✓My favorite weapon
✓Bikini ski boat
✓Fluorescent sand
✓Her eyes immaculate
✓Keys to the prophet's house
✓Emotional screening device
✓1 cup of sun, 3 teaspoons of rain
✓Third world treasure map & saxophone
✓Alternate flightpaths
✓Extra parachute
✓Mediocre Shakespeare
✓Poison pen letters
✓Getaway car & escape route
✓Ladies in waiting (in lingerie)
✓Subterranean lips
✓A pinch of film noir
✓Night vision
✓Antarctic scenarios
✓Fountain of remembrance
✓Policy of containment
✓Silhouette machine
✓Water wings
✓Pillow

~
The method is slow
And probably dangerous

From your telescope
Fewer and fewer places
No advancing horizon

Are you rendering again?

Two miles of uncertainty
Too much undergloom
You don't remember his face

It's war of attrition
A home for you
No place to run
No place to hide
To live is to die slowly
~

Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
Come sterilize history with me.
We'll whitewash every smudge
until its sparkles and shines,
like fool's gold.

Rich only in our own
limited heads,
we'll believe in
addition by subtraction.
Only this isn't math, it's life.

'Those who do not learn history
are doomed to repeat it.'

The human mind
remains bleeding edge,
but no one pays for
attic salt,
the best shall walk away
from the spaghettification
of the school system.

And roman candles
will go unlit.

Where's your résumé, Johnny?
He will hunt-and-peck
to create, lest ever
comprehend, his future
as a basement
mixologist,
'cause no one cares
to drink in education.

And his roman candle
will go unlit.

Classrooms are a thirstland,
an empty canteen,
pre-loved Maggie
—she'll graduate
quite parched,
assuredly vagarious,
modeling merkins
for period piece ****.

And her roman candle
will sadly go unlit.

Janus-faced, she sits in her
Sinister bathing tub
Cleansing herself from
Fallen lovers

The very ones
She devised subtle ends to
Lest they should claim
Her heart for a kingdom

Vandals of her plumage
Whom she allowed
To drink from her stream
Once or twice

A god of vengeance sent her
A message in a bottle today
To prove the origin of her flow
And remind her that time is

Fly-by-night

These strange fellows
Still record on videotape
Abroad an outdated
Insufficient spacecraft
The shape of
An interstellar bowling alley

By night they hunt for
New age wine
Radio waves
And a slew of hitchhikers

Some they greet
Some they cheat
Some they mistreat
Some they eat

Convenient store gangbusters
Crop circling has seen its better day
Soundtrack enthusiasts
They've a score to settle
With John Williams

They came from a fruitless world
In search of pomegranate skies
And the Big Apple
Even from the far flung
Reaches of space
Everyone's an actor

Some they unseat
Some they beat
Some they reheat
Some they eat

We're odd to them
Because they're gods to us
In a technologically challenged
Unidentified flying object

It's not war they want
Nor invasion
Just dinner theatre
And a reliable map

Dreaming of the never mind
--the burden of proof my thoughts struggle
over if it was even such a thought.

It's in my nature
--the uncertainty
--the clutter of an empty space begging
for stronger remembrance:

like signal to noise.

Even in the harsh light
it casts unknown shadows

causing me to turn to something more tangible
--people, places, and things:

the ones I can criticize
or stylize, hold in my hand,
crush with my fist, kiss with my lips
--honing it down until a kernel
of something remotely mine.

Then I smile
at being a tourist in my own mind:

Paris syndrome: litmus test:
that disconnect between fantasy and reality,
fragment and rumination

--It's right there now
on the tip of my tongue.

Inside this box are but three things
--a ruler, a boxing glove, and kite string.

Because I never could keep my sordid
life straight.

Because I never did learn to fight my
own battles.

Because I never will soar as high as my smallest dream.

Why do I have them in the first place,
you might ask?

I just love reminiscing.
I'm a sucker for nostalgia,
even if it's over my own failings.

The field's on fire

wrath
and natural selection

loose in the commons

dying to ****
killing to die

this is no dress rehearsal
no prank

the breath of life
melts

into playground psychosis

triggering
the finger of a false god

summoned in the blackness

to try and choke humanity's
guiding flame

(but on it burns)

Out of the mouth of a terrible dogfish she came,
A modern-day Cinderella, but avid shoe geek,
Stabbed to death by stiletto on the Castle Turret,
Done in by her own spiked heels.

There was even a sign posted
Warning of the danger,
"Wear the wedge instead,"
Jiminy Cricket had said.

"I'm no fool,"
Her final utterance
Before tripping out in Thule.

All this just to dance with a wretched boy,
The scapegrace,
Who laughed derisively
In his maker's face,
Then stole his wig.

And as he fled with Candlewick
To the Land of Toys,
He dreamt of Lederhosen & feather hat,
To be seen in Tyrolean as the real McCoy.

Alas, here came the Northerly Wind,
Angry at the boy's lack of moral fiber,
To cast him out & lay bare his sin.

And as the rope passed
Unnoticeably 'round his wooden neck,
On this noose he did swing,
One long shudder, he was done and hung,
Stiff & insensible yo-yo on a string.

The moral of the story, boys & girls:
Fairy-tale Romance is like having
A venomous snake for a pet,
It's cool & fun & magical,
Until you get bit.

Riding
The color
Wheel

From
Liftoff
To splashdown

Onyx
Eyelids
Heavy with rheum

Waking to
Laminated
Stick-ons

A vinyl ocean
Of unco adhesion
And snap vacuum

Jettisoned
Trinkets
Of youth

Soaring
Prophetically
Overhead

Acquiescing
As scenes
Of upended worlds

The simple playgrounds
Both remembered
And loved

Darth Vaper--
E-Lord of the Popcorn Lung,
Learned the ways of the force
From her master,
Nicotine,
Who during the Tar Wars
Went up in smoke,
And ****! He was gone.
Vaper took her own
Apprentice then,
For there can only be two,
The ruthless Count Syphilis,
Who was always sore
And acted rash,
Until it eventually ******.

Let's paint with broad brush strokes
from centuries of blood,
ye fair permeable maidens:
Once upon a summer's eve,
menotoxins killed crops and wilted spring flowers.
Pandora's box, opening to such bad reviews,
closed down and fled to a monastery,
where she wrote scarlet letters to family back home.

Vallopes of black holland cloth, intrusive
but necessary little bedfellows fit for a queen.
Don't keep us in suspense,
your fancy royal harness,
guards are posted at either side, hooked & girdled.
Take Communion some other day,
Elizabethan petticoat.

History tells of the strangest restraining order:
Hippocrates threw his two cents into the fountain,
banning bleeders from nearing the wishing well.
Hey, Father of Medicine,
our hallowed moon lures the currents,
driving us all a little mad on some enchanted evening,
not just the lassies.

The foil of every fable
rests in the absurdity of its fate,
so often presumed upon the faint of heart:
A damsel in distress,
who must be saved from herself.
The nonsense of which then seeps into the pores
of reality, rousing fear in certain unmentionables
that just might one day incite anarchy,
tipping our planet over on its side
and away we fly.

Ignorance wears rose-colored glasses.
It's high time he got his eyes checked.

The wonders of research
Tell us cats and dogs are color-blind.
But don't be sad,
They've given us
Something to aspire to.

On the second floor
of a department store

At the DMV
appointment window

In the kissing booth
on Coney Island

Anywhere around
her pineapple grove

Sweet coma canopy,
brain bath in solemn loops,
a gentle washing away
of handprints,

Makes the bed,
blanketed by dreams,
rest upon reimagined partitions,
instead of the jagged edge,

But there are holes
in the architecture,
pliable infrastructural tunnels
to navigate through,

Lucky termite splinters
the mind, this delicious library,
and feasts upon before all acquired
souvenirs settle into books,

It's then a young turtledove lifts
off toward October next,
searching for the dry twigs
with which to build closure.

People who are more active
are less likely to think about cancer.

Choosing confusing reusing
is the answer.

Spanking your child
is unproductive and cruel.

We may have been wrong there,
But hey! William Singer can get the kid
into a better school.

Pools and ponds are okay,
but avoid lakes.

3 out of 5 doctors
prefer headaches.

Do you have a problem (?)
Take this pill.

But not for too long
'cause it can ****.

Don't eat eggs,
don't use butter.

You can eat eggs now,
but not with butter.

It's okay again to use butter,
just skip anything from Laura Scudder.

Girls with long legs and short tempers
make better lovers.

Boys always marry girls
who remind them of their mothers.

Do these 40 things
to be a better father.

That's so last year!
Why even bother?

Women who wear wicker
marry quicker.

Men who love their lawn mower
do it slower.

People who breathe through their mouth
as less likely to pick their nose.
Or so it goes.

50% of those polled
said "yes."

The other half shrugged
and wouldn't wager a guess.

We know it's a lot to process,
so just stick with us
and we'll guide you through...

more or less...?

Many a girl
Dreams of being loved
And cared for.

Many a boy
Claims to be that dream
Incarnate.

And yet skies still darken
And many a girl's heart
Becomes a kingdom of rain.

When will the storm pass?
Is there a reset button
They can press?

That does it!
My heart got trashed again.
It's time to get renters insurance.

She was winning!
She had the poor sod
on his knees,
one more tongue lashing
and this nemesis
would be vanquished!
Only...
he really wasn't
her enemy at all,
but in truth,
her most beloved.
This raging battle
had so swiftly
mushroomed
from such an innocuous start
your head would spin
(like a top).

A passing observation
fueling outright war,
but he valiantly waved
the white flag of surrender.
Suddenly victory
was not so sweet to her,
thus with sword drawn
and poised at his throat,
she called a truce,
and confessed, "forgive me, my darling,
I was wrong."
Pardoned she was,
and peace ensued.
One lovable turncoat,
she traded in her uniform
to became a cowgirl instead
(like on top).

This poem is brought to you by the following:

Stick N' Yank
The do-it-yourself Brazilian wax kit.
Guaranteed to leave you bare down there or your money back!

Recommended only for those with high pain thresholds. Keep out of the reach of hippies.

Cosmic Wafers
Blast off any dull lifeless party with the snack chip that's the equivalent of drinking a six-pack of beer. And it's gluten-free!

Remember to snack responsibly.

My First Hornet's Nest
Forget ant farms. Your kids will have an even better time learning about these flying insects, up close and personal. They can hang it from a ceiling, a tree, or underneath a car!

For ages 10 and up. Hornets sold separately.

time and again,
her steps
are sprinkled
with rose petals,
well-wishes,
and kisses.

her dress
is elegant
and fair,
yet understated,
so as not
to outdo
the woman of the day.

"affect not
little shifts
and subterfuges
to avoid
the force
of an argument,"
she patiently
holds her breath
for everyone
except herself.

she may
hold the line
with her
precarious walk,
and yet,
"there is always
a prepared place
for a prepared
person."

her very next step
belongs to
no one else,
sprinkled
with song
overflowing
unto her,
as the dawn
breaks within
the fenced walls
of her own heart.

--this is her day.

--this is her time to love.

Chaos Theory is nobody's friend.

It will do the sensitive math on just about anyone; in constant loops, patterns, fractals, and repetitions.

This can lead to the butterfly effect:

A butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas (or NYC, for that matter).

It's simply when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

To what does this measure?

That perhaps the present is already the future...

Even the gracefully beautiful
Sonnet inspiring
Adult butterfly
Started out
As an awkward unruly
Eat you out of house and home
Kid caterpillar

Growing up
She loved staplers
They kept things together
Nothing was ever lost

  Then one day
  Mommy & Daddy
  Became unstapled

Now she favors scissors
They cut things apart
So many things lost
Starting with her