Is There Another Place at This Table?

This week and next, their ruling chiefs—
Israeli and the PLO’s—
In Washington with well-worn briefs
Will play their role as civil foes.
They’re quick to say the other’s wrong.
If only they could get along.

Flip-Flops Not Allowed Inside

Obama, does he flip and flop?
On second thought he wants a stop
To photos showing all the world
More shame that leaves our hair re-curled:
Some troops afflicting detainees
With torture that he now foresees
As grounds for anti-GI hate
And reason to retaliate.

The Groves of Claptrap

Obama’s May in academe
Is nuts enough to make one scream.
At Arizona State, they say:
Address the grads and go away.
No LL.D. degree you get.
You’re not enough accomplished yet.
Two books? The Harvard Law Review?
A party school is ASU.
An aloe-vera maker, we
Awarded honorarily.
He smoothed our skin to large extent,
And you are only president.

Your Money or Your Life

U.S. health care’s plain barbaric.
Pay or die if you get real sick.
Un- and undercovered panic.
Would our system looked more Gallic.
France’s system—socialistic—
U.N. figures rate terrific,
First in line, to be specific.

The Power of No

In Kenya, women sick of strife
That disarranges public life
For one whole week held back from sex
In hopes their abstinence corrects
Division in the nation’s rule.
It seems they’ve found a useful tool.

Already one man’s filed suit.
He mentioned back pains I’d dispute.
A lack of them results, I’d guess,
In what he cites, but I digress.
The boycott’s gained robust applause.
The P.M.’s wife has joined the cause.

But why stop there? Reflect worldwide.
Imagine having on our side
Subservient wives of Talibans
Desiring power like a man’s?
Al-Qaeda women, frayed galore,
Who’d give the choice of love not war?

The gift today, would it were so,
Is mothers’ sons without a foe.

— Mother’s Day

Un-American Activities

What a pain, Guantanamo,
Filled with guys we won’t let go.
Some perhaps we wrongly hold,
Guilt unknown or oversold.