Artistic Problems

Originality or relevance
Or self-expression -- none are relevant
To poetry or any of the arts
Than swim trunks are to Asian elephants
Or poems are to any elephant --
On art they leave their stench, like mental farts.

Leviathan

Look to the coldest monster in the sea
For your salvation -- look to it and plea

For life and livelihood -- then sacrifice
Your wives and daughters to its tongues of ice --

Then sacrifice your lives to all its lies
That it will satisfy your endless cries

To satisfy your envy and your hate
That you mistake for justice while your fate

Is having all your flesh sheared by the knives
The monster's maw bears -- blood will flow. He dives

To depths below your worst and first despair
And leaves your bloated bodies floating bare

For fish and gulls to pick the severed flesh --
And all because you thought a tangled mesh

Would finally assuage the guilt you fish
For in your depths -- you finally have your wish

You never understood to be your lust
For punishment -- you feel the balmy gust

Of putrid air the coldest monster breathes
And blame the warrior whalers with their wreathes

They throw you in the sea -- your monster soul
Is rolling limp upon the stony shoal.

Uprising

Behold the evils hatred of mankind
Brings -- envy is the hatred of mankind

The youth have razors, slicing eyes to blind --
They do it in their hatred of mankind

They seek out virtue, seek its bones to grind,
Devoured in their hatred of mankind

They make divisions ever more refined
In tribalistic hatred of mankind

They'll take your tongue and make sure that they've dined
On critics in their hatred of mankind

Their progress looks much more like a behind --
Illiberals all have hatred of mankind

They'll feast upon your brains and spear your mind
Unless you love their hatred of mankind

Injustice forms the minute they have wined --
Their wining shows their hatred of mankind

Illogic, anti-reason both have vined
Their mindless, protist hatred of mankind

Authority is where crybullies find
Support for all their hatred of mankind

These racists against racism want kind
From kind split off -- that's hatred of mankind

They can't be happy -- hate seeps from their rind
To make to justice hatred of mankind

When you're disarmed, they'll make sure that they bind
You with their lustful hatred of mankind

And when you're weak, they'll make sure that you're lined
Against the wall with what was once mankind

To Leslie Marsh

I raise a drink to Leslie Marsh, my friend
And my supporter -- you ask, I'll lend
My pen to your endeavors on the mind
Within the model Hayek once defined
To help make sense of order emergent,
Evolved and natural. A turbulent
And stimulating time, a mental match
That's liberated -- each fermented batch
Will lift our spirits, make our nonsense sing
Its silliness so sober we can bring
A lightness and delightfulness when truth
Is sought in serious discussions. Couth
In uncouth jokes, the paradox of life
Is found in all your love and lack of strife.
New England British friend in Canada,
You live life like a Latin comeda
And bring us all along in your delight
With drinking, talking, minding through the night.
With hours of sleep, a conference the next day,
We still find energy enough to think and play.
There's nothing I can say that's slightly harsh --
And so I raise a drink to Leslie Marsh!