Puppetry

Peace talks?
Peace is a puppet.
Money, the ventriloquist,
talks.

[Note: These days politicians never just talk. They talk "frankly and openly." And sometimes the talks are "frank, open and productive." I'd write a poem about that, but why try to upstage that level of absurdity? It's more fun to watch the talking heads and wonder into what orifice the hidden puppeteers' hands are inserted. That would explain, if the puppeteer is money, why we speak of "dirty money."]

I'm tired of all these political remarks, so here's something different:

SHH! Don't Tell Anyone!

The movie critic says it's a bad movie,
inane, one-dimensional, infantile, etc.
Before I read the review,
I saw the movie, and,
(how embarrassing!)
enjoyed it.
____________

Dean Blehert
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM

MEALS

...and fields
of wan men
warmeal lie.
______________________________

Note: This line is a take-off on a line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, called "Spring and Fall," (late 1800s) in which the poet is addressing a child named Margaret, who is moved by autumns devastation. The line is "Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie." The Hopkins poem is:
Spring and Fall
to a young child


MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.
_________

I switched the scene from leaves to bodies on a battlefield. (The little marks over syllables in Hopkins' poem are one of his many idiosyncracies. He marked some of the stressed syllables.)

Dean Blehert
Blogs:http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM

UNDER COVER OF BANALITY...

Remember,
before you worked for a bureaucracy,
when you thought evil was
passionate and intense?

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM

HOMME ASIDE

Suicide IS murder.
When you killed yourself,
you were not yourself.

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)WWW.BLEHERT.COM

TOMORROWLAND

[Note: Today's poem and those for the next few days concern nasty things such as war, but eventually I'll harness my inner satirist (but not my inner unsated satyr] and return to cheerier stuff.]


New at Disney World: GHETTOLAND,
where tourists can cruise in bullet-proof pimpmobiles,
buy plastic bags of harmless white powder
and perform drive-by shootings
with red-paint-ball pistols.

[Note: Almost as much fun as the real thing!]

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM

OHH! Look at THIS one!!!

Adult books, adult magazines, adult movies--
all deal with what fascinates little kids.

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM

Nightscape

Towers of light,
each light a cubicle
containing a worried person.

[Notes: Interesting at night to see how many people in sky scrapers are working late. This reminds me of the old TV show, "Naked City," that began each episode with a a cityscape and a narrator saying something about "a millions stories in the Naked City...and this is one of them." A million stories. My dictionary says that the word "stories," when used to mean the floors of a building, probably derives from "story" meaning a tale--which derives from "history," which comes from a Greek word meaning something like to learn by inquiring.

How did a building floor become a story? (I'm learning by inquiring.) My dictionary speculates that floors of buildings long ago (Greeks? Romans?) were typically marked on the outside of buildings by friezes (bands of sculpture) that told a story. Makes sense for buildings a few stories tall. Wouldn't it be interesting if each floor of a 100-story building were surrounded by its own frieze, each floor telling a different story?

"I visited the Empire State Building today. I couldn't tear myself away!"]

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM