fooling yourself is the way to go
you're doing it anyway
so go full throttle
you'll wind up ahead
don't bother fooling other folks
it takes a lot of energy
and it doesn't matter anyway
nobody cares like you do
so go forth and prosper
my deluded compadre

after the galactic destruction of hiroshima
we felt we needed a bigger bomb
exponentially bigger
we needed a thermonuclear bomb
equal to 1,000 atomic bombs
so we built one
then we built many
it was necessary

not if but when
maybe bird flu will save us

Rami Malek is radioactively brilliant
as the most alienated soul on earth
in the mindblowing first season--
nostalgia for Occupy Wall Street
when the evil overlords
were under the radar
not flying AirForce One--
and hackers were omnipotent rock stars

got my tent in the back of the car
driving to my campsite
out of the city, into the country
and though the election is long gone
it’s TRUMP billboards, lawn signs
TRUMP splashed on the sides of barns
with the occasional **** BIDEN
thrown in as punctuation
these folks must be so happy
they won
america’s great again
then i see a billboard about guns
STORE IT SAFE
PREVENT SUICIDE
but i thought their dreams came true

i lived with laurie anderson’s keyboard player
back when you heard of laurie anderson
i think the woman’s name was lucky
just roommates, no romance
we shared a loft in times square
that year in new york we were all musicians
but lucky was a star in her own right
"at my level, you don’t have to audition," she said
"oh yeah?" i said
"at my level i don’t give a ****"
we weren’t the hanging-out kind of roommies

the hospital whiteboard
for the 21-year-old patient
has some sunny goals
"spend time with family"
"happy 4th of July"
upbeat aspirations
for a kid heading to the OR
to get sliced and diced
for ***** donation

as hard-hearted "pragmatism"
becomes the norm--
and it has--
our congenial presuppositions
about how we want to live
are taking a beating
but on his way to mars
elon musk clarified the moment:
"the fundamental weakness
of western civilization
is empathy"
ok, there it is
no more mr. nice guy
**** everybody