So if you want to know upfront,
Then, you should know
That a reasoned selection process was used,
The music was cherry-picked,
Three perfect compact discs,
Hanging there from the branch,
(Actually CD stack storage)
And me, with a sativa buzz,
Working nicely, grazie mille.
I sit down to write another one of my “fakakta” poems.
The music?
Three crystal gems
Liquid pearls, all of great price.
To wit: (1) “The Best of Joe Cocker,”
(Joe died last year, and
Don’t we/Shouldn’t we
Consider him a close associate,
A kid we grew up with?)
(2) “A Twist of Marley,”
A “Verve Music” product,
Brilliant conception!
Montego Bay gone South Chicago,
A sweet instrumental miscegenation--
A potent, wicked fusion of reggae & jazz--
Manifested by Dave Grusin,
Gerald Albright, Lee Ritenour, & Others.
And last, but not even close to being least,
(3) “MILES DAVIS Kind of Blue.”
Lest we forget Norman Jewison’s
Homage to Mambo Brooklyn Italiano
Cher & her wacky greaseball family:
The Castorinis.
The Cammareri.
The Cappomaggios.
Did I hear someone say “*** Stereotype?”
Bam! A double “Moonstruck” slap,
Just to remind you:
“I’m talkin’ here.”

Lest we forget:
Coltrane blew tenor sax
Both March & April 1959 sessions,
Columbia 30th Street Studio,
New York City.
And if you've heard
"Freddie Freeloader," a
Sizzler solid 9 minutes & 49 seconds,
I think it’s probably a good time
To go check to see if you
Left the garden hose on.
BAM!
Now do I have your attention?

We pensive Boomers--
We take stock.
We ponder the clock, a
Vexatious tick-tock
Arctic soundtrack,
Music in the key of winter of
Our discontent/content.
YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE!
Time to script your buggering off,
Time to settle in
On an exit strategy.
“Yes, hurry up, it's time.” screams T.S. Eliot,
From an English major’s
Vast wasteland archive.
The scoreboard reads 4th Quarter now.
We ruminant Boomers,
Facing up to it at last, are we?
To be or not: a serene letting go, or
“Rage against the dying of the light?”
Dylan chimes in:
Thomas, meet Thomas.
Oprah, Uma.

So you should know upfront,
I got a great buzz on.
The music is groovy.
This poem ends here.

So I was reading a Paul Krugman review of
Capital in the 21st Century, that French guy’s
Thesis on economic inequality that seems to be
Getting so much play in intellectual circles these days.
The word rentier came up in Krugman’s text.
I realized by its context that I’d better consult
My Webster’s--an archaic, print-era device,
A volume I keep close to the couch,
The couch where I do most of my reading these days,
Particularly my NY Review of Books
And The New Yorker,
Obbligato for us holdouts,
We 21st Century pseudo-intellectuals.

Rentier: (from the Old French,
Noun rente, circa 1847),
A person who lives on income
From property or securities.
A status far cry from Renter:
A schmuck who pays the landlord
For the leaky roof above his head.
Rentier & Renter:
It’s words like these—
Essentially polar opposites—
That make understanding our world so difficult.
What chance does the uneducated person have?
What chance to grasp the importance of Piketty’s book,
Let alone be spurred on,
Driven to the barricades once more?
The great tragedy is this:
Piketty's book will reach the audience
Least likely to support the kind of
Progressive tax policy change,
Change that anyone left with
A mere skosh of 1960’s heart,
Would demand in terms of simple fairness.
Capital in the 21st Century
Will only be understood
By those with little or no inclination—
Be it intellectual of moral—
To deviate from the status quo.

"Wagons East (1994) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0111653/ Internet Movie Database Rating: 4.7/10 - ‎3,545 votes (stylized onscreen as ‘Wagons East’) is a 1994 western comedy film directed by Peter Markleand starring John Candy and Richard Lewis. The film marked one of Candy's last film appearances although it was not his last film release. His last film, Canadian Bacon which he had completed before “Wagons East,” had a delayed release in 1995. The film was notable for its leading actor Candy dying of a heart attack during the final days of the film's production. A stand-in and special effects were used to complete his remaining scenes and it released five months after his death."

And it’s Wagons East!
John Candy’s last mega-bomb,
Released 5 months postmortem.
Alas, even the sympathy vote stayed home,
Reject the we-owe-it-to-him-for
“Planes, Trains & Automobiles”(1987, IMDB).
The role, like money in the bank,
Earning diminishing returns,
Yielding interest but losing value over time.
The myth of INTEREST:
Das Capital, 2015.
The Prime is at 0%,
Yet, Inflation soars at, well,
At inflationary rates,
Digit-pounding inflation,
Higher food & shelter prices,
Masked ever so cleverly,
So deftly obscured by benevolent gasoline prices.

“Planes, Trains & Automobiles” (1987, IMDB)
Meet Del Griffith,
An obnoxious slob,
A complete schlemiel
(Also shle·miel (shlə-mēl′),
A serene shower curtain ring
Salesman and tour de force.
A film illustrative of everything
We love about farce,
(Merci beaucoup, Molière!)
And love about any
John Hughes/Steve Martin collaboration.

Needless to say,
I watched “Wagons East”
On TV the other day.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
Will-o'-wisping in the ashtray,
Smoke from my first joint of the day.
The ashtray, a mosh pit carbonara--
Actually, an inverted exoskeleton dome--
One of dem big muthas,
I once free-dived for,
Offshore Mendocino Coast,
Back in the day,
Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY . . .
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Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY
Paid beaucoup bucks for
Well-tenderized,
Sledge hammered slabs of illegal,
Black Market abalone.
Most assuredly, I digress.

So where else would I be?
My laptop was open & willing,
Legs spread, wet and waiting for
Whatever comes what may.
What came was a film
Earning pitch perfect
Dramatic chops for Candy.
We owe you, Del.
We owe you for this Anthem:
“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you . . . but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like . . . I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
But that was then,
This is now.
Wagons East:
A disastrous ****** bomb.
A vapid character jambalaya:
(1) A defrocked doctor
(2) A sagebrush *****.
(3) A queer book vendor.
(4) A Donner Party Survivor
Sounds can’t miss, right?
Or was it a classic Broadway/Hollywood sting?
Redux: “Spring Time for ******.”
N'est-ce pas?
Four *******
Heading east by wagon train;
Giving up on The West,
Heading east for Saint Louie,
Where freaks & geeks go undercover.
Down go their guards.
Camouflaging the chimera,
Transits the urban Wasteland,
Vast & nasty, as it were.

St. Louis, Missouri:
A much more tolerant
Hideout place.
THE WEST:
Just too much of
A hassle, I guess,
Too much for one’s
Flat-lined human mind,
Bored too shitless by
Buffalo turds to venture thought.
THE WEST:
Neorealismo italiano.
Complete Jolting-Joe reality,
A veritable wake-up call
Devouring any & all
Residual romantic fantasies . . .
THE WEST:
Struggle & Drudge,
Life lived west of the Mississippi.

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That’s right: another advertisement,
Smack dab in the middle of
Of the ******* poem!
My invention, by the by,
Putting herein another plug for
A preferred memorial gravesite,
The Shrine To Me!
Situated in Scituate,
(Always wanted to say that.)
Scituate MA (www.scituatema.gov)
Knowing my kryptonite crypt,
My not-marble-nor-gilded
Princely-monument,
Had no chance to outlive
This fakakta rhyme scheme . . .
The Shrine To Me!
My final resting place:
My very tony, exclusive
Sub Zip Code?
The South Transept
Westminster Abbey
The so-called Poets’ Corner,
Of course!

Which brings me to my true purpose:
My true intentions for you this morning?
To publicize the strange Case of
CHARLES ROCKET:
(Go ahead, ******* Google him!)
“Charlie Rocket, found dead in a field near
His Connecticut home on October 7, 2005,
His throat had been cut.
He was 56 years old.
The state medical examiner
Later ruled the death a suicide.”
And if you believe the Coroner,
A Medicine Man &
Master of Self-Interest;
If you give that sharp-dealing,
Proverbial Connecticut Yankee his due,
Then you will probably also think
That millionaire Robert Durst
Didn’t **** Susan Berman,
Even as we see him
Getting away with ******.
Again.

Yes.
And we all know how to
Make poetry pay.
We all know what it is
That makes Sammy run,
Run Sammy Run.
But I take it to its
Absurd conclusion:
Ads right in the middle of
The ******* poem!
“That was,”
If I do say so myself,
“A stroke of pecuniary brilliance."
Pecuniary adjective pe·cu·ni·ary \pi-ˈkyü-nē-ˌer-ē\
: Relating to or in the form of money
Full Definition of PECUNIARY
1:  consisting of or measured in money 2: of or relating to money
— pe·cu·ni·ar·i·ly   -ˌkyü-nē-ˈer-ə-lē\ adverb http://www.thesaurus.com
Would not this be an excellent conceit?
Villainy of a close & potent kind?
Put the cart before the horse
(So to speak):
POETS AS SWEAT EQUITY.
That’s right!
Make us pay for our sins,
Financing our sins.
(So to speak).
What a concept!
Why not run the Merriam-Webster logo here . . .
Would this not be the appropriate time?
(logo)
Advertising right smack
Dab in the middle of
The ******* poem!

My third world soul
Having a difficult time
Navigating this Toddlin' Town
Allow me to show you around, town.

And lest we forget:
Our first poets were religious crazies,
With diction gilding Version, King James.
"My Schtick,"
As Mel Brooks might say.
Mel's History of the World
(Part 2, i.e.),
Retells the Essence of Story Telling,
The Misnah Pentateuch,
Told again with the usual **** genius.
Scene:  Moses stumbles on Sinai,
One of three burdensome
Stone tablets is dropped,
Shatters on a rock.
What could possibly have been proscribed
In those 5 lost commandments?
What freaky human pleasure,
Could possibly have been lost to humanity?
It is pointless to speculate.

'Tis better to think about this,
Dear Poetry Publisher Query *****:
Ads right in the middle of the ******* poem.

Let’s face it: we’re not all George Clooney.
Most of us need a little help scoring with chicks.
Our *****—the archetypal genital signal—
Are hidden from sight, &
****** wagging
Will get you arrested.
Perhaps, pheromones may be the answer.

Dr. Winifred Cutler’s Bio:
(As read by Don Pardo, postmortem).
“Biologist and behavioral endocrinologist Dr. Winifred Cutler was the first to establish the presence of human pheromones in 1986 when her team removed sweat from human underarms and found that only the odorless materials that contained pheromones remained.”

Blessed are the
Underarm Sweat Removers,
A Labor cohort
Soon to be SEIU smorganized . . .
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Ka-Ching.
Ka-Ching.

And Andy Stern’s suggestion,
Probably the best for anyone
Searching for a new mate, or
Wanting to move up,
Move up to a new relationship plateau,
Move up to a higher class of ******?
Open your nostrils.
Take a deep breath.

Bio continues:
“Dr. Winifred Cutler
Founded the Athena Institute in 1986,
Selected that name
Signifying the mission;
Helping women increase
Wisdom and skill,
Relative to
Their Bodies,
Their Health,
Their Wellbeing.”

Why not a Nobel for Dr. Cutler?
Testimony follows:
“Pheromones magnify my mojo.
I wear the love potion that makes
The most gorgeous gal in the bar--
That kind of gorgeous gal,
Usually out of my league—
Makes her look my way.
Welcome, my fingers
Touch her siren shoulder.
She turns,
‘What do you want?’ she asks coyly.
‘Um, want to dance?’ I manage.
She grins, looks me
Up and down—
Mostly down—
And says, “Not really.”

The verdict?
Apparently, the scent of pheromones is
Still overpowered by nerves.
Let’s face it:
Women can smell fear.

Cue Etta James: “At laaaaaaaaaaast . . .”
I’ve racked up over 50 followers,
50+ www.hellopoetry.com fans,
Fifty shades from cyberspace,
Dedicated disciples,
Devotees of my work,
An apostolic cadre of
LIKE button true believers.
Time, I think, to start a cult.
Enslave the men.
Fleece their bank accounts & IRAs.
Polygamize their women.
***** their mothers, wives & daughters.
Mix up a little Kool Aid.