Monday Poem

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and
dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."
………………--Tony Hayward, CEO British Petroleum, on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill


The Mean Density of a Corporate Brain Ghazal

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
Shakespeare said —and not just in dreams if truth be told.

Devils on TV and on the radio —even in the street
ordinary demons walk among us terrors to behold.

Just yesterday someone I know remarked that we may be indiscreet
and inconsiderate of the earth; adding smugly: We may be bold.

We may have our wonton way with her without repercussion
even if we leave her desiccated —as God’s my witness, it’s foretold.

The earth’s ours to be consumed; to be sucked utterly to death. 
We have the right, he said –being the prime plums in god’s fold.

So what if the earth bleeds into the sea? The sea’s huge enough
to handle whatever comes: run-off nitrogen, sludge, black gold.

As long as skulls are stuffed with want and hearts trussed in bottom lines
it’s just routine to deal in death and decimate the earth which rolls & rolls.

If we’re dumb as Gump, blind as Lear and demonic as a corporate brain
we’ll, tout de suite, smother and annihilate even our dreams if truth be told.

by Jim Culleny, 5/23/10