What makes me a little more radical
Besides not on sabbatical?

Kids in cages
Too low wages

Border closures but
Corporate tax havens

Government shut-down
Over a border wall? *****!

Intolerance is rampant
Sharp turn to white right

Much of this is revolting
More than those not voting

Grief is a sneaky beast
Cornered sty in your eye
You know it’s there
But in a glance,
It’s gone

Or submerged:
A line of a poem
An old photograph
A trick of light and weather
A child smiling up at papa

And then come undone:
Throat coughs
Rivulets run;
You wax nostalgic.
It’s not not beautiful

“WHATS MORE,
THEY’RE CROSSING OUR SHORE…

HOPPING FENCES;
MIXING ******

DAUGHTER FROM
ANOTHER POOR

REFUGEE SPOOR WITH
ILLEGAL INTENTIONS!”




(this is satire;
if you thought otherwise—
seek immediate intervention)

Bless me Padre for I have sinned
My last confession was 3 poems ago

Padre, I watch ****; food ****
Lamb shank in a garlic fennel sauce

Pig parts unknown wrapped in bacon
Tri-tip and tripe marinated in marrow

Padre, I eat my veggies
(caramelized broccoli florets in a Béarnaise sauce)

But **** that man Bourdain!
Again and again and again!

I find myself drawn to pork stewing
In decadent assorted sweet-meats

Padre, I need a chlorophyll cleanse
Please accept my humble supplication…

What? Three kale martinis and one cauliflower?
I repent! Let the cleanse begin!

The dead remain so
The alive not not so

Pivot divot when
Friends through end

Are still so; with or
Without tuna casserole

I’m feeling the old dread
Of being half dead
A waking dream
It all seems

I don’t feel colors
I can’t smell sounds
Because gauze
Surrounds

"I am old,”
Said father time
Absconding an
Older nursery rhyme

Baby 2019
Fresh and clean
Chortled, coughed
And ripping his/her bib off

Opined: “Settle down; breathe;
This can change with ease;
You are not the only show in town.
There are other clowns around”

Time slowed
Sat down
2019 rose
And now grows…