an arm adorned with one tattoo often shimmers
but a tattoo sleeve doesn’t work
profound for you, a swirling mess for me
meaningless dizzy clutter – less is more, man
it’s like years ago i was driving in backwoods nebraska
i came to a village with one ******* SKYSCRAPER
dwarfing the town like a cadaverous giant
twenty stories tall in a hamlet of 7-11s
ranch homes and stunted two-floor office buildings
it would have been a ****** in manhattan
all those seventy-story monsters huddled together
each elbowing the next from the limelight
cancelling each other out
but a single slamming skyscraper in a hick town
hits you like the first beer after two months at sea
a billboard in the desert or a charitable lady
nibbling your cashews after a stretch in the can
i was like jack tripping on a beanstalk
i pulled over to smoke a doob, stare and you know what?
i bet you a few nimble souls hopped off that tower

yeah cops are just working guys doing a ***** job
and when you need one you need one
but man, they let themselves be molded into an army
at the drop of a top hat and overtime paycheck
the police are weapons and sometimes used accordingly
they see no problem dropping into invasion mode
against the unemployed, the underemployed
the darker population, freethinkers
and other americans who break no laws
except the law against resisting the harness
the cops accept their role as cattle **** to students
who are playing their role:  cross-examining the USA
it's simple but true--
wear a suit and you're the boss
dress funky and you're a creep.
deserving of the smug baton
i observed this at the G20 summit
where i strolled along a phalanx of cops
there to protect the inviolability of property
more sacrosanct than the citizens of the country
and now i watch them kick down the wallstreet settlements
serving and protecting the dollar almighty
(thanks to my fellow beatniks for the cliche last line)
(but tell me it’s not true)
if you’re a policeman reading this
thanks for getting my keys out of the car
but WAKE UP to the way you’re intermittently implemented

i’m listening to the gospel station
digging this lady’s paean to christ
i’m stealing the song
not paying for it with piety or belief
taking what doesn’t belong to me
it’s transgressive
like watching the miss teen america pageant
or staring at my neighbor’s wife’s ***
enjoying what’s not mine to enjoy

i just picked up the monkey wrench gang
a bible for eco-terrorists
an influential text
when i was young i read henry miller
and soon began ******* my brains out
read carlos castenada and added psychedelics to my mix
read bukowski and my upward mobility turned south
now i’m not young
so the monkey wrench gang
probably won’t have me blowing up bridges
which is fortunate
mein kampf is next on the syllabus

i’ve come to see
people who are a pain in the ***
keep you on your toes

resnick!
for years we worked together in the hospital
i knew him as a villainous old coot
but a stud in his youth
and a rake all the way through
smoking relentlessly in the oxygen tank room
which didn’t blow up, but just coughed
cascading merry cynicism with wicked timing
"for chrissakes," he’d say, seeing me carting equipment
"i took less than that with me to vietnam"
tom told me a ***** joke about rodeo ***
that i repeated on a book tour
(since i’m the ***** poet)
and which turned the audience so hostile
my poems may as well have been covid
tom came on to all women:  staff, patients, family
"hey little girl, you want some candy?"
so over-the-top creepy that it was acceptable
if you squinted
he was triggered especially by denise
a young nurse:  blonde, petite, shy
when she walked by, his admiration calmed him down

now tom’s gone to that great ashtray in the sky
and when i see denise in the halls
i smile and savor tom’s unshackled lust
his peculiar resnick love

is it really such a radical idea
that people shouldn’t push other people around
and pillage all their resources?

seems to me that the idea of a king and queen
is the wacky concept