A Poem in Honor of the Stimulus Bill

SPENDULUS
(With apologies to the immortal memory of Percy Shelley)

I met a banker from a far off land

Who said: Two unfinished and doorless buildings of steel

Stand on K Street. Near them, on the Mall,

Half amended, a shatter'd bill lies, whose prose

And earmarks and grants to ACORN

Tell that its Peolsi drafter well the pork barrel knew

Which yet survive, stamp'd on this drunken government,

The talk radio that mock'd them and bloggers that fed.

And in section 1 this clause appears:

"My name is Spendulus, stimulus of stimuli:

Look on my appropriations, ye taxpayers, and despair!"

Nothing but lawsuits remain: round the Capitol

Of that colossal bill, penniless and bare,

The lone and stupendous deficit stretches far away (to China)

Another Thought for Armistice Day

Kings

The Kings of the earth are men of might,
And cities are burned for their delight,
And the skies rain death in the silent night,
And the hills belch death all day!

But the King of Heaven, Who made them all,
Is fair and gentle, and very small;
He lies in the straw, by the oxen's stall —
Let them think of Him to-day!

Joyce Kilmer was very American and very Catholic. A member of the famous NY 69th Infanty (the "Fighting 69th"), he was killed in action in 1918 on the Western Front