you gotta do what you gotta do
and even if you DON'T gotta do it
you gotta do it anyway
it’s necessary

an arrogant conductor hires me for a show
it’s a cultural exchange, as we’re from different tribes
he gives me guitar music, a D chord with 4 staves
i ask him how he wants it played
"as it’s written!"
but the 4 bare slashes tell me nothing
it’s like working in a restaurant
and getting an order for chicken
"how you want this chicken?"
"follow the recipe!"
and the recipe is a picture of a chicken
so i cook it the way i like it
basted with latin flavor
oh, he’s ****** after the show
but the audience eats it up

looks like it’s time for new scrubs
i ripped out my last crotch
picking up a 400 pounder
(off the floor, not in a bar)

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

sometimes your brain just gives out
like any other exhausted muscle
you get a neurological flat tire

happy wife, happy life
and even though there’s no such thing
as a happy wife—
most likely she’s married to a man—
it doesn’t hurt to aim high

an airplane is an escape from gravity
a parachute is a compromise
jumping off the ground is protest
and laying down is surrender
a trampoline is a tease
and all the elevators are going up today
none coming down
so up we go

last night we went to this fancy new restaurant
i ordered the most expensive thing on the menu
dry-aged prime beef with all the trimmings
best steak i had in years
paid for it with my wife’s unemployment money
these days they give you a debit card
which the restaurant took no problem
hey, just because she’s out of work
i have to suffer?

an 80s tune with zippy synths and chirpy vocs
a song for happier times
you couldn’t sing a tune this bright now
there’s no audience for it

as the house of cards comes down…
if you can’t see that all the money in this country
is stored in the stingers of a small hive of queen bees
you’re not paying attention
quote me all the smug hard-hearted factoids
you can scrape off the radio
brand me tax-for-the-greater-good criminally naive
you might have a point, maybe there is no greater good
if it involves you and me together
i don’t know what i’d do to spread the gravy
resurrect leon trotsky?
but if you don’t think the rich have too much money
you’re a sucker

you gotta work overtime
being me
that’s why they call it work

it’s a shocker
that earth is still spinning
on its axis

i work with miley, a west virginia hottie
one night we're all sitting around
(not miley)
and someone says
"did you hear about miley's boyfriend?"
this afternoon he'd been speeding on the turnpike
deliberately doing 80 past two parked cop cars
they chased him, he stopped, got out of the car
waiving a semiautomatic, wearing body armor
they capped him five times in the head
then found the car full of guns
wow
we're stunned, taking it in
i break the silence
"so you're saying miley is available?"

stupendous new band name!

people are chromosomes
so we shouldn’t be surprised
when we act like chromosomes
bivalent bonding
after a couple of drinks
it’s chemistry

i’m wedded to today
but i’m married to yesterday too
a bigamist
and tomorrow?
tomorrow is a *******
with a smoking ***

i say bite the bullet
appropriate the money
from the ten richest americans
give them all mustangs
and say thanks
no more poor people
we could all afford breakfast

level one trauma
woman attacked by two pitbulls
they brought her thumb in a bag

sharing a dilapidated porch and shrinking fifth of jim beam
with my friend pete
we’re in maine celebrating his fourth novel
eagerly awaited by his ten fans
the sun is sinking and pete has his ruger 380
taking potshots at a statue of cervantes on the lawn
“what’s your issue?” i ask as he clips cervantes’ shoulder
“jealousy?”
“no,” he drawls, casually reloading
“******* never wrote a followup to don quixote”

when she’s being a mindblowing mess
and moans "how do you put up with me?"
i say because i love you
we have built a world together
we live in it
and that’s how it works

the secret of life is simple and two-prong
one, you gotta be LUCKY
two, appreciate things when they’re good
because they won’t be good forever
don’t sweat the small stuff
the big stuff’s coming

her life spliffs in a series of luminous crescendos
culminating in a bassinet and bottle for a porcupine
spewing tears and spittle while the man she married
commits ping-pong with the video and her friends
television around the world as the hours go drip drip drip

i could give him ten breathing treatments
he’s still 84 years old
struggling to breathe at 4:45 in the morning
i could give him twenty treatments
he still has CHF
jamming the right chamber of his heart
flooding his lungs
he’s not drowning in it, not yet
but every breath is a squat ******
i sit with him at 4:45 in the morning
administering useless medicine
watching ice truckers, shooting the ****
it’s not lasix, which is what he needs to flush the fluid
but i’m good company and so is he
and that will have to be therapy enough
at 4:45 in the morning

the popstar has his moment of success
and when it’s over, he doesn’t get it
he’s still the same musician
his latest tunes are as good as ever, maybe better
but for the audience, music is but one element
and not the most important
there’s the ambience of the era, the youth of the listener
the poignance, commotion and perfection of those years
that’s why the audience has a lifelong fondness for the performer
but little interest

as i walked down the hall to the cafeteria
at the hospital where i work
it hit me
i will NEVER get what i want
i had a big laugh
and got a cheeseburger with extra pickles

i’m tired of my imaginary friend
he’s been loyal
always there for me
but can’t we be done?
i need my liberty
and i know he’s sick of me

some jobs require brutal effort
the hammering of nails
stomping on the necks of “citizens”
vacuuming cash from the pockets of “consumers”
men assaulting women they "love"
me, i float gently towards my mission
colonizing the subconscious of this city

i’m taping a poem to a lamp post in my tiny city
and a dude comes running – RUNNING!
across the street waiving a $20 bill
"i’ve been reading you for years
i wanna give you this"
i thank him and tell him to keep his money
"the transaction is i put up this poem
you read it, you like or hate it or shake your head
and if we meet we talk about it"
but come on
once again i beat t.s. eliot
you think anyone ever ran up to him
with 20 bucks for The Wasteland?
yeah right

ruth buzzi lay dead on the lawn
ruth buzzi, star of rowan & martin’s laugh-in
dayglo spinster with a hair net
like a spider web on her scalp
foil for arte johnson
remnant of a comedian
lay stiff on the lawn
my wife placed her there for decoration
she thought it was perfect
well it was perfectly disturbing
our friends were uncomfortable coming over
i reasoned with her
"we can’t have kids here"
but my wife thought it was a cool garnish to the house
she laughed, fixed herself a tito and tonic
and plomped down in a chair on the porch
admiring the lawn

imagination is my best drinking buddy
i’ll always pick up the check
on this prison planet, fantasy is the liberator
it pulls down every cloud
undresses the ladies
expunges adultery
pulverizes the patriarchy
obliterates mommy
flattens fatty tissue
bulldozes boredom
annihilates procrastination
decimates iron-poor literature
gobbles up poverty
overthrows the workplace
abolishes taxation
liquidates profit
exterminates capitalism
confuses the cops
torpedoes certainty
trashes common sense
wrecks mortality
exterminates the divine
fantasy, the one-stop shopping mall
of freedom

i enter unit A-19
the place to be for car accidents, gunplay
and the mayhem people get into
i'm humming que sera sera
get to my space and turn on the radio
baroque sunday
ahhh
now bring on the death and destruction

bomb-sniffing dogs, towing cars
ripping down my poems
scooping the homeless from storefronts
herding them into the park
i’m surprised they’re not hosing down anyone
with ***** feet

the french are crackpot smart
daylong parking in those cafes
gives them copious time to reflect
the results evident in ubiquitous bookstores

but with their prodigious cafe loitering
curb-to-curb restaurants
and cartons of cigarettes
how is it that parisians
don't cascade off their stools
with lung cancer at age 42
leaving craters from their girth
in bistro sidewalks?

being a poet is like being a king
but ******, it takes all my time
seducing the ladies
and corrupting the youth
it’s a full time job

the republican craving for fascist darkness
is a backlash to the beatles
they were that luminous a light
if you’re old enough
you can see the trajectory

make no mistake
this is a country
where men blow the heads off little children
beyond their parents’ recognition
where republicans will not allow democrats
to win an election
where we haplessly strangle the environment
to a breathless end
make no mistake
it all means something
but what--
besides the obvious?

regarding Plato’s Ring of Invisibility

what could be ventured with invisibility?
Plato ponders filthy ***…  unbridled thievery…
well i tell you
when i think about invisibility
i say i’m already there
as are we all
i’ve got my body
which hardly instigates much commotion
but my thoughts are unseen
ulterior, inscrutable, out of sight
buried in a concrete bunker
i’m a secret agent on a secret mission
which keeps me busy far beyond thievery

yeah cops are just working guys doing a ***** job
and when you need one you NEED one
but man, they let themselves be molded into an army
at the drop of a top hat and overtime paycheck
the police are weapons and sometimes used accordingly
they see no problem dropping into invasion mode
against the unemployed, the underemployed
the darker population, freethinkers
and other americans who break no laws
except the law against resisting the harness
the cops accept their role as cattle **** to students
who are playing THEIR role:  cross-examining the USA
it's simple but true--
wear a suit and you're the boss
dress funky and you're a creep.
deserving of the smug baton
i observed this at the G20 summit
where i strolled along a phalanx of cops
there to protect the inviolability of property
more sacrosanct than the citizens of the country
and now i watch them kick down the wallstreet settlements
serving and protecting the dollar almighty
(thanks to my fellow beatniks for the cliche last line)
(but tell me it’s not true)
if you’re a policeman reading this
thanks for getting my keys out of the car
but WAKE UP to the way you’re intermittently implemented

my god, the love for billy joel here
it’s touching
"is it billy joel night?"
"yes!"
"is every night billy joel night?"
"yes!"

when you’ve seen the face of god
even if it was a hundred years ago
you obsess on that moment
i’ve never witnessed god
but i saw you
and that’s why i’ve been crazy
to this day

a pretzel is 100% better than an empty stomach
ten minutes of sleep is better than no sleep
one kiss is better than no kisses
100% better
what the hell, 500%
you see where this is going
a little is a lot more than none
since you can’t have it all
a sip of water is a fountain to a parched throat
one listener an audience to a singer
a flicker of light to a blind man
a small breeze in the desert
warm breath on a frozen night
is 100% better than zero
however
a chuckle to a comedian in a crowded club doesn’t cut it
maybe none of these things do
a touch of lucidity to the insane only makes it worse
he sees the **** he’s lying in

sadly we’re all born to play supporting roles
but the prisoner by subtraction
is free to imagine anything
he can make you and me zombie slaves
concubines to his fantasy
he has that right; it’s kosher
while we wear chains of responsibility
shackled to the civilities of liberty
exercising our right to spend money
on **** we don’t need
he can steal it all
he can dream us to death

admiring of the ladies
cordial to the fellas
dismissive of the management
indifferent to the work
on line for the coffee

i'm my best audience
engaged, attentive to nuance
amused by my dry wit
dazzled by my intellect
astounded by my intuition
i am entertained!

wine, women and song?
well, beers, wife, jamming...
netflix, lunch...

was baudelaire right and everyone else wrong?
was baudelaire wrong and everyone else wrong?
when you’re fed up forwards and backwards
when you realize your life isn’t a game of chess

it’s simply checkers
almost preordained
in its lack of options
we all have embedded GPS systems
gallantly navigating through the days
some work brilliantly
some less so
we depend on them
and they’re undependable
they get us so far
but invariably lead us
to the end of the highway
going 90
everyone puts his best foot forward
only to stumble off the edge of the earth
you can’t win forever
you lose it all
but **** a duck
i’m going to redefine victory
one bottle at a time
like baudelaire

the facts tell one story
my insanity tells another
occasionally i wake from my delirium
and realize how far i’ve drifted out to sea
then i’m dragged underwater again
it’s like driving a GMC pickup
from one whiskey rendezvous to the next
floating high above my memories
and way below my desires
i’d love to get back to sober ground
so i propose a toast
sometimes a pretty girl is a cheap trick
and i’m not falling for it

easy access to guns certainly factors into mass shootings
but an equally disturbing issue is why so many of us
feel compelled to slaughter vast quantities of strangers
i mean, it’s because we can
with all that delicious weaponry floating around
but still, it makes you wonder
i work with a guy who had a son at Virginia Tech
during the shootings there
my wife’s boss had a cousin who died
during the church massacre last year
i was coming to work five years ago
as the cops were swarming the building
on a hunt for the maniac
who’d just gunned down three people, one fatally
these incidents of random ******
have become so ubiquitous that more and more of us
know someone directly affected
that said
the way our government kowtows to the NRA
would be pathetic if not so flabbergasting
i assume the gun worshippers are against mass homicide
though i suspect they admire the firepower
but just as there’s a lot of car accidents because there’s a lot of cars
there’s a shitload of shootings because there’s a fuckload of guns
i believe that; i could be wrong
but i guess we’re lucky there’s no National Nuclear Bomb Association

there's a moment in every flight
when the plane is banking away from the airport
you get a dizzy view of the landscape
and realize this is nuts

let me ask you

you’re sitting in a hospital room
visiting a friend or mother or son in a critical care bed
an alarm is triggered, an ominous warning
you nervously step outside looking for a nurse
you tell the nurse there’s something beeping
the nurse comes inside and fixes the occluded line
you nitpick about the time it took
you question procedures as the nurse is doing them
advocating for the patient
the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?
yeah but guess what
the nurse doesn’t want to come into the room anymore
whether you’re in there or not
the vitals will still be seen to
but other patients suddenly need more attention
and by the way
every time you ask me if i washed my hands
(like the posted signs advise you to ask)
i think:  if you’re that worried about infection
i’ll just stay out of the room; that much less exposure
that means painful bedpan delay for your loved one
or lying in filth a little longer
waiting thirsty minutes for that sip of water
staying in one excruciating position half an hour more

so have you done your friend or mother or son a favor?