Bartleby 2.0

Modern working class existential angst

Has created “Bartleby the Scrivener”

‘Gainst the 21st century’s phalanx

Of our meaningless by a whisker

Tay Boon Keh has chosen to face jail time

As a modern Quixote dispatching

Expectations to various corners

Of the planet that we are exploiting

He would prefer not to participate

In the global endeavor he’s part of

He did not wonder much or ruminate

Tay Boon, on wealthy people, has laid a glove

This man’s a passive aggressive genius

He’s struck back inequity’s meanness

Daily News Story of Passive Aggressive Hero in China

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Sonnet as a Plea for Freedom

I must escape the media maelstrom

The vortex of virtual violence

Where the ideas of the basest are shown

For the bottom line wealth’s prurience

From the right wing I get primitive lies

Parroted by the mainstream media

Obscuring their white supremacist ties:

Equivalence: hypoglycemia

From the left impotent sanctimony

Dribbled keystrokes from a million iPhones

“Being Right’s” the vapid patrimony

Of people who forgot how the knife’s honed

So if you want to save me, send a letter

To a politician: make him better

I Weary of These Infernal Patterns

Rhyming Review: •The Gargoyle Hunters•

New York’s mood during metamorphosis
The “now” seems particularly cruel
Thus •The Gargoyle Hunters• will begin us
(This is today’s true literary jewel)

The meditations on what New York means
Complete with adolescent adventures
Of a free-range private school nerdy teen
All of which brought back my teen-aged culture

The relegated and crazy mother:
In an informal commune of borders
& the dashing obsessive father
Scavenging & barking out orders

A family painted on black velvet
Of private middle school dilemmas
Puberty and thievery’s strange couplet
Trapping our young Griffin in its clutches

Seeking approval & confederates
A scandalous collaboration’s made
Of two romantic thieving delegates
Who predate architecture’s colonnade

The father’s long term goal, disrupt the son’s
Immature middle school romances though
(But they do infect all the grown up ones)
It turns out we become the man we know

Iconoclastic rev’rence for icons
Is their spiral staircase of DNA
Though their collections give New York lesions
Their compulsions they cannot deny
Personalities’ personal suburbs
Those individuals on the outskirts
Of the mover’s & the shaker’s worlds
Are unfortunately too often hurt

The workers became shock troop of dreams
Marching right across convention’s front lines
To achieve the goals that the dreamer schemes
Little men enabling grand designs

In the end the dream is the loyalty
An all encompassing fidelity
That will become middle-aged pleasantries
Wrapped in older people’s sweet vagaries

Doubt in an Uncertain World Sonnet

Our beliefs are just what we think about
Even if they build these thoughts a cathedral
They’re merely thoughts: we can choose to opt out
Belief is freedom for ourselves: simple

If I choose not to believe in magic
Should not spoil your enjoyment of the show
I am an agnostic heckler tragic
Believe in religion: the way you know

The agnostic or atheist’s freedom
To (dis)believe in all your rituals
Is how the God that I doubt made it, son
So we each have “spiritual victuals” 

Believing in Yahweh, Allah or Christ
Does not mean that I have to sacrifice

Distorted America Poem

President’s American liberty
(Overconsumption, avarice, gluttony)
Dresses in the “drag of security”
(This way there is no long term certainty!)

Xenophobia separates people
Making us fearful & much more tractable
Freedom, when wealthier, was our steeple
(Nouveau-wealth tell us lies un-factual!)

It is clear: to live in utopia
You must strive to see the other man’s side
It’s not as far as Casiopia
(Attempt to understand his crazy lies!)

Behind beheadings & predator drones
The wanton ideological killings
Are simple desires everyone owns
(Someone’s getting rich off of these ratings!)

To lubricate the larder for the rich
We fear other types of society
Buy military hardware like a bitch
(To maintain some bourgeois propriety!)

Toxic Masculinity Two

In case you were wondering about it:
Toxic Masculinity’s prevalence
Is what gets these poor motherfuckers lit
In their sexist dreams of male dominance

For ev’ry rapist or cat-calling-man
Whom we try to shame or incarcerate
Is another Caucasian-suburban
Whom our sexist culture celebrates

& when the stupid fucking psycho shoots
A hospital, or rapes a passed out fare
We punish these breaches (while in cahoots
With Madison Avenue’s Sexist despair)

So when we punish occasionally
Remember sexism’s regular, see

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/sports/fox-sports-jamie-horowitz.html?#_=_