pump prime the bailout
with massive infusions
don't save a dollar when
spending two will do.
get people working
avoiding confusion
take action quick and
see this thing through.
change you can bank on
solving solutions
grab bull by the horns and
talk yourself blue.
La France s'échappe
la récession économique—
il paraît.
Ç'est chic, non?
La révolution vit toujours,
mais je demande pour
combien de temps?
Comme jamais, on ne sait.
Keep taking from the Congo:
first rubber for your bike, now tin for your Xbox.
Do you, like, care?
Or even know where it is?
Grab the controller and play,
if you still have hands.
Sure, you say, it was the Belgians and then Mobutu.
Now it's the Tutsis and probably you too.
Scientists say:
There aren't enough fish in the see.
Humans consume, dragging
nets, sifting dust.
Our dreams are drifting,
sinking fast.
They can still float to the surface,
you're thinking--
but don't hold your breath.
Well people what
have we learned?
It's not how much
you earn
or how much fuel
you burn
or what kind
of monster you'll
turn into once people start
Asking Questions.
It's got nothing to do
with your middle name
or from what country you
came or whom did you screw
over 27 years ago
when no one dared think
or even cared.
Don't blink.
There's something big here.
How big? iPhone big. Batman big.
Peggy Noonan big. A thousand points of
Big Idea
scattered around like loose Change.
Did anything sink in at all?
Did it get through your skull's
thick wall?
Or do you still fear Knowledge? Or even an Idea?
show me something
Hey Joe,
where ya goin with that
wrench in your hand?
The nation beats a path
to your white-panel van.
You're a star, bro:
Your opinion's the key--
but not to me.
I've got my own problems, Joe--
only one of 'em is a leaky faucet (now there's something you can help me with).
Otherwise I care not how much you're taxed,
or what you think about banks, since you've asked.
Hey, Joe:
You're in the toilet trade--you've got it made.
You show up with a bill before the work's even played
and you shake your head and say,
"Oh this is gonna take more than a day..."
Feeling a pinch? Your income's a lead-pipe cinch.
You'll be alright, Joe.
It's the rest of us I worry about.
Open your eyes;
There will be no October surprise.
The real bombshell
is in your mind--
you need to go ahead and
explode it.
Come November
all will not be
revealed, nor healed, nor
Turned Upside Down
so that you no longer know
what’s real.
Life will go on as before:
entirely as you make it.
The grim gray rain
has its autumn upside:
You stop and think why
are you safe and dry--
if you so happen to be.
Sunshine’s overrated--
as a destination,
a mood-enhancer--
that you forget the wet
comfort of insulation.
Keep inside, then,
and let your day
dreams warm you.
Let’s slap a ban
on that word
“bipartisan”—
it’s limp-wristed code for
“you get screwed.”
And as we’re in
the forbidding mood
eighty-six the tired, poor
“wall-street-main-street”
metaphor.
We’re all up the same
damned street don’t you see.
Here’s a deal: I leave policy to you,
You leave poetry to me.
Ol’ Jim Lehrer
he couldn’t be fairer:
He gives each man his say.
Still I wonder
if he didn’t blunder
in setting up the show that way.
A few minutes here
a few minutes there--
so little new light gets shed.
We’d get more use
--more political juice--
from an hour of air squeezed dead.
No, the flow
of thought
will not
cease--
(a notion
stands
still
for
no
one)
for we need words
without end
in the face
of the absurd:
This is democracy
not goddam pretend
and your instant poet
shall ne'er suspend...
The Electric Car:
they said it wouldn't go
far and what's more
would get there slow.....
....ly.
It's tiny and weak
and un-American.
A Communist plot,
to drive something so
small. Or to take a
bus or train
or walk anywhere at all.
Fear not,
bucket-seat-bronco,
no lesson you'll
learn: Humvee heaven
will return
when the price of fuel
is about what you earn.
When the world smirks I told you so
where do you go?
Down down down.
The light bulb above your head
how is it screwed?
Up. Up.
The politics of class war
what do you get?
Out.
Tears on pinstripes
as a colosseum closes.
Buck up Bronx:
a new one will rise
next door, a temple built of
blood, sweat and taxes.
In Boston and Chicago
they cheer--as do I, from over here--
that New York's season is a bust.
It was ever thus:
Good folk everywhere
revel in rare
Yankee despair.
But there's no denying
a bittersweet fall.
We brook no bad will here;
baseball
is
like
dogs:
so full of good cheer,
so inherently sad.
Fit yourself for a pickle barrel
and learn how to crack nuts with your laptop
bro; those surfing skills won't do you much
good in the New Economy.
It's Road Warrior time, can you dig
the kerosene? Bottled water my ass.
You'll be clawing open cactus
and puking up the juice.
Cushy retiree, a Wal-Mart greeter?
Hah you wish, pal. That's a plum job
we won't like to see again
when the shit comes down.
Learn Mandarin, your nervous joke?
It won't save you, Gweilo--
Even the Chinese don't bother with it anymore;
they're too busy counting the minutes.
Slice the bull market in half--
there's your golden calf--
and embalm it for show and sell.
Brokers on the ledge?
Put Damien Hirst in charge
of the hedge.
Ding-dong the opening bell
sends numbers skidding
across your screen
in a left-to-right slide.
Above them flap gums—
scorecard the falling sky,
never mind the why.
Sing-song voices ring
not so true, never so green
even more blue
than in between
the blank spots.
Another Cold War
hotter than the last?
Why not, I ask:
They are so much
cozier than Holy Ones.
Let's thank our lucky stars:
Hockey Mom knows
we outskated the
Russkies once
and we can do it again.
We still believe in
Miracles.
Fannie and Freddie
sitting in a tree
F-A-I-L-I-N-G...
First comes the loan
then comes arrearage
then comes Uncle Sam
with a baby mortgage.
The moral of the story
is a simple, not compound:
Money that's lost
will soon be found.
Little borrowers
musn't fuss and pout:
Overload your boat and
we'll bail you out.
O would-be terrorist,
is it a big weapon you seek?
Look inside your mind
and try to think
if it'll help.
A laser shoots light--
wave or particle I still don't know,
what Hawking's black hole will show.
(note to instapoet fans: this poem is an ode to all the thousands of people who have visited www.craigwinneker.com looking for answers on how to build a laser gun. Actually, it's a shameless attempt to attract some of those hits over to this site. For the whole story, go here.
It's an old top story
and one that is boring:
the anchorman's
glory whole.
How about you
say it
and not
spray it.
We want the news
and not the
whether.
*certain limitations may apply
Make mine a dash of Ogden Nash
(or ee cummings and Eminem
chillin with both Dylans and
Calvin Trillin).
Enough, enough with all
the who why what where how.
Well, now we know it's plain to see:
Ready to be VP?
Or a heartbeat from commander-in-chee?
Hell, she's at least as on the ball
as the guy who has the job now.
A la une! A la une
il n'y a que la lune
et le fait que
Madame le President
soit Charlotte la Brune.
C'est mieux comme ça
je croix.
It’s still a bit breezy there
but we can breathe a Big Easy now
that the storm has passed.
All the air has been sucked
out of the issue at last.
A ways up the river it’s time for the
conventional wind once again to blow.
Now we know, and by no means maybe:
that nice lady's daughter is having a baby.
Who are you to say if she ought to?
We bloggers have no choice but to
be ashamed of our lie-spreading ways
when the truth is born not in months
but in half-days.
what was she really showing?
her belly, not seemingly growing,
contained the seed of scandal
teeming with a political life all its own.
no doubt soon we'll know
one way or the other:
is the governor really
her daughter's grandmother?
Do current events upset you?
You know: the invasion of South Ossetia?
What is now the incursion into Georgia
Of many a crew-cut Russian soldier?
Fear not, world citizen:
Events in far-off mountains won’t
disrupt your summer—
as long as you consider
civilian casualties not too big a bummer.
So the games begin—
let those without stones
cast the first sin.
This much we know:
China’s quite good
at putting on a show,
so hold the whining about
Human Rights Pollution
Doping Trade
and The Like.
I for one am
quite willing to swap
my car for a bike.
Stuck on neurostar,
a speeding slow train.
Never making connections,
one track switches brain.
distant on approach.
Red light burns cold,
coach leans low.
I squint to count the passing grass.
Bribing a Senator--
how hard could it be?
One needs but rubber chicken
and weak coffee.
and golf bag blowjobs--
these fail to impress him.
ethically undress him.
The whole world explodes
in every little bomb—
a million tiny shards of why.
The police siren and the webcam
vacuum up a reason
along with the blood and
replace it spewing punditry.
We soon forget to care
about each blast each flood
each unavoidable famine
until the next time paints its
inevitable, temporary
splatter pattern.
I still believe
in a place where
they keep hope alive,
where a thousand points of
peace in our time shine atop
a city on a hill. It’s morning.
In
Like a rock.
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