Toe Story: A Meditation

What's the ugliest part of your body?

Some say your nose.

Some say your toes.

But I think it's your mind.

—Frank Zappa, We're Only in It for the Money (1968)

Meditating on my right foot today

(although the left would likewise fit the bill),

when Big Toe plays at "helicopter mom,"

the diminished lesser ones dissent.

None can ever into a Great Toe grow,

but insofar as reaching, forward bent,

for fractals left in the Serengeti,

long aeons ago, don't think them petty!

So, did those feet in ancient time (I ask

like Blake) walk upon Afric's mountains green?

And were I a Civil War amputee,

might those coagulating toes be mine?

Did I just see Dōgen Zenji * frown?

(Yes, foolish mind! Please keep it down!)

*Dōgen Zenji = Zen Master Dōgen (Kyoto, Japan, 1200–1253)

Friday, September 12, 2025

Convince, persuade

Latin convincere to refute, convict, prove, from com- + vincere to conquer —cognate “victor.”

Latin persuadēre, from per- thoroughly + suadēre to advise, urge — cognate, “sweet.” 

Convince, persuade, those words marched

In tandem for long years, but in our time

They've separated. (When did you last use

persuade??) Ever since Dubya 1's regime,

It's been convince, convince, convince

All the livelong day: prove, refute, convict!

No more sweet urging's gentle groove;

Our ways became the victor's: zero-sum.

Try to employ persuade more often, then,

And deflect convince from its fateful run!

Note: Etymologies from Merriam Webster, which observes, inter alia: “the live in livelong derives from lef, a Middle English word meaning ‘dear or beloved.’” Word trajectories from Google's Ngram Viewer, https://ngrams.org/ngram-viewer.html.

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Memories of the Fourth Crusade

A knight in chain-mail spears a griffin. "Alphonso" psalter, 1284 CE.

Si’l y a des griffons, n’en mangeons point;

si’l n’y en a point, nous en mangerons encore moins.*

—Voltaire, Zadig

Franks on the Fourth Crusade (thirteenth century),

Diverted from the Holy Land by the Venetians,

To sack Constantinople, the great city,

Like all rapists, sought a rude name for those they fucked,

Pejoratively calling Greeks "griffins," their

G-word. They'd come to steal an Empire,

"Chrysostom's** foreskin—sworn genuine!—and a True Cross splinter was what I got."

It was the Venetians who looted that lion and the four horses of the Hippodrome

That tourists gaze at in Saint Mark's Basilica;

(Be only right to return them, I say,

along with the Elgin Marbles—

The British Museum must surely give those back some day!)

"If there are griffins, we don't eat 'em;

if there are none, we'll eat 'em even less."*

The Crusaders' attack the City. Miniature from a manuscript of Geoffrey de Villehardouin's De la Conquête de Constantinople. Venetian MS, ca. 1330.

**John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407), Church Father, archbishop of Constantinople and Christian saint, author of Adversus Judaeos ("Against the Jews").

Sunday, August 7, 2025