Art of Friendship

Do nothing for your indigent old friends:
Respect the bonds of holy irony
And never lift us out of poverty
With your cascade of gold that never ends.
Enjoy the satisfaction good sense lends
To those who practise freedom, making free
With logic and good will: the hanging tree —
Too good for us — like you, it never bends.

Don't worry, staying up through half the night
Till someone wakens you and, with a start,
You realize you never knew the art
Of friendship. You won't ever feel that bite.
Do nothing for your friends. They'll be all right
Without assistance from your shrunken heart.

Market Forces

Market forces penetrate, the feeling
We've been robbed by experts, tilled and shredded
Actively, romanced, deceived, and bedded
Then abandoned. This is not fair dealing,
It is larceny, and leaves us reeling.
We were hopeful, happy and light-headed
Till the blows came, worse than what we dreaded,
And the big surprise, come softly stealing.

That's my money in that banker's pocket,
My own assets running out like water.
If this holds, what will I tell my daughter
When the Market takes off like a rocket,
Falls, and rises, falls again? We mock it,
But we pay. Take them, and make them hotter.

About the Evil That Men Do

I think I've got an allergy: my eyes
Are watery, my throat itches, my nose
Is stuffed up when I try to sleep, but flows
All day, while you complain and rhapsodize
About the evil that men do. Surprise!
I have no time for feelings. Stanch your woes
And hold your tongue. This is like minstrel shows:
Offensive, unamusing, and unwise.

I have no use for episodes like these,
Where someone sings a melancholy song
About the evil that men do, the strong
Harming the weak, and such-like histories.
Leave off -- I say the notion makes me sneeze,
And I don't mean to dawdle here for long.

New

I'm looking for new passions to extol,
New songs to praise, new singers to applaud,
New heroes we can treat just like a god
Until they step into some moral hole
To be destroyed by scandal. My new goal
Is to produce from this, our native sod,
Two peas dissimilar in one peapod,
A dopey otter and a singing mole.

Refresh my memory: you were the one
Who opened up that can of worms and cheese
Prepared for starving children overseas
To offer as the king's dessert. Well done!
I'm looking for a girl to call my son,
New bold ideas, twisting in the breeze.