YouLoveMe

UNAM* has an event on migration, In Mexico, might I grasp my own land?  I'm a monoglot son of my nation, But Aviva's Spanish I understand. It's helped by her having a powerpoint, Featuring a Barbados civil code, Racismo is the logic of the joint, Noam's daughter* explains the rules of the road. I take the bus home to my corner store, It's a Walmart I shop at ev'ry day, Here in CDMX they are core, At home I've never been, I stay away.   Wokeismo and Walmartismo are strong, Here as much as at home, they both belong.

Fun should not be subject to censure, Bourbon Street is right, let the good times roll, Into each life should come an adventure, Life with escapades is a life lived whole. The point is to go there and back again, Adventure is the point and so is home, The Shire's as important as Shelob's den, It's as good to lounge as it is to roam. I imagine one of you on a quest  Filled with many orcs and artill'ry flak, Upon it depends the fate of the West, When it's over you say, "Colin, I'm backi." You'll have your own Shire and your Rivendell, I'm confident you will do good and well.  

Sam Moyn--it's fine to take my vote away! Why?  I don't give a fig about p(doom), I'm old now, I could pop off any day, My life's been good, it's running out of room. Making my death worthy is my great job, I'm go'ing to a land from which none return, Will death serve wide, make me run for a lob? Deal gently with me, make me feel the burn? My p(doom) is one, it's not deputable,  It's the fabric of my late-life journey, Will my end be louche or reputable? Will I fin'ly let go of the tourney? I choose not to vote--I'm done ruling you! My old man's work is important to do.

The night before I left I spoke with Fanny, I told her I was sad I was leaving her to fight, She told me she wanted to be at my side. That it would be holy for us to die together to make men free, I said I would do my best to live, That my love for her would never die. At Ball's Bluff fortune cast her die, A spent shot struck me on the fanny, Battle smoke rose like a gray wraith, curling, live, I ran away and toward the middle of the fight, We were retreating from Virginia to the land of the free, I felt no animus for the Rebs on the other side. III As I ran a Minie ball pierced my chest on the near right side, I said, "I'm a gone coon, I'm gonna die, God of this damn pain I wanna be free." I closed my eyes and thought of Fanny, I disbelieved in my belief in the fight, In reason, in morals, in the will to live. IV My father the doctor knew it could be better not to live, I had laudanum hidden in a vial in a pocket by my side, With it I could peacefully die, Think ...

Sex is like law--no to formalism! Likewise to moralistic reproval, To Swift'ian Big End--Little End schism, To fights for red light district removal. Hopeless cads coexist with hopeless dads, I happen to be one of the latter, I saw her first when we were not yet grads, We are she are me are all that matter. Darwin measures us by fecundity, I am Genghis Khan, verbal division, You might say that we lack profundity, But we reproduce!  Bah to derision! Sex and Reason was not a Pauline work, It was a lark, a part-time scholar's perk. One morning 

Did I believe in the EAL creed? Yes.  But my loyalty was divided, To Yeats and Eliot I gave greater heed     than to models with feelings elided. I was no Mr. Brooks.  Sanctuary       was not my deepest passion, I rooted               in the ground, I flew to no high aerie,                      No Keats I, in me no genius fruited. Was John Nash as great a talent as Keats? Perhaps, and his fate was just as tragic, I revere them both and envy their feats,  For me art possesses greater magic. I am third said a Chicago player, Yes. Art, math, me in a lower layer.

EAL was my conversion story, I who was Saul was born again as Paul, Econ's logic underlay law's glory, I would preach to Jew, to Gentile, to all. I wrote the book in a red hot fever, A rational one, I hasten to add, I was a renegade eager beaver, Opening channels was good, dams were bad.   On and on I wrote, on and on I gnawed. Freedom to compete was the point of law, The mandates of the liberal state were flawed, Late 60s craziness stuck in my craw. Paul was sincere, we may assume.  Was I? Was my faith always partial, mixed, and wry?   

In my lucky land, I do a heel turn, I'm a wrestling villain in crimson tights, My moves help make the Keynesian wheel turn, Friedman's our headliner, his name's in lights. The people who run the show are in shock, Gorgeous George is headlocked by George Stigler! We're bad geeks destined to lose to the Rock, Ronald Dworkin's The Man, I'm The Wriggler. The show-runners retain some of their pow'r, In law schools we're a small minority, But we're rising, it's the Chicago hour, In elections we're the majority. I can take all their moral sticks and stones, I like my side's chances, let's roll dem bones. ,

Posner, from Poznan, is just a person, Richard, from the West Side, is a rich rad, I'm abstract and particular, verse 'n     prose, happy, angry, and calm, but not sad. Rich rad person applies to Blanche and Max, My high chair was a liberal limousine, They fed me with great books instead of snacks, Henry James was inside my soup tureen. Shuffled up, my childhood could have been dire, Chelmno was near the city of my name, My mother led me to the sacred fire, To Homer, away from her old home's shame. Thanks to them both, I've had a lucky life, Playing with words, wielding Occam's sharp knife.

The one son who appears the same as me       has a very different disposition, The son whose seed blew far from the tree      has his father's taste for cool sedition. They have formed me as much as I've formed them, My wife formed us all, made us into men      who can parse a line but not sew a hem, Our now reforms and is formed by our then. With neither have I ever raised my voice.  With my wife--well, that's a diff'rent story, I told them both that anger is a choice, That cars pose risks commonplace and gory. They grew in the unheavenly city, They made it marginally more pretty.

I was relieved that she'd finally gone quiet,  That she didn't have political views, That she didn't worry about my diet, That she didn't rage at the morning news. Tough-minded hard-headed Max became frail, He doted on Blanche, stroked her like a cat, He asked me once, should they put me in jail      for my loans?   Outside, he put on a hat. Why shouldn't I put them both in a zoo       and charge people a dollar to see 'em? I won't, I'm ruled by convention, it's true, They are monkeys now, I'll one day be 'em. Should I get a case of elder abuse, I will have a bent to find an excuse.   

Poems 1-4 My Early Years Economic Analysis of Law ( A ntitrust) I Am Third ( A sylum) Nietzsche ( B ite-Mark Evidence)  Anagrams ( C atastrophic Risk) Poems 5-8 My Middle Years Sticks and Stones ( M icroscopic Hair Evidence) My Parents ( N euroscience) Sex ( O bsession with Citation Form) My Sons ( P sychology) Poems 9-12 My Later Years Changes ( T heories of Constitutional and Statutory Interpretation) The Young Unitarian-Universalist's Sermon ( U mpireal (versus Managerial) Conceptions of Judging) Peacefully I Resolve to End My Days ( V erbose, Overly Complex, Vague, Poorly Written Judicial Opinions) Ball's Bluff ( Z oning)

With aging has come disinhibition, Suffering fools gladly is not easy, That was never my nat'ral condition, It's harder to be relaxed and breezy. Some other changes in me are odder, I'm thawing, ice is turning to water, Meter and scansion are my fodder, I dream about my never-born daughter. Under my ubermensch horny skin       is an oozy soft mass of compassion, I can feel each indigent's woe within, To each one I must give reason's ration. Am I Nietzsche now, embracing the horse? You think me mad.  I disagree, of course.

I walk through the woods to the library, In a glade a short boy holds a small frog, I'll squeeze him til he bursts like a berry, No, his tall friend says, put him on the log. The frog skips off, I am caught in a bind, I'm not the tall boy, I'm not a leader, I command empires that are in my mind, I am not a doer, I'm a reader. In blond wood stacks I am curled up in peace, I will check out Beyond Good and Evil, In thought there is mast'ry without surcease, No matter if I'm warrior or weevil. Nietzsche I think was a boy much like me, A bottom and a top, a worm, a tree.