21: Boll Weevils

-poetry inspired by Jeb

First the rain: even a mist is the beginning
of erosion, a weathering of the skin.
Then, perhaps, an endless series
of petty insults, like pigeons nesting
in your hair, crapping on your alabaster
dreams. Fin de Sicle follows suit:
a revolution of the boudoir by the bourgeois:
those shoes you loved so much, discarded;
that innocent electric eyeshadow now
'a hoot'. Then the first diagnosis arrives:
your ample bust's a bust; your thighs
evince a lack of will, a breach of trust,
no faith in a future save a future
exit where the ambulances are mating:
bumper to bumper, fission-like, krill
for the grist mills of the afterlife.
Dust to dust? Hell no. Just a powder.
The intermission when your patrons
jaw down their jujubees, pronounce
you dead: the curtain ressurects
a flesh-toned corpse, in bed
and granting interviews: the governor,
the congressman, the holy roller and his
entire Roller Derby team. All grinning
for the radiologist, who snaps a picture
of the demons responsible
for your talking head:
'Boll Weevils?,'
the technician wonders,
circling each anomaly in red.

-FFMand

Terry's Not Dead!

-I guess Terry Schiavo, is afterall, not dead: at least you could reach that conclusion based on the attention she continues to receive from her 'supporters'. I was especially moved - nearly puked in fact, when I heard that Governor Jeb had found a way to turn the release of her autopsy, into another opportunity to make political hay out of her vegetative state. Really, is there any other lesson we can take from this latest surge of interest? Jeb -wounded by the far right's reaction to his less than 100% commitment to their lunacy during the lead-up to Terry's undignified end, is showing the kind of political 'anything-it-takes' attitude that is required to elect an otherwise unqualified person to high office. It makes you realize that we have to have the same level of commitment (though not the same wholesale abandonment of principal) if we are to fight these people. And that is why I cannot help but feel that the compromise that avoided the 'nuclear option' was not only a loss for our side (in that the worst judges were given up and down votes) but that it only delayed the inevitable: they will invoke the Nuclear Option.

Personally, I don't think there is any reason to worry about who is elevated to the head of the Supreme Court -if and when Rhenquist steps down. But if Bush does not make a reasonable effort to nominate a reasonable replacement, all bets are off.

We already have an American Taliban ruling the Congress, the Senate, and the Executive Branch. If they place another Mullah on the Supreme Court there will be fighting in the streets.