Objectivist Free Will Bootstrap Nightmare

 

Objectivist Free Will Bootstrap Nightmare

Last night I dreamed

Rand Paul walked up to me

as I sat working at my desk,

in his suit and wide red tie,

curly hair oiled

like a delicate machine.

He tipped up my chin, grasped it firmly

and planted a kiss on my lips

while I froze.

"My god," I whispered,

"I've kissed a libertarian."

and sunk my face in my palms.

A wave of shame consumed me,

as I sat deregulated,

more broken than an oil spill;

Mr. Paul smiled a small

bomb-thrower's smile,

and walked on to the next desk.

~ January 2015

slightly revised, July 2023

old jokes posted for the desperate satirists at

desperate poets

Images/memes via internet  Fair Use

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain