strong coffee to stay alert
protein and poetry for strength
hard times are coming

Their names are:
Katie, Bobo, Bear--
Max and Buddy,
Sushi and
Grafin Hegwig von Stubenrein*,
Hedy for short.

For 30 years, dachshunds, chihuahuas
and miniature schnauzers.

Chihuahuas are definitely
the undercover dogs,
but dachshunds will burrow too.

Hedy and Buddy at the foot
of the bed, cross- and lengthwise.
Bobo too, but anywise.

Sushi and Max like it
when we sleep on our sides--
preferring the crooks of the knees.

Katie was an armpit dog.

Dogs are mobile and in a pinch
do double duty as a heating pad--
but a cold nose on bare skin
is welcome in the heat of the summer.

Night or nap, the company is welcome--
Did we rescue them or did they rescue us?

I've become a lazy reader,
dismissive and curmudgeony too.
Magazines or books? Not magazines--
Magazine readers are a different species.

So books it is. Let me take inventory:
Nonfiction. Sorry, just the occasional science book.

General fiction lost the war for my attention--
Do real people really have so many feelings?
So often and so detailed?

So I read genre fiction.
But bang, bang adventure has become tiresome--
after all how many times and ways can you shoot/stab/blow up/car chase?

Likewise, there are books that seem spend pages and pages describing clothes.
Even though Chaucer also spent many words describing clothes,
his best lines were about bare ***** hanging out a window.

All my favorite characters are now old, Harry Bosch, George Smiley.
To my regret, the Wall falling and the Cold War ending almost wiped out the thoughtful spy story.
Science fiction, a previous favorite, took a goofy turn awhile ago, and I’m done with it.
Let's see: fantasy now seems written for teenage vampire-witch wannabes. Just flutter away.

What's left? I think it's only Detective stories and Poetry.
I'm pulling for Harry Bosch and Billy Collins at 90, and, God bless him, John Le Carre.

Outside, near the entrance,
a tendril wafts into my nose—
A pleasant olfactory response,
as the molecules are absorbed,
and work into the capillaries,
Traveling through the veins,
Into the heart twice and then the arteries to the brain,
Binding to and activating the nicotinic receptors—
Causing a release of dopamine—
Yes, a runner’s high!
And never mind the downsides,
Even after a 30-year quit.

And yet, I'm glad I quit.

Strobing flashes in the clouds,
Thunder rolling through the hills.
Dust puffs with the first drop-
The promise of grass and prairie flowers.

The Indian gentleman, Brahmagupta,
invented the zero, null, nil, and zip--
just for times like this:
You betrayed me, you broke my heart.

Rewind, erase, delete, obliterate.
You are naught to me.

Black holes are really cool.
The bigger the cooler.
And they are not really black.
Absorbing real quick, emitting real slow,
By George, that's the way to go.