Thanks Al Gore

2010
by Tarzana Joe

When near next November’s nigh
A mad majority disappears
In spotless sun

Taxes rise
As realization settles
On a seething city
Thin alliances dissolve

Approval ratings glide down
Facts feature failure for the future
A hard fall comes
Quickly

Then signs are raised
Slogans shouted
For the nation’s celebration

One term Blue Dogs take their leave
Unmourned
Bekins readies their vans

The people have found their voice
Bells ring
The city on the hill shines again

The poet cries
The moment of decision has arrived
The checkbook and the voting booth
Here are your tools.

Angry Poem

Growl
By Tarzana Joe with a limited borrowing from Allen Ginsberg

They say that every Inuit
Knows a thousand words for snow
What we need in Washington
Is forty-one for NO

No
No!
No more rhyme
No more meter
Now I howl

I have seen the “best minds” of a generation destroyed by madness
Who passed through Universities hallucinating
Who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers
Who were expelled from the academies for publishing obscene odes

Who made it through all this and somehow got to Washington
To Dream up Medicare for Juniors and Enron Economics
No
We can hand over our music to these men but not our souls
Let them have the newspapers
We will keep our radio and our freedoms

For a bunch who built their orthodox on choice
They sure forgot that word when it comes to
Pacemakers
Hips
Shoulders
And eyelids
I may only have one kidney but its mine
No
We will not let them tax our wind or
Tell us where to put our thermostats
No
We will not let these unshaven underwear shuddering
Peyote politicians tell us how to live
Or when to die

They say that every Inuit
Knows a thousand words for snow
What we need in Washington
Is forty-one for NO

Thanksgiving Poem 2009

Thanksgiving 2009
By Tarzana Joe

While thanking God this week for all our blessings is the norm
I say we should be thankful for the calm and for the storm
For the things that seem a hazard, when we think about them longer
Are somehow, by the will of God, designed to make us stronger
And so, I'm doubly grateful for the blessings and the curses
And humbly I acknowledge both my good and better verses
I thank Him for the grace that pumps the heart that keeps me living
And all the things I’ve done in life—I thank him for forgiving
The hand of God has fashioned this broad universe of beauty
And thanking him for all of it--is our pleasure and our duty
But more than for creation—for the rose and for the lotus
We ought to thank Him most for all the things we’ve yet to notice.

This week's Health Care poem

Twilight of the Senate
© 2009 by Tarzana Joe

At fashions of Parisians
Americans would gape
While we all totaled tea leaves
The French enjoyed the grape
So back during Prohibition
Sophie Tucker sang this song
Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong

Our intellects look Eastward
For their guidance, wouldn’t you?
Europe’s given us so much
Like World War One, and Two
And they expect that you’ll agree
While marching with the throng
A hundred million Socialists can’t be wrong

And so we turn to Europe
From whence we once seceded
Whenever we want hope and change
Or fresh ideas are needed
If you like the health care they have
Then you’ll follow right along
The European Union can’t be wrong

Unnecessary mammograms
The system’s sure to strain
And all those colonoscopies
Are really just a pain
Disconnect your C-pap
You’ll sleep right through the night
Two-hundred twenty Congresspersons must be right

So what if our survival rates
Are always at the highest
Those numbers are just numbers
And the scientists just biased
Is your life and liberty really worth the fight?
Sixty US Senators must be right

On Saturday, at Twilight
Those Senators go forth
They’re also looking Eastward
Or maybe to the North
Where you can’t get an appointment
And the waiting lists are long
Well, ten million dead Canadians can’t be wrong

Another Health Care Poem, Oy!

The cork's been popped
The bubble burst
The leaky ship has sailed
Pelosi's Health proposal
Has finally been unveiled

It's better than the last one
It fixes all that's wrong
It must be twice as potent
Because the thing is twice as long

Of course, it reads like fiction
That Nancy's quite a plotter
She wraps the whole thing up in 20 pages less than all of
Harry Potter

That Bible on my bureau?
The work of countless sages
Its wisdom is contained in less than 1900
Pages

She fills the presentation
With paradox sublime
She spends 900 billion but it doesn't cost a
Dime

That's nonsense and its bunkum
And put in plainest prose
This transparent grab for power is
The Emperor's New Clothes

There's nothing there that's useful
There's nothing there that's wise
The only thing it covers is a multitude of
Lies

OK, it boosts employment
With each patient, an employer
Cause every office visit will require its own
Lawyer

I'll leave it to the pundits
To filter through and sift it
The darn thing is so massive it's a wonder they can
Lift it

The cork's been popped
The bubbles burst
The leaky ship has sailed
Pelosi's Health proposal
Has finally been unveiled
(c) 2009 by Tarzana Joe

Bad Calls

Bad Calls
© 2009 by Tarzana Joe

Some teams, they get the garlands
And some teams get their lumps
And those that take the losses
Often blame it on the umps

Unless I’m quite mistaken
This, more than former Falls
Has seen a certain surplus
Of quite questionable calls

The fans in Minnesota
They all quote Shakespeare there
Like Macbeth, they know
That fair is foul and foul is fair

And down in Athens, Georgia
They sure know who to blame
A penalty that never was
Just cost their Dawgs a game

Oh! Just like Justice
Refs are blind!
The cloth of Fairness ravels
Manny never takes a strike
And Kobe never travels

I say this most sincerely
My friends, my fans, my brothers
While all bad calls are awful
Some sure are worse than others

The baddest of the bad ones
If I may share my views
Is one the White House braintrust made
To battle with Fox News

Every day they protest
In words both crass and callow
Whining makes the whiner look
Poor and weak and shallow

Sun Tzu told his master
Know when you begin
Never fight a war
That gains you nothing if you win

Take a moment’s measure
Use that mighty brain
Even if you conquer
Tell me what you think you’d gain

Yes, even if you triumphed
And a network lay destroyed
Drudge and Breitbart—Hugh and I
Would quickly fill the void

So focus on YOUR message
Think WHAT and WHY and HOW
And that’s the lesson you could learn
From good old Chariman Mao

Night After Night

Night after Night
By Tarzana Joe

Each and every Autumn
Defying rhyme or reason
The folks who run the networks
Announce a new Fall Season

They promise innovation
And shows with fresh perspective
But all that they deliver
Is another cheap detective

And starting this September
The promos proudly shriek
A popular performer
Is on five nights a week

Now how can I express this
With words approaching tact?
This kind of saturation
Is such a tired act

Of course the public loves him
Likewise, of him I sing
But overdoses come from
Too much of a good thing

I know he’s top banana
The Leader of the Pack
But every single time I look
He’s right there staring back

Some nights I’d like a ballgame
Or scintillating drama
But all the networks give me…
Is President Obama

On Monday, he's on Letterman
And Sunday, Meet the Press
Thursday, he’ll be sewing
Heidi Klum’s new runway dress

He’s going on Survivor
And Jeopardy and then
He’s starring with Joe Biden
On One and a Half Men

To headline “Law and Order”
I hear he has a “go-see”
On Dancing with the Stars
He’s dancing with Pelosi

If I were his advisor
I’d tell him if I could
Enough of you is plenty
Too much is just no good.
(c) 2009 Tarzana Joe

For Mark

4 Questions

Spring will never come again
No April without pain
Each April the Emancipator's
Slain

Mothers, will there ever
Be a Sunday in December
When your sons will not
Remember Remember

November never passes
Until I shed a tear
Year after Year after Year

And never in September
Will I look into the sky
Unless I ask the question
Why Why Why Why

(c) 2009 Tarzana Joe

The Pledge

I PLEDGE to be of service to my community
I PLEDGE to oppose anything that threatens the earth
I PLEDGE to fight the unseen terrorism of plastic water bottles
I PLEDGE to support the right of convicted terrorists to die comfortably In their own beds
I PLEDGE (if I am an Average American) to cheerfully pay as taxes to my government everything I earn from January 1 to April 13
I PLEDGE to donate everything else I have to Charley Rangel
I PLEDGE to look the other way when supporters of Euthanasia, legal standing for animals in our courts, tax cheats and 9/11 Truthers are appointed to top White House jobs without Congressional approval
I PLEDGE to stand side by side with the International Community and ignore North Korea and Iran and attack Honduras if asked
I PLEDGE to buy Government Motors cars once they start making them in China
I PLEDGE never to impose upon this administration the subtle bigotry of high expectations

And when my bones are weary
And useless to this nation
I PLEDGE my all to help decrease the surplus population

I PLEDGE to thee, Obama
But if some questions linger
In proof of my deep loyalty
I’ll bite off my own finger

And in the fields of fairness
I pledge to be a weeder
I pledge to be of service
To our Beloved Leader

Keep Tarzana Joe Conservative

The National Endowment for the Arts organized a conference call of "leading artists" and urged them to be part of the solution. These artists were, of course, those who had received grants from the NEA before and the unspoken suggestion was that if they wanted to keep getting paid for making sculptures out of meatballs, those meatball sculptures should support Cap and Trade and Health Care Reform. The call is seductive. I'm sure I could write an epic-ode-sonnett devoted to controlling carbon dioxide emissions. So please! Donate Fifty Cents to keep Tarzana Joe Conservative!

My latest podcast

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Why wasn't I asked????

Click on the title above to find out how The National Endowment for the Arts is about to become The Department of Propaganda. Let a thousand flowers wither!

Poetry Pod-Cast

I Would Shop at Whole Foods (if I could afford it)

I don't know John Mackey from Adam Sandler. He may have committed as many crimes as John Edwards. The last checker who swiped my Paypal at Whole Foods had more metal sticking out of her than the dart board at my local pub. But a man has a right to his opinions. The outcry of the t-shirt left to John MacKey's Wall Street op-ed on Health Reform is amazing, overdone, ridiculous, and misguided. I shop at Whole Foods when I am flush with cash...and that means rarely. However, I think I'm going to buy a chuck of Brie or a hunk of dark chocholate or a bottle of bacteria for my intestines from the good people at Whole Foods. It will cost me, but it's one line I want to cross.

No Second Cannae

The news this weekend is that the Democrat leadership is retreating from the "government option." Whenever I hear that a party with control of the House, Senate and Executive branch is retreating, I hear the name "Cannae" echo in my brain. It was at Cannae during the Second Punic War that the Carthaginian general Hannibal invented "rope-a-dope." He had the center of his battle line simulate a retreat. The eager Romans charged into the gap anticipating victory. Instead they were encircled by the Carthaginians and slaughtered. So beware when the clever and powerful retreat. Check your flanks.

And as I have called this post "No Second Cannae" I am also reminded of one of my favorite poems, "No Second Troy" by W.B. Yeats. I would have loved to meet her. But I would have checked my flanks.


WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?