you can’t get fried/on cyanide
nor run amok/on hemlock
curare? sorry–petrified
snake-bit? don’t spit, nor them mock
.
with cigarettes come sighed regrets
with smack you lose big time
but cannabis in blissful sets
chagrins your gin and lime.
the dart left the hand of the expert player/and its tip clove the cork/within the quasi-trapezoidal section of the dartboard/that yielded a triple seventeen/to win the game
the dart quiesced in its foam-rubber nest while its owner and operator attempted to persuade/a much younger female in a cotton dress designed to reveal but not flaunt/to accompany him and his pickup truck to a nearby hotel
she declined
the dart next unseeingly saw the light of day/in the woods near a campground/where its owner, irritated by the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker/decided to teach the woodpecker a lesson
but midmotion of the dart-launch that would have pierced the bird/where her spinal cord met her head/an artificial wasp plunged its titanium-alloyed stinger/into the dartsman’s throwing hand
the dart missed the tree altogether/and was abandoned by its owner/who drove himself one-handed to the hospital/where baffled surgeons removed his necrotized hand and half the adjacent forearm
while the operator of the artificial wasp sent a drone/to retrieve the fallen dart and bring it to her/for documentation/of a successful field test/of one of the newest weapons/developed by the department of defense
as for the wasp/it darted homeward as well
the springloaded mousekill the flyeating plant/the holder of grease°line of questioning°web/the finger embracement°thematical rant/the souls being pulled from the beach on the ebb
bland protocol traps us in nets of decorum/deft headhunters trap us with dazzling enticements/swift factchecks trap lies in a broadcasted forum/a verse traps attention with sugerandspicements
and gravity binds us in vast looping spiral/high penthouses pen us in decadence heaven/harsh scripture compels us to stone and go viral/and crap games sing siren songs seven eleven
seduction abduction reduction and rape/enflankment embankment tank airless no breath/the scars of a lifetime are hell to escape/but we are all sprung with omegatrap Death
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” –Blinded Gloucester in KING LEAR by William Shakespeare
he is naked in a huge sphere in interstellar space and cannot remember how he got here
the sphere is transparent and he floats near its center gently pushed hither and yon by a cool breeze
there is a galaxy nearby but no star near enough to be a local sun
he drowses and sleeps and when he wakes he sees another sphere quite close
it is blue but for a tiny human figure floating near its center
he realizes his sphere must be blue too
gently the spheres draw close and when they touch there is an anticlimactic clacking sound
the figure within the other sphere floats toward him and he wonders if it is their personal gravities pulling them together
she is female and would be far too young for him except he sees that the body he is in is no longer old is somehow many years younger than it had been
both of them instinctively put out their hands when they arrive at the touching place and their palms are mere intimate inches apart
her softly swaying hair and enticing shape arouse him and he blushes and pushes away
“children,” says a voice, “i plucked you from your planet after learning something about it, and about you.
“you are perfectly suited to each other. you never would have met but for me. and i have made of you a work of art.
“but do not rejoice. the theme of this art show is Futility. and the title of my piece is Pale Blue Balls.”
with that, the spheres dissolved, and the air within them as well…
…
but before the two could die of decompression, they woke in their separate home-planet homes, thousands of miles apart, their bodies as they were, with the grim knowledge that they would never meet in real life…
…
unless they defied Reality Itself.
That hot chick Maria Teresa/Asked a feller from lower East Mesa/If he’d like to get nasty./”Too iconoclasty.”/She said, “Wow, now I need a cerveza.”
A couple who lived in Surprise/Made a feast of six blackberry pies/And with bellies that strained/And their teeth badly stained/Caused a neighbor to holler, “MY EYES!!”
Far westward of Route 303/Was a Buckeye lad needing to pee./He dropped trou and drained ocean/Saying, “Please, no commotion–/Since it’s Live Free or Die, I felt free!”
In Scottsdale, In Old Town, a punk/On a scooter veered close to a monk./”You WANK!” cried the Brother./”What ho! It’s another/Yank-Dodger encounter! Who’da thunk?”
When riding the Metro Light Rail/You’ll see Freak Shows aplenty, and sail/Through the circles of Hell/In malodorous swell/When the babies and saxophones wail.
so you ask What Is Folly? and a wise guy says that it is the season after Summery and immediately preceding Wintery
and then you say Seriously? and the wise guy says that though Seriously is not a season, the weather has been known to become Seriously Hot or Seriously Cold or Seriously Humid
and then you stop asking the wise guy and you dig and you find that the word derives from the old french Folie which at core meant Madness but also had notes of Stupidity and Delight
you dig more and find that the Folies-Bergère was established in 1869 and later in 1882 during the Belle Epoque its bar was immortalized by Edouard Manet and a fun fact is that he put a bottle of Bass Pale Ale on the bar
and having dug and digging the dig you dug you realize that Ziegfeld’s Follies and Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley are also part of the tapestry
as are we all
in this crazy stupid delightful world
unfriending is rife/unfoing less so/though enemy life/is painful we know
which side are you on?/whose hat do you wear?/by light’s early dawn/whose views do you share?
it’s easy to mock/but best to console/and soothe and unblock/a tortured old soul
take heed of the pain/take charge of your fate/and cease to disdain/by unfriending Hate
Even after we wake up we are asleep most of the time aware but not sensate but dumb as rocks
Exhibit A is Clickbait we never wise up we sometimes resist but it bugs us because the little lizardbrain voice keeps saying Cmon Cmon the Gollum voice says We Wants It
And so we are essentially crippled when it comes to selecting candidates for political office and positions to take on ballot propositions
Because like a brain a campaign has compartmentalized operations with often contradictory motivations
And rumors fly that their guys are outspending our guys and They have an evil agenda and We must meet our fundraising deadline
None of which have much to do with The Right Thing To Do
Because at root it is persuasion and salespersonship and you don’t sell to Sweet Reason you sell to We Wants It
And since we are asleep though awake we are subject to hypnosis
Let’s think of that next time we are in a restaurant and the server utters the hypnotic question “How is everything tasting?”
And the only way to snap out of the lull is to visualize hyenas tearing away at a rotting corpse–did you just wake up, Reader and Friend?
Isn’t Blue a soothing color?
Or Doesn’t Red mean Passion and Purpose?
Wake up!! You fell back asleep
When they get you to give them money they bank on the fact that that act means YOU ALREADY VOTED
They have you
Please hit your Reset button!!!
comic-book-reading kids in the 1960s/were invited to sell a newspaper called GRIT/in one of those sears&roebuck-esque ads/that stood chockablock next to for example the adolescent-aimed Vacutex
i was never a GRIT newsboy/but intrigued enough now to do a little research/and find that in its heyday GRIT had 30,000 kids on 33% commission/keeping a nickel of each 15-cent sale
also it published fiction and trivia/and as far as trivia goes i hereby submit these meta-grit items:
if you grit your teeth gritlessly with freshly brushed teeth they squeak
a lady named duckworth wrote a book championing a combination of perseverance and passion that she labeled “grit” as a success-touchstone for schoolchildren
grit in an oyster gets coated with a nacreous substance called mother of pearl
if you have a drained blister on a footpad/and run four miles on beach sand in san diego/grit will erode the blister epidermis/and then get into the blistersac/and abrade the tender flesh beneath/and with every other footstrike torture/you will be forced to cut your planned five-mile run short
and you will remember that grit for thirty-nine years
politics
one seems sky/one blood/but both dream/both bleed
one faces right/one left/but to get around they pivot bob and weave
both have barbs on their talons/both think fierceness proves the point
but the scales are tipped
i made these birds/and pondered them
and i am voting blue
One with Clay, Image and Text 