Madoff

Bernie, you're immortal now,
At least for 150 years,
Joining swindler Charlie Ponzi
On the trail–and trial–of tears.

Shall we call you Bernard Hood,
A modern Sherwood Forest elf,
Stealing from the rich (et al.)
And giving all of it to–yourself?

Or shall we make your well-known name
Synonymous with investment trade-off
And call the cur who transmutes others'
Fortunes into his a Madoff?

EDIBLE COMPLEX

Everything's enhanced by food:

So observers might conclude

Watching people on the go

Bolting stuff wrapped up in dough–

Walking, talking, at a show,

Listening to the radio,

Glued to cable's status quo,

Waiting to see a medico,

Wondering–snackless!–how to bear

Sitting in the dentist's chair.

Nothing seems at all complete

If they lack a bite to eat.

See them on the subway train

Sucking on a candy cane;

On a line outside the opera

Munching on a mutton chopra;

At the airport, set to board,

Downing Coke they've quickly poured;

Touring Brooklyn's Museum of Art,

Sneaking in a chocolate tart;

Voting in an election booth,

Pushing in a Baby Ruth;

Pacing in the maternity ward,

Spooning out the goo from a gourd;

Christmas shopping, enduring a pitch,

Chewing on a Santawich.

Food–there cannot be too much

When folks lean on an easy crutch.

Anything to them that's edible

Could only improve by being bedible.

Anybody wonder that

People "enhanced" are also fat?

I'm no better, for goodness'
sake:

Penning this, I'm munching on cake.

Jailhouse Bar Mitzvah

Steel bars do not a prison make
When it's bar mitzvah day
And Daddy's obligated to
Celebrate and pray.

So Tuvia Stern, an inmate at
The fabled New York "Tombs,"
Transcended lockup etiquette
And ordered party rooms.

He had the gym festooned with bunting
And rocked with festive strains
Provided by an Orthordox group
That blew out everyone's brains.

Kin and kith and friends galore
All danced and sang out lustily,
Serenading the bar mitzvah
boy
Religiously and
robustily.

They ate and drank like Rahm Emanuel
Or baseball's Leo Durocher,
The food having been most  carefully catered
To be ultra-strictly kosher.

Sixty guests held forth in the clinker
For fully six-plus hours
While eight correction officers
Kept guard over baskets of flowers.

The guards as well made sure the party
Remained a private affair,
Keeping other prisoners
From infiltrating there.

The only jailbird  to be found
Was the influential dad,
Who may be a convicted scammer
But on this day wasn't bad.
 
The fraudster's now upstate and serving
Two-and-a-half to seven
But at least he gave his now-a-man son
A taste of party heaven.

And he's done the same for his lovely daughter–
Stern showed his jailhouse dash
Again when he had outsiders in
For her engagement
bash.

The Subtractions

"Escapes" is gone along with "City"–

The Times is getting leaner and fitter;

How long before the Sunday paper's

Delivered in the form of a Twitter?

                                   Leon
Freilich

Streets of New York

I'm dreaming of a clean restroom
Just like the ones I used to know;
     In my smalltown birthplace,
    My favorite earthplace,
Folks had choices where to go.

I'm dreaming of a clean restroom
With every block I have to walk.
Though I hate to sputter and squawk 
I am forced to hunt just like a hawk.

I'm dreaming of a clean restroom
With every block I have to walk.
Will my days in New York be bright?
If a restroom pops up into sight.

Cruise News

A cruise fits

Opposites:

The newly wed

And the nearly dead.

The moribund overeat,

Honeymooners overheat.

For both the mode

Is overload.

The Bee-All

More than a college degree            

Can ever start to tell,                                       

The state of your education's        
 
Revealed by how well you spell.            

     SEATTLE SATELLITE

Of all the many cities in the nation

There's one most offers a monster vacation.

Atop every hill you come upon hotelry

And in each of the rooms, large-screen TV.

Channel 5's called KING and it features a gong;

Channel 6 answers to the simian KONG.

In New York his fall broke numerous hearts–

But Seattle's put  King Kong top of the charts.

    R&R Found Afar 

I'm gone, now traveling
By plane & car & boat.
If you happen to be a burglar,
Please disregard this note.

Back on the twenty-sixth
To unpack, unwind, rewind.
Expect that distant merchants
Will've robbed me nearly blind.

O the joys of travel,
The boon of new addresses,
A surefire way of purging
All traces of our stresses.

Dig Deep

"Brother, can you spare a handful of quarters?"

Sick Transit

Reduced service at higher fares?

Leave it to the MTA!

Subway rides become nightmares

And buses, delay upon delay.

Battling expanding student waistlines, colleges are dispensing with cafeteria trays.  –news item

 TO-DO ABOUT TRAY U.

Eighteen-year-old's eyes

Widen with surprise–

Pasta, burgers galore,

Two or three or four;

Smoothies, sodas, shakes,

Cookies, candies, cakes,

Hot dogs, chill dogs, corn dogs,

Ice cream, chocolate logs,

Whitefish, bluefish, lox–

Not from Pandora's box.

Takeaway: bursting belly

Soft as lemon jelly.

Temptation can't be beat

When it's all-you-can eat.

Eighty-sixing trays

Limits piles at buffets.

So the teen's brown eyes

Stay at healthy size,

As does his midsection,

Almost back to perfection.

Final weapon awaits:

Much smaller plates.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter To Switch Parties–NPR

Welcome aboard, Arlen Specter,

Too long you've been afar;

Joining the Democrats puts you

Where the people
are

Shakespeare's Day

He was born on April 23rd

And died on April 23rd,

A balance very nearly absurd

Both In number and in word.

Emily Smartphones

Incessant stream of messages–
They come in starts and fits–
What one's eating. whom one's dating—
A universe of twits!

Sharing Without Caring

These parents and the vendor
Plus others share the same bent–
A highly indignant sense
Of pure entitlement.

This just in from Verse Responder Leon Freilich. Subject Heading: Coming to a Couch Near You.

"In Treatment," far and away the best TV series of all time, began its
analytic life in Israel.  The therapist was an Israeli Jew and so were
his patients.  As a result–unlike the situation in Jewish families in
the US and Europe–fathers, living and dead, dominated  every single
character.

Closely translated into English, the series moved to
suburban Maryland, with fathers still posing serious psychic problems
for their children.

Now HBO is sequelizing "In Treatment."  The therapist has moved his home and his practice to–where else?–Park Slope.

Maybe because Brooklyn's now the off-center of the universe; maybe because two of the main performers, Gabriel Byrne (Brooklyn Heights) and Hope Davis (Carroll Gardens) live here.

Thirty-five half-hour session-episodes begin tomorrow.  Now it's
the turn for Mom to burn.

Here's an excerpt from a Columbia News Service feature by Laura Cameron about OTBKB Verse Responder, Leon Freilich. We're so proud. Read the rest at Columbia News Service.

He has tried his hand at both. In the
’60s, he wrote fiction on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where drugs were
cheap and General Francisco Franco’s police turned a blind eye.

When that turned out to be unsuccessful, he came back New York and
worked as a teacher until he grew tired of it. He had studied Latin and
Greek at City College, which he said was good preparation for his next
stint, as a journalist writing about scandal for the National Enquirer
and Star magazine.

But when Star moved its operations south to Florida,
Freilich says he decided to do what he loved. So he loafed for a bit
and when he, again, grew tired of that, he began writing a column for
the local weekly, the Brooklyn Paper.

It was during this time that he was named poet laureate by the paper’s editor in chief, Gersh Kuntzman.

A few years ago, the paper cut Freilich’s column, so he retired from
the newspaper business. But he held on to his title as the local bard
and began posting light verse online, including on the New York Times
blogs City Room and Paper Cuts, the media gossip site Gawker and the
community forum Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn.

Even though it doesn’t
pay the bills, Freilich’s position as poet laureate has given him an
incentive to put his work out to the public. In a poem posted on Only
the Blog Knows Brooklyn, Freilich versifies on life as a writer:

Dead Letters Dept.

It’s bad enough when your hair’s falling out,

Leading to middle-age rage,

But if you’re a writer, how worse it is

When your words fall off the page.

Staying Detached

I'm not attached to attachments

Which irritate my iris

And startle my computer

With the threat of instant virus.

Transportation TIffs

Pedestrians hate the drivers,

And drivers hate the bikers, 

Who in turn believe 

That both belong on Rikers.

Regulatory Systems

Corporate Beneficence

Goodness gracious!  God bless

AIG largesse.

They got it–so they spend it;

Only the envious would end it.

Who helps the needy living?

Affluence Inspired Giving

Pedal Medal?

I saw a biker in the bicycle lane!

I never thought I'd live to see the day.

The sight reverberates within my brain.

(Of course the guy was going the wrong way.)

A Coup Grows in Brookyn

A thousand-dollar pamper-package

Is the latest offer of Hotel Le Bleu's;

So what if nobody's ponying up–

It's free publicity in the Daily Neus.

Atop the Middle

The primetime age of 40
Will never be outdone
So hug it fast before
You slip to 41.

Obama to raise taxes on wealthy to cut deficit. –news item

         Oh, No!

Our most productive people

Are under fierce attack;

The country might just lost them–

What if they move to Iraq?

      One Guise Fits All

I miss the old defense
–"The devil made me do it"–
It had a biblical ring
Though some might misconstrue it.

Theology's out of fashion
These oddly godless days
And slippery slips of the tongue
Are "explained" by another phrase.

So those who've self-indicted
And're close to being a con next
Attempt to weasel out with,
"It was taken out of context."

Of course it's possible
These folks are on the level,
In which case what's the choice
But to go and blame the
devil?

  Preemption

When my 16-year-old told me
Just what he intended to do,
I knew I had to stop him
–He was getting a tattoo

Now my distress would never
Have any effect on him–
My rebel has no doubt
His dad’s incurably dim.

So how to dissuade the boy
Without beating him black and blue?
The answer came like a bolt–
I got a tattoo!