If I somehow
***** this up, and die
in some stupid, boring, clichéed,
romantically tragic way
while I'm still sort of
young and
sort of attractive, and
you are, too,
I hope you
**** on my grave,
howl profanity at the couldn't-give-a-**** sky,
and curse me inside-out
for being
so derivative and
predictable.

I know
it doesn't
matter
now.

I can't
remember
if it
ever
did.

When did news parody
stop being funny?
Was it somewhere between
Alan Jackson’s 9/11 cash-in
and Donald Trump’s hair?
Was it BoJo stranded on a zipline over London,
or Cameron’s alleged porcine relations
(bizarrely black-mirroring fiction)?
When did the news
start doing Chris Morris’ job for him?
When did they start
pre-satirising the headlines?
“No evidence mermaids exist,” says US Government.
Swimming pool evacuated after prosthetic leg is mistaken for *******.
Robots follow Marco Rubio to South Carolina.
I swear, I didn’t
make any of those up.
The actors on Saturday Night Live
are more statesmanlike
than the Presidential Primary Candidates they’re lampooning.
How the hell do they breed these
creatures?  These gurning,
overgrown foetuses with their
conveniently dead ****** sisters to get
all wet-eyed and tumescent over,
their boomingly hollow controversy and
their total, catastrophic
crashes of personality.  
These loathsome
organic constructs who would seem
more relatable and trustworthy if
their image consultants made them wear
Nixon masks for every
public appearance.  

When did it all become
this strange, sick spoof
of itself?

Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?
Man dressed as penguin receives more votes than the Liberal Democrats.
Piers Morgan given jail time for illegally hacking ‘phones and gloating about it.

Okay.  
I made the last one up.

He pulls away, precariously balanced
above the raucous creek slicing through
the campground’s city-like togetherness

she protectively hovers, hands cupped
inches from his slender back, prepared to grab
honoring his need for independence

the crooked lodge pole leans
toward what little sun is bestowed
upon it by its larger brethren

a mother, a child
a tree, a stream
soft light.

Dawn
light just seeping
through slatted blinds
robins begin
their morning song
at full-blast volume
I am awake, listening

hoping you made it
through the wilderness
and are sitting on the deck
with your morning coffee
listening to robins too
or loons calling on the lake
watching the sun rise

you said you wanted
to be lying naked
next to the woman
you love
when you're ninety
I hope to be the one
in your arms

perhaps completely deaf
to the robin's cacophony
and a little
worse for wear
but still loving
each other
just the same.

You are
so perfect.