Have you ever met the snark?
Teeth and claws of slease?
His breath smells of
Odious innuendo
Cutting comments
Mean bon mots

The snark is short
Only three foot two
On a good day. Always
With a grimace visage
As he tap-shnicks, taps-shnicks
Ambling his way toward you

Hit the button for the
Crosswalk cross light
Red seconds count down as
Weird whooping sounds
White man walking! Get
Safe on the other side!

I’m a solid bronze snowflake, baby
Shiny, showy, pointy
I don’t melt

I’m here for the love, the dove
I’m here for the queer and the trans
And the newspaper delivery man

My heart is on my sleeve
Always beating never bleeding
For what‘s right, the good fight

This liberal for liberty
Leans so far to the left
It’s hard sometimes to walk

Disregard me at your peril
Think me mushy meek then
Meet me feral

Please, save me from home and our status quo zones
Where my dear and the misanthrope stay
Where sometimes is heard no dispiriting words
But the clouds are still cloudy all day

Home, home is so strange
Where my fear and the forlorn hope lay
Where is often is heard many recurring words
And I need to go outside and play

I am going to make mistakes
And probably break things

In my attempt to speak the truth
You will like or unlike me

You might even un-Friend me
REPLY: "Oh! No! Dear me! No!”

It won’t stop my postings
In this pre-apocalyptic world

Peeling the opinion onion
Seems the right thing to do

On the shortest day
Before the new decade
As the sun belt sways
With seasons changing
High in sky is Venus
Bright night beacon

Tomorrow will be longer
Bringing urgent hope nigh
That as the earth tilts
So do we, happily
To greater fortune
And love reciprocal  

May you see clear in 2020
And have dreams realized
With all fears deprived
To all I known and love
Good health, better life:
My card, my Yuletide

I want to redo some of this
White-out some wrong doing

Left swing the other things
Highlight the bliss

Put it back in place
And if by grace, it stays

And then one day it happened.
Not one gun was used, nor knife.
There was not a mass shooting;
no one was killed.

Not s car hit a pedestrian,
not even by accident.
No deaths by heroine overdose
nor by fentanyl were recorded.

No one committed a ****** crime
against anyone.
Doors opened for indigents
and immigrants.

It became more strange:

Truth was spoken everywhere,
even on Fox News.
Corrupt leaders abdicated—
get this—even Trump!

Acrid air cleared, waters too
and salmon swam upstream to spawn.
The earth cooled half a degree,
over the rainbow.

Archived sounds of
Modem’s tortured yodeling
Dot Matrix‘s Zzzzzzzzzzzkt; Thwick!
Zzzzzzzzzzzkt; Thwick!

The boop-boop-hoop-boop…
Of another’s busy phone. Or:
"35 cents for the next three minutes”
Chik-fwwwwrick-ka-ching-ing, kik-frwwwwrick-ka-ching

Back further: the
Thwick-bop-bob-bop
Thwick-bop-bob-bop-bop
Of a rotary dial

Further back:
The piercing
Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Of the 3am TV test signal

Why stop there?
Cha-clump; Cha-clump, Cha-clump; Cha-clump
Milk bottles rattle
Cream at the top
Milk truck’s come and gone

*** of magic soup
mother toiling
leftovers boiling

a kitchen *****
making food for a dozen
with leftover magic

chicken soup first
a ratatouille iteration
mixo mysterioso: gumbo?

a shape-shifting soup

amazing Grayce fed us
dressed us, taught us:
love.

Sour milk.

She walks to Three Corners Market. 

An unseen sludge of mud;

a slip, a fall—
PAIN!

Ice helps;
Not enough.
"I'll wait for you in the car"

1 hr. @ Urgent Care.
Tedium at Emergency.
Inconclusive X-Ray.
Cloudy CAT Scan.
Inconclusive.

9 hours later, 1am, sleep.
This morning?
I'm guessing:
PAIN!

I'm off to fill her prescriptions

And get fresh milk.

On the road less travelled
Unfamiliar now routine
Strangely, though, at home

A dog crosses the road
With more skill than I
His home is to roam

Magical and mundane
Surrounds us and
Confounds us

A sky too blue
Smells noxious
Tastes renowned

Sidewalks cracked, uneven
Traffic dense, dangerous
Horns, alarms, sounds abound

Boy with penciled mustache
Girl as bumble-bee
Glorious pageantry

Unfamiliar territory
Humble observers we
Embrace the sameness

I’m down in the dumps.
Why? I don’t have the mumps.
Sure, life has its bumps,
Even some humps.
I’ve known many chumps,
As well as some grumps;
(One called me a frump!)
Yet—my mind does its jumps;
Something deep, deep in my ****?
A rumble, stumble, grumble;
Oumph! Ugh!
Quick, pass the stomach pump:
It’s, it’s—
I’m passing a…

I know who I am
A man of
Complexity

Completely
This and that and
In-between

Coming and going
Evading but knowing
Modern eye Popeye

Yuk-yuk-yuk-yuk!

****** Spock!

Jim?

Why, why, why!?

Jim?

*** was that, Spock?!

What, Jim?

Delving deep;
Spilling the beans?!
Letting your guard down!?
Schrödinger's cat out of the box!?
Revealing the secrets?!
Violating protocol?!


…It is the truth, Jim.

Cherry blossoms fall
Spiraling to verdant green
Color contrast: spring!

It’s still spring…
With a hint of summer
Guess I’ll call it Sprummer

Actual opposite of ******
This seasonal fecund trend
The great greening of the world

Blossoms still coming with some already gone
Trees leafing fully with some still nascent
Every abundant hue of green in view

Festival of chirping; birds flirting
Copious coos of doves in love
Swooshing thrums of the hummers

Morning rain
After noon sun
Evening pending

Axis tilt-a-whorl
Wobbly earthiness
Glorious, wonderful transition!

Welcome, SPRUMMER!

You don’t speak for all,
President Butterball

Fallacies, fantasies,
Homespun homilies

Disingenuous dissidence
Worse than any immigrant

Look at the unsaid
Fears inside our heads

We ride a crash course;
An apocalypse horse

Stop this farce
Disembark

I’m 87% sure
I’m 97% right
13.2% of the time

I’m rarely wrong
When I’m actually write
Like wright now

I’m probably certain
And certainly resolute
Of probable absolutes

Maybe

LIBERTY:
freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
—dictionary.com

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses
Yearning to breathe free,”

(But not your children;
They’re coming with me)
Not free.

"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me,”

Then what?
Toss back to sea? Fate
Worse than Walmart?

What have we become?
…?!?
Who do we want to be?

A muscle in my metacarpal twitches
A metallic smell pervades the air
I think I hear a high-pitched whining
Hairs rise on my arms and neck

Heart rate slows
Thrumming in my ears
Pores perspiring
Pupils dilating

Something’s coming…
Or someone…
(Or something wrong?)
What!

Flight or fight has me
A finger twitches and
Eyes flicker
Stay or go?

STAY!
STAND!
BALANCE STANCE!
PREVAIL!

We have three or four cats
Two or three of them are black
Fred, the ginger, remains Fred

Without Boss Dog they seem lost
Alliances shift hour by hour
Minute by minute

Who gets the lap?
Right now, surprisingly,
Ms. Black is back

Miss Prissy Hissy
Lady Lucky herself
Prowls her kibble kingdom

Fred the Red with a "Rouwll!”
And a “Rouw!” and a “Prrrrrt…”
Makes his feelings known

Black in the box
Remains subtle queen
With a Lucky detente

Game is not over
Black blur in periphery
Three cats or four?

I didn’t acknowledge the moment
Some of my assumptions went wrong
Not that’s what it all means

Action interaction
Minus abstraction
Breeds reaction

Potent possibilities explode
Reductive responsibilities implode
Churning time into rhyme

Yes, officer, I did it.
Now done,
I won.

I am in fact a dinosaur
****** into the late 50s

Child of the 60s
Emancipated: late 70s

Came of age through the 80s
Became a man in the 90s

Time travelled in 2000 but
The naughts were frought

Better when in the 2010s
Seeing liberation by the 20s

Extant not yet extinct
This dinosaur still roars.

I want to be a Supershero, a
Wikipedia entry with a
Book of poems trending

I want to be that melody, the
Friend you hum right to the end
And think "what a mensch!”

I want to be the
Brother, son, lover
Friend to another

I want to tell a story
Writ large where you will
Gasp, clasp hands, laugh

You might even cry
Or at least
Have a tear in your eye

I’ll never play checkers
  with my dad again
Can’t go back to that
  place or when

I remember being
  sick at six
But mom knew soup
  and other tricks

[here’s where you think
  of who/what you lost
both the gain and/or
  the precious cost]

We’re on a time slide
  What a ride!
    Only towards
       So look forward

Under my fleece blanket
Conventions scorned
I’m naked.

Yes, surprise!
My organs are contained in skin
Contours, grooves; holes in.

*****, ****, eyebrow, *******
You will have to imagine all the rest
As you, too, undress

We really are silly creatures
Dressed in frilly fabric features
Mine is this, yours is that.

Truth be told
Body bold
Is sacred.

I do the best I can
As an old white man
Privilege not withstanding
I try understanding

The world is bigger than me
. . .
Just another tiny speck
Hoping to do so with respect

subatomic love as an
attraction/repulsion thing
while planet's orbits swing

i am neuron
striving to be proton—
but recall electron

and all that matters
niether here/there
is all that matters

Give me Nepenthe
To relieve the odd grief of

Sodden swollen days
Odd different ways

We need some forgetting
Of sadness and regretting

I shan’t regret thee, napenthe
For your welcome Elysian sway

Did Descartes say
"I’m drunk, I thunk:
Therefore I am’nt, Sam…?
And is that now a can of spam, Ma’am?”?

Here and now and then besides
Later perhaps, sometimes betides
Then once again I hunger for:
Tinted eggs and ham once more.

Hail, Nero,
Friend of Piso;
Welcome to the villa

Agrippina at Mar-a-Lago
Ivanka in her tower
A Melania apologia.

Left we are all stumped
Under water and in ruins;
Unfortunately *******.

A super 8 film
Flickers on the screen;
Sprocketing film sounds
Comforting in black and white.

One clip:

A boy in chef hat
Dances gleefully with spatula
At a barbecue with family.
Memories made visible with
Backyard in background.

Another:

He looks like a chemist in the wading pool
Water sploshed from bottle to bottle.
There he is, happily pulling tails of kittens.
Perhaps a future biologist?

There he is:

In line with nine siblings
And matching striped pajamas
Running to rip presents open
From happy boxes under the tree.

Year to year,
The siblings age;
Black and white turns technicolor.
Pops shoots more movies.

A baby falling over;
A sly smile to the camera;
Chocolate covered lips at Easter.
And always a shot of mother smiling.

Who will chef-hatted spatula dancer
Chocolate lipped-
Proto-scientist
Future clown grow to be?

Me.

Left fist at 9 o'clock
Right fist at two
I'm flying, flying
Superhero style.

Nothing can stop me now.

The bullet missed;
Locomotive late;
The building's been left
Shortly after lept.

Lois Lane aside,
I'm soaring solo.

I like the way my cape is flapping,
Snapping
Tapping
Down at my thighs.
Super, man!

"What?"

"Supper?"

"OK."

"I'll be right there."

A correlation of crows
Coruscate above
Rippling and shimmering
High in the sky

Potent portents present
As options multiply
Diverge, converge, divide
With diminishing reply

Phosphorescent swirls
In an opalescent sea
Wondrous whirligigs
Of knowing and being

Make the Moses message minimal
Two tablets become one
10 commandments crucibled
Only one remains:

Don’t be greedy

Common space vs.
Personal space vs.
Marriage space—

I waited for you to…
“No, I waited for you, too!”
No, I wanted from you to…

I thought we both want…
I believed we both should…
I thought we both might…

Dance

It’s a tango:
Slip, slide, dip,
Marriage is a wild ride!

I convert
I come out
I confess

I confound
I confuse but
Don’t conform

I perform
The reform
Rejigger the norm

You and me,
Let’s have tea—
And reach quorum

Channel 3 had Commander Bob;
Eyewitness news on channel 7.
Channel 4 could be watched—
Sometimes.

UHF was a twilight zone,
“Imagine if you will…”
Twiddle those rabbit ears
Tune in if you can…

Local news with a weather man
Gesticulating, cut to
“Shoe sale at Tom McCanns” or
“Save on snap peas at the A&P.”

Then cable:
240 stations with nothing on
Re-runs; if you can find ’em, tape ‘em.
Stack ‘em up and maybe watch ‘em.

Cut the cord.
Nascent net hits the nation
You tube surf to some URL,
A network station replacement…

Netflix, not Nielsen’s
Binging, not “tune in next week…“
Amazon, Hulu, Utube, or Vudo,
Storytelling bettered.

Back in the days of Commander Bob,
"Mutual of Ohmaha’s Wild Kingdom,”
Followed by “Wonderful World of Disney”
In Peacock Technicolor

Cancelled shows meant
Unfinished stories
Tangled plot-lines
Unresolved ennui.

Now, you pitch to Netflix *****, get a “yes.”
And tell a story In 6 to 10 episodes.
You won’t be canceled after number 3;
Vox populi decides Season Two.

Story arcs matter;
Just ask David Lynch.
25 years later, you magnificent *******,
Agent Cooper crushes his chrysalis.

I sleep next to
The time traveller’s wife
I’m there with her
In the then when where again

She sleeps next to
The time traveller’s life
She’s there with him
Bending being here and then

We sleep until
The moment is right
We wake being
Me, you, us and them

[Class already in session]

T: And why not “History”?

[Mean emoji response:
ironic disbelief and amusement]

T: Sharon?

[snick] Well, it’s always been our story

T: Tahjik?

[snick] Never OUR story

T: Well, we study differently now
What do you see?

[snick] she’s helping him
[snick] he’s letting her
[snick] he’s hurt
[snick] and she’s still afraid
[snick] he’s still bigoted
[snick] and angry
[snick] this is incredible

T: Let’s now shift to 2067 and
Watch their co-authored bill pass…

X: Mr. Floss, do you believe in god?

J: No, no I do not.

X: Mr Floss, do you believe in sin?

J: No, I do not.

X: Mr Floss, are you saying…

J: Please, let me explain. I believe in goodness. If you know what being good is then you know what being bad is…

X: Isn’t that simplistic solipsism?

J: Yes—but it is not that simple…

X: Explain.  

J: We want the world to be simple but it isn’t. We desire absolutes. We want the news to assure us that what we think in the moment is right. But it may not be.

X: Go on.

J: You could be right at the same time that I am right. We needn’t rely on a two-valued logic.

X: So, what are you saying?

J: Let’s both get off our high horse?

X: What?

J: We both just might be right. Relax. Sleep well tonight. Do something good tomorrow. Treat a fellow human being well. Goodness is its own reward.

The maw of grief opens
Slowly, reeking
Of onions

Wet eyes blink
From the lost cost
Bereaved, we weep

Still, not yet asleep,
We sojourn here
Bereft

Behold!
The magnificent
Centipede!
100 legs cruising
At full speed
Ten thousand toes
But now suppose
He trips on tiny little
Poppy seed
The tripping ripples
An all toed tumble
With no intercede
Behold the now curled
Chicken feed

I’m happy; but why so sad?
I miss my dad.

I saw him last a year ago
I wiped his *** and so

I told him I was proud
I’m glad I said it out loud

Because now I can’t
Nothing to recant

He met the end with dignity
And aplomb, didn’t he?

Lovable lug of a man
Emulate? I’ll try if I can

I thought him an ******* republican
At age 18—then thought again

I left home to be me
Family? I was free!

Young, naive, on my own
I made my own home

Family was for other guys
That umbilical thought otherwise

Because there was another
Yeah, my mother

Always there, always kind
Reminded me of mine

Calls ended with, “Here’s your father...”
A Lake Woebegone bother

“Hello son...” he’d intone
“Hey, pops,” I’d own

Every poem needs a fulcrum
A change always welcome

I’d say before the call stopped
“I love you, pops”

Months, years, eons begun
Finally, “I love you too, son.”

Next defies time, logic and law
A love so deep it fills me with awe

We became good friends
Mutual respect to the end

The loss cuts deep
And so I weep

And you still have
Your mom and dad?

Call them.
Amen.

A pride of lions
A parade of elephants and
A shrewdness of apes

A prickle of porcupines
A crash of rhinoceroses with
A chatter of budgerigars

A gaggle of geese
Gleefully honking
Heads held high

A horde of crows
Cackling and cawing
Wings spread wide

A kerfuffle of Flosses
A gatherings of clans
A thankful flocking

Kerfuffle is commotion
A happy hoopla
Movement together

Noisy, gleeful, cantankerous
Laughing, loving, boisterous
Family to the end

One.
Might be fun…

Two.
Might be you…

Three.
Be with me?

Four:
Ask for more.

Five,
Combined lives.

Six;
Pick up sticks.

Seven:
Life unleavened.

Eight—
Navigate straights.

Nine:
Leave all that **** behind.

Ten.
Then.

Beneath the fabric
Covering her eyes
Tears puddle and flow

Arms tired, spirit disgraced
The scales list dangerously
Sword lies discarded

Her constitution weak
Battered by righteous fools
This is how justice dies

William Jefferson Clinton
did not come for our guns.
Barack Hussein Obama
did not come for our guns.
No one is coming for our guns.
They come now for our TRUE weapons:

Our words.

The FIRST (not the 2nd) amendment
is now officially under attack.
PED (President-elect Drumph)
tweeted to the cast of HAMILTON:
"Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton"

Freedom of speech is harassment?
A gentle message by a gentleman playing a gentleman
founding-father said to Mr. Michael Pense:
“There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen,
there’s nothing to boo here.
We’re all here sharing a story of love.
We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious
that your new administration will not protect us,
We truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold
our American values and work on behalf of all of us.”

Harassment or free speech?
Bullet points, people. Bullet points.
I am NOT throwing away my—SHOT!
I am NOT throwing away my—SHOT!

The woman
Next to me
Vexes me
Unwittingly

We share our
Space and place
Meet and greet
Carefully

I wish we could
differently.

Maybe?

Yesterday, the day before
And of course, today
Temperatures markedly different

First, no solace
No place of peace
Hiding in strange places

Second, remorse
I behaved badly
During third incident

Third: incident
3 X recently
Feeling quite differently

Anxious dread?
Too much caffeine?
Electrolytes?

I’ll figure it out
By doing and being
Which involves accepting