Victory in the morning,
cancer in the afternoon,
dark night on the way,
these are the dominoes falling,
this is your past catching
up to you our ruling elite,
America's so called Best and Brightest.

Checking out YouTube,
never seen so many people
being crushed, destroyed,
annihilated, wrecked, obliterated,
owned, eviscerated and so on.

Whew!

Is a lot
more fun
going down
than it is
coming up

Because I can never be honest,
I cannot write my memoirs.
I cannot stain the pages with the truth.
I can only tell lies.

You're a short, ugly, unattractive man?
You don't deserve a girlfriend.
You don't deserve respect.
You don't deserve anything.

So why don't you just crawl off somewhere and die?
I don't want to have to look at you.

So spake Her Royal Highness Billie Eilish.

It's always a surprise
to discover that someone
you barely know
hates your guts.

Has a wonderfully
***** mind.

I'm surprised she
wasn't born a boy.

Robert Pirsig knew
what was really going on
but he promised not to tell.

Sssshhhh! It's a secret.

It ain't no rock concert folks.
So if you wanna get drunk
and holler for "Freebird"
half the night only to pass out
before the band actually plays it,
you're in the wrong venue.

Is like a Higgs-Boson particle,
it bursts its way into existence
then disappears just as quickly.
Gone, gone, gone.

Look,
the bridge to that
lame old life in flames.

You did it, finally.

So, go on celebrate.
Before the moment passes.
Before you reconsider.
Because there's no going back.

Are we talking absolutes here? **** right!
Those rich, slave holding white male landowners
made it clear: "the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
and never mind that "well regulated militia," crap.

You're eighteen years old and a law abiding citizen.
Or maybe not. Either way you are "the people"
and anything less is a slippery *****.

First they come for your nukes,
then your rocket launchers, then your bazookas.
Then it's your hand grenades, then your assault rifles
and, before you know it, they'll take away
your right to breath, eat and blow stuff up.

So stand up patriots. Tell them crazy Dems "Hell No!"

I thought Mrs. Asp wise and inscrutable,
sitting in her rocking chair, bespectacled, knitting
and saying little, deep in her own thoughts.

Turns out she had Alzheimer's.

Faster than an old fashioned slide rule,
stronger than any AI,
able to leap tall algorithms in a single bound,
he is the master of all things technological.

Unafraid of math, science, AP exams,
poking fun at dumb jocks and mean girls,
getting the better of hoods and bullies,
defender of outcasts and the downtrodden,
a purveyor of all that is intellectual,
he is the hero we need in these difficult times,

So, give it up for Super Nerd!

Crowbar's "Existence Is Punishment"
playing at full blast, tears soiling my face,
thinking how "I gave my heart and soul to you"

Only to have my love betrayed,
only to be broken like a Ken doll and tossed aside

I could set myself on fire,
I could hang myself from the tree outside your window,
I could slit my throat on your doorstep

I could do any of these things but I won't,
because my selfish darling, I know this much:
you simply wouldn't care

Before I pooped my pants
in front of a live audience,
long after the age when
such a thing could be done
with impunity and without
embarrassment, I considered,
even obsessed over the possibility
or, rather, the probability of just
such a an event occurring until
it became, not merely possible
but inevitable, a self-fulfilling
prophecy so that, when it did
happen I was prepared--

I had on an adult diaper.

Who claimed he liked what I sent
And, though he can’t publish any of it,
Would like to see more I say
I’m sorry but this is pretty much
My best **** anything else I submit
Will, frankly, not be as good
So why should I bother?

We talk about cold fronts
and warming trends.
We talk about imminent storms.

Hail, frost, wind.
The long hot summer.
We nod, smile, commiserate.

We talk about the weather
To keep from killing each other.

She’s 79 years old.
She weighs 350 pounds
And spends most
Of her time in a wheelchair.

Every month she sends
Money to her “boyfriend”
In “Australia.”

He promises to visit.
He just needs a little more time.
He just needs a little more money.

It was three years ago.
Then two years ago.
Then last year.
Now it’s this spring.

Don’t try talking to her.
She knows he’s coming.
Just a little while longer.
And it will be joyous.

It would be cool
To be a rhyming fool
To rhyme sappy
With happy
To rhyme hullabaloo
With Picachu
To rhyme resurrect
With circumspect
To rhyme yellow
With mellow
To rhyme dirigible  
With incorrigible
To rhyme hellacious
With salacious
To rhyme Jocasta
With pasta
To rhyme moon
With buffoon

And best of all
To make the call
To rhyme maybe
With baby

Then salute the purple cow
In the audience and take a bow

When you're not getting
mugged, *****, tortured,
shot, beaten, choked, stabbed
or otherwise terrorized,
Life can be kind of boring.

Bring on the boring.

Still want to pony up?

Do me a favor.
Take three ones
or a five out
of  your wallet
and flush the bill/bills
down the toilet.

Don't give the litmag
the satisfaction
of doing it for you.

Behold the expendable character
Who’s death is designed to help establish
The putative high stakes of the show.

Cue Walter, a homicidal monster.
Little nuance here. Sneering, lecherous,
He’s due a satisfyingly violent demise.

And there’s absolutely no danger
In giving him one.

It's not just that I ******
It's that to achieve even
modest competency
I had to play a piece
so many times that
I couldn't stand to play
piano anymore

So I sold the **** thing

I'm fine with them until they start
******* and pooping all over the place.

Check out those filthy hippos,
in the zoo or in the wild,
flagrantly crapping themselves
on land or, worse, in water swimming
through their own ****.

But, oh, those sweet, darling animals.

Okay, I dislike the idea of eating them
or stealing their milk but my patience
is sorely tested by the lazy cow
who couldn't be bothered to step out
of the middle of the river before
unleashing a thick stream of ****
that went on and on and on while
placidly eyeing our approaching canoes.

And I was going to go swimming later.

Monkeys hurling feces.
Horses, pigs and chickens fouling
their own nests, stepping
in their own crap again and again
even when they could easily avoid it.

I suspect that, given the chances, they'd
foul up the planet as badly as we have.

Plenty of them out there, forced rhymes,
non sequiturs, contradictory lines,
mixed metaphors, just plain nonsense.

But the music catches you up
and, sooner or later, you're snapping
your fingers and singing along,
mouthing those ****** lyrics
as if they were the finest poetry.

Ask a lab mouse.
If he could talk he'd tell you,
"better than *******."

Use a credit card,
cut it into lines.
Snort it, chew it. Or spike
it directly into a vein.

Check out the slip of a woman
seated at the corner table.
She's smoking a cigarette
and shoveling spoonful
after spoonful of the stuff
into her coffee cup.

It's ubiquitous,
in soda, in lemonade,
sprinkled onto donuts,
baked into cookies.

Fudge, cotton candy,
creme brulee.

"One lump or two?"
asks the hostess.
The reply: "Just keep 'em coming."

The PSA: "This is your brain,
these are you're eyes widening."

Better than ***?
Ask the man
in the leisure suit talking
to the pretty woman at the bar.

"Give me some sugar,"
he says playfully.

She grabs a handful of packets,
drops them in his lap.

He grins. "Thanks doll,
you're a lifesaver."

Ask if you like,
But the answer is no.

Don't believe you can ****
half a million Americans, get filthy rich
in the process and walk away scot-free?

Check out the Sackler family.

An argument with a flat-earther
is an argument you cannot win.
No matter how many times you assert
that the earth is round, he will says its flat.

And, because the flat-earther is strong
in stamina and fierce in self-belief,
he will always get in the last word
which means he wins, you lose.

Your best option?
Admit defeat, walk away.

"That was wack,"
the twenty something said,
referring to something I can't
even begin to remember
and it was the first time
I'd heard someone say it
without air quotes
or an ironic smirk
outside of the movies
and someone else called
him on it, saying "that was wack
to call that (whatever it was) wack,
and, so, the argument was on,
because the word itself
was already on the verge of passe
even for a bunch of bored
small town white boys who
were not remotely hip or gangsta
until somebody passed around
a joint and we forgot all about it

So it came to the point
where nothing else was working
so we ******.

We ****** crazily, frantically.
We ****** desperately, despairingly.
We ****** without rhyme or reason.
We ****** without hope.

We ****** until we were exhausted.
We ****** until we were both sore.
We ****** and ****** until we
could **** no more.

Then we broke up.

Yet another close game
decided by a bad call.
Why bother?
Forget the game. Forget the refs.
Flip a coin.

I have an idea!
Let’s do something
Really, really original.

Let’s get an Olympic Ring tattoo!
Better yet let’s get Olympic Ring tattoos
For every one of our body parts.

We can hot tail it to the tattoo parlor
Downtown in our Ralph Lauren outfits,
Pick up a six-pack of Coca Cola on the way
And pay for it all with our Visa Card.

What say? You in?

Shakespeare was just kidding!
They lived happily ever after.

Just took my third dump of the day
and I'm tired of wiping
but I'm too lazy to take a shower
so I'll have to take my chances out
in the Big Wide World

Which means taking my heart medication,
which means obeying traffic laws,
which means being extra careful
crossing the street, which means
not antagonizing the cops or the homeless

But if I get struck by lightning
or hit by a meteorite or a stray bullet
or attacked by a grizzly bear
chances are I'll **** my pants
anyway which makes worrying
about it at all kind of pointless

When he’s not sexually assaulting women,
Insulting war heroes, the disabled,
Veterans, Gold Star families

When he’s not hoarding
Classified documents, cheating contractors,
Hiring illegal immigrants, stiffing employees,
Kowtowing to dictators, chumming around
With Jeffrey Epstein and lusting after young girls
Who remind him of Ivanka at age thirteen

When he’s not committing tax fraud,
Filing for bankruptcy, peddling nuclear secrets,
Mocking evangelicals, threatening election workers
And his own vice president

When he’s not promising to build a border wall,
Selling products made in China,
Using campaign funds to pay his lawyers,
Conning his supporters into buying worthless
University degrees or contributing to his bogus
Charity foundation

When he’s not losing money hand over fist,
Packing the Supreme Court
Or trying to destroy the democracy,
I kind of like that little two-****** dance
Trump does at his campaign stops—

It’s kind of amusing

"I'll never tell" or "I'm telling"

Like two sides
of the same coin--
heads, tails,
neither choice bodes well.

Which is more disturbing?

I consider one way,
then the other
and conclude:

They're both really creepy

It starts out with a cup of Joe
that becomes two, three, four, more

It starts out with a cigarette
that becomes two, three, four,
a pack, two packs, more

It starts out with a beer
that becomes a six, a twelve, a case,
shots in-between, more

A snort, then two, three, four, more
A pill, then two, three, four, more

Until you're in as deep as the criminals
in power who started the war

It's an event and you're fully invested:
the gala at the museum,
the marquee match-up at the arena,
opening night at the theater.

You circle the date on the calendar.
You buy tickets close to the action.
You listen to commentary.
You cheer and follow along.
Yes, you're fully invested.

Just don't look away.
If you do, you'll realize,
it's already over.

The **** Cheneys of the world
Start the wars but the young guys
Laid off from the paper mill fight
And die in them.

Are a house on stilts
in shifting sand
in the path of a tsunami

He survived the firefights
and near misses,
so many that his brothers-in-arms
thought he was charmed,
invisible to Death

Came home after
his third and final tour
and died with a gun in his mouth

On some level even the most die-hard cultists
must realize that their orange-skinned Messiah
wants to burn down The Republic.

They're so angry they don't care.

"Get out of the garden!"
No, it wasn't God yelling
it was the angry old man
next door and this wasn't
"That" Garden it was
the small vegetable
garden in his back yard.

And it was two young boys,
their pockets full of carrots,
radishes, turnips and not
Adam and Eve who made
a run for it.

Later, they tossed
their ***** into the gutter
because neither one of them
much liked veggies.

I'm with Brother Beavis
on this one

Listening to the song
"Shiny Happy People"
makes me feel kind
of shiny and happy

Listening to it makes me want
to step away from the ledge,
to take the gun barrel out of my mouth,
to unhook the hose from the exhaust
pipe and open the car windows,
to put the cap back on the bottle of pills,
to pull my head out of the noose,
to put away the razor blade

Yeah, I know it was written tongue in cheek
and meant to be ironic, satiric or whatever

Don't care, it makes me feel good

If they sit you down and
Inform you in a certain tone
Of voice that you have options,
You might as well reach
For that strategically placed
Box of tissues--

You're going to need it.

Zombies prefer young brains,
still pink, loaded with nutrients
and yet to be corrupted by life experience.

Zombies sit in their cars
outside grade schools, middle schools,
salivating, waiting for the dismissal bell.

They practice pick-up lines.
"Hey, how's it going?"
"What's your name?"
"Come here often?"

Zombies haunt online chat rooms,
posing as youngsters.
"School ****** today didn't it?"
"Wanna play video games?"
"Wanna meet up and hang out?"

Zombies sit on park benches in front
of the playground, watching, watching.
They bring their puppies.

Don't be a zombie.

Sometimes the best ideas come when you paint
yourself into a corner,
it forces you to sprout wings
and fly your way out.

"You better watch out
you better not cry
better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Clause is coming to town

He's making a list,
and checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!"