Shadows

May 9th, 2008

Weep for the shadow,
who never sees the sun.
Always some fucking tree is in the way.
Trees have their dark side

Weep for the sun,
who never sees its shadow
or yours, either.

Weep for the tears you shed,
fallen to the earth, never again
to return to their beloved home in your eyes

Posted in NATURAL WONDERS | No Comments » | email

The Future of Skepticism

May 7th, 2008

Without doubt, too many people live without doubt.
What they need is a healthy dose of skepticism.
But of what? One lifetime allows a limited number
of grand speculations, floated then exploded

And without Grendel, there is no Beowulf

At the end of this road, you could become
disenchanted with disenchantment,
skeptical of skepticism itself

The immune system you’ve so patiently reared
turns on itself. You become possessed
by an unquenchable urge to affirm something
(Jung with his UFOs, Pauling with vitamin C)
and there is no logical reason to expect that logic
can produce anything worthy of your first Yes

Science can take you to the brink
of quantum uncertainty, where maybe
or maybe not your cat dies, while the rousing revels
of faerie worshippers beckon from behind the walls
of their imaginary castles.

Plato said this would happen

But in fact what will happen,
some lucky prick will fall out of his tree
all tangled up in the true theory of everything
and leave it to the skeptics (and his mother)
to spend several centuries cleaning up the debris.

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The History of England

May 5th, 2008

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(calligraphy by Myrna Rosen)
 

Posted in KITH & KIN | No Comments » | email

Lullaby

May 3rd, 2008

Mama pig is hiding in the root cellar.
Papa pig is hiding in the fruit cellar.
Baby pig, whose crib is in the treetop,
is crying for a just and lasting peace.

Posted in GREAT BATTLES | No Comments » | email

The Coxes Make Their Move

May 1st, 2008

Excerpted from Takeover Talk on Thistleberry Road (filed under “The Skeptical Investor”)
By way of background, this is an asset-rich neighborhood with good cash flow, which is always a temptation to takeover artists. On top of that, there are a number of undervalued properties on our street, if you want to believe the people from Point Breeze who keep complaining to the Board of Assessments that their taxes are too high and ours are too low.

Still, it came as a surprise when the Coxes moved to take over the Wagstaffs; and at first nobody thought they could swing it because the Wagstaff house is at least twice the size of the Coxes. Their garage is bigger, too, and so is their dog.

That didn’t faze the Coxes. They figured they could do the whole thing with high-leverage debt finacing and then pay down the loans by liquidating some of the Wagstaff assets after they gained control. They plan to sell off the piano, the oriental rugs (Sorry, Mrs. Wagstaff; business is business), and the motorboat that’s been sitting in the garage ever since Mr. Wagstaff threw his back out trying to water-ski.

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