Category: Uncategorized

A SUMMER’S BAKER’S DOZEN

A Hint

I wonder what I
Wonder,
Now I wonder
Less.
I've squared the
Circle,
Cleared the bar
And straightened every
Curve.
I wonder what I thought.

I've sat at tables,
Round or square,
With stern and
Greedy men,
Whose bluntly bold
Insistence
Confirmed their need
For more.
I wondered, hell,
What for?

For years, I looked to
Equity,
The sanctity
Of law,
The to and fro
Of compromise,
The ebb and flow
Of awe.
I wondered through
It all.

Now I wonder little
Lest
I miss what's coming
Next --
A word perhaps
In confidence,
A hint of why
We're here.
And so, I merely
Watch.

JAD, 2022
Unfiltered

The cattle-called and
Caterwauled 
Have curtsied to the cowled.
The immigrant
Imbroglio
Has raised the loudest howls.
The antiseptic
Ambience
Has coddled the devout.
The meretricious
Messengers
Are generating doubt.

The cyber-sick
Soliloquists
Are stalking the unborn.
The glory-hoarding
Gabriel's
Are gorging on their horns.
The atavistic
Amateurs
Are aching for a break.
The patronizing
Crypto-punks
Are pushing proof-of-stake.

The epidemic
Shooting sprees
Are tearing through the schools.
The pro-sedition
Roustabouts
Are looking more like fools.
The gender-parsing
Pharisees 
Are deconstructing sex,
Their self-indulgent
Victimhood,
A lesson in excess.

I'm roaming past the
Residue
Of rarefied remorse,
The bones of the
Enlightenment,
The Templars' splintered cross,
The tyranny of empathy,
The fallacy of trust,
The alchemy of entropy's
Anatomy of dust.

JAD, 2022
The Run-Up

June as it lingers,
Bent on reprieve,
Offers its sonnets
To time,
The Run-Up evoking
The solstice precessed,
The sun and the angle
Aligned.

JAD, 2022
Recovery

Soothed at last, these
Shorter nights,
By soft, enfolding warmth,
I roam through streets
That speak of grit, of
Wit and nonchalance.
The Age of Reason,
Cued again and
Wrenched unseen through time,
Is gamely back at work.

JAD, 2022
Talking Third Age Blues

We are what we are
Till we aren't,
Love till we can't
Even think,
Miss what we miss
Then dismiss it,
Pamper ourselves
Till it hurts.

We do what we do
Till we lose it,
Make what we can
Of what's left,
Follow the rules
For the moment,
Walking the talk
If we must.

We canonize rights
And resentments,
Casting the widest
Of nets,
Savage the fools
Who oppose us,
Lacking the sense
To relent.

We hide in the weeds
Of our failings,
Brandish our biases
Drunk,
Sever the means from
The meaning,
Tally each wound
And regret.

We try in our way
To be humble,
Speak what we feel
To be true,
Justify stealth
With conviction,
Tend to our health
While it lasts.

We were what we were
Till we weren't,
Loved even prior
To thought,
Missed what we missed
Then dismissed it,
Pampered ourselves
Till it hurt.

JAD, 2022
REM-ing

Hit it!

The baffled
Aborigines,
The manicured viziers,
The aching
Archipelagoes,
The cabin-fevered seers,
The misers in their
Catacombs,
The sullen raconteurs,
The sainted sons of
Innocence,
The naked bombardiers.

Play on!

The moribund
Menageries,
The silent-treatment wives.
The Turks of old
Sebastopol,
The summers of our lives,
The seminary
Supplicants,
The seminars in vain,
The connoisseurs of
Courtesy,
The scholars who remain.

Lay out!

The caravans of
Cardigans,
The catapulted clowns,
The mercenary
Mannequins,
The sanctifying frowns,
The brilliant alter-
Egoists,
The camouflaged marines,
The calibrated
Metaphors,
The solemn and serene.

So good!

The Pentecostal
Piccolo,
The samba-flavored waltz,
The latest bout of
Vertigo,
The fatal, nut-less bolt,
The cantilevered
Camisole,
The unrepentant monk,
The impish
Impresario,
The sermonizing drunk.

Nasty!

JAD, 2022
Midnight Midtown East

Day two of summer
Saw sixty degrees,
Gusts off the river,
Soft rain.

I walked out near midnight
To shiny, wet streets,
The hissing of tires,
Few souls.

Fifty years later
And still on patrol,
I'm grateful I've made it
This far.

JAD, 2022
Out East

I lived that summer
In a simple house
On a curb-less street
Near the bay.

The salt air smelled
Of freedom.

To reach the beach,
I'd bike back roads
By turns through sun
And shade.

The causeway 
Loomed ahead.

The first few days I
Walked the beach,
I felt the world
Return --

In time, the
Women, too.

As more appeared,
The nights arrived,
An outdoor bar,
A band.

The waves kept
Rolling in.

I saw her first
That afternoon
Then later,
Sipping drinks.

We made it
In the dunes.

At dinner at her
Sprawling house --
The place had been
A church --

I met her
Rowdy friends.

They sat at tables,
Banquet length --
The room a
Soaring vault --

And teased us
As we ate.

Retreating to her
Breezy room,
We smoked a joint
Then slept.

I dreamt of
Towered bells.

Of course, we never
Met again.
That wasn't how
It worked.

Who queers a
Lucky thing?

Other nights on
Other beaches
Seeded
Other poems.

I wore them
On my sleeve.

In later years, I
Fancied writing
High up in 
A rook.

It fronted
On the sea.

The Coast Guard station
Down the road,
The house once
Holy ground --

Combined -- became
That rook.

JAD, 2022
Come Summer

July, its lulling
Languor,
Has pacified these streets.
Remotely, I take note.
What unexpected
Urgency,
What entropy reversed
Is likely to result?

The breeze that teases
Tudor Greens,
That rids the heart of sin,
That purifies
Contaminants
And cleanses open wounds,
That paralyzes
Posturers
And penetrates the numb,
That marinates
The overwrought
And soothes the overcome,
That breeze that rose so
Softly first --
So softly now --
Subsides.

July, its plusher
Luster,
Has catalyzed these streets.
Encouraged, I take note.
A reaffirming
Energy,
A lethal curse reversed,
Have turned aside my dread.

JAD, 2022
On Madison 

Have we come to die 
At the Alamo
Or just watch Travis fall?
Heartless life, its mocking roar,
Ignores our faint complaints.
What chance has matchless
Nuanced mind
When torn from priceless flesh?
Risen gods can't save us now
From what we can't accept.

JAD, 2022
River to River

Summer now stretches
Its smooth, supple limbs
From river to river,
Restored.
Heat pressing down against
Water-cooled pavements
Dries them in minutes
Or less.

I'm searching for treasures
I once may have glimpsed,
Abandoned or failed
To unearth.
Intent on some
Final convergence,
I riffle through
Layers of loss.

JAD, 2022
Musing

Against a gaping,
Moonless sky,
Through waves of
Blanketing heat,
Towers aglow in
Long Island City,
Pollinate skylines
To come.

But will markets and
Metrics agree?
Will dollars keep flowing
Should energy peak,
Economies slip
Into shock?
Will the meek even think
To inherit?

The heat as it pressures
The chest and the heart,
Reducing the depth
Of each breath,
Patiently coaxes
What ripens and rots
In deference to life
And to death.

The air as it simmers,
Envelops the street,
Shrouds it in
Heartening calm.
Beneath it in patterns
Apparent to some,
Traces of purpose
Remain.

JAD, 2022
Stifling

This heat enhances
Fluid thought
Amid a vague unrest.
A climax nears
In silent waves
Too subtle to detect.
The crowds returned
Are out tonight
And searching in their thirst,
Through thrills of thinning
Fantasies,
For scores they can't resist.

The postulates of
Paradigm,
The stratagems of stealth
The Lebensraum of
Lunatics,
The Weltanschauung of wealth,
The architects of
Anecdote,
The acrobats of art
Are steeping in my
Fevered brain,
Itself a budding threat.

This heat entrances
Feeble souls,
Romances foolish hearts,
Conceals a stream of
Pathogens
Too deadly to deflect.
The crowds returned are
Massing now
Amid their homeless hosts,
Amid the trash of
Negligence,
The cult of disrespect.

JAD, 2022

What Happened to al-Zawahiri

This gets gruesome.

From ZH:

“Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wasn’t blown up at his Kabul residence over the weekend — he was apparently butchered on his balcony with the blades of a “flying Ginsu,” a nickname for a special type of Hellfire missile used in highly-targeted strikes. 

“Because a conventional explosive warhead would have risked killing nearby civilians, the CIA is believed to have used the little-known R9X, which deploys six long blades seconds before impact and slices its victim into bloody chunks.”

“Moving at 1,000 miles per hour, the blades of the R9X can reportedly slice through concrete and steel. However, with Zawahiri perched on his breezy balcony, the blades were completely unimpeded when they struck the 71-year-old Egyptian at 6:18 am Kabul time on Sunday.”

More:

MY ONLY QUESTION IS — WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE OTHER SIDE GETS THESE WEAPONS?

AND AS WE KNOW, THERE ARE NUMEROUS “OTHER SIDES” OUT THERE.

More on JPM Metals Manipulation

If you STILL don’t think METALS MATTER, check out the following.

From Bloomberg via ZH:

“Former head of precious metals at J.P. Morgan, Michael Nowak, is currently on trial with colleagues Gregg Smith and Jeffrey Ruffo in Chicago regarding whether or not they conspired to manipulate gold and silver markets.”

More:

“It was revealed in court that the bank’s annual profits from its metals desk, which aren’t usually broken out in the bank’s earnings reports, made astonishingly consistent “annual profits between $109 million and $234 million a year between 2008 and 2018.”

HOW DO THEY DO IT?  BY ARBITRAGING MANIPULATED SWINGS IN THE MARKET.

OLDEST TRICK THERE IS.

Earth Spinning Faster

And we DON’T KNOW WHY.

We’re all on the AUTOBAHN now.