If you walked through the woods with me,
at first opportunity I’d do you the favor
of blistering your skin with tree sap,
scratching you with thorns,
making places for blood and mud to mix.
I’d jump on your back, push your face
into the loam of last year’s leaves,
stuff your nostrils with earth smell,
cake your tongue with earth taste,
mud your eyes closed with earth sight,
all for your own good.

When you remember where you come from,
that even you need water and air to live,
I’ll let you up again,
let you chase me,
pleading with me to buy your shares,
help you divest of your past life;
but I’ll be way ahead of you,
laughing like a nuthatch
all the way to the riverbank
because, like I was commanded,
I love you and not your sins.

A poem, a pun and a joke sat down to devour the human race.
Immediately, they began to eat, not pausing to say Grace.

The poem ate quite delicately, not wanting to make a mess.
“These humans can be quite delicious, I really must confess.
Their emotions are very spicy,“ she said, eating the heart with zest.
“A taste of brotherhood and love delight the palate best.”
She ate so very slowly, reflecting on every bite,
She drank the blood of beauty.  It made her head feel light.

The pun, upon the other hand, sliced into the brain.
Deftly and swiftly he cut, not causing any pain.
He entered the cerebellum as swift as a laser beam,
And then was gone so quickly that to the brain, ‘twas but a dream.
Discovering its invasion, gray matter laughed, white matter cried,
“My God, I’ve been defiled and logic has been defied.”

The joke, always an outsider, did not want to know the victim’s name.
It ate only stereotypical beings; it treated everyone the same.
The way in which the joke ate, was very crude, indeed.
Manners and good taste are not inherent in its breed.
The joke was not particular, it would chew on any part,
But it could not reach the brain; it could not touch the heart.

The poem, the pun and the joke blew smoke after eating the human race.
They burped and belched and buried the bones beneath the earthen face.

Silent songs
perch on the strings
of his banjo
like birds frozen
to phone lines.
Those un-played songs
wait for someone
with some pluck
to take their hands
out of their gloves,
warm up those chickadees,
set them to singing.

Six lovely red, unspoiled apples
lay atop a heap of typical American trash,
call me with a snake-like hiss,
feast on us, feast on us, feast on us.
Come on, Adam; it’s why we exist.
But you’re in a dumpster, I reply,
mingled with garbage, waste, refuse.
What about germs, sanitation, hygiene?
What about my middle-class American pride?

Alongside the apples, a blood-stained newspaper
speaks headlines of disaster—
starving children in Myanmar, Dharfur,
the refugee camps in Syria and Uganda.
I think the sin, not that original in this land of plenty,
would be to let these apples rot, so I pluck them
from the trash, take them home, devour them,
their sweet juice running down my throat
as I write a check to a local food shelf
to assuage the guilt only the full-bellied feel.

Only in a democracy
do the fire hydrants
and car tires
elect the dogs
that **** all over them.

35

#35 on the menu sounded good,
though not pronounceable by my Minnesota tongue.
With a Thai accent, the waiter asked
how we’d like our food, mild, medium or hot.
My friends and my wife opted for mild but I chose hot;
I’d heard really hot peppers turn the key
that unlocks the endorphin cabinet,
and being a child of the ‘60s, I knew what was inside.

I chose boneless chicken, carrots cut to look like flowers,
green beans, and broccoli with mushrooms and rice
lightly sauteed to just beyond crunchy,
all sprinkled with red pepper flakes.

After the first forkfull, my tongue ignited, my lips kindled
and my face took on the color of a cayenne sunrise.
With the second taste, salt water,
the ocean we all carry inside our bodies,
reached high tide on my forehead.,
Waves of sweat broke on the beach of my face.

I gulped ice water and beer, glass after glass, but the heat increased
as in between ice cubes I shoveled more delicious coal on the fire,
unable to stop until my stomach could hold no more
and I had to ask for a carry-out container.

After a night of flaming dreams,
I woke with my lips still atingle, my tongue crackling.
Gasping for cool air, I remembered the take-home box,
half ran to the kitchen for well water and ice,
filled a pitcher, placed it in the fridge,
salivating with anticipation of lunch
and another dose of #35.

The would-be King is angry,
adamant that his silk suit trumps
all the other suits and pantsuits
vying for the throne.
His head is in his ace hole.
He thinks all the Queens are airheads,
gropes them as if they are ******
to be replaced when one gets old
and a prettier one comes along.
He shuffles his Jacks,
mere minions, all interchangeable,
discards them, sluffs them off.
His would-be subjects
are treated like deuces and tres;
the cards that do the hard work
of making a winning hand,
mostly with spades,
are clubbed into submission.
Though he values diamonds,
his deck contains no hearts,
they bleed too liberally for his ilk.
With his hair pulled over his eyes
like a dealer’s shade,
he deals from a stacked deck,
under the table, cards hidden up his sleeve.
He can’t see himself for what he is,
the fifty-third card in the deck,
the joker.