fedoraku
headwear for gumshoes/impractical and stylish/some banded some plain
fedoraku2
on redondo pier/my then love fedora’d me/so adorably
capku
seed corn politics/ball teams philosophies all/on billboard foreheads
roundwearku
oliver hardy/wore a derby but patrick/macnee a bowler
tangentialechoku
a bowling champ goes/to the kentucky derby/and says “whoops–wrong hat”
Money stuffs a wallet,
Pizza stuffs a face.
Most downtowns are overstuffed
With hurting human race.
Pillows have their eiderdown
Turkeys breaded sausage.
Bonnie had her Clyde. A frown
Is stuffed with soured tossage.
Alveoli plump with oxy,
Peppers, Spanish rice.
Is this Stuff and Nonsense?
Maybe. Ain’t it nice?
**
Questions for the reader:
Do lines 3 and 4 serve the poem, even though their tone is more serious? Why not or why?
Is Line 7 necessarily lascivious? Does a sympathetic yet prudish reader tend to perform mental gymnastics to un-lasciviize it!
Did the reader see the “punchline” final lines coming? Are they off-putting in their self-servitude?
Do these questions themselves become a second poem?
Please feel free to use the Comments section to post your answers.
as is common in the primordial early morning/i was draining an old man’s bladder/after having blown my nose
there was a sensation of my nose starting to run on the left side/but what fell from my nostril and into the bowl/was a fat wobbly raindrop/of blood
then there was another one
so I pulled up my underwear/flushed and unrolled a few squares of tp/tilted my head back/and staunched
it took a while/but the toilet paper squares finished their job/spotted but unsoaked
and now a video loop plays over and over in my head/of that first fat blooddrop going from my nostril/in super-slow motion/and splashing into the bowl water
see it wobble/mildly elongate/touching down with a splash like a space capsule/with three parachutes
a little, nay, micro, ocean filled with corpuscles and plasma/platelets/and all kinds of information/about my recent drug and alcohol use/(zero, he says smugly)/and cholesterol level/glucose and blood gases/forecast for probability of survival five years hence/(guessing 40% plus-or-minus ten)
and then it splashes into the already-splashed-into water/and is flushed away
and the city’s sewage is further enhanced/with a geezer poet’s blood and urine
you want a piece of me, phoenix, Arizona, usa?
here ’tis/with my best regards
at work/handshaking and high-fiving are rare/but hugs amongst females/and knuckles amongst all/are common
the modern knuckles greeting/also known as bumping fists/will also involve the adjacent forearms/if the greeters are extra friendly
there is more of an energy exchange
camaraderie is a nice part of the work experience/and the technology exists/for the user interface to enable knuckles/even unto the forearms/to be administered remotely/in the augmented reality of modern computing
which leads to a sneaky question…
will ai entities/do knuckles/to fool humans/or each other?
boy meets girl is obsolete/two entwined’s still incomplete/souls a-melding might encompass/permutative joins and rumpus
dovetail joints can be most durable/furniture and loves referrable/metronomic • syncopated/relatively cross-related
just don’t be a gropy mutt/creeply inappropriate/mindfulness of situations/leads to gleeful destinations
patience pays and may well deal you/into hands of kindly milieu/don’t forget to breathe and grin/if the fun and games begin
share a gaze and up the voltage/help reduce the feather’s moltage/loneliness evaporates/doves entail the coo of mates
In the last few seconds, you drew breath,/Moved blood,/Built a thought.
You have decided to do these things/For your betterment/And to see what happens. Soon you will review/Plans for the maintenance of your livelihood,/Appeasements of the wants and aches that drive you,/And speculative wanderings/That lead you to places/Where you feel more welcome/And less wrong.
There are things you must fight for./You have decided to fight,/But you have not decided/How fiercely.
When you have decided/To channel your fierceness/Into that battle with that part of yourself/That has been wheedling you astray/In the name of Not-Ready-Yet…
And I-Shouldn’t-Have-To…
And I-Can’t…
When you have silenced that constant/Seductive whisper of doubt/Of distraction from your truer/Striving self…
Then all your other decisions will follow
Organically.
fifty-six years ago i owned a nehru jacket
i had some love beads too
and said “right on” a lot
my mom took a picture now lost of me in that jacket/and those beads/and that lank long hair/and that smug expression
fourteen-year-old poseur full of himself
no clue as to who the real nehru was
looking now like a piece of period furniture
i sit in my underwear and planetary society t-shirt/waiting for my heart to stop signaling/that something is going on in there
this is nothing new/when my brother was still alive more than six years ago/i felt something like this/and reported the feeling in a facebook post/and my classmate jeff/said get to e r that’s the widowmaker/i felt that when i had my heart attack
and my poet friend julie/said where are you i will drive you to the hospital
and so i called brian my brother now deceased/and he drove me to the e r/and they fast-tracked me into a little room/iv’d me up/got an ecg going
and not much later i was on my way home ecg reading normal bp ok cardiologist recommending a ct with contrast and wrote a script and an appointment was made
insurance would not approve that/instead greenlit a nuclear stress test/with result ‘normal’ because heart perfusion ‘normal range’
so in the several times/in the intervening years/i have like now just sat quietly and waited/for the signals to fade to quiet
and now the room is getting dark and no more heartjolting/and it’s first friday and a lot of stuff is going on/and i have missed the poetry event in tempe/missed the shabbat with my friend nadia and her family/but I can still catch the tail end of my sculptor and teacher friend sue’s solo show opening
time to put my pants on
life is fleeting precious and wonderful
bread
bed for sauce
toss on stuff
scuff some cheese
tease the heat
eat
The landlines are gone/And the pay phones are too/For our race has moved on/From the Anchorage Zoo
But the thing on our person/Both frees and inhibits/To better and worsen/Our lifestyle exhibits
Our likes are recorded/Our life events shared/No matter how sordid/We end up ensnared
We end up so pounded/By ask and directive/By deluge unbounded/And doomscroll invective
The stress of such pressure/Seems never to cease
Hey, end this indenture
The Off switch
Brings
Peace
