more horrid haiku

ev'ry partial man

equipped with sincerity

cannot see one truth.

 

a mere forty years

and maybe you become twelve,

maybe sixty-three.

 

whene'er I get there,

I will be in no hurry

to waste any time.

 

they are poor children

who never solicit help

from older children.

 

driving, I marvel

at the numbers of people

killed by standing trees.

 

the sign could not read

“we change oil”—it had to read

“we do oil changes”.

 

monster-osity!

one ugly caramel purse

with uglier shoes.

 

goofy girls, alas,

are still goofy, only now

they're armed with cellphones.

 

(your phone is ugly,

my dear—yes, you, and the one

attached to your head.)

 

the poets can hear

with their penetrating eyes,

thunder with their tongues.

 

whose land, resources,

whose wealth to buy whose glory,

glory for how long?

 

whose rules and whose laws,

which freedom, what liberty?

wars—no end in sight.

 

exclusively fed

poisons and non-living things,

we die—but surprised!

 

so quick to cremate,

impatient for minerals,

vain as carved granite.

 

life lacks our logic:

imposing logic on life

does not make life live.

 

dialectics errs:

we do not judge ancestors,

ancestors judge us.

 

immortality,

for fifty-nine centuries:

our stark achievement.