with some ugly strokes of the pen
a guy who helped hamas launder millions skates
dozens of violent protesters skate
defrauders not only skate, but get to keep the money defrauded from the victims
all this from a joker who has intoned
“LAW…AND…ORDER…” over and over and over
..
pardon my skepticism
pardon my disgust
for i do not pardon the stink of corruption
there was a throbbing in his lower neck
there was a throbbing in her yearning heart
and so they got together/and ran in rainy weather/and shackled passion in a horse-drawn cart
..
her parents were aghast agape appalled
his parents had long fled this mortal coil
and so they fled the scene/and lived aloft serene/and made ends meet with kisses books and toil
..
we leave them near his deathbed decades hence
their daughter and their grandkids leave as asked
he says what gracious robbery/you gave with ardent throbbery/i throb with you my truest love u n m a s k d
o flow and ebb go lofty thoughts go interest rates go astronauts and like the tide the beach is littered with driftwood kelp and dreams embittered
we school we strive we get professional as hair and hopes become recessional whilst meters run and turnstiles click and pinpoint chaos makes us sick
home stretch is full of yawn and laze and cortex blurs our minds to haze as vultures wheel as heirs lick chops to flutter in when heartbeat stops
but i am here to tell you reader that your fine self is your best leader and striving’s in you for to go into the midst
turn ebb to flow
i am well into my eighth decade
and so am beset by pill pushers
insisting that certain medications are vital
lest i die
..
blood pressure/cholesterol/glucose level/prostate
need atenolol/rosuvastatin/metformin/tamsulosin
and there go $240 a year
..
my phone plan is $55/mo
anti-virus a hundred a year or so
entertainment and news subscriptions $25/mo
website $104/year
restaurant tips in the hundreds per year
car washes eight dollars a pop
cardboard-sign-beggars’ donations–
today a man slumped sitting against a mcdonald’s wall asked me for a cigarette/i told him i didn’t smoke/he said something unintelligible/i said “what?”/he mumbled again/i came closer per his scheme and said “what?? I am hard of hearing”/he said “do you have a dollar?”/and i said “yes, but i am going to take it somewhere else” and walked away/for i had sized him up and concluded that my dollar would add to his death spiral
but later of course i schmeared a lady with a shopping cart with a fiber
so it goes in my microeconomic universe
and it may well be the death of me
gather round the watering bowl
the clay-form array on the ware board looked as if
they were waiting for some water in brother bowl
..
the chess pieces are bone dry
the bowl and birds were just made
and are still wet
..
when all are dry they will be bisque fired
and then glazed and glaze fired
a continuance of a tradition
that began millennia ago
..
and when the glazed ware emerges from the kiln
perhaps there will be another gathering
around the bowl
..
perhaps some non-canterbury tales told
perhaps love made
swollen eyelid
an eye is awry.
its lid hoods and occludes the iris
and tickles the lachrymal duct so that it weeps
and the tear-filmed pupil makes for blurrish vision
and the man who owns the eye
feels like quasimodo or someone
even more grotesque. he worries
that it may be a staph infection
or, worse, some flesh-eating parasite
chewing his head away.
..
he tries to dismiss such foolish thoughts
by reminding himself
of a lifetime of hypochondria
and the many oh-i’m-gonna-die episodes
that turned out to be laughably untrue.
..
a visit to urgent care
would be a resounding smack in the pocketbook
even if they don’t upsell him like the charming lady
doc who said “you have earwax. want me to
take care of it?” and that two-minute tune-up
cost forty additional out-of-pocket bucks.
..
he looks in the mirror and smiles
with the half of his mouth on the unaffected,
uninfected side.
tries to, anyway.
he wanted to make a comedy/tragedy mask
out of his single face but the other half of his mouth
insists on half-smiling too.
now he half-laughs at his melancholic vanity.
“That’s Life,” he murmurs,
and feels better.
written in a dentist’s chair as things got ever weirder
applying numbing jelly
for yet more numbing juice
the quadrant on the telly
was scanned for 3D use
a bib atop a belly
forestalls a leak’s abuse
and sandro botticelli
bullwinkles with a moose
a subject met a verb
pretended with a slur
put emphasis on i
let meaning be denied
ecstatic yet unsure
A hint for puzzled readers: Not all koans are questions. And not all murder mysteries involve death.
the hook at the end of the cable of the crane
rises. the strap tied to the hook stretches
and creaks. the cargo enwrapped in strapping
stirs and scrapes along the gravelly ground, then,
swinging into the air, is briefly silent as it
dangles aloft and slowly
spins.
..
a few seconds later and a dozen feet in the air
a flaw in the strap gives and stretches and snaps
and the cargo falls and crashes, wood-
box corner first, bursting the box, and the metal
inside clashes and screams,
ruining the delicate mechanisms,
destroying the precise arrays they described.
..
the crew chief swears,
the crane operator stares,
and the project manager slips into his office
to weep.
a mare drops her foal in a light rain and the
foal gains a stance like a doomed tripod and blinks
away raindrops and takes hesitant steps and takes in
the rained-on field and her blood and bone say
this’ll do
she returns to her mother and her mother gives suck
..
is there love between them?
look at them
and learn of a love beyond your ken
One with Clay, Image and Text 