Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library

A Brief Meditation on Grief

Dad left in 1983, Brian 2018, Mom 2020, Harold 2025.

Four years brought four kinds of grief.

Dad was only 49. Brian was the younger brother.

Mom’s suffering ended. Harold got a tough break.

..

Many Thanksgivings Mom used her turkey roaster,

Dad demanded rutabagas, Harold and Brian and I

Ate like savages and clowned around

With pearl onions and gravy and green Jell-O salad.

..

Brian’s ashes are on my shelf of knickknacks.

I keep trying to make a good urn for them.

Brian seems to tell me from time to time

Yeah, Gary, no rush, don’t worry.

Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library

Sweetheart Darling Baby [Love] (duet)

(Note: the boy is bold, the girl italic, together both.)

We will figure it all out

Sweetheart Darling Baby Love

Push will never come to shove

Long as we’re together.

..

Karma’s what it’s all about

Sweetheart Darling Baby Friend

Fall and rise and rest and wend

Long as we’re together.

..

Sugar in our every kiss

Sweetheart O so empathetic

Now we’re Type 2 diabetic

But we are together.

..

Fun and Games maintain our bliss

Sweetheart Darling Staunch Companion

And our ardor fills a canyon

Evermore together.

press secretary karoline leavitt

proudly announces a cease-fire

spinning it to make her boss

look like a peacemaker

..

we don’t get breaking news anymore

we get broken fragmented and fractured news

because some of the ultra-rich own the media

and have dodgy agendas

..

“mama said believe half of what you see/son

and none of what you hear” is truer now than then

and blatant governmental liars

are the real domestic terrorists

A my name is Annie and I skip the light fandango with a nod to faroff Saturn as I ring around the Sun

B my name is Bradford and I hope to be a broker and behold the city’s vistas in a highrise luxy condo

C my name is Candice and I left my lazy lover for a brace of yapping Corgis and I feel just like a queen

D my name is Darkseid not Darth Vader who came after and I’m clumsy at this jumprope but absurdity is fun

E my name is Elmo and I act just like a baby but I’m looking for a publisher to do my autobio

F my name is Franny and I walked out of a novel so to turn my bleak dysfunction over to a Baptist choir

G my name is Gary and I turn in this assignment as I beat a hasty exit so as not to trip and f

Granted so many in power are vicious bloodsuckers

The party not in power has their bloodsuckers too

Stop scrolling! they are all saying.

Please chip in! they add

We are being outspent! they argue

Please please PLEASE!! they beg

Well, I may have a chip on my shoulder

But I am chipped out

And decidedly unchipper.

So I’m reeling you in, campaigners:

Stop asking for money!

Stop with the urgent deadlines!

Please use your ingenuity so

It WILL NOT MATTER how much you have been

O U T S P E N T !

How can you fail to defeat a pedophilic,

Misogynist,

Reporter-bashing,

Felonious

W A R . C R I M I N A L ‽‽‽???

Borne on a BreO⁷eze

To the immortal magic of Marc Chagall

O⁷ is unoccurrable

O³ unstable at best

And O² free only by the sufferance of coincidental phenomena

And no one

Ever sees or breathes O¹

No¹, I tell you

Still…

I would love to dance with my sister

Because she does not exist

And if I were dancing with her she would exist

And it would be her wedding day

And I’d have lost 45 pounds to look good in a tux

And at the alfresco reception

I would get supernaturally high

With lungs full of the O⁷ that had wafted though us

On a fanciful breeze

And I would then invulnerably float over the village

Legs dangling body bent beyond a horseshoe’s

Because once the impossible has occurred

The impossible is no more

And the benign Possibilities are innumerable

Including having the numbers associated

With different configurations of oxygen

Indicated with superscript

And not subscript

who doesn’t like

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion?

the big Cheese, that’s who,

and a bunch of Nutheads wearing red hats.

so a campaign of lies, executive orders,

and scorched-earth undoings

is undoing, has undone, and will undo DEI,

while war crimes and threats are undoing

the integrity

and possibly, eventually, the existence

of the United States of America.

..

every lie, grandiose or marginal,

needs to be repudiated.

let us use airhorns.

let us walk away from the sham “press conference”

and the sham “town hall meeting.”

let us sell Huggies

and hip waders

at the poisonous rallies, blasting

“GETTING DEEP IN HERE”

at 110 decibels.

..

it is time to stop the theft

of Truth.

It seems as if there is a conspiracy against the elderly

Certain packagings do not open properly or at all when you follow their opening instructions to the letter

It might for instance say TEAR HERE and you find to your dismay that the place indicated is unperforated and unbearable

Or they lull you with something that tears wonderfully and satisfyingly yet the zip-locking arrangement beneath is so grippingly locked that you futilely apply more and more pullapart force till you risk ripping the plastic and having half the tortillas slide to the unmopped kitchen floor

And then there are the pot pies whose perforation patterns do not work because the faux cardboard bends to pressure rather than part along the perforations so you have to saw with serrated knife or reperforate with a fork and both are ineffective so you end up frenziedly ripping & mangling the box top like the devil doll in Trilogy of Terror

And THEN you are invited to “slit the top” of the pot pie which is frozen brick-hard and you have to wield a meat cleaver if you have one or a chef’s knife if you don’t (you don’t) with the swiftness of a medieval executioner cleaving a neck

And there are also pickle jars and fruit-juice bottles that require superhuman torque to un-vacuum-pack

Why, even a simple mustard or ketchup pack can ro rogue by being difficult to tear and when you squeeze hard from necessity the foil suddenly gives way with an inelegant SPLUTCH! and a big little mess

This is the second quarter of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, for crying out loud

Astronauts have gone beyond the Moon this very week

The least our genius inventors can do is to make a package that opens ITSELF with the voice command Open O Sesame

Can you tell me how to get, how to get

To Open O Sesame Street?

Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library

April and Allergies Start with an A

April and Allergies start with an A

And Hay Fever starts with an aspirant H

And here I am faced with a tough rhyme today–

Ah! I love Rachel Maddow. You’re Aces, dear Raitch!!

..

Bee Pollen and Benadryl start with a B

But Pollen itself with a plosive, the P;

Bet Bolsheviks sneeze quite alliter’tively

Bitter that they are used and discarded for Free.

.

Could we make an ingestion of Vitamin C

Casting out sneezy demons with one megadose?

Congestion will make us act desperately,

Cursing bugs that now turn us disturbingly gross.