Broken chassis
Or son of a V I P
Now we 4F U
Enjoy lack of war
Bone Spur II: Acrostic
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Monthly Archives: June 2025
mildstone
the distance between 32nd st slightly north of thomas on the east side of the street/and the mcdonald’s slightly south of indian school on the west side of 32nd st/is exactly one mile
after you walk across 32nd st and head north/you will pass an apartment complex that touts its “sparkling pool” but beware/for another sign that says “newly renovated” has been up for over a year
you will walk past what once was a church and what now seems to purport to be/a sanctuary for people who are bent but not broken
and past the southbound bus stop at clarendon/you will approach another apartment complex/one that once had a “now leasing” banner with a number to call/but the banner is gone and since i once lived there it amuses me to think/that a resident driven to enragement by inattention to such issues as pest control and mold management has torn down the banner
and walking past that artifact of pestiferous memory you now approach the fabled golden arches
and it’s pleasantly slightly warm being early/and your hunger has nicely gestated/and you feel slightly druglessly buzzed
melllow with three ells
with a mild case of the munchies
bone spur
bone spur
here is a foot with a genuine bone spur.
the owner of the foot has lived with the spur
for more than fifty years, managing
to play tennis, football, the other football, capture the flag, and king of the mountain;
managing to finish three marathons, six half-marathons, and dozens of 10K footraces;
managing to climb piestewa peak’s summit trail at least ten times and its circumferential trail at least four times; managed to climb atop camelback mountain at least three times; has taken the peralta trailhead to a good view of the weaver’s needle in the superstition mountains at least twice, once carrying a toddler on his back;
has managed the bone-spur pain and sensitivity mostly without medication;
has managed not to talk about it at any length till now, when its relevance trends every now and then.
the owner of this bone-spurred foot
avers that a bone spur need not be an impediment for ANY sort of activity
though that activity may be accompanied by the occasional yelp.
this has been a public service announcement
and an excuse to brag.
please Vote.
miscku
truestoryku
dined last friday with
seven poetic women–
Paradise enow!
.
diveku
desperate fellow
sleeps close to the front entrance–
my kind of Bar, eh?
.
hardballku
the stitching suggests
blunt force trauma and assault
taken for the Team
.
cupku
first i fill the cup
then the cup i made fills me
we are all Vessels
foofoo feline
some cats are mostly monochromatic
some have a pattern of stripes
but I know a cat who is pure punk
whose random splotches make her into a fireworks tapestry
splotch and skidmark
starburst and smudge
.
she is craycray
wears her heart on her sleeve
and she is all sleeve
furrodivergent
former dot, and vice versa
with a flyby from far space to us/our awareness begins with the sight of a new dot in the night sky/and we train better-than-human eyes on the dot/and learn more
those rocks with volatiles we call comets are such former and future dots
sky scrutiny is as burgeoning as the supernova blast-debris we now image and display
and here at home we make stuff/with sensoria and solar-power paneling/that are at ground level the size of large animals or tiny houses/but are destined to ride controlled explosiveness into the sky/to become dots/out-there messengers of the realities/that have piqued our curiosity
this dot-forming impulse has the power to be our salvation/or our undoing
the one will require sanity
the other its lack
Hallways
Hallways
Through windowless corridors
The lady with stiletto heels and veil steps,
The snap of her footsteps
Echoing in the narrow spaces.
She stops at one picture of a family of four
With a grinning dog,
Looks at the woman she was,
Shakes her head, and mutters,
“What was I thinking?”
She pulls a fresh long-stemmed rose
From the vase on the little stand
At the juncture of corridors
And de-thorns it,
Shortens the stem,
And puts the rose in her hair
By her ear.
She’s done. There’s a lot more to see
But she remembers most of it,
And it makes her shake her head again.
At the door
She says to her assistant,
“Demolish it, then sell the property
As quickly as you can.”
She holds up a hand
To the sputtering protest
And says coldly and firmly,
“Do it.”
In the town car she tells the driver
To take her to the airport.
Then slides a tear.
“Changed my mind. Take me
To the cemetery.”
Graveside
She places the rose gently
At the foot of her man’s headstone
And whispers,
“See you soon.”
Back in the car
She says, “Airport now.
How is your family, Edward?”
This poem first appeared in slightly altered form in the Facebook poetry group Poets All Call.
upscaled models
upscaled models
miniatures promise
and thumbnails hint
maquettes sketch their dramas
and prototypes squint
..
then cashbackers do
as their sales resistance
dissolves into goo
and recedes into distance
..
our sweet lady liberty
was sculpted in small
then upscaled she came to be
goddessish tall
..
so might your dream-fountain
my friend/ally/neighbor
cascade from a mountain
with upscale of labor
..
so take your fine notion
from under your wig
take raindrop to ocean
take tiny to big
..
for fission and fusion
are both nuclearity
we need less contusion
more breathtaking rarity
He Gets More Done in a Week
The everywhere comments
From people who are STILL
Cheerleaders on his team
Say all kinds of variations
On “He gets so much stuff done.”
They say it
Because a propagandist, maybe AI,
Figured out it was both easy to repeat
And undeniable,
And put it out there,
And his lackeys picked it up
And ran with it,
And now his parrots repeat it endlessly.
He gets a lot done, all right.
He used a drug-addled billionaire
To fire thousands of people
Who were doing good work, then did a Whoops
When it turned out
That some of those folks
Were vital to National Security.
He sent planeloads of brown people
To an El Salvador prison
In blatant violation of the Constitution
He swore to protect and defend,
Then brought in some white folks
From South Africa
To balance it all out.
He sold pardons to deep-pocket contributors.
He manipulated the stock market,
Letting some of his pals in on it beforehand.
He sold cryptocurrency in a scam he had set up
Just before he was inaugurated.
And he played a ton of golf, and denounced a lot of judges, and called half his fellow citizens “SCUM.”
Busy as a beaver, this guy,
Digging our Liberty and Justice for All
Graves.
Trick Stirs
“My brain is playing tricks on me”
We say. But, you know, the older we get,
The more body parts get involved
In the trickery. One trick stirs
Another. The skin
Decides we need new constellations
In the form of deflated-balloon skin tags, and
Then the hair, the skin’s epithelial partner,
Says “New fashion statement coming up:
Recessional Follies
Featuring Silverthread Sadie
And Thinny Minnie!”
Then the Gout Beast quiesces
For three days after that naughty McFlurry
Chased with three-sigar coffee,
And on the fourth day chooses a new home,
The Pinky-Toe joint, alchemizing humility
Into agony…
Whoa. What was I just saying?
My brain is laying bricks on me . . .
One with Clay, Image and Text 