow beyond all command
Only fools and the drowned ever this truth forget
Which is why they should stay on dry land


But the day-trippers out for a float on the pond
Seldom think of the perilous shoals
So they send off the Fig Leaf Contingent to fight
Absent only some well-defined goals


Thus they played on TV what in real life demands
More than Hobbits, and Wizards, and Elves
And they taught us our duty much better by far
Than they put into practice themselves


So we've come back again from our exile abroad
With our tattered ranks bitter and sore
Having done what our Maximum Leader would not
All of that and a hundred times more


We are here `cause we're here `cause we're here `cause we're here
And for no other reason on earth
But for us in the Fig Leaf Contingent, we know
What our duty and honor are worth


So we will not abandon to memory's hole
Those we loved and who loved us in turn
Still we go to our graveyards secure in our trust
That America never will learn

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

Changing Commanders-in-Brief

The last guy-in-charge said, “Go shopping.”
This war, he said, wouldn’t last long;
Our victims, he swore, would repay us
For plundering them for a song.

In six months, at most, we’d be winners;
The enemy vanquished and fled;
And then, with our mission accomplished,
We’d leave them to count up their dead.

Our generals trained for the last war,
Their learning-curve zero or less.
In six years they’ll figure out something;
Just what, will be anyone’s guess.

They had them a “surge” in their payments
To “enemies” placed on the dole
So they wouldn’t shoot us so often
Because of their land that we stole.

The new guy took over, saluting,
A race that had already run
Its course, ‘cause the bungler before him
Had exploited all of the fun.

The new guy got rolled up like sushi.
He blew his chance early to leave.
More "surging" has just raised the death count.
What next does he have up his sleeve?

It sounded so good while campaigning:
One little “good” war for one bad;
Except that the Afghans hate bombings
As much as Vietnamese had.

Our generals, though, won’t admit it:
They’ve taken eight years to do what?
Yet somehow they think we’ll applaud them
For not knowing doodley-squat.

They say they need more stuff and faster
Yet won’t explain what they would do
Except to extend their disaster
By breeding more pooches to screw.

In common-sense language, the answer
Replies to their “more, more, more” rant:
“You would have, of course, if you could have;
You didn’t, therefore, so you can’t.”

The new guy Obama, like Dubya,
Thinks playing Commander-in-Brief
Means mission-creep “more” and saluting
The Pentagram treasury thief.

“A trillion a year?” Oh, who’s counting?
“And all for what?” Don’t be a bore.
“And who will pay?” No one, we promise.
It’s what we call slush-funded “war.”

Obama won’t ask the right question,
To wit: “What on earth have we ‘won’?”
Like Pharaoh, he thinks he can dictate:
“So let it be written, then done.”

He cried: “Yes, we can!” while campaigning,
This slogan he sold and we bought.
In office, however, he’s changed things:
Himself. Now he says, “We cannot.”

Our Wealth Care rules out Single Payer
Our troops must remain on patrol.
The votes don't exist in the Congress
That Democrats cannot control.

We gave him majorities, plenty,
Yet these he seems ready to blow.
Now Wealth Care and Quagmire have named him:
Commander of Old Status Quo.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

A Mistaken Pardon

(In the style of A Forsaken Garden, by Algernon Charles Swinburne)

In a time of deceit, in an age of unreason,
The frightened find faith in the fabulous fraud.
Divided and conquered in Fascism’s season,
The browbeaten buffaloed brandish their GAWD:
A weapon of weirdness when doom encroaches,
Whom preyed-upon pray to for jobs and a meal,
While the thief who thrives and the prince who poaches
Smile and steal.

The lies laugh loudly, obscenely spoken,
As time and the tides for an honest man wait.
If a truthful word should appear as a token
Of dawn, would the dark not retaliate?
So long have the meaningless mantras befuddled
The passive consumer in word-magic’s trap
That the ad-man’s slogan has even muddled
Simple crap.

The duped can’t see when their eyes won’t focus
On cynics who say what they know they don’t mean;
For duplicity serves as the principle locus
Of talking-point “dots” so arranged as to screen
The head from hearing no thing but the bellows
Of nothing much else than the noise we receive.
Should a thought intrude with its doubting fellows,
None believe.

And yet, as he falters, he still dissembles,
Since witches once sold him some trifling crumbs.
The one who lit fires in the forest trembles:
To Dunsinane Castle now Birnam Wood comes.
And those he kicked hardest while climbing higher,
Ascending to roost at the greasy pole’s top,
Guffaw as the Furies pursuing the liar
Reap their crop.

The law, as we’ve heard it expounded in verses,
Presumes us all innocent, absent a proof
Of guilt beyond doubt, as a long line of hearses,
Gives eyewitness testament, terse and aloof,
To death’s final sentence which no one can question
And from which no pardon can later on spare
Since Nature, despite any plea or suggestion,
Does not care.

Yet in our own country, of late, we’ve seen visions
Of what The Law means when the outlaws in charge
Proclaim ex-post-facto that their bad “decisions”
Require of them only remaining at large.
And subsidies, too, they demand for their “service,”
While helping themselves to whatever is left
As “bonuses” stolen while never nervous
At the theft.

While perched at the top of the heap, The Decider
Has chosen to pardon preemptively much
That courts should consider infractions wider
Than just misdemeanors like lying and such.
But too many judges, for lifetime appointed,
Who think of the Law as “semantics,” at best,
Enable our “leaders” whom they have anointed
Truly blessed.

The truth turns timid, afraid of facing
The gargoyle who grins at the trust now betrayed;
So why would the sheep ever think of replacing
The forces of fraud now against them arrayed?
While memories fade in a flash of forgetting
And what didn’t happen now screams that it does,
The perps blow their bubbles without fear or fretting,
Just because.

The talented traders of tripe roll in riches
Yet swear that – for taxes -- they haven’t a sum,
While Congressmen beg them to scratch where it itches
And unemployed men by the millions grow numb
To poverty, homelessness, debt and disaster
As fewer grow richer and more become poor
The fish in their feeding, ever faster,
Take the lure

Till the cows come home to the chickens roosting,
Till hens crow at sundown and pigs take to flight,
Till the world and its woes need a lot less boosting,
The touts and promoters will hype-up the fight
To customers, baffled, but only too willing
While Goldman and Sachs to the government turn
For more money, gratis, which then for a killing,
They can burn.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Fall and Autumn, from a child born old

(After reading Spring and Fall, to a young child, by Gerard Manly Hopkins)

Village priest, why this decrying
Margaret’s grief for gold leaves dying?
You tell her that, as young girls grow,
Hardened hearts will coldly know
And with few regrets or sighs
View an Autumn’s due demise.
Yes, she'll weep, but not grow wise.
For the Fall will look the same;
Sorrow goes by any name
When all sadness you conflate,
Misconstruing mankind’s fate,
Like an older child reborn
Not to celebrate, but mourn.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Ichthyological Metaphysics

"There is a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own nature." -- Aristotle, The Metaphysics

"No one can justly or successfully discover the nature of any one thing in that thing itself, or without numerous experiments which lead to farther inquiries." -- Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration
 
In honor, and illustration, of this fundamental philosophical dispute, consider:

Ichthyological Metaphysics

When I need a word that rhymes with "fizz,"
A term that brings to mind an empty bubble,
I can always call on good old "is,"
And save myself the slightest bit of trouble.

When I want a noise that sounds like “fuzz,’
To symbolize a meaning I’ve forgotten,
I can do with nothing less than “was,”
Which changes “new” to “old” -- from fresh to rotten.

When I need the past for him-and-her
Or the subjunctive mood in doubtful cases,
Postulating that, and if, they “were,”
Joins fact and logic, and them both debases.

When I feel like heading to the bar,
But don't wish to examine my intention,
I can say my cravings simply "are":
For lazy drunks, the neatest word-invention.

When I wish to take off on the lam
To dodge the karma earned from lousy choices,
I can vaguely note the way I “am,”
Which tends to silence any nagging voices.

When I want to never look and see,
But jump instead at any mere suggestion,
I can ask: “To ‘be’ or not to ‘be’?”
Avoiding action through this pseudo-question.

When I need to shift from “now” to “then”
Because I’ve screwed the pooch for all to witness,
I can point to how things might have “been,”
And hope this covers up my own unfitness.

When I cannot face the sordid taint
Of life as it confronts the normal peasant,
I – like Tweedledee – say “isn’t” “ain’t.”
Conflating timeless absence with the present.

When I gather these inflections few
Into a “verb” that sums up disagreeing,
I speak bubbles as the others do,
And chalk-up ignorance to magic “being.”

When I swim in school I seldom sink,
But waste my time, like any son or daughter.
I just feed and float and breathe and drink,
While never taking thought about the water.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Mere Looking

(After reading Wallace Stevens' poem "Of Mere Being")

Wallace Stevens, an attorney,
Switched careers and sold insurance
For a living.

Then upon a poet’s journey
He embarked, with no assurance
That forgiving

Readers would approve enough.
With feathers fangled and dangled,
His bird in a palm

At the edge of space; golden fluff;
In nothing like reason tangled,
Sings an offbeat psalm.

Thus, "modern," which word suffices
To redefine for poetry
What will "free" it.

Whatever its aural vices,
We know it, like obscenity,
When we see it.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009

Maligned Madam does Fox News

“And now we have, for our next guest,
A lady of the night,
Who has, for reasons none too clear,
Agreed to speak what we shall hear:
Some ‘answers’ meant to bring a leer
To lips that freely grin or sneer
When overhearing questions queer,
Profound, or simply trite.”

“We thank you, Madame Magdalene,
For giving of your time
To scandalize the girls and boys
With lurid tales of wanton joys
Supplied for rent to Jews and Goys
Entrapped by your seductive ploys
While honest men, your hapless toys,
Must suffer from your crime.”

“But au contraire! I say to you,
My bogus blowhard host:
I only serve your vain desire
And offer up what you require,
And, yes, I do it all for hire,
While you ejaculate, retire,
And afterwards feel only ire,
Or else the urge to boast.”

“I only see the truth too well,
And live by what I do.
I understand men’s vanity,
And lives filled with inanity
Till driven to insanity
By Murdoch, Fox, and Hannity
You use me like profanity
And swear: ‘GAWD told me to!’”

“But, Madam, what of Juliet,
Whose virtue fiction tells?
Does not her pure, Platonic love
Deflect the need to rudely shove
Some Romeo without a glove
Into an orifice above,
Below, or in the region of
Some pulchritude that sells?”

“Oh, no, dear sir! Such fantasies
Just fan the flames of lust.
As I have often told the priest,
My holes are not for sale, just leased
To poles whose sweaty palms have greased
My own with cash, and not the least
With ‘love’ for me, a meager feast
For wretched lives gone bust.”

“Then might I ask, Ms Magdalene,
About Ophelia’s tale?
You know, the Danish maid who pined
For Hamlet’s love: the crazy kind,
Both unrequited and resigned
To ambiguity; designed
By Shakespeare, meaning: ‘Never mind.
Such tragic love must fail.’”

“Ophelia, just like Juliet,
My case could never plead.
Because, as fiction, they – not we –
Exist for sport of men who flee
From nature -- like the urge to pee;
Who make up tales that don’t agree
(Except when offered on TV)
With what they really need.”

“So have you any final thoughts
Here as we end the hour?
Do you not have a heart of gold
Despite the johns that you have rolled
Together with your pimp who sold
Your services to young and old
Who wanted heat but got the cold
Of sordid sex gone sour?”

“Mais oui, Monsieur! but let me say
To males by us enthralled:
That we who ply the oldest trade;
Who make our living in the shade;
Who walk our alley promenade
Until our looks begin to fade
Know men will call a heart a spade
To get their ashes hauled.”

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009

Here Come the Frowns

Someone recently remdinded me of a little lyric from the old (1973) song by Stephen Sondheim, "Send in the Clowns."

"Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here."

This inspired me to attempt:

"Here come the Frowns"

I love a farce.
Karl Marx did, too.
He said we get history twice:
Farce as Part Two.
But Tragedy first
Must slake its foul thirst;
So, Part One will do.

Isn't it grand?
That Shock and Awe!
Some looting and then civil war.
But, for the flaw
To really sink in,
We just need to skin
The last man of straw.

Argue the case.
Shoot for the moon.
Crusades in Lunacy led
By a buffoon.
Send in the Marines.
Police those latrines.
The Army comes soon.

Then we stay on.
Quagmire sets in.
The years pass and nobody pays
For the great sin.
Thus, in one's career,
"Advance up the rear!"
Becomes the true spin.

So, "Suck on this!"
"Don't fuck with Jews!"
Friedman and Goldberg now spit
Their juandiced views.
Just send in the tanks.
No need to say "thanks!"
Then black-out the news.

War on the poor,
Trapped refugee.
We'll teach those dumb Arabs a thing,
Since they can't flee.
Thus zionists claim
Apartheid's no name
For theft they decree.

Christians and Jews
Love Son, fear Dad.
Muslims say their Prophet speaks,
For which they’re glad.
Yet what they all claim
To know they defame
Each time they get mad.

Here come the frowns.
Smiles disappear.
We’ve seen this act so many times
But still we hear
That this time the game
Won’t work out the same ---
Till this time next year.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

Diurnal Dialectic

Thinking of a stray lyric to an old song my mother used to sing:

I went walking through the park
Goosing statues in the dark.
If Sherman's horse can take it, why can't you?

... led to a brief meditation on day and night, night and day, and a

"Diurnal Dialectic"

Before the dusk and after dawn,
Between the twilight edges of the light,
A race obscene to look upon
Continues on its mindless road to night.

From sundown until sunrise,
Confusing lust and love,
The poet's pornographic play
Embarrasses the moon and stars above.

Before the steak and after eggs,
Between the main and minor of our meals,
The questions that our language begs
Obscure more than the god of Lies conceals.

From lights-out until sun-up,
Through nightmares; peaceful dreams;
And much disjointed nothing, sounds
A schizoid symphony of sighs and screams.

Before the going-down of day,
And after sun-up puts an end to dark,
The intervening hours stray
Like perverts goosing statues in the park.

From supper through till dinner,
Conflating dreams with thought,
The saintly sinners celebrate
What they have stolen from the ones who bought.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

Cozy, Scandalous

With apologies to the shade of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his immortal poem "Ozymandias," I offer here a brief meditation on the current, continuing, and contemplated depredations of the Apartheid Zionist Entity upon those captive Palestinian Arabs who had absolutely nothing to do with the German/Christian persecution of Jews in Europe before and during World War II. For want of a better title, I'll just call it:

"Cozy, Scandalous"

I met a refugee from Gaza Strip,
Who spoke to me with empty, staring eyes
Dumb words whose depth of pain I could not grip
With all the helping hands the world denies
While lapping up the lurid lies that slip
And roll so greasy off the practiced tongue
Of Zionists whose caged and wounded prey
Are told to flee and leave their dying young
To weep beside the corpses of their old
In darkened shattered former homes where they
Cannot refute the garbage we’ve been told
By glib Israeli liars trained to spread
A veil of darkness over crimes they’ve sold
As “Peaceful Co-Existence” -- with the dead.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2009

The Boobie Pledge of Subservience

(from: "Fernando Po, U.S.A." - America's post-linguistic retreat to Plato's Cave)

I offer my obedience
I pledge undying love
To any symbol formed to serve
The needs of those above
Who rightly feel that I deserve
The fist inside the glove

I stand and mumble publicly
With fear upon my brow
Lest some mistake my silence for
An insufficient vow
Let all who see and hear me know
How easily I cow

Authority need never fear
I swear I know my place
I pledge to take the gauntlet slapped
Across my beaten face
The Seizure Class knows I'll accept
Chastisement with good grace

About such things as freedom
I Have not the slightest clue
By birth and class it's come to THEM
I know that it's THEIR due
To hand me down instructions as
To just what I must do

And so I promise faithfully
To play my scripted part
Each day I'll chant Two Minutes' Hate
To finish, from the start
Until I love BIG BROTHER from
The bottom of my heart

I swear to do as I am told
I will not think too deep
I'll huddle in conformity
Just like the other sheep
To take my whipping like a slave
And utter not a peep

I pledge to stand up every day
Within my schoolroom class
And mouth my mantras on demand
Without backtalk or sass
Until the program makes me a
Compliant, docile ass

I swear upon my loyalty
To stuff my head with fat
And place my nation "under" "GAWD!"
Supinely prone and flat
With me then going "down" "beneath"
And "lower" "under" that

I swear to go to Sunday School
Upon the public dime
Each morning in my homeroom class
I'll mouth my dreary rhyme
And if I leave out words
THEY can Indict me for my crime

I pledge and vow and promise that
I'll swear from dusk to dawn
And never fail to chant or moan;
To never blink or yawn
And with each cry of "GAWD IZ GRATE!"
My own soul I will pawn

The Papal bulls and fatwas tell
Me all I need to know
Which isn't much because I see
I've nowhere left to go
I swear to never set my sails
Against the winds that blow

The Popes, Imams, and Rabbis tell
Me what and where and how
The master's overseer tells
Me which row I must plow;
To toady, genuflect, and crawl;
To grovel, scrape and bow

I'll train to "hurry up and wait"
And do the Bulgar drills
To stand at rapt attention dressed
In military frills
Just point me and I'll drop the bomb
No matter whom it kills

I pledge and promise on my word
To do the things I ought
To work for lower wages
So my labor comes to naught
I swear to vote Republicrat
To prove I can be bought

The Party keeps us all at war
Which makes us quake with fear
And so we give up all those rights
Our ancestors held dear
Which saves our enemies the need
To take them from us here

But I won't think of bygone days
The past I'll just rewrite
I'll call my history "old news"
To make it pat and trite
Which sleight of mind will help me keep
Its lessons out of sight

With this capitulation I
Agree to sell my pride
Before I even own it or
It grows too big to slide
Inside the shabby, craven cave
In which I must reside

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005