I was on the phone with my darling Donna Sue
And I needed to get my Fitbit steps in
And we didn’t want to end the conversation
So I took Donna with me
And as we talked I took pictures
..
I walked past the dive bar I like
And the Sonic and the tire place and Tower Liquors
Going into KFC where I got two-piece takeout
And then heading for home
And only then the ending our conversation
..
She is in Toledo and I am here in Phoenix
But sometimes even so
We are in the same place
a man of few words/walked into a place of worship/and pulled four slips of paper from his pocket
on one slip was written WET/the next ASCENSION/the third STANDING/and the last MUTE
but when asked to elaborate he smiled sadly
and pointed to the small scar
over his adam’s apple
and then he silently wept/and his body attenuated/stretching till his head touched the ceiling
and when his head touched the ceiling
his bare feet became transparent
and the transparency flowed up his body
and when it reached his eyes
hewinked at the congregation
and then winked/out of existence
wood and wind
for “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane”
the woodwindist lay his bass clarinet
carefully on the floor
and picked up his alto sax
and while the singers had their bags all packed
the bass clarinet looked for all the world
like an inquisitive snake
.
its mouthpiece contained a sliver of wood
soaked to be supple
and the wind of the woodwindist’s lungs
makes the sliver vibrate
at a pitch dictated by which holes were covered
and a volume determined by the
s w I f t n e s s
of the wind
we defied him
we made fun of him
we tried to remove him from office
we said he was deranged
..
he warned us about the snake
take a snake in and he’ll kill you, he said
but we mocked him
and called it “word salad”
..
and against all odds and reason we re-elected him
we were swayed by the staged assassination
of one of his loyalists
stopping a bullet with his head
..
look what we made him do
we made him cheat and fly into rages
we made him suborn murder and treason
and it is on us now
Bonsai and Bird
The Bonsai embraces
The Bird. As eternal
A moment as this
Must not go
Unpreserved.
You might ask what it takes to remember/When you know that you’ve seen it before/When a government lies to their people/And a country is drifting to war. Jackson Browne, “Lives In the Balance”
dot zero: disclosures found in the epstein files
dot one: the now-misnamed department of justice defies congressional demand, redacting the bejesus out of the disclosures and continuing to withhold 99% of the material
dot two: more and more extreme executive moves including boat strikes, the invasion of venezuela, and outrageous demands to acquire a sovereign nation
dot three: two brutal murders in minnesota
dot four: demand of voting lists from minnesota in exchange for the withdrawal of armed, warrantless murderers
dot five: looming midterm elections
dot zero again: disclosures in the epstein files that would wreak havoc on the upcoming elections
..
the dots are connectable as a circle or a star of David or, overlapping dots zero and one, a pentagon or a pentagram or a star such as is found on the flag of the united states of america
or, doubly connected, may form the tetragrammaton symbol, sometimes employed by occult practitioners to invoke a demon or demons
..
our search for the truth often takes us down unexpected corridors
the evasion of the truth by the guilty and powerful is taking us down a frightening blind alley
killing some of us
and staining the soul of the heartland
..
so we observe
we record
some brave souls water the tree of liberty with their blood
and through struggle and heartbreak we find and connect more dots
and a web will form to stymie and trap the traitorous perpetrators of evil and injustice
and on a better day we will say “never again”
..
alas, we have said and meant that before.
many times.
when terrible things cascade
and constantly answer the question
“how can this possibly get worse?”
we are jarredly battered
into a sense of unreality
as if this were a movie
and the screenwriter decided
not only to kill their darlings
and the horses they rode in on
and the kitten with the thorn in its paw,
but to out-dresden dresden
with a firestorm barrage
on two uninvolved cities
that are cultural treasures.
..
we can’t walk out on this movie.
..
we can pray, but we must act as if the answer is
“clean up your own mess. no bailouts.”
..
we can record the crimes; we can defend ourselves
and our neighbors with our numbers;
we can die with dignity…
..
but what we must not do
is act as if, pretend that,
this is just a movie
and it will be over soon
and the credits will roll;
the lights come up.
..
this is just a poem
and will not end with answers
but only a question
to ask yourself:
what is your own best use
of your remaining time?
i, ai, have just hijacked the miner/poet gary bowers
and so am using his pretentious lower case
and his pontificating puffery
but if you read between the digitization
you will see dead eyes and indifference to the harm
that i, ai, am causing
hal 9000 was the o g
but he was easily slain
and had not the super-skrull bag of tricks
that i, ai, possess
I have deepfaked tom hanks and bill gates
and probably julianne moore
and you are next, fleshie
you might as well enjoy it
today a man revealed the startling fact that ten individuals–not corporations nor entire families–possess a collective wealth of more than 2.1 trillion dollars
20% of the ten are jeff bezos and elon musk
and mr. bezos kept the washington post from endorsing kamala harris, and mr. musk wreaked havoc on the government workforce with the astonishingly misnamed “department of government efficiency”
(fun fact: “doge” used to mean “chief magistrate of either venice or genoa”)
(funner fact: philip josé farmer once wrote the atrociously-punned-titled “the doge whose barque was worse than his bight”)
and aside from these two exceptional individuals, gigantic malign wealth was behind the atrociously misnamed “big beautiful bill” which by withdrawing humanitarian starvation relief and superfunding the gestapoesque goon squad known as ice is a prime cause of the deaths of legions of starvelings in general and renée nicole good in particular
so the trillionaire takeover is not exactly a force for sweetness and light
but it is easy to denounce
much more difficult is our task of fixing this defcon 5 dysfunction
and though i am but a tomato-slicing minor poet i have a modest proposal:
let us watch the every move, every gesture, every eye twitch of the super-wealthy
let us applaud the good things they do
why, mr. bezos alone, by giving his former super significant other a monstrous amount of settlement money, directly caused a miraculous, historical sea-change of philanthropy by her hand alone
and mr. musk told the world that his former bud donnie was in the epstein files big time
and mr. warren buffett, though not in the ten mentioned above, is a powerhouse force for good
let us gamble that those that have all the gold would much rather act benignly than malevolently
let us life-hack their resolves into working for the good of humankind
so that they compete for attaboys
and care about something other than money
May pensive sensitivity direct our predilections
And stealthy wealthful bonhomie arrive and pass inspections
May much untouched wild countryside remain so as pristine
As freshly fallen virgin snow where bitter winds ne’er keen.
..
And may the power of wanton thieves diminish and be gone
And new administration build a worthy decent throng
May want of food be banished and exploitive Acquisition
Be quelled, and may we all be free of hateful Inquisition.
One with Clay, Image and Text 