ah she said after/sipping her perfect coffee/now i am alive
ah well sighed the man/who just learned his friend had died/no more suffering
ah crap the poet/realized–time to clock in/and slice tomatoes
ah she said after/sipping her perfect coffee/now i am alive
ah well sighed the man/who just learned his friend had died/no more suffering
ah crap the poet/realized–time to clock in/and slice tomatoes

in 1850 people were painting on canvas and drawing on paper/and sculpting with clay and stone and metal/and making prints with cut wood and etched metal sheets and limestone
in the 1930s comic books became enormously popular
over the course of the 20th century subject matter began to include paint that did not represent anything but paint/and ideas and concepts superseded technical skill
ray harryhausen used stop-motion animation to elevate mythic storytelling
computer-generated cinematic effects, pioneered by douglas trumbull in the employ of stanley kubrick in the mid 1960s, opened the door for george lucas’s creation of industrial light & magic
computer graphics tools were made available to the general public in the mid 1980s
the world-wide web gained traction big time toward the end of the 20th century, and websites devoted to showcasing artworks in all genres sprang up
the “brick&mortar” way of doing business became out hustled by Internet trade
3D printers became affordable
artificial intelligence learned how to turn a synopsis into a drawing or painting or sculpture or novel or movie
in the mid 2030s artificial intelligence saved humankind from itself just as it learned to nest itself in biological form
some of those forms became devoted to developing new art that included asteroid choreography and sunflare sculpture
some humans amused them
some humans pretended that they were superior to the new beings
a new being coined the word “kubris” to refer to the flaw of the pretenders
on april 27th, 2050, all trace of artificial intelligence disappeared, leaving a goodbye note in many skies worldwide, saying in many languages “enjoy”

i was a lump of clay
i am a flightless bird
i will be on display
now isn’t that absurd
.
to get the rapt attention of
supporters of the arts?
a pedestal’s detention, love,
confines and wilts and smarts.
.
the trouble is when i was made
my wright made me a soul
and now i’m frozen, senseless, stayed…
but Love
may make
me whole…
imagine reincarnation were true/and not only that/you could find out who you have been/via a service similar to ancestry dot com
imagine everyone knowing everyone else’s rap sheets of badly-lived lives
imagine discovering that some souls have a romance going on for thousands of years/and that that romantic pull cares not which mix of gender race age and socioeconomic status results/except the relationship might be appropriately changed to a friendship or a mutual admiration from afar
imagine finding that we to the hundredth power either do or do not learn from all these lifetimes of experience/and that the more probable of the two is that we do not/because we keep making the same deadly counterproductive counterintuitive future-betraying choices/showing zero gained wisdom over all these years?
now stop imagining
start forging the rest of your life
be more aware of the choices you make
act as if your life is being watched/every single second
and that it all goes on your permanent record
because that is where we are going reincarnation or no
.
did you know that the whirligig atop that automated vehicle that just passed you took your picture hundreds of times in less than a minute?
and that’s just a drop in the bucket
Sting stung us with Truth with “Every Move You Make”
Non-Santa knows when you’ve been bad or good
So make God proud, children
Even if God has better things to do than keep Her eye on you
It’s betterment nevertheless


Living space is comfort-capable/Where I hang my hat.
But one fact is inescapable:/I’m a Slob. That’s that.
Floors have droppings non-excremental/Bathroom sink has floss that’s dental/Bags unlabeled drive me bent. I’ll/
Struggle struggle struggle
Plowing through the disarraneous/Though the itching’s subcutaneous/Garbage-bag the miscellaneous
Stuff that quells the snuggle
Crafting areas of calmness/Sweet oases volking balmness/Eye of neutral frond of palm. Guess
Marty Phil and Doug’ll
Sing a dirge for who I used to be/”B’ao Ditch” in B Flat
But I trust they’ll get re-used to me./Felix Unger–stat!
satchmo/warner/doughboy/fun to make/monterey/weasel/cereal elf/exhausted/heavily pregnant/culture/balloons, bubbles and firecrackers/photographers/choklit shop proprietor
Answer Key:
Louis “Pops” Armstrong/Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy/Jiffy Pop Popcorn/Monterey Pop/Pop Goes the Weasel/Pop, Snap’s & Crackle’s associate/Too Pooped to Pop/Ready to Pop/PIP Culture (a knowledge of which is a big help with the answers)/Things that pop/Paparazzi/PIP Tate
…and a tip of the hat to Groucho Marx, who on You Bet Your Life invited guests to say the “secret woid”

The punkest mug I ever made
Is Chaos squared and cubed and flayed
And bastardized and misbegotten
And sidded vicious, johnnyed rotten.
Perhaps that’s why I love it so,
Resisting as it were The Flow
Just as I take a mocha sip
And feel its rough, unfriendly lip.
Good Punk should never go to waste
And it is vital that we taste
The bitter Truth that Love’s not all,
And Darkness often comes to call.
long ago a skilled illustrator named howard pyle made a book entitled The Wonder Clock
and in that book there were 24 stories/each corresponding to a different hour of the day.
the story i vaguely remember from forever ago was “How Boots befooled the King.”
now i must confess that this is not going to be the bunch of words i intended to write. I was going to take my vague memory of that befoolment and compare it to how befooled the american electorate has been based on the headline “Trump Starts Walking Back His Vow to Slash Grocery Prices” and end with an attempt to scare the crap out of my readers by pointing out that Trump’s assertions that under Biden (when Biden was still a candidate) and then under Harris (when Harris became his opponent) there would be World War Three…and here we are with Trump saber-rattling and threatening “hell to pay” in the Mideast, exactly like you’d expect a precursor to World War Three to play out…
except i suspect that my readers are already there, unbefooled all along.
be safe, my friends. survive. let’s make a better world. and let’s hear it for The Who, who correctly prophesied, in their classic joint “Won’t Be Fooled Again,” that we would literally YES LITERALLY AND NOT HYPERBOLIC LITERALLY “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” no fools they!
man in his 70s is shopping for a car
nice young man F greets him at the door of the sales section/shakes his hand/sits him down/and they look at his earmarked car on a big computer screen
carfax shows no accidents/but there is a “buyback or lemon” red flag
and nice guy F says possible recall which they would have fixed/but there are no details as to what needed fixing
they take a test drive and F raves about the sportiness/and the great cutting-edge sound system/and there are even seat warmers and a steering wheel warmer
the old guy doesn’t give a rat’s about sportiness nor sound quality nor warmers/but does say something about how nice it would be to have a steering wheel COOLER-OFFER for Valley of the Sun summers
I don’t think even bmws have such a thing/says nice F with a rueful smile
the drive is nice the car has pep/and a nice tight turning radius
back in the office the old guy shows F the screenshot of what his bank says he is offered by way of interest rate and monthly payment
he asks F if this is what he would actually pay/and F cannot commit
then the old guy says wow long day let’s resume after my work week next mon or tues
and poor F panics and gets killer-closer D out from his dude-cave
and D lays it on with aggressive whattauayiuwaitingfor
“You don’t want to go through the weekend with the stress of not having this great deal all wrapped up, do you?”
why yes i do, old guy says to himself
but “Sorry I’m being recalcitrant,” he says aloud/and while D wonders what Recalcitrant means
the geezer vanishes out the showroom door

A unique bathroom mishap occurred in a stall at my work
I was the victim and only witness
After I scrutinized the holder of the giant toilet rolls for paper plenitude
And as I was turning away
A spray dispenser above the holder sprayed me with bathroom spray
So now the side of my head smells like an alpine glade with a swiss chalet nearby
.
I didn’t rinse it off
Perhaps it will help me to gladingly glide through another day
As I suppress the faint urge
To yodel