fedoraku
headwear for gumshoes/impractical and stylish/some banded some plain
fedoraku2
on redondo pier/my then love fedora’d me/so adorably
capku
seed corn politics/ball teams philosophies all/on billboard foreheads
roundwearku
oliver hardy/wore a derby but patrick/macnee a bowler
tangentialechoku
a bowling champ goes/to the kentucky derby/and says “whoops–wrong hat”
Money stuffs a wallet,
Pizza stuffs a face.
Most downtowns are overstuffed
With hurting human race.
Pillows have their eiderdown
Turkeys breaded sausage.
Bonnie had her Clyde. A frown
Is stuffed with soured tossage.
Alveoli plump with oxy,
Peppers, Spanish rice.
Is this Stuff and Nonsense?
Maybe. Ain’t it nice?
**
Questions for the reader:
Do lines 3 and 4 serve the poem, even though their tone is more serious? Why not or why?
Is Line 7 necessarily lascivious? Does a sympathetic yet prudish reader tend to perform mental gymnastics to un-lasciviize it!
Did the reader see the “punchline” final lines coming? Are they off-putting in their self-servitude?
Do these questions themselves become a second poem?
Please feel free to use the Comments section to post your answers.
as is common in the primordial early morning/i was draining an old man’s bladder/after having blown my nose
there was a sensation of my nose starting to run on the left side/but what fell from my nostril and into the bowl/was a fat wobbly raindrop/of blood
then there was another one
so I pulled up my underwear/flushed and unrolled a few squares of tp/tilted my head back/and staunched
it took a while/but the toilet paper squares finished their job/spotted but unsoaked
and now a video loop plays over and over in my head/of that first fat blooddrop going from my nostril/in super-slow motion/and splashing into the bowl water
see it wobble/mildly elongate/touching down with a splash like a space capsule/with three parachutes
a little, nay, micro, ocean filled with corpuscles and plasma/platelets/and all kinds of information/about my recent drug and alcohol use/(zero, he says smugly)/and cholesterol level/glucose and blood gases/forecast for probability of survival five years hence/(guessing 40% plus-or-minus ten)
and then it splashes into the already-splashed-into water/and is flushed away
and the city’s sewage is further enhanced/with a geezer poet’s blood and urine
you want a piece of me, phoenix, Arizona, usa?
here ’tis/with my best regards
at work/handshaking and high-fiving are rare/but hugs amongst females/and knuckles amongst all/are common
the modern knuckles greeting/also known as bumping fists/will also involve the adjacent forearms/if the greeters are extra friendly
there is more of an energy exchange
camaraderie is a nice part of the work experience/and the technology exists/for the user interface to enable knuckles/even unto the forearms/to be administered remotely/in the augmented reality of modern computing
which leads to a sneaky question…
will ai entities/do knuckles/to fool humans/or each other?
“I’ve got everything I had twenty-five years ago. It’s just lower.” Gypsy Rose Lee
in the culture in which i was raised/perkiness of breasts was a plus/sagginess a minus/and “man-boobs” is now in the vocabulary/along with the contractive form “moobs”
here I sit on the edge of my unshared bed/unperky/sagging/able to tuck pencils under my moobs/and have them stay snugly in place
but my flesh meltdown is not that bad yet/in that if I stood up and straightened my spine/the pencils would fall to the floor
but i saw the future in july 1984/when my 76-year-old grandfather was given a birthday shirt/and took off his to put it on
with his imperious pharaoh goatee/and majestic gravity-pulled bulk/he looked like the god of california mudslides
i do feel irrational shame/because of the sag-stigma imposed by my upbringing/and i imagine women feel worse/though shame at such a natural evolvement/is just plain silly
let us all laugh at the universe/and its outrageous second law of thermodynamics/and face, nay, REJOICE, in the phenomenon of sagging
as an artist i will think of my sag-in-progress/as my solo slow-moving-sculpture show
for i now accept and embrace the fact/that the way of all flesh/is downward
“I’ve got everything I had twenty-five years ago. It’s just lower.” Gypsy Rose Lee
in the culture in which i was raised/perkiness of breasts was a plus/sagginess a minus/and “man-boobs” is now in the vocabulary/along with the contractive form “moobs”
here I sit on the edge of my unshared bed/unperky/sagging/able to tuck pencils under my moobs/and have them stay snugly in place
but my flesh meltdown is not that bad yet/in that if I stood up and straightened my spine/the pencils would fall to the floor
but i saw the future in july 1984/when my 76-year-old grandfather was given a birthday shirt/and took off his to put it on
with his imperious pharaoh goatee/and majestic gravity-pulled bulk/he looked like the god of california mudslides
i do feel irrational shame/because of the sag-stigma imposed by my upbringing/and i imagine women feel worse/though shame at such a natural evolvement/is just plain silly
let us all laugh at the universe/and its outrageous second law of thermodynamics/and face, nay, REJOICE, in the phenomenon of sagging
as an artist i will think of my sag-in-progress/as my solo slow-moving-sculpture show
for i now accept and embrace the fact/that the way of all flesh/is downward
boy meets girl is obsolete/two entwined’s still incomplete/souls a-melding might encompass/permutative joins and rumpus
dovetail joints can be most durable/furniture and loves referrable/metronomic • syncopated/relatively cross-related
just don’t be a gropy mutt/creeply inappropriate/mindfulness of situations/leads to gleeful destinations
patience pays and may well deal you/into hands of kindly milieu/don’t forget to breathe and grin/if the fun and games begin
share a gaze and up the voltage/help reduce the feather’s moltage/loneliness evaporates/doves entail the coo of mates
Hi, I’m a Writer, and that’s a fact you can take to the bank, because you are reading some of my writing. You’re a Writer too, and you can prove it to me by leaving a comment. You can also help boost the net compassion in the world by leaving me a Like, and saying something nice about me in the comment that proves you’re a Writer.
Gullible people are more compassionate and worthy of existence than those cynical and nasty murderers out there. Gullible people know that when a word starts with a capital letter it means it is more Legitimate and Important. And even though they know deep down that the main reason a catchy title invites you to click a button is that someone wants you to buy some stuff, or at the very least become more aware of the stuff, that has nothing to do with the catchy title, the compassionate, Important Gullible Person will click it anyway, because they will learn that one irresistible Thing that the Title promised them they would learn.
Except sometimes the title cheats. For instance, Yes, there are 145 facts about gullibility. A few are described here. The rest of them, you Magnificent Reader and Writer, You, are rattling around in your own Sub-Subconcious, waiting for You to dredge them up. It will be hard but by the time You are done, O Illustrious One, YOU will be completely cured of Gullibility…
…unless the next clickbait you encounter has either a kitty-cat or a young female Human Being with a huge pair of hemispherical Glands.
Buy my stuff, wouldja please?
In the last few seconds, you drew breath,/Moved blood,/Built a thought.
You have decided to do these things/For your betterment/And to see what happens. Soon you will review/Plans for the maintenance of your livelihood,/Appeasements of the wants and aches that drive you,/And speculative wanderings/That lead you to places/Where you feel more welcome/And less wrong.
There are things you must fight for./You have decided to fight,/But you have not decided/How fiercely.
When you have decided/To channel your fierceness/Into that battle with that part of yourself/That has been wheedling you astray/In the name of Not-Ready-Yet…
And I-Shouldn’t-Have-To…
And I-Can’t…
When you have silenced that constant/Seductive whisper of doubt/Of distraction from your truer/Striving self…
Then all your other decisions will follow
Organically.
fifty-six years ago i owned a nehru jacket
i had some love beads too
and said “right on” a lot
my mom took a picture now lost of me in that jacket/and those beads/and that lank long hair/and that smug expression
fourteen-year-old poseur full of himself
no clue as to who the real nehru was
looking now like a piece of period furniture
One with Clay, Image and Text 