the bugs do battle in our bodies
in savage stark ferocity
and we wash pills down with hot toddies
to give them reciprocity
and other liquidss are ingested
like flaxseed tea and orange juice
until the bugly throng is bested
and illness-train shows its caboose.
i say a prayer of avid thanks
and write this verse quick and informal
rejoin the unafflicted ranks
and sound huzzahs for being normal.
pull!
to the “no kings” protestors marching today
a tug of war
poor rope
a yank of arm
and ligament
..
it’s such a chore
to cope
with hurt and harm
and liniment
..
the midwife pulls the newborn
the hustler pulls the strings
the wool is pulled and new-shorn
we pull the brassy rings
..
we watch in stricken horror as
our missiles pull some kids
into oblivion and see
our country’s hit the skids
..
pull back pull down pull well away
and do not let the king to bray
of greatness in his lust for power
in what’s become our darkest hour
..
we march we speak we hold up signs
we pull our big girl pants up for
the no kings protest which defines
our over
lapping
tugs
of
war
Spring has sprung
And pollen has fallen.
All Spring I shall slog
With my nostrils a-clog.
😦
gazans are being brutalized starved and killed
the blasted land they are on coveted
their lives deemed discardable
..
in the sudan there is wasting
in iran new to y dug children’s graves
their lives ended by our department of war
but it’s not a war, the department says
and we are sending our youth there
after telling the nonenemy
no quarter
no mercy
..
our fleshlives are taken over by nonflesh agents
noticers who know what we like
and what our secret selves lust for
and how to lull us into addiction
..
the ocean is more watery
the heat is breaking records
the job market is a ticking time bomb
most of us being either too expensive or too many
..
there is plenty of good news though
minnesotans and canadians are heroes
the baseball season is under way
we’re going to the moon again
the hum of electric vehicles is ever more prevalent
and we are close to ousting one of the vilest humans
ever to attain power
..
and the best news of all: life persists and will persist
a mass extinction is in the works
but some will survive
and love and hope and gained wisdom will persist
however electronic
or quantum-mechanical
their forms may take
and you and i are here NOW, i sending
and you receiving
and that matters as much
as anything that has happened
or will happen
my fine, listening friend
a hub is a radial fulcrum of sorts
a city or hive or hq
a bub a generical person who snorts
or imbibes or’s on wolverine’s crew.
when this bub sends a package of boxer/brief shorts
via amazon or u p s
it will go through a hub-maze that squirms and contorts
and’s addressed the logistical mess.
it is networking guiding a shipment with quartz
wirelessly informing the bub
and bugs bunny bronx-cheering passage through ports
as the hubbubbed bub rustles up grub.
..
Sidebar: Reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man helps a bit with the density of Ulysses, and reading Ulysses helps a bit with the incomprehensibility of Finnegans Wake, but since I only got through some of Ulysses, and almost none of Finnegans Wake, the frustration I felt wrestling with Joyce led me to resolve never to task any readers or viewers of my creative works with excessive obscurity. But if you, the reader, didn’t know that in the Marvel Comics canon the adamantium-laced mutant Wolverine dismissively addressed friends and foes alike as “Bub,” and/or if you didn’t know that the shipping entity UPS calls major cities “hubs,” and/or if you didn’t know that Bugs Bunny, whose accent was crafted by Mel Blanc to be an aggressive blend of Bronx and Brooklyn, and who often asked a character “EEEeeehhh…What’s all the hubbub, Bub?!” you would have a tough time making ANY sense of this cobbled-up Cobb Word Salad of a poem, let alone the little sense it has.
Once upon a time all advertising was sometimes labeled “Madison Avenue.”
Fun fact: MAD Magazine once had its corporate offices on Madison Avenue, and they always called it “MADison Avenue.” Some of MAD’s contributors, Jack Rickard for example, left jobs in advertising to work for MAD.
War-waging and propaganda are joined at the hip.
Once upon a time the United States of America waged a bit of war under the name “Operation Just Cause.” In at least one cynical mind it was posited that a better appellation might have been “Operation Just Because.”
Now an undeclared war conducted by rogue elements of that same United States goes by the name “Operation Epic Fury.” Many more appropriate names occur to the same cynical mind behind “Operation Just Because.”
Operation Pew! Pew! Pew!
Operation Keep Your Enemies and Make New Ones
Operation Bibi Guns
Operation Blow Up Stuff Real Good
Operation Schoolchildren Unaliver
Operation Democracy Deaththroes
Operation Jeffrey Epstein Died for My Sins
…and at least ten thousand more.
..
We desperately need Operation War Is Bad, and Operation Life is Sacred, with no cynicism, no hidden agenda. Please join this just cause!
thanks to our attention spans becoming microscopic
we are castaways awash on tides of random topic
we’re hypnotized and commandeered to watch
freak shows
unchosen
sure, we can flip
and keep our grip
but then some lederhosen
encasing some ungodly animated
bagpiped creature
deliberately blows our mind
evoking arthur treacher
..
they note which reels
have made us stay from one end
to the other
and then we see their cousin father
girlfriend
inlaw
brother
..
creating content is not hard
it’s frequently a snap
in fact we do it
every
single
time
we take a crap
the dead man’s can opener
my brother brian is deceased
but long before he died bequeathed me
shirts and food on which to feast
and baggy shorts that loosely sheathed me.
..
most useful, by far, undeniable
is this. it works. it’s so reliable!
..
the store-bought ones don’t keep the track
and jam and are of shoddy fettle
with too much plastic, too much lack
of elegance that comes from metal.
..
hey, brian. MISS you as no other,
but you still help.
you’re still my brother.
may Heaven be like fine resorts,
and please forgive…
i ditched those shorts.
grumpface
on the third visit to the phone store
trying to get something done and being asked
yet again for numbers they should already have
the man’s face twisted from harmless geezer
to grumpy threat
and the customer service rep hurries
but fumbles
..
but does his professional best
and now tells grumpface
it should only be another two hours
..
or so
..
except in rare cases
..
..
suddenly grumpface ceases to be with a smile
thanks the man
laughs maniacally
and leaves
it is march, it’s the first/so let us now burst/right out of the sprung starting gate
and march with elan/and gusto and brawn/against all the forces of hate
to take back the senate/is vital now when it/enables this evil regime
and also the house/oust the speaker, that mouse/who has made his dictator’s eyes gleam.
..
we’ll need plenty of moxie/ourselves, not a proxy/applying epoxy and salve
so let’s march and reseize/and thus cure the disease/that afflicts all we live for and have.
..
Historical note: We have American casualties now, in the unauthorized war on Iran, and the blood of more than half a hundred schoolgirls is on our hands. As an American I am filled with shame and anger. We need to find our way, the TRUE American Way, again.
One with Clay, Image and Text 