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
Today is my brother Harold’s 73rd birthday.
I talked to his wonderful spouse Terry earlier this morning. The plan is for me to meet them tomorrow at the Olive Garden nearest where they live. It will be there and then that I present Harold with a small gift bag containing these two ceramics works of mine, one functional, one whimsical.
Harold doesn’t do social media to speak of, so I have no fear that I am spoiling the surprise. It tickles me to think that people in the Etherverse will know in advance that this will happen, just as if this were a surprise party and they were hidden in the living room waiting for him to come home.
Happy Birthday, Brother.
we are as decent and honest as our leaders, God help us
so now we are neither decent nor honest
we are Hellbound
with blooded hands and dreams of the malnourished children we knowingly abandoned
the weight of our recent myriad sins
heavy as a calving edge of Antarctica
sliding into the cold sea
some of us fight
but ineffectively so far
our waving signs no match for the punches in the face delivered by mayhem-gleeful malicious, masked fools and goons
who round brown folk up
for the express purpose of fucking them up with extreme prejudice
it is true that we would be better off without a small few of them
but the powers that be act as if due process is a mosquito
to be waved off or smashed
and so they scoop em up and ship em out and see what happens
.
fight harder friends
stay decent and honest and unhateful
undo this doom
before it is ratified
we are in the twilight of manual labor
and the work i do slicing tomatoes will dry up sooner or later.
but till it does I put on six gloves–
vinyl, cut-resistant mesh, vinyl–
and with my left three-gloved hand I pluck a well-washed tomato from a container,
place it stem-orificed down on the runway of the nonmotorized tomato slicer,
and with my elbow tucked in, in the manner of a boxer delivering a body blow to an opponent, ram the tomato through a parallel set of blades remindful of open venetian blinds,
while my right hand waits on the other side of the blades
to catch the freshly subdivided tomato.
that’s the plan, anyway. in a perfect world with ripe yet firm tomatoes and a slicer with new blades, it is a lovely process.
today was unlovely.
all tomatoes are not created equal. most in a case i was slicing were overripe. more than one of this batch also had skins cut-resistant enough so that the imposed pressure of blades-ramming caused a rupture, jamming the tomato in the blades and spraying juice and seeds.
one tomato had the temerity to spit in my eye.
halfway through my shift i changed aprons, the sprayscape looking like something done on canvas by one of the lesser abstract impressionists.
i finished my shift, drove home, and shed tomato-redolent clothing, but would not be surprised if my hair retained some of the plant-based fragrance, even though I wear a bouffant hair net on the job.
but it is honest work…declaims the Tomatoman.
some Republican lawmakers were gloaty yesterday
they thought they had won
because what they called “the big, beautiful bill” got shoehorned into american history
.
they failed to realize that what they won
was future ignominy
shame
scorn
.
they voted against we the majority of people
and they voted for the tawdry gimmegimmegimme of those who think having more than they could possibly spend in five lifetimes entitles them to more
they have trampled on the flag that represents liberty and justice for all
and historians will note this
.
The America of Liberty and Justice for All IS Beautiful
just as those who have forsaken her are u g l y
Tomorrow a “Big Beautiful Bill” will be signed into law
It will enable parasitic moneybaggers to continue their bloodsucking behavior
It will take food from the mouths of hungry children and elders
It will make the attainment of quality healthcare suddenly nigh-impossible for more than ten million American citizens
And it will provide bonus incentives for mercenary kidnappers
∆∆∆∆∆
Its signing date coincides with the 249th anniversary of the publication of the Declaration of Independence, a date traditionally referred to as Independence Day
And it is generally accompanied by the ignition of all manner of fireworks
The noise makes some dogs trembled or hide or howl
The burnt gunpowder adds tons of Particulate matter into an already-befouled atmosphere
It is a glorification of explosive incandescence
And tomorrow it will be celebrating the full and wretched rekindling of tyranny
∆∆∆∆∆
It’s hard to watch fireworks when your head droops
With grief
Behold a thug who lusts to gaff
Reduce redact and ravage so
Upload depletion unto chaff/Sheer
Tyranny. It’s ABC
Extermination’s nigh. Best flee
A Serious Look at Language, with a Great Deal of Inadvertent Giggling and Smirking, etc.
The popular Scrabble-esque game Words With Friends
Permits many F-words,
But will not allow at least one.
Now, DILDO is obviously sexually connotative
But Words with Friends, as demonstrated above,
Allows its use.
I confess I blushed as I used it,
The more so since my opponent had a female name,
And I doubt if I have ever met or talked to her
In real life.
I have a real-life female friend
With whom I play WWF on a daily basis,
And sometimes our use of sexual words,
Though always strategic and never gratuitous,
Seems downright flirty.
The current President of the United States,
After having dropped bombs on faraway Iran
Without Congressional approval,
Dropped an F-Bomb while knowingly in view
Of recording devices, including video,
Because two countries were not doing
What he wanted them to do.
This may result in an increased proliferation
Of F-bombs amongst schoolchildren
For whom POTUS is, if not a role model, an excuse.
There is a book that permits me to call him
And his “Big, Beautiful Bill”
A thief
And his satchel of burglar tools.
The book is my Dictionary.
