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Monday, March 25, 2019

G-d's Little Obstacle Course

I wrote this poem a while ago, but wasn't really sure what to do with it. One of those things that seemed too cheesy to non-religious people and too heretical to religious people. But necessity is the evil stepmother of creativity, and I had a post due for Hevria, which -- inspired? no, demanded -- that this poem and I get to know each other better.




I believe in G-d today
and I think it’s making me less clumsy
stopping to notice the patterns in everything
once you’ve given up the excuse
of chaos

flower petals
the bunching together of eyelids
of girls who look at me
and crap

especially crap
laid out on the sidewalk
like an obstacle course
a rhythm and reason to its fall,
impossible to avoid
all trying to catch my feet
no way to get around all of them

[ read the rest ]

Monday, March 11, 2019

My Slow-burning Obsession with Steven Mnuchin

This is a weird one. Sometimes I'll start thinking about Steven Mnuchin and get so mad. Other times he just seems like a paradigm of all that is weird about the Trump administration -- not wrong (although that, too) but weird -- how Trump mocked Hillary for her Goldman Sachs connections and then dragged this guy into the White House, the portfolio of movies he's invested in, including (but not limited to) The Lego Movie, the Thomas Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice, and Mad Max: Fury Road, and the way his wife invites rubbernecking, Asma al-Assad style.

But most of all it's this picture, and the accompanying tweet by Christopher Ingraham that seemed so sad and poetic and weirdly hopeful, that made me want to write this poem, and which I sampled for the last two verses. There it is. My confession of love. Steven Mnuchin, I hope you're happy. Now please take care of this country.


With enough money
Steven believes
you can change minds

The way his name slips by
in the credits for Avengers
and The Lego Movie

to show his old bullies
whatever they wanted
to do to him, it backfired

Steven marks his territory
like a bulldog on a Sunday outing

The United States, Steven says
is the greatest country
to invest in

and we are his investment
Steven shouldn’t be this happy in life
but somehow figured it out

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