Do you think that might be tempting fate

To tweet or text or say out loud

Here beneath the Google Cloud,

The big computer in the sky

In which all subversive thought

By an algorithm caught,

Is nullified and comes to naught.

And at the center of the web

Of data’s crisscross flow and ebb

Stands the FBI.

In six degrees of separation

You can sweep up a whole nation

It only takes a single bit

Of connection. Tag, you’re it!

Sorry, buddy, now you’re toast

You never should have read this post.

Here’s a place to hurry from

A window where light never shows

In a room where no one goes

Shadows deepen, something shifts

Behind the blinds that no one lifts.

Wherefore then does evil come?

God designed each human part

For a purpose, and his art

Failed him when he made the heart.

How I miss his steady hand

That kept the ship of state afloat

In cowboy boots he took his stand

And read to us from “My Pet Goat.”

He kept us safe from Hong Kong flu

And madmen in Korea

Thanks to him we never knew

The horrors of Sharia.

Terrorists who boldly stalk us

Planning some perverse attack

On St. Louis or  Secaucus

Would look at him and turn right back

No jihadis in hijacked planes

From Bosnia-Herzegovina

Attacked us. And no hurricanes

If you don’t count Katrina.

And when shoves to pushes come

He saw that Saddam itched

To blow us all up with a bomb:

Fission Un-Accomplished.

So bring it on, you sorry slob.

Don’t misunderestimate him

Dubya did a heckuva job

But somehow, we still hate him.

He stood there for a minute and then kind of disappeared.

He looked all kind of nervous and something just seemed weird.

At first I saw him walking fast and then he kind of slowed

He spoke a foreign language, or maybe it was code

He’s carrying a coffee cup as if it might explode.

There’s something strange about the way he seemed to be engrossed

In talking on his cellphone, so I did what I’m supposed

To do and took his picture, sent it to the New York Post.

I saw something, I said something, on Facebook and on Reddit

On Tumblr and on Twitter and I’m very glad I said it

And when they catch him, just remember, I deserve the credit.

Ah, springtime in Virginia, where the hills are mountain laurelly

And birds and bees who do it, do it properly and morally

The Laws of Nature won’t permit a tit to do it orally

Nature’s Laws are absolute, God’s word is unconditionary

Embodying a way of life that’s modest and traditionary

All creatures in Virginia have to do it like a missionary.

Peacocks flaunt their feathers and they strut and pose so zanily

But when it’s time to do it they get down to business banally

‘Cause it’s a Crime of Nature for a bird to do it anally.

And right and wrong are opposites and pose a strict dichotomy

You’ll never see some chickadees or cows or hippopotami

Do it in a way Virginia might construe as sodomy.

Now living in the End of Times

We sinners all scared shitless

Ask not for whom the doorbell chimes.

It’s some Jehovah’s Witness.

The warning signs are all around

The situation’s dire

The sky is rendered by a sound

The oceans turn to fire.

But of the hour, no one knows.

You can’t Yahoo or Google

The moment when the angel blows

God’s almighty bugle.

It’s knowledge we cannot possess

It’s strictly in God’s will, dear.

Jerry Falwell tried to guess.

But look, the world is still here.

And just in case it’s not the end,

If we’ve got more time, it

Seems like God might recommend

We not fuck up the climate.

Watched by Michelangelo.

Preceding Bergoglio:

Simplicius and Symmachus

Pelagius, Sisinnius

Liberius, Hilarius.

(That’s not a joke.) Gelasius.

(Or Saint Pistachio.)

Five of them were Sixtuses

Six of them were Pauls

Sixteen Benedictuses

Hid secrets in these walls.

A lot of them were Innocent

Of what, they didn’t say.

And quite a few were Pius.

They’d close their eyes and pray.

For on this Rock He built his Church

To stand against upheaval

A fortress safe upon its perch

For Rocks can see no evil.

And when a Pope at last departs

A new one rearranges

The Sistine Chapel’s seating charts

But nothing ever changes.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Empty towers midst the rubble

Waiting for their price to double.

You can see them from the Hubble.

Dollars heaped up to the sky

Greed flies across the ocean

As in Phoenix, so Shanghai:

You leverage emotion.

Never stop or hit the brake

Just keep on smiling smugly

This is the annus of the Snake

What comes out might be ugly.

What goes around will come around

Just ask Tyrannosaurus

Corrections from on high come down

And bring a world of tsuris.

If you’re a broker, banker or investor

Your basic one-percent well-feathered-nester

In River Oaks or Greenwich or Westchester

Whose kid will be in Paris next semester

Just go ahead and name your yacht “Sequester.”

But if you’re someone dressed in polyester

Some sucking-on-the-governmental-breast-er,

Living way out in the Middle West, or

Someplace even bleaker and oppressed-er.

Step into our cyber-scan means-tester!

Empty all your pockets, get undressed, sir.

You won’t be around to bug and pester

The taxpayers. Put on this nice life vest, sir.

I’m afraid that you’ve been chosen for sequester.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Mayor Ed Koch, the combative, acid-tongued politician who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world, died Friday. He was 88.

Now is the winter of our discontent

So over! Dug up from cement

A king whose spine, not soul, was bent

As we’ve been misconstruing.

(Now also in this moment bluish

We buried someone loud and shrewish

New Yorkish and did we say Jewish?

So tell us: How’s he doing?)

Was king the victim of the Bard

Serving up a base canard?

Should we call in Scotland Yard

To look inside the Tower?

And if it was all Tudor smears

And history absolves and clears

His name after five hundred years,

Will truth have beaten power?