Yearly Archives: 2012

Sad Eyed Mullah Of The Lowlands

Things seem to be getting a bit tense in the Middle East. The EU has given Iran a deadline on stopping its nuke program or they will impose sanctions, the Iranians have threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz, and the US has responded by sending two aircraft carriers to the region. I saw a picture of maximum leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and he looked a bit sad. Was it because even the United States of Obama was stiffening its spine? Kind of reminded me of that old 60s Bob Dylan song, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands.

With your turbaned head and your silken robe

And your barbered beard and your eyes that probe

And your ears so pink and with a diamond’d lobe

How could anyone resist you

With your sabers sharp and your flintlocks primed

And your blustered threats that have always rhymed

You think that everything is neatly timed

And Obama has just kissed you

Sad eyed Mullah of the Lowlands

Sad eyed Mullah don’t you see me there

B-2s waiting by your garden gate

Sad eyed Mullah shall I wait

Macedon of old was just a tiny thing

And Alexander killed the Persian king

What’s the feeling that those memories bring

Could it be that they depress you

See the ocean with the ships of gray

And the sky where all the Hornets play

And the missiles turning night to day

Surely they impress you

Sad eyed Mullah of the Lowlands

Sad eyed Mullah don’t you see me there

Hornets waiting by your garden gate

Sad eyed Mullah shall I wait

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Games People Play

142 Replies

Russia is holding war games in order to tamp down the tension in the Middle East and Washington has canceled war games in order to tamp down tension in the Middle East, while Iran is holding war games in order to tamp up tension in the Middle East. Is there a winner in this game? Does anyone know the rules? Are there any rules?

Oh the games that people play

Some on grass and some on clay

Little kids play kick the can

And so do pols since time began

Games in tune with nursery rhymes

Games that date to ancient times

Games of war where no one dies

At least not ‘til the missile flies

The Russkies play at war because

The see themselves in US jaws

Israelis play from mortal fear

The Persian bomb is drawing near

The Mullahs play to call our bluff

They win ‘til someone says “Enough!”

Obama says he will not play

Perhaps he will some other day

Yes games are fun, we sing and laugh

Composing someone’s epitaph

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Letter

6 Replies

As the day when Iran gets the bomb and incinerates Israel approaches, Obama shakily tries to head off Armageddon by sending a secret letter to the Mullahs. Officials denied a letter was ever sent, but everyone knows the denial is false. Did Obama send a secret letter to the Iranians begging for further talks? Is Obama crawling on his belly to the Ayatollahs? To ask these questions is to answer them. Yes he did and yes he is. When Verse-afire questioned the President, this is what he said.

I sent a letter by the postman

Sent it off by registered mail

Put some first class stamps upon it

So it surely wouldn’t fail

To be delivered to the right guy

Somewhere deep inside Iran

Begging for an honest answer

If he feels he safely can

I would like to tell the world that

I would crawl on broken glass

To prevent a war between us

And I’d even kiss some ass

There is nothing worth the fighting

There is nothing worth the pain

They can have the nukes they cherish

For there’s nothing we can gain

From this silly confrontation

Over something quite so small

As the death of tiny Israel

They mean nothing after all

Just because they haven’t answered

And they laughed right up their sleeves

Doesn’t mean the letter’s foolish

I’m a man who still believes

That my charm and cool demeanor

Will prevail at very end

And if things do not turn out well

Another letter I will send

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Blister And The Leech

7 Replies

Superbugs, resistant to the strongest anti-biotics, are threatening to bring back all the deadly diseases we thought we had conquered. Back in the day, before Fleming and penicillin, medicine was hardly further along than the days when doctors shook a rattle, raised a blister on the scalp or stuck a leech on you. If you got sick your body either cured itself or you died. We seem to be approaching those days again, where modern medicine is creating creatures smarter than the medicine men, or if not smarter, then at least capable of faster adaptation.

Back when your health was failin’

You relied upon a Galen

To use his knowledge skills to make you well

But though Galen sure was willin’

He just had no penicillin

And you closed your eyes and heard a slow church bell

And then there came Joe Lister

And he said don’t raise a blister

And he said it loud in no uncertain terms

He said contrary to rumors

Sickness is not caused by humors

But by little beasties I am calling germs

Well in time the docs conceded

Sanitation might be needed

And they started in to washing up their hands

Death by doctor then diminished

But the medics were not finished

For a new drug soon killed germs in all the lands

All because one Alex Fleming

After hawing and some hemming

Showed that penicillin did despite its quirks

Cured all kinds of harsh diseases

To the point where sickness ceases

To concern the docs ‘cause penicillin works

There now came anti-biotics

And new stuff for the psychotics

And the pharma business boomed and profits soared

But we’re doomed for disappointment

There’s a fly in every ointment

And the little beasties gathered up their horde

And proceeded to adapt to

All the drugs that had been mapped to

Cure the ills of everyone the docs could reach

So that now the drugs are failin’

To make cures, we’re back to Galen

And once more we’re back to blisters and the leech

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

A Four Letter Word

28 Replies

Obama is a five letter word, but sometimes even five letter words become four letter words.

While sitting on a park bench

In the glowing midday sun

I chanced to overhear a mensch

Complain about the One

He mumbled something in his beard

He thought he’d not be heard

He mumbled it’s just as I feared

Obama has turned out to be

A name that all the world can see

Is nothing but a bad four letter word

He looked so grim and harrassed

With a sad look on his face

He seemed to be embarrassed

But he said with some small grace

I thought he’d be a wonder

Though with promises deferred

I see I’ve made a blunder

For Obama has turned out to be

A name that all the world can see

Is nothing but a bad four letter word

He said he’d stop the warring

He’d close that Gitmo down

He’d stop those fat cats scoring

All the money that’s in town

He said we’d come together

Stop the seas from rising high

Said there’d be no more bad weather

But Obama has turned out to be

A name that all the world can see

Is nothing but a bad four letter word

Yes Obama’s just a bad four letter word

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Yin And The Yang

144 Replies

In the West in particular there are two ways of looking at man’s place in the big picture. The first way, the yin, is the big government way, where government takes care of every citizen from cradle to grave. This way leads to stunted development and ultimate societal death. The second way, the yang, is through market capitalism, where one may succeed or fail, depending on luck, will and talent. The yang is anathema to the big government types, for it places the individual beyond the reach of the bureaucrats. You can either have big government or you can have freedom. You can’t have both.

There is the yin

There is the yang

The grievous sin

The bloody fang

Of market forces

In full sway

Producing courses

That well may

Lead on to those

Who’re left behind

Where daily goes

The deadly grind

How better then

The second way

Where all good men

Receive their pay

From jobs that seek

No harm to Earth

Protect the weak

From day of birth

There is the yang

There is the yin

Choose bloody fang

Or without sin

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Zoo

5 Replies

If you think about it, the world is a natural park zoo, and has been since God breathed on the first faint form of life. The problem is one of God’s species on display has greatly elevated himself above his natural station and presumes himself to be the keeper of all the lesser (in his view) animals, and among that species is a sub-species, called Progressives, who believe themselves to be the curators and keepers of all creatures not themselves.

The Curator, let’s call him Zeus

The name is not to matter

Presides over a structure loose

As any old mad hatter

Like animals in any zoo

We tend to think it ours

We tend to think the sky is blue

And raindrops bring us flowers

But all the while the man in charge

Is keeping His eye on us

To see that things both small and large

Do not fall down upon us

We wander through our park-like days

While thinking we are masters

While God whose name we seldom praise

Prevents the worst disasters

Oh yes the park it sometimes floods

There’s hurricanes and rainstorms

And volcanoes and flowing muds

But when the zoo has brainstorms

The Curator is pleased to note

His charges climb the ladder

Like science and the right to vote

Or kicking a pig’s bladder

For God does love a sporting game

It’s what the park was made for

The game’s to know our God’s true name

That’s what the game is played for

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

The Shifting Whispering Sands

5 Replies

President Obama, caving in to the radical Greens, has poked Canada in the eye and refused to permit the building of the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, creating thousands of jobs and decreasing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Canada will now sell that oil to China. President Obama and the environmentalist movement are determined to reduce the United States to desert, and that desert will not consist solely of Canadian tar sands. The sands of time are running out on those of us who want to maintain the country in its historic form. It was said of the Romans that they created a desert and called it peace. President Obama and the radical Greens intend to create a desert and call it paradise.

Where once the farm and factory stood

Where once flowed stream beside the wood

Where once the cattle quiet grazed

Where once the young in sunshine lazed

Where once the farmer tilled the field

Where once the hawk and eagle wheeled

Will soon become both sere and mean

In thrall to Satan’s Lefty Green

Who want to see our lush green lands

Turned into shifting whispering sands

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Hercules Invictus

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In the third century BC the people of the new Roman republic accepted the view that they were of Trojan lineage, that the god Heracles had founded the city of Rome, and that Aeneas and Achilles had fathered Romulus and Remus. This acceptance of the Greek view of the world, and Rome’s place in that Greek world, put Rome in direct conflict with Carthage, whom the Greeks despised as barbarians. This conflict led to the eventual destruction of Carthage, and the eventual destruction of the Roman republic as well. Yet who would have thought that the Greek myth of Heracles driving the cattle of Geryon south through Italy and thus to Pallanthium, the site of a future Rome, would lead to the world we live in today.

Hercules Invictus

How gods laugh as they inflict us

With the thought that we could understand the world

Though we wonder and we labor

Neither arquebus nor saber

Ever answered questions while the bagpipes skirled

For the stars remain in silence

As they look upon the violence

Of the salted cities midst the women’s cries

Yes we think we are exalted

And we never can be faulted

But the gods know we are smart but seldom wise

See my novels and collected verse at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle HERE

Verse-afire

The Writings of Walter Erickson

Yearly Archives: 2012

Sad Eyed Mullah Of The Lowlands

The Games People Play

The Letter

The Blister And The Leech

A Four Letter Word

The Yin And The Yang

The Zoo

The Shifting Whispering Sands

Hercules Invictus

The Triumph Of The Will