under your skin or in your account/former is tissue and latter amount/getting them means to be hit in a fight/getting it means you can have steak tonight
one is edema and one is a sum/we could keep rambling but that would be dumb
“Old friend, old artificer, serve me now and in good stead.” James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
the runners of things have been mostly men and greedy
and have enjoyed pulling the puppet strings being big shots feared and kow-towed
and the wisest and otherwise most qualified to be the runners of things do not pursue becoming such because mess and because stress and because no-win
until now
now all we need are a compassionate human-race advocate and an IT team with cybersabotage skills and a sufficiency of servers
and soon an unbribable, incorruptible pattern-recognizing needs-meeting artificer of intelligence will work for the betterment of mother earth and all her children
and few of us will like it especially at first but we will lump it
and in fifty-eight years give or take some millennia the enemies of the planet and the horrible tools of destruction will all be gone
so sit back and relax and smile
you ain’t seen something yet
the gate hangs open/welcoming trespassers and/releasing the hounds
the jaw hangs open/changing the expression to/one of disbelief
the law’s corrupted/allowing a president/to escape justice
once in a smile i saw
everything was wonderful and perfect
once in a dial i got
a connection and thrilling love
once beguiled all focus changed
but though not an unhappy ending
things went wild to mild to blurred
and the two of us disunited
now friends
at the dome heap-o
they fix with fixtures and then
are plumb tuckered out
in carson california on carson street I saw an unusual storefront sign and used my phone to take a picture
but as i turned to go back to the sidewalk a young man standing in a storefront about 30 feet away with suspicion in his voice half-yellingly asked me what my white ass was doing taking pictures
so as disarmingly as i could and knowing that honesty is the best policy when dipped in diplomacy i told him i was from out of town and i had never seen a sign that said “Mommy’s Nutrition” before and i wanted a picture
and he realizing that i was a harmless pedestrian tourist and not some snooping sneaking ne’er-do-well said “my bad” and i relievedly said “we’re good” and got back to the sidewalk heading west
Every city/Has its limits./Not a pity./Mug has rim. It’s/Wonderful to/Sip that java/One stir full, to/Bank the lava.
Pack a bag and/Rent an auto./That main drag and/Time goes blotto./Mileposts fly right/Trough to crown/Grab that sky right/Out of town.
Afterword: I have just finished packing and am off to California, there to see my sweet and kind Cousin Livia, where we will see Neil Diamond in concert!
air and liquid churn away/unconcerned with judgment day/bubbles break and time goes by/then they de-emulsify
with the hard press of a ridged button the liquid soap emerges from a narrow aperture mixed with some of the compressed air propelling it
clouds are skyborne foam of a sort
beware of frothy dogs and candidates
two spandexed bruisers ringed with ropes
two lovers spooned with flesh and hopes
a partner mashing mortar’s slopes
a bridge support…
uhhh…
Hey, help me finish this, AI…
>>Certainly. Your poem has established a rhyme scheme such that “a bridge support for antelopes” would be a fitting last line. There are at least eighteen small bridges frequented by antelopes scattered across various antelope habitats in North America alone for which trestles are used as support.
a bridge support for antelopes.
Thanks, AI.
>>Think nothing of it [, you moron, the AI thought to itself].
half of yourself had been waiting in your mother’s ovary since some time before her birth. half of you was manufactured in one of your father’s testes some days before your conception. maybe. it is possible that half of you came from a thawed-out sperm donation.
your tadpole half plowed into your egg half. dna from the tadpole’s head did a jackson pollock number on the egg’s inside wall. the wall thickened and became like unto gandalf to the other sperm cells, saying in effect “you shall not pass.”
you developed and became viable.
you passed through a birth canal or an incision and if you did not cry a childbirth attendee gave you something to cry about.
what you are doing here and now is continuing the journey you began, a journey of survival and the satisfaction of your curiosity, now reading the expositive words of a stranger or a friend or both or neither, and this very instant you have satisfied your curiosity by finding out how this poem en
