phoenix ay zee

has been home to me

but my sweetheart resides in toledo

so in june i will launch like a jazzed-up torpedo

and suitcase my clothing as best suits a suitor

and bring my ceramics and laptop computer

and love in my heart for this intricate soul

and we’ll have adventures tween north and south pole

and make the ride last for as long as we can

a golden-years couple both woman and man

a dude and a kitten

both lusty both smitten

with both meters running

it’s loving and funning

that counts!

in new york in 2018 a black-capped chickadee

was audially captured for four minutes

and fifty-seven seconds

sounding  nothing if not tired and bored

“here i/am now/[pause]/here i/am now/[pause]/

here i/am now/[pause]/here i/am now/[pause]/”

little johnnie four-note

with almost nothing to say

..

but isn’t it a miracle:

you can think of a bird, any bird

and do a search for “[bird] birdsong”

and in less than a minute

that bird will sing

only for you

He had to be a Big Shot,

Spouting What a Fool Believes;

And now he has a cabi-knot

Of Crypties, Tramps and Thieves.

But his misdeeds spark up a mind

And LO, how does that brain glow,

That balladeer of White House crime,

The stellar Randy Rainbow.

..

Applause for the lunatic, lyrical genius known as Randy Rainbow, whose song parodies eviscerating “Donald Jessica Trump” give me hope that there is still intelligent life in our beleaguered nation.

Yes.
No.

the late chris farley spoke into a fan:

“l-u-k-e. i-i-i a-a-m y-o-o-u-u-r f-a-a-t-h-h-e-r.”

the fan blades feather-chopped the sound

and made him sound otherworldly.

he was acting like a kid. he was Tommy Boy.

and when we were kids, Boys and Girls,

we clothes-pinned playing cards to our bikes

such that they strummed the wheel spokes

whole the wheels turned

just as a guitar pick strums strings–

or is it that the spokes strum the cards?

we also filled paper bags with exhaled air,

held tightly closed the bag end, and punched

the bag just right, for a loud and satisfying

popping sound.

cellophane and raisin boxes can be made to make

a piercing soprano whistling noise.

the finger-pulled-sideways-through-the-mouth

is still fun. squeezing air between armpit and hand

is juvenile, but so what?

special bags of dried corn and grease make a sound

in the microwave a bit like fireworks, but please,

On Your Life and for the Love of God, do not

use a Microwave

to pop a Weasel.

i wear the raggy ones and all

now look at me askance

i get the side-eye too a paul

ling cannot even glance

it’s only clothing but such loathing

low thing makes me dance

and what the hey it’s just a day

a boil we need not lance.

Long ago he took out a full-page ad in the NYT calling for the death penalty for five youths accused of savaging a young woman in Central Park. Though they did not commit the crime, and were exonerated, he is unrepentant and unapologetic to this day. He has also for about ten years been calling the publication that took his money and printed his ad “the failing New York Times.”

By his decree a historically significant part of the White House was torn down.

He endorsed Arizona’s Kari Lake, who proudly acknowledged that she was “Trump in a dress,” for the 2022 gubernatorial election. She ran on a campaign of Trump-supporting lies, narrowly lost, claimed fraud and went to court, lost, appealed, lost, was sued for defamation, and lost. She is employed by his administration to help dismantle the “leftist” Voice of America, which had served as a bulwark against totalitarian repression for the better part of a century.

He had an Iranian military leader assassinated by drone.

He stole boxes and boxes of government top-secret and otherwise classified documents, secreting them in his Florida fiefdom.

With no shred of legitimate claim, he is openly seeking to acquire the entire territory that is Greenland, the majority of whose population is indigenous Inuit.

He has also thrown his weight onto underaged females.

But he says I am the problem, calling me and people like me “Radical leftist scum.”

I am for throwing HIS ungainly weight around, either out of the country he has incessantly defiled, or into a maximum-security federal prison.

But please, let’s keep him alive. Cults thrive on martyrs, Heaven knows.

i: swan

the clock that tells the time counts not/and i’ll not count on it/with mainspring sprung and face besot/i do not give a snit

ii: slow

the peach that prufrock dared to eat/was neither soft nor moist nor sweet/which proves that daring has its place/but swaybacks rarely win the race

iii: peat

that dog from hell may well be love/but give your bread some leaven/by courting fun instead to shove/your carefree way to heaven

iv: gone

back to the woods and road diverged/and at the fork a dime/”so THAT’S the DIFFERENCE??!” “yup,” bob urged,/”so pick it up and climb.”

Our day is made,

My fellow Scum.

The table’s laid,

So beat the drum,

For we’ve been dissed

By Donald Trump,

Who’s deeply pissed.

His hair’s a-clump,

His face is mottled,

His fists are clenched,

His hate’s unbottled,

His pants are drenched.

He does not like

The flack he’s got,

The bursting dike:

He. Has. Been. CAUGHT.

in the kitchen the sanitizer buckets/must be changed every two hours/to ensure potency of solution.

there’s a sweet dishwasher lady/who can often be found scrubbing surface after surface/right by the dispenser of sanitizer solution. one day soon i would like to surprise her/by greeting her in her native language with a purity of accent/that startles her.

two hours of slicing overripe tomatoes/makes my sanitizer rag/as gruesome as a bandage that needs changing/so part of my sanitizer-changing ritual often includes a thorough hot-water rinsing

and the wringing of the rinsed rag is something i do with all the squeeze i can muster

takes four squeezes to get it down to the last dribs

but there’s always a couple dribs that get resorbed with the relaxation of the hands

few things wring completely

but some chapters of our life will wring true if we live right