sunny 80s in may
chores around the city
sandals, shorts, ebike
old kid rock tunes
students halfway naked
sidewalk beers delivered by stunning servers
wacky salad pork wraps
martinis at the fancy restaurant
another lovely afternoon
there’s a day off for you
happy to write this poem again
i wish i could rewrite this poem
every day

some ******* have way more
than their share of luck

**** that glittery mausoleum in Cleveland
the real rock’n’roll hall of fame
is the Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ
and that went out of business years ago

once again the sudan is dipped in hell
a ferociously satanic civil war
tens of thousands butchered
villages torched, millions set wandering
and now a famine
babies starving to death every two hours
i was gonna skip breakfast
but instead i loaded up at the cafeteria
four turkey sausage links, two hash browns
and a hard boiled egg
i know it's ****** up logic
but it felt right that someone have breakfast

that lawn mower
is heavier than it used to be
and tonight i’m paying the price
i see that old age
won’t be the easy transition i expected
i should have known
but i’m a blithe optimist
my trouble will be a diminished capacity
that day by day, takes me by surprise
some days more violently than others
well you gotta live your life
i’ll have to discover my limitations
the hard way

alan turing conjuring his everything machine
he built the future
and we’re stuck with it

just treated a covid patient, a bit of a throwback
a break from the warm weather trauma patients
scooter vs. car (awful), a kid shot in the crotch (ouch)
a paraplegic whose friends strapped him on an ATV
(it didn’t end well), a 17 year old girl shot
for looking like a "snitching *****"
a fella going 100 miles an hour until he wasn’t

ah, summertime