Who is a real man?
A man with a hard rock body,
Can hold his liquor without puking,
Has many ****** encounters,
Lots of money,
Wins many fights,
Muscular with ten packs.
No!
A real man  seeks knowledge for himself and his family's betterness,
He is focused,
Stays away from glitz and glamour.
He is gentle but firm,
Does not holler to get his point,
Is not a punk.
He is a family man,
Makes time for his family,
Brings up his children to be upright human beings.
Keeps his promises,
He is trustworthy,
Does not break deals,
Pays his debts,
Is upfront and honest.
Respects all women,
Doesn't leer with lust at women,
Stays faithful to his wife,
Treats women with respect.
Keeps his house in order,
He does chores around the house,
Helps with dishes,laundry and ironing,
Cooks sometimes.
Pays his bills on time
Handles his own money,
Doesn't go looking for hangouts,
Or depend on his wife or parents.
Works his tail to earn a decent income,
Budgets his money and saves,
Gives to charity and good causes.
Does not whine or complain,
Solves his own problems,
In my opinion that's a real man.

Skull and Bones free markets calling,
          we're sailing off with your income's falling...

Skull and Bone's gain, -your hurt;
          all your fetid industries we do subvert...

Skull and Bones my outlaw swear!
          on the altar I cremate the care!

He was too lazy
to put pennies in his loafers
and too cheap
to offer a penny for your thoughts
nickel & diming
his way through life
until the pennies had no value
and the thoughts weren't cost effective
and the income was disposable
and the outcome was predictable.

Blank faces, hopeless dreams
Scattered down the boulevard
Thank the barren local streets
That shatter thoughts of working hard

Lonely moms, dying friends,
Barefoot children in the dark
Play behind a chain-link fence
Instead of in the park

Fast food & news stations
Feed on troubled minds
Claiming that the stipulations
Are changing with the times

These days you can’t wake up
Without that cup of Joe
Problems all those drugs shake up
Most people never know

Snow White isn't easy
Maybe she just needs seven extra sources
of income
Maybe she gets depressed
easily
Maybe she is very good friends
with every single one
Why does everyone have to assume she's sleeping with all of them?
Snow White is better than that.

Swipe in to enter
The machine said
And we did
we intend to do the same
on a daily basis,
Immerse ourselves into a fake promise called
Income, stability and a preconceived notion
called “life, the way it is”

For once the machine, couldn’t recognise
The faded lines on the thumb,

Walk away,
we walk away till we reach
the queen’s necklace
where it all began,
Dreams, hope and salvation.
The perfect place to revisit
Decisions, choices and the way forward
But we fail to look into any as we take a pause
From all that is normal.
To gaze at the surreal horizon
Ebbed in the promenade that is home to all of us.
“Swipe out to exit” Nobody says
As we dwell in the possibility of a better tomorrow

Jingle, jingle, Mr. Kringle
Please drop by my house.
Don’t miss it like you did last year
Don’t be that seasonal louse
That brought cheesy kinds of toys
From the local dollar store
We shopped there all the time
So we had seen them before.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful
But Action Tommy is not the same
As GI Joe. Between the two there’s
More difference than the name.
And Lego blocks fit together
To build some amazing things
Those copycat toys from Taiwan
Do not build much of anything.

Jingle, Jingle, Mr. Kringle
If you are real, please heed.
None of those toys and junk
Is really what we need.
It would be better if you could
Bring a job for my poor Dad.
Make it better than minimum, like
The one he most recently had.

And maybe a raise for Mom
Who works a full time job too.
Would a dollar an hour be such
An earth-shaking thing to see to?
So, just in general, Kringle dude,
If it wouldn’t make you awful mad
Could you twitch your nose and
Make this Christmas not be sad?

"My home life isn't the best," I said.
"It doesn't have to be," she said.


BADLANDS BLEAT


Okay, I said it again. Getting out of bed was the worst part of the day. To begin, the marijuana haze from the night before never went away and left me sore. Sure it was likely enough to ease some of the pain, but in the morning my body stood and got to working slowly like it wasn't eager at all. Only the thought of fast food coffee got me pumped up, not even half-mast at that. If the **** I called erotica to save face couldn't bribe a competent rise out of me, the daily grind certainly couldn't get it done. Impetus again, every time in two week increments. Sure, I had money in the pockets of my sweat pants for the coffee and treats that I charged on a credit card years ago when I had the means -- but I was living with family. A prison sentence delivered by a cruel twist of fate that I caused myself in the first place. Nothing to blame but the errors in my own transactions. Much better than before, still not in charge of anything more than my mistakes. I didn't talk much. Who needed to know? I fulfilled the bare basic requirements of my peers so I could stay stealth. I had pills to eat. I ate them at home. I had meals to eat, and I ate them alone. Company was always safer to keep in a cigarette. Lucky me, when I ran into other smokers you would think they spoke for a need to keep their lips wet. There was a freedom in the chance to sit around a circle taking in information without the pressure to reciprocate. Four years running, I'd made choices in the Fall that brought all my work down. The scribbles and notes attached to cork board, reliably lost in a pile of clothes, paper and thumb tacks. Living with no other luggage made the journey more bearable during the dark days. It helped practice ignorance of others when I barely kept myself well.

I used to live in a country
That was based on liberty
And where just anybody
Could achieve prosperity
That with assured equality
And working diligently
One could expect definitely
To succeed economically
If you saved all the money
Left over from your salary
To save to bring your family
A step closer to solvency.

Not an impossible proposition,
It was based on the condition
Of a grand national institution
Which promised that stabilization
By taxing us and corporations
With an equitable correlation
Between folks of humble station
And the larger organizations
Working in happy syncopation.
A welcome feeling of elation
Would descend upon our nation
And keep us from stagnation
Or going into nationwide deflation,
Or just as scary, a huge inflation.

Now I look upon our history
And see decades of misery
Laid upon us by calumny
By those meant to fortify
And build up our security.
The constant forces of calamity
If we accept less than probity
From those who have no honesty
Choosing leaders based on beauty
A national cult of personality
Then permit political chicanery
By people with no dignity
Only a greedy criminality
That pretends to propriety
And a devout base of spirituality
When what we have is actually
A kangaroo court of dishonesty
Without a care for the citizenry.