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?#_=_

Toxic Masculinity in The Bronx

Toxic Masculinity’s protection
Offers underdeveloped egos Black
Kinda venal form of compensation
To surmount the simulacrum of lack

“Shit rolls down hill” the old adage reports
Zora Neal said, then Yoko Ono too
“Woman’s [truly] the nigger of the [Earth]”
(So their diminished status makes Black men blue)

“Sexism is all a brother’s got left
In this commodified society”
Some say I oversimplify in jest
(Such is my academic piety)

But rest assured this “crazy nigger killed”
To get his masculinity refilled
http://gothamist.com/2017/07/01/bronx_hospital_shooter_henry_bello.php

Maximum Security Murders Sonnet

Boredom in maximum security

Led two dull despairing inmates to kill

Four more souls for some electricity

& maybe some jailhouse version of thrill
For they, hoping to get executions,

Murdered four more of their Fellow Felons

They were not searching for absolution

Just hoping: end the thoughts in their mellons
There is no fraternal honor of thieves

Just a vapid caldron of men’s desires

Around this venality someone grieves 

That only murder satisfies these fires
We on the outside, vaguely sentient,

Can’t imagine the pain of confinement
Original Tweet on @wQueens7

#Dixie’s #SouthCarolina #inmate who details 4 #prisonkillings: “I did it for nothing” http://nydn.us/2tgqm7C #WorldClass #Nihilism

Bland Warm Beer

Sandra Bland & Otto Warmbier are
Obverse sides of the law-&-order coin
One’s intercontinental travel went far
The other got the role of oppressed toy

Both existences are tragic stories:
Good people done in by crooked systems
Their tales of injustice tired & hoary:
They might well be Old Testament lessons

But our media will defend but one
Defending the undefendable way
Our brutal racist system deals with some
Lamenting Otto Warmbier’s sad display

So as you surf the internet notice
How racism is a given: know this!

Subway Slashing Sonnet

There are two unfortunate souls right here
The pregnant woman whose young face was slashed
Thinking about being a new mother dear
(& how to keep herself together lashed)

The other’s ridden life’s roller coaster
Hoping the bottom of the descent’s near
When younger, perhaps she was a “toaster”
Angel Dust, Dope: starting with pot & beer

So onto train ventures the mother new
Avoiding she that’s fighting her demons
(Beelzebub says: “don’t let her dis you!”
Sitting elsewhere was what that was seemin’)

Into her bags she reached for the bright shiv
Payback for dis was what she did give

http://nypost.com/2017/05/28/woman-slashed-on-subway-platform-at-grand-central/