Today the Chicken crossed the road
Soon followed by the Rooster
Who followed his hormonal goad
With no blue pill for booster.
Why the Rooster Followed the Chicken Across the Road (As If You Didn’t Know)
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I Fight My Mental Illness at McDonald’s
I Fight My Mental Illness At McDonald’s
I need to at least break even/With my mental morning sickness/At this McDonald’s/Where I am finishing up a too-big meal/That cost me $7.00 and untold mental-health points/Because fast food is the last thing I need/With my diabetes/obesity.
But my imaginary Rev Tevye/sang his signature “Tradition” siren song of (with my altered lyrics) caloric seduction/And here I was/setting forth on yet another dietary setback.
Worse, I now had a Defcon 3 need to use the bathroom/And home was too far to non-explosively walk/And my mental illness, stemming from early childhood, made me perversively averse/To away-from-home bathroom activity…
With a wrench of effort I asked the counter lady/To unlock the bathroom/To which she told me it was unlocked but very dirty/And she was waiting for “the maintenance guy.”
“Emergency,” I said with gritted teeth.
There was a pool of water on the floor.
I took my pants and rolled the bottom cuffs.
My legs were now like squeezed accordions.
I minimally did what needed done:
Five lines of iambs in pentameter./(Make that six.)
It was not TOTAL victory against my mental illness/Since I felt like a sleazy thief as I slunk out/Of the ever-abiding Home of the Golden Arches/And not a healthy, fully-functional Human Being who wishes no one harm, ever,/But it was baby steps towards the truest of Homes/Which is my beloved Valley of the Sun/Unconfined by the walls of my apartment.
If you do not understand, count yourself lucky, my friend/That you are u afflicted/By this pernicious disorder. Or, to warp and twist the Bible once again:
Whither thou goest, I wish I could go.
The Beast of St. Agnes Walks Into a Bar
The Beast of St. Agnes Walks into a bar.
The barman sighs, “Heavenly Glory,
I hope for excitement from near and afar,
But get this Ash-Aggie Dog story.”
Certificate of Annoyance
As if a Munchkin in her head
Had now unfurled a scroll,
She codified her morning dread
And how it wrenched her soul.
The list went on on on and on
From how the clouds occluded
The crescent moon and then the dawn,
To nursing breasts denuded,
Baristas getting orders wrong
For custom cappuccino
And tribute-band lines overlong
At this and that casino.
.
He nodded and tsktsked as she
Continued with her litany,
But when she moaned how there could be
Six ways you can spell Brittany,
He pulled a paper from his pants
And pen from his lapel
And wrote while she looked on askance.
She queried, “What the hell?”
.
He answered, “Dear heart, I’ve prepared
A document. Clairvoyance
Has helped to guide me where I’ve fared,
And now I chart Annoyance.
The thousand things that piss you off,
And spoil your disposition,
The thousand more that make you scoff
And fuel your indecision.”
She gaped. She sputtered. Melted down.
How dare he criticize?
He.listened to her with a frown
And fixed her with his eyes.
They stared across the clothed expanse
Of fancy bistro table
He signed the paper. One last glance;
He said, “Thus ends the fable.”
He rose and left. She watched as he
Paid off Anton their server
And strolled away, forever free
The better to unnerve her.
As for the document he left:
A front-load of WHEREASes
Preceded NOW, THEREFORE, and cleft
The doc with all those jazzes.
HE was annoyed, the doc declares
And not just by her sniping
Nor by her undisclosed affairs
Nor by her constant griping;
Nor by the secret bank account
Where she had funneled dollars
Nor for starch which by sheer amount
Abrasivized his collars.
No. His annoyance genesis
Stemmed not from what she did
But from the passion-barren kiss
Beneath the false-front lid.
He wished her well but not at the
Expense of future journeys.
For any other issues, she
Could contact his attorneys.
.
She shifted in her chair and stood,
And tucked his parting gift
Into her purse, and thought she would
Step out and call a Lyft.
No harm, no foul, she thought, beguiled.
May dread disease afflict him.
The cab pulled up. She brightly smiled.
So–who’ll be my next victim?
fill-t habits
mathematics tradition has assigned
the lower-case t
to designate time
and the greek letter ∆ [delta]
to mean change of or a change in,
while the lower-case v
designates velocity,
and so ∆v/∆t is acceleration,
being a change in velocity
over a change in time.
unsurprisingly,
a change of philosophy over a change in time
is outside the scope of mathematics.
for what it’s worth, though, I am always
more optimistic after a long,
refreshing shower,
reflecting a change of philosophy
over a change in grime.
placements
car insurance in my country depends
on how willing the car owner is
to be surveilled. there’s a better rate
if you allow them to hitch a ride
on your smartphone. you then
automatically drive more prudently
because a tracking algorithm analyzes
where you go and when
how you brake and corner
how smoothly you drive
and your deviations from your routines.
you are placed
in categories from Excellent to Good
and presumably all the way down
to Reckless/Criminal; but naturally
this poet never wants to learn
about those evaluative placements.
he is for the straight and narrow.
he will obey all traffic laws
of which he is aware
except for a little fudging on the speed limit–
and that fudging
may be keeping him
from placement
in the Superb category
if any. but, hey,
even limitations
have their limits.
gargoyle nails
gargoyle nails
i have old-man toes with gargoyle nails
that resist cutting by conventional means
toughened by fungus, rumor has it
the left big toe is discolored
and could probably stop a bullet
and i have to use a pliers-like device
that is like a small pair of bolt cutters
and only try for the first eighth-inch across
squeezing with all my mortal strength
till i get a SNAP!!
and then i can wedge the sharp edges in
and finish the job
.
upon reflection, it would make far better sense
if i soaked my toes in bathwater
and achieved hydrated softness–
they’d be a lot easier to cut, right?
.
why have i stupidly not-soaked my toes
for so long??
.
because i wander through my life in a daze
if not a semi-coma
but when i write poetry I am more mindful
.
bath time
long live poetry
NaPoWriMo 2025, day 30 and last: Caked on the Icing
It seems like a million years ago that my mom had a crush on Richard Harris
He had just hit the Billboard charts with an out-of nowhere LP called A Tramp Shining
And later he would portray Dumbledore in the first Harry Potter movies
And I’m sure that if there’s a Heaven that Mom started looking for him right after she arrived
But I suspect she would have to wait in line
Because Mr. Harris more than 50 years ago captivated the souls of many midlife American ladies with his unforgettable cover of Jimmy Webb’s surreal tour de force “MacArthur Park”
His tortured voice giving substance to the crazy smile (Pressed in love’s hot fevered iron/Like a striped pair of pants”) and hallucinatory metaphor (“All the sweet green icing/Flowing down…”) of Webb’s web of lost-love insanity
Harris did not sing the lyrics so much as well them with all his actor’s skill
And drove my late, great mother to distraction and album-purchase
My uneducated guess is that Mom and her fellow fangirls loved the thought of a man so romantic he would let a special woman drive to him to Batshit Insanityville and beyond
And speaking of Batshit Insanityville, the sequel to the first Beetlejuice movie features an extended-play version of “MacArthur Park” featuring a gigantic cake
With flowing green icing
And Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice standing on top of the icing’d cake
Himself caked with putrefaction makeup
Standing as groom with his intended bride
And that’s just the tip of the cakeberg
So rest in peace, Mom and Richard Harris
The beetlejuice goes on
NaPoWriMo 2025, day 29: dubya cee dubya feat. pee jay eff
the one was born in eighteen eighty three
the other hoosiered in in nineteen nine
the one wrote chock-full, threadbare poetry
the other science fiction full of wine
the one was a physician whose ennui
had made him write “the use of force” and mine
the lode of image for fresh things to see
and glory in the everyday and shine
the other built his worlds with filigree
façades of yearning backed by painted pine
and resurrected legend/history
and swift imagineering on the vine
both had hispanic middle names
agree
on facets
realistic
that entwine
****
The two deceased-yet-immortal beings are William Carlos Williams and Philip José Farmer.
NaPoWriMo 2025, day 28: Pompadour and Circumstance
The lovely and gifted Marco Antares would have been Valedictorian but the homophobic shop teacher hated him.
Marco was glad to get an unfair C in Metal-Shop III that made him Salutatorian and promoted the sweet and humble T’Janelle du Bois to Valedictorian.
And in the week before graduation Marco went around saluting everyone,
Especially the shop teacher who gnashed his teeth and fumed.
And on graduation day Marco had his hair done up in an enormous pompadour,
and pompadour plus mortarboard made Marco look quite festive,
and when he strolled up to the podium for his salutatory address to students, the square and tasselled cap atop the shellacked follicular stack bounced merrily,
and Marco grinned at the expectant multitude and said
“Fellow studentry, faculty, staff:
“This will be the shortest salutatory speech in history. I will let my Metal-Shop project do my talking for me. Two snaps!”
With that he snapped his fingers twice and two sizable drones arose from behind him, looking like galvanized-steel floating Cybertrucks, their stereo sound system playing “Ride of the Valkyries” menacingly.
The crowd gasped and the shop teacher cringed.
Then the music cut off, and after a Pee-Wee-Hermanesque giggle an electric version of “Pomp and Circumstance” began to play, and a banner between the drones unfurled, saying
S A L U T E….T H E…R A I N B O W ! ! !
with a glitter-festooned rainbow over the words.
And one of the drones floated above the shop teacher’s head with the banner, and dropped it on him.
And as it flew off the other drone extended a servo arm and delicately grasped Marco’s tassel and switched its sides.
Then it delicately grasped the entire cap, flew over the rows of graduates, and flipped the cap skyward.
Then it flew off like the other one.
There was a huge bang and puff of smoke from the podium, and Marco was gone.
T’Janelle, who had been in on the scheme, gave a stirring speech about Diversity, Equality and Inclusion that brought the house down,
and the students began humming “Ride of the Valkyries” as they marched up to receive their degrees.
One with Clay, Image and Text 