tapwater coffee

July 15, 2025
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low on water and unwilling to go into the world for more/the man sighs and fills his coffee pot with tapwater

his is not one of the states involved in a class-action lawsuit/alleging that the tapwater of the participating states/is linked to testicular cancer

nonetheless his dislike of tap for his consumption includes the knowledge that the motorola semiconductor division/sent plumes of pcb-laden waste/into the local groundwater

and though supposedly cleanup occurred/who knows in these days of deregulation/what kinds of misdeedery happens on the sly

the coffee is brewed and he pours himself a cup

he knows his mind will play a trick and make the coffee taste metallic

except

in these days of deception

he does not know

Heat Management in the Valley of the Sun

July 14, 2025
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I’m in Phoenix AZ at 7:07 AM Mountain Standard Time

And the temperature is 91 and well into its eager climb

And my Fitbit is at zero steps and I need ten thousand more

But if I face the harsh broad daylight now my sweat will surely pour

And the shower I just took will take a turn to null and void

So my challenge is to get my steps in a way to be enjoyed

And I think of nearby Fry’s at which I buy foodstuffs and fluids

And the Goodwill on the way there with arcana fit for Druids

But the Goodwill doesn’t open till 9 and the Fry’s though open now

Will be an E-Z Bake GIFTEEN HUNDRED STEPS one way and bedrenchment nigh and how

But I could drive there and take a tour of endcaps shelves and aisles

But the net steps won’t be much and what I really need are miles

So what I’ll do is make ceramic ware at PIP Coffee and Clay

May take the bus may walk.may drive but I’ll get a good spin on the day

And later at Scottsdale Fashion Square I’ll mallwalk hither and yon

A ragamuffin imposter facing bougie brigades full on

But cool! and fresh! and lucky! for their Harkins boasts a movie

That will reward ten thousand steps with a Pitt stop O so groovy

And their covered parking will keep my doors and steering wheel cool

And my undisheveled revelry will fluff like unworn wool

****

Afterword: We desert dwellers, ambulatory or motorized, have a daily challenge to meet at this time of year, and I thought a walk through my own challenge today would be fun. I decided on a slightly clunky rhyme/meter scheme typical of those who do not have enough poetry-writing experience under their belts that yields smooth, glib (and sometimes cloying) verses, and tried to “sound” like a typical Phoenician on a typical summer’s day.

I mention Harkin’s Camelview Theatre, where I am a fairly frequent flier, and “Pitt stop” refers to the movie Foula One, starring Brad Pitt. It is hard for me to resist bad puns, especially with light verse.

A Landmark Event in the History of Heckling

July 12, 2025
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You have heard of Plato

He was the guy that made Socrates famous

And you may have heard of Diogenes

He was the guy who lived in a barrel and wandered around looking for an honest man

Less known is that Diogenes heckled Plato during one of Plato’s discourses

Let the audience know that he thought Plato was full of it

And rhyming word thereof

.

Much more recently

Last evening in fact

Heckling history may have been made

During my fabulously-talented poet friend June Powers’s reading of her poem “Close Your Eyes”

And after she had invited us the audience to close their eyes:

A masculine voice at considerable volume came from the smartphone of an audience member

And it said “I AM AN AI. I DON’T HAVE EYES.”

Is this the first instance of AI heckling a human poet?

It seems probable.

.

Will it be the last?

Unlikely.

his and hurts

July 10, 2025
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some boys never become men

they used to play marbles and now they play markets

they think of sex as conquest

income as “fuck-you money”

and the poor as annoyances as best and barbarians at their gates otherwise

their neverland is gimmegimmegimmeville

and they daydream of centerfold pleasure even as their own skin sags and mottles

and many of them die as ancient boys

still lusting

still hurting

still baffled

degreed

July 9, 2025
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there are academic degrees and thermometer degrees and degrees of freedom and degrees of criminality

and to be degreed academically is to acquire the prestige of letters following your name

whereas to be degreed thermodynamically is to be subject to a certain amount of heat from the sun or lack of heat due to compressor activity in a walk-in cooler

and then from an engineering standpoint there are dimensional degrees of freedom found in a mechanical linkage or in musculoskeletal motion

but there is a sense in which “degreed” refers to none of these

but may refer peripherally to degrees of criminality…

can you see it?

see, in the single word “degreed,” the solution to many human problems?

here: take the word greed and append to it the prefix de-

degreed, verb transitive: to remove greed as a factor in persons or legislation or decisions

ah, but we cannot live without greed, proclaimed gordon gekko as brilliantly portrayed by Michael douglas in the 20th-century film wall street

sure we can, says minor poet gary “the tomatoman” bowers in this thing you are reading

and here is what he imagines: that we define greed as desire to acquire to the detriment of someone else

easy as that

and degreed will be to shift focus to benefit to all and not detriment to some

that’s not marxism, communism, socialism, nor globalism

it’s just decency and honesty, within which true capitalism can thrive and blossom

please try to prove me wrong, world

paradise will reward your efforts

No Smoking, No Joking, No Kings

July 8, 2025
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We who have ceased our childhoods choose

To put such childish things aside

As self-indulgent bad-for-yous

Like put-down jokes that slur/deride

And drawn tobacco into lungs

That bystanders will breathe as well

To climb adulthood’s ladder’s rungs

And make a Heaven of a Hell

.

We also need some leaders who

Are not to parasites beholden

Which parasites suck killing goo

That turns the beacon sun ungolden

We need to oust denounce unseat

The big shot bully would-be kings

That growing up become complete

With birthing Mother Earth Who sings

One Brother, Two Presents

July 7, 2025
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Today is my brother Harold’s 73rd birthday.

I talked to his wonderful spouse Terry earlier this morning. The plan is for me to meet them tomorrow at the Olive Garden nearest where they live. It will be there and then that I present Harold with a small gift bag containing these two ceramics works of mine, one functional, one whimsical.

Harold doesn’t do social media to speak of, so I have no fear that I am spoiling the surprise. It tickles me to think that people in the Etherverse will know in advance that this will happen, just as if this were a surprise party and they were hidden in the living room waiting for him to come home.

Happy Birthday, Brother.

countryslide

July 6, 2025
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we are as decent and honest as our leaders, God help us

so now we are neither decent nor honest

we are Hellbound

with blooded hands and dreams of the malnourished children we knowingly abandoned

the weight of our recent myriad sins

heavy as a calving edge of Antarctica

sliding into the cold sea

some of us fight

but ineffectively so far

our waving signs no match for the punches in the face delivered by mayhem-gleeful malicious, masked fools and goons

who round brown folk up

for the express purpose of fucking them up with extreme prejudice

it is true that we would be better off without a small few of them

but the powers that be act as if due process is a mosquito

to be waved off or smashed

and so they scoop em up and ship em out and see what happens

.

fight harder friends

stay decent and honest and unhateful

undo this doom

before it is ratified

the squishiness of ugly tomatoes, and vice versa

July 5, 2025
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we are in the twilight of manual labor

and the work i do slicing tomatoes will dry up sooner or later.

but till it does I put on six gloves–

vinyl, cut-resistant mesh, vinyl–

and with my left three-gloved hand I pluck a well-washed tomato from a container,

place it stem-orificed down on the runway of the nonmotorized tomato slicer,

and with my elbow tucked in, in the manner of a boxer delivering a body blow to an opponent, ram the tomato through a parallel set of blades remindful of open venetian blinds,

while my right hand waits on the other side of the blades

to catch the freshly subdivided tomato.

that’s the plan, anyway. in a perfect world with ripe yet firm tomatoes and a slicer with new blades, it is a lovely process.

today was unlovely.

all tomatoes are not created equal. most in a case i was slicing were overripe. more than one of this batch also had skins cut-resistant enough so that the imposed pressure of blades-ramming caused a rupture, jamming the tomato in the blades and spraying juice and seeds.

one tomato had the temerity to spit in my eye.

halfway through my shift i changed aprons, the sprayscape looking like something done on canvas by one of the lesser abstract impressionists.

i finished my shift, drove home, and shed tomato-redolent clothing, but would not be surprised if my hair retained some of the plant-based fragrance, even though I wear a bouffant hair net on the job.

but it is honest work…declaims the Tomatoman.