Black the boots of success

One of my all-time favorite poets is e.e. cummings, 1894-1962. He introduced me to free-form poetry and the concept that all elements of a poem—not just the words—contribute to the meaning.

I was in high school, remember.

Cummings definitely had an eye for the political animal. And he used his words like a boning knife, to fillet every layer of despicability and venality. He’s definitely got us covered for the current administration and its “excursion” in Iran.

Perhaps his most famous anti-war poem is “plato told”. It skewers those who will not heed the warnings of Greek philosophers, Jewish teachers or American generals that war is not anything to be sought. (It also nails the businessman who’s perfectly happy to profit by trading with the enemy, especially since neither he nor his sons will be headed in harm’s way.)

“next to of course god america” goes more directly after those who preach the gospel of glory; the ones who give the fieriest speeches in hoarse voices, urging someone else’s sons to go to war. The ones who—for one reason or another (could be draft deferments for bone spurs, or “critical” business interests)—never actually have to carry a carbine at the front. Looking at how cummings jams all the clichés of bloviating politicians together, you can just see the red-faced, over-fed politician standing at a podium, sweating copious amounts into his wrinkled suit as he makes his tired case.

The only thing missing is the chants of the audience.

“next to of course god america”

next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

Because it’s cummings, I’m giving you another poem for today’s National Poetry Month entry. This one speaks to the entire ethos of MAGA.

(Look at how he’s structured the first two lines of each iteration of “humanity”, carefully changing the emphasis by where he places the words at the end of the first line.)

“Humanity i love you”

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more

especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Don't give it up

Everything is not terrible. Tuesday Virginians voted to approve a plan to redraw congressional districts; this new map leans heavily Blue, which is enraging everyone with an (R) after their name.

I mean some clown car calling itself “Justice for Democracy PAC” has been sending out multiple variants of flyers that actually use photos of Barack Obama urging Virginia to “Protect minority representation” by voting against it. 

This in addition to other spurious claims like this is Governor Abigail Spanberger’s doing. (The referendum was on approving a bill from the state legislature, not a power-grab by Spanberger; she just signed it, allowing it to be voted on by us.) They were really counting on the stupidity and/or confusion by the voting public.

Yes, the new districts are drawn to favor Democrats, potentially flipping four seats to Blue. Yes, this is absolutely gerrymandering. But also yes, this undoes the last round of gerrymandering in 2010, which served up safely Republican Representatives for a decade and a half.

And again yes, this particular cycle of gerrymandering was started by Republicans in Texas (egged on by the Kleptocrat), when the lege mandated new district lines that disenfranchised heavily Latino areas—mandated, mind you, without any consultation from the voters. So the same people who lauded the Texas changes are currently hopping mad at the outrage of being served up what they dished out.

BTW: this is how the Washington Post's editorial board heralded the Texas change:

And here's how it covered Tuesday's vote in Virginia:

(Update: a Virginia GOP-appointed judge ruled Wednesday that the redistricting amendment is unconstitutional, that all votes are invalid and that the state is barred permanently from implementing the changes. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he'll appeal. My prediction if this goes to SCOTUS, they'll faff about until it's too late to change the districts for the mid-term elections in November. Nonetheless: the people voted.)

So my earworm for today is “Words of Wonder/Get Up, Stand Up”, by Playing for Change and featuring the immortal (truly) Keith Richards. (Richards wrote "Words of Wonder"; "Get Up, Stand Up" is from the also immortal Bob Marley.)

Make it so.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

O! 'Tis foul!

Today’s the day we mark the Big Gun of English poetry, William Shakespeare. We think this was his birthday in 1564, and we know it was the day he died, in 1616. Much of Shakespeare’s life would have been spent amidst pestilence; smallpox, typhus, cholera were just some of the diseases swirling about. It’s surprising that his works aren’t more drenched with catastrophic events beyond the making of man.

King Lear was first performed for James I in 1606, following a summer in which bubonic plague ravaged the country and closed down much of the entertainment venues and shops in London. We don’t know that this influenced Shakespeare, but the landscape of Lear is a blasted wasteland for much of the play, so…

As per usual, Lear’s downfall is of his own making, but, man, does he take half the cast with him into madness and death. About halfway through the play, when the deposed king is wandering the moors, he rages…against ingratitude.

Huh.

King Lear, Act III, Scene 2

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!

Frankly, I’ve always thought that—more than other Shakespearean tragic heroes—Lear pretty much deserved what he wrought. I mean—the guy couldn’t see Regan and Goneril for what they were; or Cordelia, for that matter. The tragedy was that—because he was king—his follies turned into horror for everyone around him. Which we’re experiencing right now with the current occupant of the White House whose brain is rotting before our eyes, but—far from being exiled to the moors with his Fool (and who among his Cabinet of grifting morons would play that role, I wonder?), he’s free and empowered to start wars and wander off, pillage natural resources, crush human rights at home and abroad and loot our treasury. The tragedy is ours, not his.

Anyhow, as is my custom for Shakespeare day in National Poetry Month, here’s one of his sonnets, in which he compares love to disease. ‘Nuff said.

“Sonnet 147”

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
    For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
    Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

My bread you snap

I read a WaPo headline the other day to the effect that Republicans in Red states are having difficulties passing anti-immigration bills because of pushback from business lobbyists. I didn’t read the story because, first of all—duh, but also because it’s just another case of FAFO. It turns out that without immigrants willing to work for low wages and no benefits, anything to do with the food chain—from tending the fields to bussing the restaurant tables—can’t survive. (Also, manufacturing, transportation, retail, construction and trades apparently have the same crap business model. They all depend on exploitation of the workforce to turn a profit, so without immigrants, they’re toast.)

Imagine that.

This year, we’re facing increased strains on the global food supply chain. Climate change has altered the geography of arable land, and violent weather has played up with crops. Tariffs have screwed farmer and consumer alike. Moreover, this moronic war of choice in the Middle East has not only sent the price of all petroleum-based fuels (and products) skyrocketing, but it turns out that a big chunk of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now closed as a totally predictable (to everyone except the Kleptocrat, apparently) outcome of the attacks on Iran.

Yay—not only are prices of food going up, but we may all get to experience food scarcity. First hand.

Well, my entry for today in National Poetry Month is from the immortal Dylan Thomas, “The Bread I Break”.

You can read this on so many levels—literally on the process of what it takes to turn grain into bread and fruit into wine. It’s a commentary on humans pillaging the planet. It’s also an allegory of the sacrifice of Christ.

(Who in no way—physical or moral—resembles the brain-rotting occupant of the White House.)

“This Bread I Break”

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this time wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Turns out humans are utter crap at appreciating sacrifice of any sort, whether it’s the chicken they’re frying or the god they worship. Yippee.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Killers in high places

I was introduced to Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” via one of my favorite Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny. That series is about a Québecois inspecteur du Sûreté and it’s centered around a Brigadoon-ish village some kilometers from Montréal. The villagers are a little on the fey side, and I do wish Penny had not given her protagonist a name that is so very close to the chocolate coating that goes on cakes and truffles, but the plots are generally quite good, and I do love police procedurals.

How the Light Gets In is one of the most powerful in the series, and Penny described Cohen’s generosity when she or her publishers wrote to ask him for permission to use part of the chorus as an epigraph. He gave it to her, without asking any fee.

Well, I’ve been thinking rather a lot about the notion that things (and people and nations) can be more beautiful—stronger, more valuable—for having been broken. I want to believe it, but I know there’s a difference between a crack and utter destruction. I hoped we could stop the damage before we get to that place, but I fear we’re already there. We will have a lot of work to do to repair the damage a few greedy powerful white men are doing.

I'm also thinking about the Japanese art of kintsugi—repairing cracks in pottery with gold. In a visual sense, that's surely letting the light in, isn't it? Viz:

I’m giving you today’s National Poetry Month entry as a poem, because I’ve always thought of Cohen as a poet rather than a songwriter. Also, I’m not that wild about the melody of this one. I’ve also cut the chorus until the last one.

“Anthem”

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me

You can add up the parts
You won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring (ring the bells that still can ring)
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

Can we be kintsugi? Can we let the lights in through the cracks? Can we try? 

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: He fathers-forth

Particularly in our current environment, one of undeclared class warfare that pits the oligarchs against everyone else on every field—economics, environment, education, politics, religion, resource allocation—I struggle with maintaining any kind of spiritual, emotional and mental balance. So I make a conscious effort to absorb and honor the beauty and grace in my daily life.

As I do, I follow the prescription of an old photography professor—when something strikes me, I also try to look around for another perspective, to see if there’s not something else about it equally beautiful.

Viz:

I went out to glory in the dogwood in my cluster, which of course were spectacular.

But so, too, was the shadow it threw on the sidewalk.

This reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”, today’s entry for National Poetry Month. Just the first line opens me up for the joy and the loveliness that’s all around us, in both nature and the work people do to make our lives easier.

You might call it "God's DEI program."

“Pied Beauty”

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

To be led by a fool

Like many writers of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler used the “otherworld” settings of her novels to explore a variety of themes, including African American spiritualism, characterizing survival as heroic in itself and criticizing hierarchies. Her work won many writing awards, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship (you know—the “genius” grant).

She’s not known primarily as a poet, but she used poems to frame her prose.

Butler set her two-book Earthseed series in a post-Apocalyptic Earth. In the 2020s. (Parable of the Sower was published in 1993; Parable of the Talents in 1998.) She prefaced each chapter with a poem. My entry for National Poetry Month today is from Chapter 11 of the former; it does seem appropriate.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Sneer of cold command

As I understand it, Ozymandias was a Greek name for the pharaoh Rameses II; I do not know whether it refers to the Egyptian’s mama and combat boots. The only reason I know of him is because Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem about the pathetic and pointless remains of a self-aggrandizing tyrant of former times.

Even in high school, the arid arrogance of the colossus’ broken old statue struck me. Back then, I didn’t know Ozymandias was real. Now that I do, I give him more credit than I did—Rameses the Great had chops. He was a warrior king, successful in battle. He brought wealth to Egypt. He built temples, tombs and art works. He’s also posited as the pharaoh of the Exodus, and apparently looked a lot like Yul Brynner.

Shelley does a bang-up job taking the piss here, and I’ve recently been struck by how applicable this description is to the current occupant of the White House. Cadet Bonespurs projects all the megalomania the poet documents, but with none of the accomplishments to give substance to the broken monument. We certainly recognize the wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command manqué. I really don’t much fancy thinking about his vast and trunkless legs, thank you very much, but I’d pay real money for a glimpse of a shattered visage half-sunk in sand.

As to looking on the Kleptocrat’s works—the destruction, corruption and misery that have been his focus since he first announced his candidacy—yeah, I do despair. We are in danger of becoming the wasteland that Shelley limns, boundless and bare around the decay of that colossal wreck.

“Ozymandias”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Thy pride of might shall be thy shame

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about “Pride of Man” for the past couple of weeks. Hamilton Camp wrote it in 1964, but its apocalyptic lyrics seem to be exactly spot on 62 years later.

There are a lot of covers out there—best known may be the one by Quicksilver Messenger Service. But I’m going with Gordon Lightfoot’s, as he gives it just the right amount of urgency for our times.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Wherever the damned do chiefly abound

I first ran into Jonathan Swift in high school, when I did a paper on the Anglo-Irish hostility. You know—the “hostility” that started in the 12^th Century, when Henry II used the excuse of the Irish Church’s refusal to follow the Gregorian reforms (the ones that stick in my mind being monks’ tonsures and celebration of Easter) invaded Ireland.

The fusion of Mother England and Celtic Ireland has produced nearly 800 years of literary giants: Oscar Wilde, Seán O’Casey, Oliver Goldsmith, George Bernard Shaw, C.S. Lewis, J.M. Synge, Bram Stoker, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Swift among them. Swift, born in 1667, straddled Ireland and England literally, born in Dublin, spending much of his early adulthood in England and then return to Dublin where he was Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral from 1715 until his death in 1745. You may know him as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, where we get a taste of his ability to use humor to skewer the many ills he saw in the world.

The one that imprinted on me was A Modest Proposal (full title being A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick), in which Swift solves the problem of poverty in Ireland by permitting parents to sell their children as food to what we’d today call members of the 1% (English 1%, to be precise). In quintessentially Swiftian fashion, he mocks the heartlessness that the 1% still show to the poor. It’s deadly.

Swift was politically active, first for the Whigs and then for the Tories, and (as evidenced by Proposal and other writings) he was vehemently opposed to Britain’s Irish policies. He managed to get up Queen Anne’s nose, and lost his ecclesiastical appointment in England. Saint Patrick’s, Dublin, was outside Anne’s gift, so that’s where he ended up. Toward the end of his life he became obsessed with death, and suffered from mental illness, quarreling with friends and growing increasingly isolated.

Today’s entry isn’t titled; it’s a concise disquisition on the nature of hell. It strikes me as being timely, nearly 300 years later. Same players, same outcomes. So much for progress.

All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damned -I'll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damned do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damned poets, damned critics, damned blockheads, damned knaves,
Damned senators bribed, damned prostitute slaves;
Damned lawyers and judges, damned lords and damned squires;
Damned spies and informers, damned friends and damned liars;
Damned villains, corrupted in every station;
Damned time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I'll readily give you
Damned ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flammed,
For we know by these marks the place of the damned:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!

 

©2026 Bas Bleu