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

Conscious

The Medics had put
him back together again with
gauze wraps, adhesive tape
and shot him full of enough
dope to stop a full grown
elephant from walking anywhere
for a week but you could
still see the look despite
all the junk and the pain
the disbelief, not-me it said
it can’t happen to me

Carbondale (Tales from SIU)

College days, sometimes roving about on a slow night.

Always entertaining out there behind the train station.

Late at night there’s mostly the old black men sang of

In Steve Goodman’s City of New Orleans. There’s a

Better known version by Arlo Guthrie. Wisdom? It

Comes from toothless men high as hell on Muscatel.

Rants about life and experiences sometimes colorful

And sometimes sad. Sad to the point of pure misery.

Jokes and laughter sometimes escaping others’ grasp.

It can get a little wild.  A stumbling drunken stranger

Comes up and falls and passes out. The lead reveler

Of the night gathers the flock to anoint the now fallen.

Save the Muscatel, unzip the zipper and spray some

Peter juice, “I christen thee loaded, my son.  Amen.”

Endless War
 
The last seismic bomb 
exploded off the coast. 
The decimated masses 
scrambled through the slag, 
shuffled on their knees, 
cried in holy fires. 
But then a silence surged—
and surged, 
like pollen drifting high. 
The war had ceased 
at last. 
Under monsoon rains, 
the crowded skies 
were filled 
with undiluted laughter. 
People drank cheap wine, 
as the ozone breathed 
like God. 
Yet, some still yearned for static, 
and one more doleful strike; 
to obliterate the plains, 
to crack the world’s insides. 
But they’re just sluggish beasts, 
with perforated hearts—
they ache for constant war, 
with propaganda eyes.