EthicalDative

Posted Here This Day in 2018

Posted on May 28, 2026 by JMN

This is the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the PRESS that covers the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

This is the DOC that protects the PRESS that covers the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the VOTES that defend the DOC that protects the PRESS that covers the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the CITIZENS who cast the VOTES that defend the DOC that protects the PRESS that covers the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

These are the MIDTERMS that beckon the CITIZENS who cast the VOTES that defend the DOC that protects the PRESS that covers the MONEY that greases the POLS who clog the CONGRESS that sops the BASE that supports the PREZ who attacks the JUDGES who bench the COURTS that rule in the SYSTEM the FATHERS built.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language | 1 Comment

Hail to Thee, Mouse-Like Bird! Wren nor Tit Thou Never Wert!

Posted on May 25, 2026 by JMN

Adam goofed. The bird called wrentit (Chamaea fasciata) is neither a wren nor a tit.

A wrentit… is a secretive, sedentary, mouse-like bird endemic to North America, primarily found in western coastal regions of the U.S. and Baja California. It’s the sole species in its family, Chamaeidae, and is known for its loud, ping-pong-like song and its preference for dense, low shrubs, where it skulks and gleans insects and berries.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged inerrant biblicy, language | Leave a comment

Democracy, We Hardly Knew Ye

Posted on May 23, 2026 by JMN

The [2026 U.S. Supreme Court] case that felled the Voting Rights Act was Louisiana v. Callais…

The day after the Callais ruling, Gov. Jeff Landry took the unprecedented action of suspending the state’s U.S. House primary — in which tens of thousands of voters had already cast ballots — so legislators could redraw the election maps. Though one in three Louisiana residents is Black, Republicans intend to jettison at least one of two Black-majority districts…

Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida quickly moved ahead with their own redistricting plans. And the governor of Mississippi — which has just a single Black U.S. representative despite having the nation’s highest percentage of Black residents, at 38 percent — announced his intent to do the same…

“They are cementing absolute minority control because they do not represent a majority of this country. And when they — if they — get away with the heist, we will be locked out of multiracial democracy for at least a generation,” [ said Janai Nelson, who as president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund argued the Callais case before the Supreme Court].

(Nikole Hannah Jones, “The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes,” New York Times, 5-22-26)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged miscellaneous, society, tyranny | 3 Comments

Rae Armantrout Appeals to My Inner Toddler

Posted on May 21, 2026 by JMN

I want to say Rae Armantrout springs a cavalcade of huggable schwas on me, but rumpled or purple or bubbly would describe them, too. As long as they’re duple bumpy words.

Joints grind like
shot brakes.

Food ignites
in our stomachs.

But we’re still muffin-bunnies,
muddle-buckets,

cuddle-chunks.

(From “Apocrypha,” Poetry, June 2026)

Armantrout’s boney, yet highly legible, minimalism does me that rare favor poetry can bestow on a reader, to wit, elicit laughter. Twenty-six syllables cresting in a persnickety streak of thud-nuts provide a rambunctious chuckle-ride. The wry-serious vocables smack of kid talk with a whiff of nursery rhyme and playground marketing. (“Muffin-Bunnies” are well positioned for the sugary snack rack at a 7-Eleven checkout.)

Also, who is one who has driven with frayed brake pads, and has complaining joints, that doesn’t seize immediately on the “grinding” simile? A brusque epithet plucked from the vernacular, “shot,” suits it to a tee.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, poetry, reading | 6 Comments

A-B-C-D-D-C-B-A

Posted on May 16, 2026 by JMN

every need fights to make
its voice heard, to be
fulfilled with a gentle touch
(from K. LINES THAT AIM TO BE)

K’s lines, encountered after I had spewed the below caustic grump at the demons of my own distractedness, furnished an alleviating contrast.

It comes down to simple resolve to have
Your way with the day. Foreswear frittering.
Swear off salving every loopy freak
Flopped on the stoop, manky hat in hand.
Never mind the entreaties. No demand
Answerable except with laser seek,
Otherwise you haven’t gained a damned thing;
Just time lost and an empty crock of salve.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language, poetry | 5 Comments

Mid-May on the Littoral

Posted on May 14, 2026 by JMN

It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates.(Philip Roth on American life in the 1960s) I fear I’ve morphed into a carping nag.Crafting invective merely fêtes the boor,vomitous bilge the thing that feeds his root.It’s to priss froufrou-like at the galaof distress, … Continue reading →

More Galleries | Tagged doggerel, language | Leave a comment

Messy Antic Bomb Bard

Posted on May 10, 2026 by JMN

I compel you in the name of my HIMARS!
I compel you in the name of my ATACMS!
I compel you in the name of my GENERALS,
By the lashings of my terrible swift tongue!

You want a red sea? I will give you HISTORY.
By my decree events shall have occurred
When and where I choose and in the manner
Of my telling, on the slant of my twisting.

Shoot you in the face, shit on your parade,
This could I do, and “Sir,” they’d say, “You king!
“You glorify yourself and live deliciously!
“All hail the stiffest rod in any room.”

Old school, that’s me. I’m Moses in the flesh.
My word’s as good as law. They say I’ve got —
What do they call it? — “prophecy” no less.
Can you believe it? I’m a prophet. Boom!

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language | 3 Comments

Let Fly, Let Sing

Posted on May 4, 2026 by JMN

As a grammar nerd I have to comment: The hortatory “let” allows you and me to influence the behavior of a third person (Let him go fly a kite!), or a third person that of a fourth (Mary Ann said, “Let them eat Twinkies!). It’s a way to wax imperative vis-à-vis someone not a party to the conversation. The Bible has used it: Let them circumcise the foreskins of their hearts! The president has used it: Let them gerrymander Texas!

As a poetry reader I have to give the floor to Linda Gregg. She pushed letting until the predicate just flew away. It’s hymnodian. I can’t get over how good it feels, well it reads.

[…]
Let birds, let birds.
Let leaf be passion.
Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be
between us. Let joy.
Let entering. Let rage and calm join.
Let quail come.
Let winter impress you. Let spring.
Allow the lost ocean to wake in you.
Let the mare in the field
in the summer morning mist
make you whinny. Make you come
to the fence and whinny. Let birds.

(Linda Gregg, from “Let Birds,” Poetry, April 2026)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged language, poetry | 8 Comments

Trigger Mortis

Posted on May 1, 2026 by JMN

… Not long after the end of the Vietnam War [1975], Army Col. Harry Summers, who’d won Bronze and Silver stars in that war as an operations officer, flew to Hanoi as chief of the U.S. delegation to resolve the status of missing American soldiers. In between sessions, he struck up a conversation with his counterpart, Col. Nguyen Don Tu, who’d fought in the North Vietnamese army. “You know,” Summers remarked, “you never beat us on the battlefield.” Col. Tu replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”

(Fred Kaplan in Slate, 4-13-26)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Wampeters Are Catnip for Goon Balloons

Posted on April 26, 2026 by JMN

Wampeters are catnip for goon balloons,
Slippery as deer guts on a doorknob,
Dark Davos in an amniotic greatcoat,
Wampum coined from oligarchs’ spittoons.
Treacly curls, puffed labia, eyeball moons —
A lecherous lapsarian’s heartthrob!
Wampeters are catnip for goon balloons,
Triggery as the fingers of an ICE mob.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language | 3 Comments