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Laugh, Emoji, Laugh

March 9, 2025
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Laugh, Emoji, Laugh

In the lively arena of Social Media political discussion

Someone might post something that espouses a viewpoint you abhor, and you counter their point with facts and logic, thinking your response beyond reproach and repercussion,

But behold, there are those who don’t like what you say and therefore don’t like you and they are happy to let you know

That you are the Scum of the Earth and you are The Problem and why don’t you crawl back under the rock you crawled under or make like a tree and leave or hang your head in shame and go.

Your logic, your facts, your reasoning cut no ice with certain true believers

Who think beliefs are like votes and once they have voted they are forever devoted and instead of counter-logic and superior reason they reach for pitchforks and torches and meat cleavers,

And one more tool in their arsenal is a favorite of passive-aggressives who have nothing to say because lazy or cowardly but oh gee

Behold a way to mark the territory: the insidious Laugh Emoji.

It is the weapon of choice for those too ineloquent to speak but with an urge to mock

And don’t want to take the time to comment, preferring to hit and run, deride and dash, with the subtlety of a caveman’s club rather than the finesse of the nerve pinch of Mr. Spock,

But when you ask What’s So Funny? they like as not use another Laugh Emoji, wiggling away easily

In the manner of the passive-aggressive, just effing with you with minimum effort, quickly and weaselly.

But, Friends, please keep on speaking your truths and taking your stands, because it is vital to oppose this Rush Limbaugh and that Tucker Carlson and other Bull Connor,

And if you get a Laugh Emoji, realize it says more about them than about you, and wear it like a badge of honor.

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Grateful acknowledgement to the spirit of Ogden Nash for the use of his style.

now smelt snowmelt

March 9, 2025
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the tilt of the planet offers up the north to the sun/and new warmth turns crystal to flow

the new heat activates an earthy redolence/activates hormonal response in creatures

and in the smelters of certain minds/the metal of new resolve is refined

hope shakes off sleep and rises

ends

March 7, 2025
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the garlic bread end beckoned/murmuring that seven oven minutes at threefifty/would make it perfect/and so it was

as i munched i realized/that the frequency of nocturnal bathroom visits/was increasing/and the next visit to the urologist/might be dire/and naturally my hypochondriacal imagination/leapt forward to end-of-life issues/stark as the zipper-sound/of a body bag

dancing away from such morbid musings/i thought happily of the weekend now imminent/and the poetry I would hear/the friends I would see/and the meal after the reading

but for some bizarre reason/the image of a scottish terrier’s hindquarters/with a furiously wagging tail/tugging the tender flesh of the perineum hither and yon/popped into my head/and won’t unpop

time to go back to a bedpartnerless bed

where my garlic breath will not offend

We Interrupt This Villanelle

March 6, 2025
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The Clay at times transcends decor and pottery

With shape and decoration proving timeless.

The potter wins the artisanal lottery

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And though some day time makes her feebly doddery

The work she’s done endures in realms not chimeless.

The Clay at times transcends–

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Now hold on just a second, Buster. You have set yourself up for failure. Sure, you will find more rhymes for Pottery and Timeless, but soon you’ll resort to Snottery and Slimeless and even worse, and the Poetry Gods will mock you dismissively. You’ve got the easy-rhyming Clay and the not-bad Potter and the even-better Pot to work with. Start over!

But–but–I wanted to do something with words no one has used before…

Sometimes there’s a reason for things never being done before, Bud. Here’s what you do. Go back to the potter’s wheel and MAKE that ‘timeless’ thing. It might take you a year, but it will be time well spent. Give the world something to marvel at, THEN write about it.

Yeah, that makes sense. But that’s doing things the hard way, isn’t it?

No, fella. That’s doing things the infinitely more rewarding way.

You’re right, dammit.

Now Get Crackin’!!

inci sion

March 5, 2025
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“stick…burn” the surgeon warned/as he injected yellow fluid into the hand

the local numbing agent acted quickly

an incision was made and spreaders made of it/a pair of conjoined parentheses

the surgeon deftly sliced compartmental tissue/that had impeded nerve transmission

soon he was satisfied with the loose weave/of the tissue

bound the parentheses back into a line/with internal stitches that were flesh-entombed

and two strips of surgical tape were crisscrossed over the cut

and gauze and an ace bandage completed the wrapture

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nine days later here we are/and on the hand is a rorschach test of sorts

you may see a petroglyph of a coyote/or the trickster himself

it could be a pond in winter/or an ideogram meaning “desolation”

or a bridge or pier

but the patient sees “slow healing”/and reminds himself

to be a patient patient

nocturnal flashmob

March 5, 2025
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this old man once got by/on an average of four hours of sleep per night/but now it is as if he is repaying an insomnia loan/and longer sleeps make for more vivid dreams

two nights ago he and his brothers were on a bus

(one brother in real life had passed on six years ago)

the bus dropped them off at a hotel near a ski resort in colorado/at which they intended to ski/and the deceased brother said/”i’m gonna look around”/and left the lobby/and the other brother was elsewhere as well

the clerk lady had a file on the dreamer/including the laminate from his high school i.d. card/with a faint image of his babyish younger self/and the clerk grinned and said “that’ll be a flat five dollars”/and the dreamer drew a crumpled fiver from his jeans/and pressed it between his hand and the lobby desk/and rubbed until it was as flat as he could get it

the little bell on the front door jingled/and a woman he did not recognize walked in/with a classmate and crony from long ago/and now the dreamer recognized the woman

she’d had some work done/smooth forehead/collagenned and dermabraded face/and buttressed breasts/but forty years ago she’d played him and dumped him/did the same to the classmate too/and now classmate and old flame/were making another go of it

she was flirty with the dreamer but he would have none of it/strode out the door and onto the brittle ice-encrusted snow/leaving stomp-prints in his wake

somehow he was on the roof/finding it vital to crawl lest he slide and fall/down and off the steep-pitched edge

a skier landed near him from above/grinned and “hiya”ed and pivoted/and launched herself off/and the dreamer was sure he knew her/but couldn’t give her a name

somehow he was on the ski lift/and a peruvian young woman was chatting him up/explaining that she loved to ski year round/and half a year hence she’d be back in peru/and here came the dismount point/and she said “chase me”/heading for a black-diamond trail

“no way” thought the dreamer/and slid toward a blue trail/on a burton board he was using for the first time/but it was just like a skateboard/and he deftly threaded through dozens of hesitant newbies/picking up speed/getting cocky/but here came an unavoidable TREE*#*#*

the dreamer gasped awake

uninjured/intensely relieved

and hobbled to the blindingly-lit bathroom/to complete his relief

The Umpire’s New Clothes

March 4, 2025
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Roy McRae was in a fix/Since Roy McRae was in a crash/And his Fiat Spider was burnt to a crisp/Along with his Umpire’s uniform.

His street clothes smoked his time too short/He ducked in a nearby menswear store/And behold a tuxedo fit well. With a snort/He snagged a cab. It began to storm.

He prayed that rain would postpone the game/Alas though the stadium was a dome/And he got there spiffy but wet of hame/And despaired that he didn’t have time to change.

The fans went crazy to see the fella/Unregulatory below the neck/But he said “Play Ball!” though no Cinderella/Felt more out of place, but hey, what the heck.

He called the pitches with delicacy/The batters baffled his voice so soft/The pitchers howling with unfettered glee/The fans as well. And then far aloft

A too-slow pitch was sent to the stands/And near the foul pole it did go/But Roy scratched his cap and threw up his hands/And cried, “Fair or foul? I just don’t know.“

And history, Friends, that day was made/And things will never be quite the same/For Roy McRae made the record book grade/As the first Ump ejected from the game.

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And the moral of the story is

Clothes make the person

So watch what you wear

Because things may worsen

If you’re too debonair.

app lickable

March 4, 2025
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i syrup my hotcakes with the sap app

cure my constipation with the crap app

get out of jail with the beat the rap app

and enjoy somnolent refreshment

with the nap app.

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did sammy davis junior need a tap app?

einstein a thinking cap app?

birds lack a flap app

and sexually transmitted diseases thrive

without a clap app.

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sometimes up the app-strewn road

we’ll ditch simulation

screw like bunny spawn like toad:

old school stimulation.

Just Like in the Movies

March 3, 2025
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Just like in the movies

The camera tracks you as you thread

Your way through foot traffic

To a restaurant entrance

And go in and spot the man

In the bulky brown coat and fedora

Gun at his elbow

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Cut to a closeup of the man’s face

He is kindly and grizzled

And old enough to be your dad

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He is exactly old enough to be your dad

Because he is your dad

And you two are following a script

Co-written by the two of you

To show your mom on her birthday

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You tried to make it Hitchcockean

Because Mom is a Hitchcock fan

And so the gun is a Maguffin

And the script is laced with doom words

Like “fatal” and “enigmatic”

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The two of you discuss an evil woman

Whose modus operandi is death by kindness

Who is a nefarious genius who must be…

Eliminated? Stopped? Done away with?

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“The trouble is, I love her,” says the man

“God help me, I love her too,” says the girl

And they break character

Turn to face the rented cinematic drone

And say, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!”

.

It’s exactly like the movies

Because it is a movie

An indie done on a shoestring

And Mom’s going to love it

basket wordweaving

March 2, 2025
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(Source: Wikipedia)

basket wordweaving

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a nest is a basket of birdies;

a basket for peaches changed histories;

and ella sang in the late thirties

of tiskets and taskets and mysteries.

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containers of stiff-fibered lattices

hold picnics or handhelds or bread,

while catholic uniforms plaid a sis

who basketless may go unfed.

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the slangness of basket weaves parity

with genitals, bowlsmoke and bastards,

a versatile twisting of clarity

and provenance dim-distant-pastwards.

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“so silly”–oh, really? believing

that wordplay and mindflex may yield

new pathways to language beweaving

new verbiage is this poet’s shield.

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so gather your own stalky fibers

and weave–it is not a big ask,

you may become language macgyvers

and in your own basketing bask.

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Notes: The early game of Basketball involved a peach basket. Ella Fitzgerald recorded “A-Tisket A-Tasket” in 1938, overriding the objections of her record label, and her career skyrocketed. Baskets come in many different custom, function-related designs. The Urban Dictionary has five pages’ worth of words and phrases involving variations of “basket.” “MacGyver” was a TV series whose main character was famous for improvising solutions to dire situations with unusual materials at hand. And Catholic uniforms got dragged in by the heels simply because of a need for a rhyme with “lattices.”