PORTRAIT OF YOUNG MORRISON UNDER COMMAND

Once this populace no longer authors
Their own songs
Outsourcing all creative spark
To a battered adolescent’s robotic dreams,
John Lennon’s soul has been desecrated.

No one could move
To even understand punk
Beyond data, no furious weight
Launched at its demise
When cops show up
Where rebellion thrived,
This was health of
The human to live free
Promptly expelled
Then scrolled over

Mr. Death, you have unjustifiably stripped away my soul,
and I was left to dree your hatred.
You buried me beneath sludge and notorious boulders,
and again, the surge of the flood washed me away.

I lost my soul; my flesh was eaten by mud,
and the water threw my skull onto the riverbank,
where a dog licked my skull.
But that dog did not know which nationality I was.
Its instinct told it only that there was food.

Yet across the ocean, people are commenting on their governments,
saying the people who were killed in Nepal were not of this nationality or that nationality.
The skin of people is determined by their nationality,
but not by where they were born or where they acquired citizenship.

I shut down my social media feed,
with a heavy pull of tears inundating my nose.

Death does not care what colour you have,
nor would the dog on the riverbank cherry-pick the skulls based on inferior or superior nationality. 
or be able to see their nationality.
It simply needs food—and devours it. 

Greedy Death did not even  give me an opportunity to be shrouded with  cerement 
nor did it allow me to take a rest inside a casket.

It’s just absolutely crazy

The frustration rules my life.
The endless quest goes on.
I go to one shop looking then
Go to yet another, still no luck.
Online Amazon has nothing.
Walmart workers have no idea
In which section I should look.
Not surprising for Walmart.
They must train their employees 
To know nothing so you would
See new items while searching.
Where the hell can it possibly be?
I’m not sure if it would be canned
Or come in a box or stink like fish.
Somewhere, somehow, sometime,
I’m gonna find that reason to live.

Grasshoppers and Butterflies

Laughing while frolicking through
Fields of grain chasing grasshoppers
And butterflies and then on to the
Riverbank for a splash or a dip
Makes for a thoroughly pleasant
Afternoon and, if you’re lucky, the
Gators are sleeping with full bellies
From fools going to the riverbank
For a splash or a dip that morning.

SALT-TINGED BREEZES

I wake to fog
suspended between the cables
of the bridge brushed orange vermilion
foghorns and their sadness
whiffs of salt air
a morning when there is little but fog

In the gentle early light
memory taunts
everything I am afraid to remember
about an attraction like a moth’s fire-dance
how your grin stilled the moment
touch left me breathless 
in that green VW Fastback
as winter rain lashed the coast
and there was hunger
shot through with tenderness.

TRUE STORY

                  This is war

                  No country

                  For old men

                  Just bombing

                  Love bombing

                  This week feels

                  Like a year

                  Gone down fast

                  See that sneer

                  No hope here

                  For winning

                  True love

Golden Age

A golden age
is the day you wake
and realize no one needs you

The world keeps spinning
without you
ignoring your feelings

You see how little others care
and yet
you still care for all of them

This is the moment
your life becomes
yours alone

Whatever you do
no matter how trivial
beauty remains

Punching Time

So these
are the 40 hours I have to pawn.
Worth many times what you will offer
but I have bills; rent,
electric; I need to feel
like I’m headed somewhere.
Lick a thumb, bend
your stingily haired head
and count out my cash above
your button threatening stomach.
As much as I will hate myself
I will reach to take it;
that little roll will not be an insult,
will bulk my pocket,
straighten my shoulders walking
out into the weekend, something
to bounce my step
until Monday’s time card thunk
like a closing door
on five days, five fingers
counted down
to clutch the next wad
pushed through the slit
of the greasy plastic
separating me from you.

Improv Man

(sung to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”)

It’s six o’clock on a Thursday
Chris and Thor arrive late
While players stand in a circle
Shaking down beginning at eight

Ryan says, “Give me the name of a movie
One that’s never been filmed
I’ll play director
And you’ll be the actors
I’ll give notes and suggest obscure frills.”

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please

Now Mark with the beard is a Santa Claus
I saw him last week at No Kings
We met at audition. It felt like perdition
When I bombed with that hillbilly thing

And the players avoid talking politics
As the students slowly unwind

They ask for locations and maybe vocations
But keep tonight’s skits unaligned

Now Nate is a standup comedian
Who does open mics at Hop Knot
I read there one night, under black light
My books sales were not all that hot

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please

It’s a pretty good crowd for a Thursday
Though the church basement smells too much of pee
The heater’s been broken. I’m not even joking
But hell we get it for free

And the players, they all channel Spolin
On four chairs set in two rows
One hitchhiker mad, another one sad
That’s how tonight’s session goes

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please