call me al
algorithm

McDonald's crispy strips
Chipotle's triple-wrap burrito
Sonic's half-price shake after 5 pm
Gucci lotion
Verizon cell phones
Carona beer
trying to guess the TV station
by the demographic nature
of the commercials

finally a warm spring day
i break out my sandals
a couple of years old but still in prime shape
i put them on, drive to the show
exit my car, step onto the sidewalk
and sink up to my ankles in fresh cement
a tiny warning flag on the edge of the walk
this is how the world works

the strapping 20-year-old saw that tiktok video
someone riding a motorcycle standing on his head
looked like a good time
happy stupidity vs. dismal reality
entertainment always trumps education
if the tiktok video had been him in a hospital bed on a ventilator
a broken neck, quadriplegic
he wouldn’t have watched it
though if he had watched it
he wouldn’t have been in that hospital bed on that ventilator
having us unplug him two weeks later

i'm standing in the rain
and every drop that hits me
is a detail of my life
utterly random
some smack me, some miss me
and that's my life
i'm soaked in accidental events

these poems make me an arbiter of reality
pretty crowded field these days
in fact it's every man for himself

we’re born into unyielding architecture
and concrete landscape of circumstance
our only freedom
is interpreting that architecture
and negotiating that landscape