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!

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , | 1 Comment

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)

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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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)

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Wampeters Are Catnip for Goon Balloons

Posted on April 26, 2026 by JMN
Greatcoat fury.

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.

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Photo Worth Several Words

Posted on April 24, 2026 by JMN

Who’s being “honored” in this picture? (Hint: They’re female.)

[Detail.]

Peekaboo!

The University of Georgia women’s tennis team posing with Donald Trump and administration officials. Photograph: Margo Martin on X/Margo Martin on X (@MargoMartin47). [Guardian caption and illustration]

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 6 Comments

The Madman Helming the Solo Voyage

Posted on April 22, 2026 by JMN

When at sea / directionless / approach the / Unexpected(Cheyenne McMasters) The madman helming the solo voyagesteers by the seat of his cargo shorts.His jury-rigged bark breasts the swellsand he clutches the tiller with white knuckles. The madman waves to … Continue reading →

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Come Sweetly

Posted on April 18, 2026 by JMN

No more the air- / borne omens; no more the incensed prayers; no more the carcass / butchered at the altar.
(From “Elegy for the Deathless Gods” by Sherod Santos, Poetry, March 2026)

To this or that paradise of misrule
Is not where the road to Damascus leads.
Muster pandemonium at full bore,
Pitch fits and furies to the highest heavens
— Death to this or that son of a whore!
Vain fusillade. Foam of mouth. Rancor’s drool.
Swing low whose chariot over the ruins?
Which hemorrhoidal saint won’t tell his beads,
Come sweetly — any God! — to squat this stool?

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Art of the Smirk

Posted on April 13, 2026 by JMN

Did your social circles “overlap” with this person’s?

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Epic Titan (Art of the DOGE)

Posted on April 10, 2026 by JMN

Damon Winter/The New York Times. [New York Times caption and illustration. The article it illustrates is here.]

I love that guy! I love him. And we’ll only have one chance at this…
(Rev. Franklin Graham)

Open the Fuckin’ Strait…
(Trump)

“Alas, alack, all manner of woe.” My big TOE, pussies!
Grievance in the cheap seats, on the ground, in the air.
The deal is this: I ran. I wrack. I rant. I riff. I tear.

Stay my hand, give ground, quell the furies?
Not on your fairy’s life, your sissy’s dime.
My will: verbal. My lock: total. You are mine.

Fleece the meek, poke the woke, stoke the fringe.
Duck, DOGE, desecrate, dispute, deny.
The principles I hack are those I live by.

Don’t make me blister your behinds, people!
I feast with long teeth. Know your place. Now scram.
And don’t forget this: Who’s your daddy? I am.

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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My Favorite Wire Sculpture ’Til Further Notice

Posted on April 8, 2026 by JMN

Jean Crotti’s wire sculpture of Duchamp. Credit… Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; via The Museum of Modern Art, New York [New York Times caption and illustration]

“When functioning as art, an object asks its viewers to ‘look harder, look longer, ask questions, interrogate, try to make something of it.’”


Alva Noë, philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley)

Duchamp helps us understand that “art” shouldn’t be thought of as a noun that picks out certain kinds of objects, but as a verb: We “art” absolutely any object at all by using it to trigger thoughts and conversation.

Marcel Duchamp was chairman of the “hanging committee” for the First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in April 1917. It showed 2,400 works by 1,300 makers. At Duchamp’s behest, the works were displayed alphabetically by the 1,300 makers’ names. This caused much heartburn in art circles. Robert Henri, dean of the Ashcan School (my favorite “school” of painters) wrote:

“Should order and relationship not be sought in the presentation of pictures?… We would not care for a musical program where Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony would be followed by a fox-trot, nor would it be possible to enjoy eating in sequence mustard, ice-cream, pickles and pastry.”


An April 1917 view of the Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists at the Grand Central Palace. Credit… via Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives: Arensberg Archives. [New York Times caption and illustration]

(Blake Gopnik, “Duchamp Made a Urinal Into Art in 1917. We’re Still Discussing it.” New York Times, 4-7-26)

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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