you walk in/it is unusually quiet/a few pairs of eyes flicker from you to a woman you do not know
someone pokes their head into the break room/and says Staff Meeting In The Boardroom Now
you get a few more looks
you find your seat nearest the exit
the Director comes in and glances at you with a twinkle in his eyes
and you exhale as you realize
this is not an execution
but the dubbing of a knight
my adult-life home town was named after a mythic bird who was periodically conflagationally consumed and then was reborn from ash
but a spreading fungus is a more apt comparator
aerial maps over time show urban development filling topographical nooks and cartological crannies
and photos over time of camelback mountain taken from east of 40th street and south of camelback road show expensive houses climbing the mountain like lurch-stepped hikers
.
climate change has amped the furnace roar of this Infernal paradise
and entrickled the cascade of Verde salt and Colorado rivers
and new residents migrating from California to escape wildfires are just as thirsty as the rest of us
.
this is my home and my life
but i have moved before
the piece i made sunday looked a bit like oscar wilde/he also looked lonesome/so i made him some friends
in a couple of days they will dry/and at a proper time/into the kiln they will go
and soon they will have a board to stand on
and more friends
and friendly foes
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
Despite having created her, I know little about this sweet old lady except that she is a work in progress and is surprised and overjoyed to exist.
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.
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.
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
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
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
