there was a wishing well
on the boardwalk. a fountain

spewing yellow and blue water.
I reached into the pool

grabbing change.

crossed the street
and spread the wet
green change across the bar

and got a beer.

2 a.m.

just in time for the turtle races.

so I rushed across the street
to get money for beer
and to bet on the race.

she was kneeling
in front of the wishing well.

she told me her name was Destiny.

the green-dyed water
dripping from her clenched fingers.


DESPERATE LOVE was the turtle
we picked. a 40 to one shot.

Destiny and me
spread the wet change
across the bar,
placed our bet...


...right after the fight
the cops arrested Destiny. the green

dye. she never washed it off
her hands, her arms.

Desperate Love came in first.
I took the winnings and bailed
Destiny out of the county jail.

it was love at first sight.

...meanwhile,

we're back at the wishing well...

Our land of stars and stripes, now glows,
with screens that flicker in hallowed halls.
Entranced humans shuffle, with eyes fixed below,
on small gadgets that have us enthralled.

Should the Statue of Liberty, our symbolic girl,
be holding a smartphone up to the world?
While tweets fly like eagles and hashtags swirl,
foreign disinformation trends as fast as it’s purled.

In lunch halls, real conversations take rest,
as influence is sought—in hoity-toity, binary quest.
Friends are backdrops—originality in short supply
as likes and shares make our dopamine fly.

America’s zombies, though ******* drained,
shuffle endlessly on, with Wi-Fi stimulated brains.
Once the land of the free, we’re now the land of tech
with minds wrecked by truths unchecked.

As we rock and sway—the new robot way—
will our old, analog-republic simply fade away?
.
.
Songs for this:
Airhead by Thomas Dolby
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_01.mp3

The fence posts stand, bleached and brittle,
a tidy graveyard for dreams not their own.
Each board a promise of security,
painted white by hands that never bled,
guarding a silence that screams privilege.

A lawn mowed to uniformity,
as if clipping blades could trim truth.
Beneath, the roots tangle in soil tilled
by those unseen in the storybooks,
their spines curved by centuries of labor
to raise a house that barely held them.

Inside, the air is stale with whispers
of manifest destinies and invisible hands.
Windows frame a world distorted,
a lens of 'normal' that filters out color,
washing the streets in sepia nostalgia.
The picket fence becomes a cage
for those who see the bars.

But who built this town?
Not the architects of ignorance
who claimed the blueprint as birthright.
No, it was those in shadow,
their brilliance stolen to light the chandeliers
of men who never thanked them.
It was the voices erased
to make way for the monotonous hum
of a narrative too pale to reflect reality.

Progress wears brown hands,
scarred from the heat of engines
that drove the country forward.
It sings in languages
that don’t fit neatly into syllabaries,
its rhythm syncopated, refusing the march
of conformity.
Progress carves its name
into the very foundations of a nation
too proud to look down.

And now, the town crumbles,
its picket fences splintered
by the weight of unacknowledged history.
The 'white normality' that painted
its walls in monochrome
is revealed as smoke—
a ghost-town haunted by the very people
who gave it life,
only to be exorcised.

Yet those ghosts do not wail.
They speak, steady and firm,
their presence undeniable.
They are the architects now,
designing futures that will not crumble,
drawing plans that see the beauty
in every hue.

And the white-picket fences
are repurposed for something new,
their shards forged into tools
to till a soil fertile with truth,
where a garden of multitudes can finally bloom.

Be inconsistent
Change your mind, proudly
To be great, is to be misunderstood

There is always one person
you can rely upon

Read the notes,
and take the
words, and
press them
to your
flesh.

~ inspired by, & for Sally~

the modern internal combustion engine
is a series of controlled explosions, a spark
ignites the flammable gasoline, the pistons
moving, dispensing energy to turn our
wheels so we may voyage as a pair, to
there, and to here:

our very hearts, the original model of
this energetic blood disbursement of
oxygen ignited by electric pulsations,

one contemplates
at this late hour, at this late date, when the
moving parts, obedient servants,
collectively concur
that the use-by-date has nearly arrived and
we must soon take a sabbatical to the whereafter

what two, surely not three, digits will complete the right side of our hyphen,
our from~ to, as if that were an achievement,
more than merely, an identifying bracelet

think upon it, thousand of explosions,
millions of sparkings electric, we have been
engineering our reactors to go to over 100%,
until we cry out
how long you gonna run that body down,
and when the answer is ascertained,
we now done and undone,

we
no longer care, that last datum,
we are, of it, unconscious,
the date prior inscribed in flesh,
its mate, its uncomplimentary
complement,
can be only scribed in
Vermont granite,
as a warning
to any passerby
that yet harbors
the illusory that
the future can
be foretold