By the pricking of my thumb
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.
“The Bush administration had seven years after 9/11, no successful attacks on the United States”–Charles Krauthammer on George W. Bush, whose approval ratings have climbed to 47% since leaving office.
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.
You see that dark-skinned fellow with the jacket and the beard?
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.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has challenged a recent court ruling finding Virginia’s anti-sodomy law unconstitutional….A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled on March 12 that Virginia’s “Crimes Against Nature” statute, which banned oral and anal sex, violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. —The Washington Post, April 3
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.
Roughly half of Christians in the U.S. say they believe that Christ will definitely or probably return to earth in the next 40 years–Pew Research Center
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.
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.
In the room the cardinals come and go
Watched by Michelangelo.
Preceding Bergoglio:
(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.
“…the most populated nation on Earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them … desolate condos and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles and miles and miles and miles.”–Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes
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.
“With the Dow Jones Industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold.”–New York Times, March 4, p. 1.
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.
More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in northern England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by William Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.–AP.
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?
Greetings from the land of Davos!
Please, friends, hold the cheers and bravos.
I’m just another humble Tweeter
Having drinks with Derek Jeter
Couldn’t ask for someone sweeter.
Except of course Melinda Gates.
Some Arab prince, maybe Kuwait’s,
Is holding forth on interest rates.
To Susan Rice and Richard Levin
John McCain and Charlize Theron.
Over breakfast (stale baguette)
Thomas Friedman gave his set
Talk about the Internet,
Alarming growth in mortgage debt,
And then we all commenced brainstorming
On how to handle global warming,
Egypt’s failing revolution,
Children sold for prostitution,
How to meet the Third World’s hopes.
Then we went to hit the slopes.
And I don’t want to boast or brag
About my Davos party swag
Or the karaoke chorus
I sang with my friend, George Soros,
To all of you that didn’t rate
An invite, hey, it’s not too late!
You can share the glam and glitter
I’m posting pictures here on Twitter.
And like my fellow Davos smarties
Available for dinner parties.
jerryadlersnewsverse 