the function of words is to communicate
not flaunt vocabulary
dazzle with metaphor
or shock with syntax

but then there's poetry

a relentless weekend in the ER

i kid you not
a man fell off the couch
and we had to rush him to the OR
to pry off half his skull
and staunch the bleeding
to keep him alive

we had another fella
6’6 with the biggest head in the universe
probably 400 pounds
he hadn’t bathed in five years
he was a white man and his skin was black
the nurses scrubbed him clean later in the ICU
an epic endeavor
he couldn’t walk
amazingly he had a girlfiend
who shoved him from bed to chair
to toilet and back for years
supplied him with pain meds for years too
the big guy’s in big trouble now
needs a tracheostomy to keep him breathing
but can’t get one because his neck
is as thick as a chimney
and he’s young—35
his mother and sister came up from florida
they hadn’t seen him in ten years
and had no idea how he’d deteriorated

and let’s not forget the uber driver
who had a heart attack while driving
poor woman never made it
out of the trauma bay

now it’s monday
i’m eating a frozen pizza
watching Paris, Texas
Wim Wenders, Sam Shepard
and Harry Dean Stanton all agree
this world
and every world
is tough to navigate

i could brag about my night
but to who?
what sentient being is epicurean enough
to appreciate my palate?
cosmopolitan enough
to follow my exploration?
who has mastered the physics
to dig my trajectory?
there’s only one
back to the mirror!

had a great time in new orleans this year
sad to hear about that brain-dead *******
with an empty life and nothing better to do
than launch his truck into a bourbon street crowd
on new year’s eve
14 dead, dozens crushed
and oooo, he served honorably in afghanistan
and probably had unmet mental needs from the war
and yeah, wonder where this twice-deployed vet
got the bug to slaughter folks he never met?
he was a hardworking family man
he helped out the lady upstairs
all these random mass murderers have a story
and the search for their motivation
is served up to us as entertainment, really
at this point we have to dodge the raindrops
you can't go to the supermarket
without the possibility of assassination
the world is brimming with violence
but this growing american compulsion
for murdering arbitrary strangers
much less executing first graders
seems unprecedented
an especially nasty example
of american exceptionalism

rick owned the monkey bar
not the one in L.A.
but his own knock-off in cleveland
and rick wasn’t a big fan
of african-americans he knew
but he was REALLY no fan
of strange african-americans in the bar
however, the pandemic arrived
the white people stopped coming
and the black people kept coming
and rick sat on a corner stool
making money overseeing a black bistro
called the monkey bar
it was like ****** opening a bar for jews
and calling it the chamber

"Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord
a founding text of the Situationists
it's like social media was invented
to intensify what he's talking about
our reality is a manufactured representation
of course Guy Debord's life
was yet another glorious failure
his canny analysis changed nothing
but it can be argued that glorious failure
is the way to go
otherwise you're not thinking big

the secret of life is simple and two-prong
one, you gotta be LUCKY
two, appreciate things when they’re good
because they won’t be good forever
don’t sweat the small stuff
the big stuff’s coming