I knew she was bad news
when we met
at Terminal One in Vegas,
but my thinking brain
was in limbic limbo
— strong-armed
by the scent of Cinnabon
and new car smell.

You might say we got lucky.
What are the odds of finding
a chapel open at midnight?

For sale.
Efficient revolver.
Rarely used.

A saturnine mood
fell over the land
when news broke Saturday
the billionaire buffoon
wasn’t rocketing to Saturn
after all.

LAUDATION
for curious Doctor Jekyll.
ADULATION
craved by Mister Hyde.
Witness an anagram’s dark spectacle:
An antigram spell where virtue died.

Never — not ever! — do we not have
NO MELON, NO LEMON
At the Palindrome Emporium!

WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW?
WAS IT ELIOT’S TOILET I SAW?
Only at the Palindrome Emporium!

Prices are NEVER ODD, OR EVEN
At the Palindrome Emporium!

EVIL I DID DWELL,
LEWD DID I LIVE
At the Palindrome Emporium!

YO, BANANA BOY
Come save a bunch!
And say hello to
BOB, HANNAH, OTTO, and ANNA!
Your friends at the Palindrome Emporium!

My son’s eyes have an innocent look.
Chocolate is the color of his lips.
Clothes once clean, are smeared with ****,
Or spotted by an ice cream cone that drips.

I’ve seen damage done both day and night,
Of a magnitude you’d never believe,
Done by my son while out of sight.
Destruction Patton could never achieve.

I love to hear him sleep, yet I know well
When he is awake, there will be sound.
He’ll make ‘music’ with horn, drum, or bell.
My son, when he plays, you know he’s around.

And yet, by heaven, I love to be with him.
Even if snot is crusted on his chin.

“Everything in moderation,”
Henri’s mom said with a grin,
serving the banal advice
with red Kool-Aid
and unfiltered cigarettes.

A chortle is
a slythy gleeblish burstle
of verbivore
snickerdazzle
daufter.

To chortle is
to gigglenuzzle bubbles
of snottish glimmerguts
that tickletwist speworling
belly happyspritz and
vorment fuzzlefizzes
out your nose.