FLIPPING LIFE & DEATH 

 
So how's death treating you.
How long had you been at life’s doorstep.
Fie! to be struck down in the prime of your death!

As you lay there pummeled half to life
Did your memories take on a death of their own—
To be struck down by a Young Death bus & its kids 

All but shouting “Life to Infidels!” & “Choose Death.”
Kids we can’t convince Black Deaths Matter.
They look bored to life, strangely mute

On paramilitary life squads pacing their mission countries.
Their grandparents on death support, their parents 
Ask again, “Is there death after life!”

Well, certainly, death is short, & life is inevitable. 
And you’d been so happy with a new lease on death. 
Truly, yours was a fate worse than life, 

But you never let death pass you by. 
For all your near-life experiences, 
How sweet you can still die death to its fullest.

You called him the love of your death—
Until life do us part, you said.
His folks say he had a life-wish 

But you call it a mid-death crisis
He wreaked a trail of life & left not a one dead. 
They put him on life row & threw away the key. 

Until his sentence was commuted to death. 
As the fat book says, the wage of sin is life.
Well, where there's death, there's hope. 

Yep, there is a remedy for everything except life.
Everyone should lead such a charmed death.
O, forget it. You’re live to me now.

1) Some Stranger, Waiting


I followed the string
I’d reeled out for myself so
many lives ago,
through twists and turns, only to
     find some stranger, waiting there.

Wired

What was I thinking
when, without qualifications,
except for being as cold
as anyone all last season,
I ran to get elected
County Commissioner of Winter Heat?

I was thinking of warmth,
of course, the irony involved
in commanding the motion of electrons
within a fifty-mile radius of my
two-fold ignorance: geometry
and electrical engineering.

And what was I thinking
when I yearned to prefer
the official wire required
for the job rather than
the under-the-table imitation
available for a little gift of graft?

I was thinking of the Second Coming,
of course, that seek-and-ye-shall-find
system of irrevocability, how
I would want a seat up front.

What I wanted was
inclusion, to be connected,
wired if you will,
to the universe of painlessness
unavailable to those in pain,
by which I mean everyone.

And if I gained favor
by following the ritual
of water-into-wire
then you could count me in,
count me among the sheep,
not those goats also spoken of.

What I didn’t want was what Mugsy
got: jolts at inexact intervals
from an on-going present eternally
separating him from any wire at all.

spirits

when the body dies
the spirit rises up to Heaven
on wings made of pages
from the Communist Manifesto

the American Empire
has slaughtered countless millions
in the barrios of Latin American
in the rice paddies of Asia
in the slave brothels of Eastern Europe
in Gaza

but the dead are NOT gone,
America

they will come back as millions
upon millions of spirits

and each will be the spirit
of Che Guevara

America, your time is coming
a time that’ll be 1000 times worse
than the fires of hell
even worse than the fires of 9/11

America, when your time comes
your throat will be slit from ear to ear
your eyes will be gouged out
your guts will be ripped from your belly

America, I am not warning you—

I am laughing at you

and we will ALL be laughing
when the blood flows in your gutters
and you wonder what happened
to your stock market
your football players
your fat-ass baseball players
your wiggers
and your slices of apple pie
laced with cocaine and fentanyl.

Night of the Following Day


The person I went to sleep as wasn’t the same person I woke up as, half-drowned in sweat after traveling on motherless roads all night, seeing plants and animals bombed into submission, families forced to dig their own graves at gunpoint, tears evaporate on contact with the air, and only for me to arrive some six hours later back where I started but feeling barely present, like I was still miles and miles away from the redwing blackbird on the black branch.

Posthumous Bill Collector


Where do
your debts go
after you are dead?

Gigantic cosmic erasers
eradicate them from
your credit report,

wiping it clean
as an unblemished
chalkboard.

You can’t squeeze
a buck from a
deceased person,
or you can bet
your creditors would try.

Even when you think
you’re safe inside
The Great Beyond,
you’ll still get those

annoying phone calls
and sinister envelopes
marked “Urgent.”

You thought you
would escape,
didn’t you?

Where does the time go


Do you hate your job?
If so, there it is—
there you have it
that’s how you grow old
so terribly fast

Don’t know about you
but if I can’t find a job I love
or at the very least
not hate

I’d rather be poor
and a bum
with the occasional food insecurity

doesn’t work
for everyone

but it’s my trick
of stalling down time

much preferable to me
than mustering
a strength that decreases
in amount
day by day

every dawn
when that alarm clock
yanks me out of sleep
to face the beginning
of the shifts in a job
that slowly kills me

the audacity then of some—
middle aged and wondering
in horror almost—
where did the time go

is it really any wonder

five days a week
for most of your lives
you think—
let me get through this shift
through this day
and the next
and the next

and the next

people living
for the weekends

people living
for that paid holiday
once a year

is it really
any surprise
then

that you wake up
one morning
and you slowly
make your way
to your bathroom
to brush your teeth

and there’s an old man
staring back at you

wrinkled
saddened
asking you

how could you
do this to me

how could you
do this to us.

Earworm

It’s Monday morning 
in Geezerville
and here I am
shuffling through
the grocery
with a cartful of nothing

Blue Oyster Cult 
Muzak
tells me not to fear the reaper

and I think, YES!

I have never felt so happy
about death.

“Impostor”

 

I tuck my right hand under my left,

Accept the gracious gift given to me,

And say “Amen” with a friendly nod

Knowing that I am an impostor.

After I return to my seat and recover my bearings, 

I shift my weight as I struggle to find comfort

Within the unforgiving wooden pews

That keep my body and beliefs in place.  

The peaceful palm of my wife

Calms my unsettled, unsavory nerves

As she escorts my perspiry hand

Over to the safe nest of her lap. 

She knows of my disinterested past

Regarding religion. 

I am no atheist or agnostic.  

I was raised to believe God was possible and present. 

There was just no urgency on my part

Or the parts of my parents

To instill and install the notions

The Bible was willing to cement in my mind. 

Many passages and psalms are news to me,

Yet the lyrics linger longer than I expect.   

My indifference makes no difference now. 

I mouth the words I have learned through repetition,   

My voice a whisper lost in an ocean of vibrato.

No one pays attention to how swiftly I sign the cross

Or how straight my posture is when I rise.  

I am in attendance

But I am not always present

Like God is.   

There is hope for me,

I hear.  

Charades come to an end.

Impostors come clean,

Get exposed as frauds

Or realize, 

Like I will

That they were never pretending

To be something 

They were not.

easier

everything

is getting

easier

and i

don’t like

it.

weight loss,

take ozempic.

write a paper,

use AI.

we are

banishing

the muscles

of humanity.

bodies

& brains

will soon

deteriorate.

we will

lose

the meaning

of achievement

for nothing

is earned

unless

it is

worked for.

and

the only

thing

we seem

to be

working for

is the

destruction

of ourselves.