sunken waltz

washed my face in the rivers of empire.
made my bed from a cardboard crate
down in the city of quartz.

no news, no new regrets.
tossed a susan b. over my shoulder,
and prayed it would rain and rain --
submerge the whole western states.
call it a last fair deal
with an american seal
and corporate handshake.

take the story of carpenter mike --
dropped his tools and his keys and left
and headed out as far as he could
past the city's gated neighborhoods.
he slept 'neath the stars,
wrote down what he dreamt,
and he built a machine
for no one to see,
then took flight
first light of new morning.

-- Joey Burns / John Convertino (Calexico) 2003

life decisions

"There are only three important decisions you need to make in your life. What to do. Whom you do it with. And where you do it. Everything else takes care of itself."
-- Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning (2010)

policy short-sightedness

"The fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences ... is the persistent tendency of man to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups."
-- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in one Lesson (1946)