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gilgamesh is gone

December 18, 2025
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“Whence Came We? What Are We? Whither Go We?” –Title to one of Paul Gauguin’s most mysterious paintings

about four thousand days ago

plus or minus an order of magnitude or two

there was a great local flood

and people have remembered it in myths

because myths inspire and drive us

(just ask tolkien or campbell)

..

meanwhile it is with great sadness that we note

that just this week raw tragedy occurred

two deaths

a father and mother done in by a berserker son

and all kinds of wounds are fresh

in millions of souls

wounds inflicted by the stark wrongness

of loving parents slain

by a son who would not be helped

..

surely new myths are already being wrought

because we like stories

and what a story premise we have here

but the problem with myths

is that they act as baffles to understanding

they act to mislead us from wisdom

..

now it is especially important

for us to discard our love for a juicy narrative

and try to arrive at understanding of this nihilistic act

and with that understanding

however minuscule

arrive at a means of coping

..

gilgamesh of legend

survivor of the flood

is gone

if he ever was here

and make-believe is good for some things

horrendous for others

rude rage

December 17, 2025
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some time in the last fifty years

“quality control” became “quality assurance”

and more recently

“problems” became “issues”

but, marketing aside, rage turns people with weapons

into murderers

and free-floating rage

is on the rise

hatred has waxed and lightheartedness waned

..

some time after rodney king got his meat tenderized

by a gang of cops with their handheld hitting devices

he asked “can’t we all just get along?”

but all of us getting along would be catastrophic

for the manufacturers of weapons

so no, rodney, we won’t be getting along

any time soon

..

a man with fruit cart placed himself in harm’s way

to keep a gunman from making holes in some folks

not of his faith

and the gunman made two holes in his arm

..

frustration makes us ruder

and may make us enraged

and abraham zapruder

our smartphone use presaged.

Still Life with Choppers, Burrito, and Salsa Bowl

December 16, 2025
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Still Life with Choppers, Burrito, and Salsa Bowl

Attention K-Mart Shoppers¹

The Blue-Light Special², Choppers,

Is Aisle Five–and Neat-O³

We throw in a Burrito⁴

With bowl of Salsa Rojo⁵

Très chic⁶, Tré Cool⁷, très Boho⁸

A feast of contrariety

In Southwest High Society⁹.

..

¹ Kmart was a supermarket chain popular in the 20th Century. It still has an online presence but aside from Miami and Guam the brick&mortar empire it once was is gone.

² The Blue Light Special was a Kmart flash sale that lasted as long as a rotating blue light shone and twirled.

³ When I was ten in 1964 “Neat-O” meant fun, groovy,desirable. Its etymology might owe something to the Beatnik era.–“Daddy-O” for instance.

⁴ A Burrito is a tortilla encasing anything from beans and cheese to chile-marinated meat. Spanish for “little donkey.”

⁵ The two major salsas are salsa rojo (red) and salsa verde (green).

⁶ French for “quite fashionable.”

⁷ Nom de guerre of Frank Edwin Wright III of Green Day fame.

⁸ Short for Bohemian, loosely meaning “unconventional.”

⁹ Needed a phrase to rhyme with Contrariety.

..

Endnote: the “Choppers” in the photo are a 3D-printed cast of my upper and lower left back teeth, made to enable casting of a molar crown in the upper.An oblong scanning device was manipulated around that sector of my mouth by a dental tech.

gland total

December 15, 2025
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so i was curious as to how many glands we contain

and got a lot of answers but none conclusive

one source says eight major glands

another says seven

a total of 43 shows up elsewhere

and yet another says the gland total is thousands

..

new-to-me words show up too

exocrine

eccrine

apocrine

ductless

..

all agree that the largest gland is the liver

none agree on the total number of glands

..

i submit that one of the mysteries of life

is glandularity

–strike “mysteries”

insert “secrets”

–strike “secrets”

sub “secretes”

–mind-boggling, isn’t it, that our secrets may be outnumbered by our secretions?

it is a gland canyon of arcana

and it’s hard to wrap my gland-habituated brain around it

..

i could go on and on ad infinitum

and some secretion urges me to do so

but another accuses me of being a silly wordplayer

and punster

shamelessly

glandstanding

brew stew

December 14, 2025
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barley, baby carrots,

and a chicken all in chunks,

mushrooms, and a veg stock,

and some green peas and bell peppers,

don’t forget the onions and some cauliflower hunks,

brewing up a stew that’s fit for anti-vegan monks,

governors and non-contagious medicated lepers,

couriers, deliverers,

and good ole boy forklift shleppers,

metaphoric ferrets

and a brace of almond sliverers.

..

stew to eat

for a brew of folks.

musing’s sweet

if we’re free of yokes.

J and the Legal Heineken

December 13, 2025
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J and the Legal Heineken

Once upon a couple months ago I was working

And I was in a time crunch

And my co-worker Jalen

Sometimes known as J

Dropped what he was doing to help me

And I was grateful

And I asked him what his favorite beer was

And he said “Heineken”

And I told him

There was a Heineken in his future

But there’s a (completely reasonable) rule

Forbidding employees to bring alcohol

To the workplace

So I mulled it over

And got the notion

That the Heineken in J’s future

Would be in the form of a DRAWING

Of a Heineken

So I drew it

And J next to it

And it looked OK but not quite right

And the oinner voice that tells me what to do said

“Draw his hand holding up the bottle”

So I did

But the pencil’s eraser didn’t erase right

Smeared rather than erased

Being old and oxidized

So I said the hell with erasure

And that’s why the hand is a little ghostly

But J still liked the drawing

And gave me permission

To post it on social media

Like this.

..

He’s a good guy.

variations on a dream

December 11, 2025
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whew. woke up just in time. the evil overlords/had me. my cover was blown, my whereabouts known,/and this minute the bald guy with the cigarette holder,/an obvious admirer of the late dr. hunter s. thompson,/had a gun on me…

just woke up. lots of colors./we were playing hopscotch near piccadilly circus/when the ghost of shakespeare,/head shaven, smoking a virginia slim on a long ivory holder,/was showing me the cap gun i had owned as a child./he handed it to me,/and I removed the roll of caps, put the roll/on the sidewalk, and slammed/it with a hammer. at that exact moment…

wow, that was a doozy. i was disguising myself. shaved head, rouged cheeks, fishnet stockings on a garter belt./the only instructions from hq were “dress in drag and carry your walther ppk between the peaks of your falsies, in plain sight.”//i wonder, not for the first time, if i am being set up.

ugh. thank gog I woke up. damn, i need a cigarette. –hey, wait, i don’t smoke. maybe i’m not awake yet…

lament, december 2025

December 9, 2025
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“Get busy livin, or get busy dyin.” Stephen King

for all intents and nervousness

agendas are not purposeless

though some have improprieties

to bring a bull moose to its sneeze

indicativity’s inactive

as sleazy actions are redactive

though elton john and kiki dee meant

well, disclosured per agreement

Their names dragged in their names now drop

along with cher and iggy pop

legitimizing stance anarchic

and Who knows what makes ringo starr tick

l’envoi

so many of our thumbs a-twiddle

not giving effs for sphinx nor riddle

redact, distract, enact, pretend

we still feel like we’re near

The End

whirrd

December 9, 2025
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whirrd

“The right word is the unexpected word.” Frederik Pohl, introducing The Best of Cordwainer Smith

three caffeines and i am wired/good to go no longer tired/let my wordsmith’s finger wield/this touch-sensitivish field

word be whirrd near-homophonic/aspirate that aitch atonic/ascertain a certain smuggish/air when jazzed-up coffee-muggish

tighten up those loosish ens/comically let’s be frenz¹/tragic cali mourn our bros²

we may see them

no one noes

..

¹Ron Frenz. “Ronald Wade ‘Ron’ Frenz (born February 1, 1960) is an American comics artist known for his work for Marvel Comics. He is well known for his 1980s work on The Amazing Spider-Man, particularly introducing the hero’s black costume, and later for his work on Spider-Girl and Thor…” Wikipedia

²Along with my nuclear family, I have lost brotherly cousins of the Householder clan who lived in California.

boy king

December 9, 2025
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let’s pick a warning label

homicidal if exposed is succinct

the boy king asked Russia to find her e-mails

and his henchman says ‘kill them all’

..

transparent if scrutinized works too

boy king wants Greenland

which in a heartbreakingly few years

will become one of the last livable places

and he works tirelessly to make this planet less inhabitable, with the grinning help of the prince with the bone saw fetish, equally homicidal if exposed

but there’s not enough room on Greenland for former legal US residents and the Saudi Arabian royal family too

so he’s imposed a quota of 3000 deportations a day

to thin the herd before he herds the rest

to the last bit of green

..

boy king got in a little trouble for boinking a porn star

and then killing the story with 130 grand

so that he could become king

..

he is a real prince of a king

with his trading cards and other ikonography

a wannabe pope and gunslinger and superman too

and yet ask a follower and they thank God he is king

and add that the despicable Left

would destroy our country if we let them

..

something is rotten in non-Denmark, my friends

it is time to scour the Shire