as all consciousness
is filtered and corrupted
through online interaction
my poems taped to lamp posts
in the real world
may come to be seen
as humanity's redemption

call me al
algorithm

McDonald's crispy strips
Chipotle's triple-wrap burrito
Sonic's half-price shake after 5 pm
Gucci lotion
Verizon cell phones
Carona beer
trying to guess the TV station
by the demographic nature
of the commercials

finally a warm spring day
i break out my sandals
a couple of years old but still in prime shape
i put them on, drive to the show
exit my car, step onto the sidewalk
and sink up to my ankles in fresh cement
a tiny warning flag on the edge of the walk
this is how the world works

the strapping 20-year-old saw that tiktok video
someone riding a motorcycle standing on his head
looked like a good time
happy stupidity vs. dismal reality
entertainment always trumps education
if the tiktok video had been him in a hospital bed on a ventilator
a broken neck, quadriplegic
he wouldn’t have watched it
though if he had watched it
he wouldn’t have been in that hospital bed on that ventilator
having us unplug him two weeks later

i'm standing in the rain
and every drop that hits me
is a detail of my life
utterly random
some smack me, some miss me
and that's my life
i'm soaked in accidental events

these poems make me an arbiter of reality
pretty crowded field these days
in fact it's every man for himself

we’re born into unyielding architecture
and concrete landscape of circumstance
our only freedom
is interpreting that architecture
and negotiating that landscape

here’s a buddy movie:
donald trump and martin luther king jr.
they play on different teams
but some **** goes down
on inauguration day
that puts them together on the run
evil mayhem ensues
and by the end of the day
things are looking dark for martin luther king
will donald trump come through for him?
all the odds say no-– but it’s yes!
and it all goes down
on inauguration day

xylazine, horse tranquilizer
croc, the zombie drug
must be lots of fun
you’re getting high
while your legs disintegrate
you shrug
"gotta take the bad with the good"
we had a patient come in
we could see his femur
the actual bone
and we could smell the problem
from out in the hall
he was scheduled to get the leg chopped off
but first we pulled out the breathing tube
so he could decide if he wanted the amputation
or preferred to get septic and die
when asked how he let things get so bad
he gave an intelligent answer
"because i’m stupid"

why people do what they do
is endlessly fascinating and horrifying
we'll never know the real motivation
and it probably wouldn't help anyway

to be fair
we were always racist
the civil rights obsession
of the 50s and 60s
was an anomalous blip
witness our recent reaction
to black people's displeasure
at getting slaughtered by police
for traffic violations
america was so appalled
we reelected donald trump

ruth buzzi lay dead on the lawn
ruth buzzi, star of rowan & martin’s laugh-in
dayglo spinster with a hair net
like a spider web on her scalp
foil for arte johnson
remnant of a comedian
lay stiff on the lawn
my wife placed her there for decoration
she thought it was perfect
well it was perfectly disturbing
our friends were uncomfortable coming over
i reasoned with her
"we can’t have kids here"
but my wife thought it was a cool garnish to the house
she laughed, fixed herself a tito and tonic
and plomped down in a chair on the porch
admiring the lawn

yo trumpy
get the Jewish State
to chill on the genocide
antisemitism will recede
back to your base
where it belongs

it’s not a fair world
nor a rational one
an unpleasant
though obvious
fact

even as it gentrifies—
all those boxy condos—
Pittsburgh will never turn
hipster chic (Williamsburg)
just pleasantly dorky
that’s cool, in its way

the trouble is
folks who are doing alright
mostly worked hard
made good choices
and feel like they deserve what they have
but it's not a level playing field
for those who fall between the cracks
the path forward is donald trump
and adventures with fentanyl

you gotta work overtime
being me
that’s why they call it work

the Fourth *****'s method
of "cutting waste"
is like curing cancer
by shooting the patient

but it's really not
about cutting waste at all
it's about shooting the patient

i make noise on the piano
can't really claim to play it
this morning i grappled with sheet music
simplified to kindergarten level
trying to get a handle on Handel's Bouree
a hapless hour happily spent
in the afternoon i visited the symphony
to hear a dude play Mozart's Piano Concerto #22
i came home, opened a beer
and went back to mangling Handel
now if for some reason
the pianist from the symphony
found himself in my basement
and observed me butchering Handel
i imagine his reaction
would be sympathy and encouragement
"he's really giving it a good try," he might say
"for a mentally challenged person"
but if someone told him
no, he's normal, he plays in public
and occasionally gets paid
our virtuoso would be be disoriented
rattled, drowning in mindblown disbelief
"no, this is not a world where that can happen"
then the horror would set in

let's begin by saying
if you wanna be a hip patient on this unit
you need to have covid AND the flu

i'm extubating a 30-year-old
who'd been complaining the week before
that his life was going nowhere
and he wanted his mom to do his taxes
the discussion culminated with his brothers
shooting him multiple times
all in front of a 5-year-old

i spend the hour before lunch
squeezing a 400 pound fella into a CT scanner
his oxygen level tanking to scary low numbers
he's not a fan of laying flat

after lunch i pull the plug on a guy who
when confronted by police serving a warrant
for ****** and child ****
took out a gun to **** himself
the gun misfired and when he brought it down
the cops felt inspired to help him out
by serving him a buffet of lead

when the addled car accident victim asks for his wife
we explain that she died in the accident
he weeps
half an hour later he asks for his wife
we explain that she died in the accident
"oh i know"
half an hour later he asks for his wife

when i start the shift
a patient is reported to me
as mildly demented but pleasant
"sounds like me," i say

shot three videos, posted poetry all over the city
saw the Weegee exhibit at the Museum of Photography
he makes every other photographer fade to gray
read some poems with my fellow sad old poets
at Otto’s Shrunken Head on 14th street
went back to Chinatown (you CAN go home again)
enjoyed that Led Zeppelin movie with my best bud
had drunken escapades with friends old and new
smoked **** for the first time in years
didn't get high while everyone else was baked
a fine conversation with a director at the Holiday
spent two days with my daughter and her kitten
took her to the movies, bought her a steak
hung at her favorite bar when she learned
she’s being sued by a hollywood producer
a fun trip

if only he’d followed his own advice
and taken bleach for his Covid

the female selling coffee
was startlingly hot
caught me by surprise
i tried to engage her
but she blew me off
in appropriately hot girl style

trump’s gonna decimate the tourist industry
you think people said
“gee, i wanna visit **** germany
looks like fun”?

i enter unit A-19
the place to be for car accidents, gunplay
and the mayhem people get into
i'm humming que sera sera
get to my space and turn on the radio
baroque sunday
ahhh
now bring on the death and destruction

say you’re exhausted at work
your shoulders are anchors
your eyes are lead
you gotta sleep
but you gotta keep going
no choice
you must stay awake all afternoon
into the evening

now let’s say you’re in bed at last
head on the pillow
blanket on your belly
cat on your knees
you remember the afternoon’s exhaustion
as you melt into sleep

happiness

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

sitting around the thanksgiving table
the turkey was yummy, the weather turned frigid
conversation mellowly roamed to tales
of childhood abuse
"when our son was a baby," i recalled
"we watched him trying to crawl
and our then-brother-in-law Nick
a self-styled hardass and an *** in general
asked what do you do to discipline him?
discipline him from doing what? i asked
pooping his diaper?
you know Nick, as a kid my mother slapped my face
when she thought it appropriate
we negated that strategy for our kids"
my wife, who often recounted beatings
she took from her dad, then told a story new to me
her mother's family were russian immigrants
and when her mother was a kid
and did something to set off her dad
he would make her kneel on a wooden plank
until her knees bled, then he'd rub salt in them
we all thought about that
until my wife said, "we have cookies"

all you need is $$$$$
it’s the illusion that dissolves
all the other illusions
but it’s reality, you say?
strangely it’s both simultaneously
like the fantasy that donald trump
will solve people’s problems
which has led us to the world
we now live in

my mansion is home to rats
i’m stashed in a studio in the bronx
i’m an olympic athlete with a beer gut
my last hit tune was analog
once upon a screen a movie star
now no one wants to see my face
my covergirls have moved on to husbands
my investments reduced to empty wine bottles
and while none of this is true
i’m living that way
a ruined aristocrat

swedish death metal bands and i
see the world through the same eyes
but i don’t burn down churches
i do things sunnyside up
it’s how i’m built
i help people breathe when they can’t
that’s how i make my millions
i scribble pictures
post poems on lightpoles
make music videos by the hundreds
throw abstract shows
and whip instruments incessantly
to hear them squeal
i brought a family into the world
took care of them
and now admire the amazing trails
blazed by our kids
while swimming in the wake
of my intrepid beautiful
intellectual juggernaut wife
i do sit-ups, lift weights with my
permanently damaged bicycle arm
feed a couple of cats every frigging day
and am probably the library’s
number one customer

astounding that art critics
make enough money to eat
i know, most don’t
but kudos to them for conjuring
**** to say about art
when there really isn’t
that much to say
“[critics] praised [the artist]
for his use of color”
well duh
there’s zilch happening on this canvas
BUT color
and what’s there to say
ABOUT color?
“colors vibrate when juxtaposed
and they’re pretty”
then there’s the explication
of toothless symbolism
meaningless to anyone but the artist
and that’s about it
so hats off
my bedazzling scribes

now let's see
if i were afraid of everything
didn't care about other people
thought science was *******
but believed anything anyone said
just because he said it
who would i vote for?

i’m wedded to today
but i’m married to yesterday too
a bigamist
and tomorrow?
tomorrow is a *******
with a smoking ***

this morning at work
i read the new york times
listened to huey lewis
ate a pepperoni pizza
with banana peppers
took a nap
and had a cup of coffee
why would i retire?

the second coming of kamela harris
is a crackup
a few months ago
she couldn’t get arrested
by the democratic establishment
i’m all for her
but those four nights of hosannas
was quite the megaload of hooey
all generated by vast relief
but a bit much

for most of us
working a job is a lifelong mindfuck
we've been snowed into believing
we must dedicate our lives
to making some invisible ******* rich
pay unceasing attention to tasks
unimportant and irrelevant
commit unflagging effort our entire adult lives
to nothing special
until we're parked out to pasture
so we develop investment strategies
for enduring the workweek
spend too much for designer coffee
pay extra for easier parking
buy lunch when we could bring a sandwich
flirt with the skirts or broad shoulders
all effective crutches to keep us going
it would be epic
to get more of a return on our investments
than a dishwasher or two

the truth is
you mostly don’t care about things
until you have to care about them
a necessary filtering process
for the vast polluted ocean
of existence

as i was visiting a greek friend
yesterday in astoria queens
greek america ground zero
i couldn’t reconcile the deep thinking
of our old friends plato, aristotle, etc.
with the greeks i know
an open-hearted, pragmatic
materialistic UNCOMPLICATED people
maybe plato’s inebriated symposium relates
but there is a basic disconnect

i ran it by a couple of my smarter friends
"look at the italians," said one
"some made art that advanced the human race
while their cousins hung out
on the corner eating pizza"
another pal framed it like this:
"it’s the language
all the declensions and conjugations
steer you to abstract genius"

hmmm…

if you have 4/4 going on
it’s cardiac rhythm
you like 1&3, i like 2&4
but either one gets you on the train
you can layer anything on top
saxophone, guitar, synth
barking dogs, crashing cranes
airplanes, aggravation, nuclear ordinance
moans, groans, koans
your heart’s dancing

relaxation is an art
which would make me
Leonardo da Vinci

don't care much about the Olympics
but it beats Russia's merciless imperialism
Israel's inept butchery
and the United Fascists of America
so party on

the doctor said the worst thing you can say
to a family member
"this hospital is full of incompetent people"
he just made life impossible for the rest of us
now everything we do is wrong
you have to paint a picture for the clan  
and that is not the picture you want to paint
the love families feel for their sick ones
metastasizes into worry so severe
that we get splashed with its acid
their love is a blast furnace and we get burnt
it’s sublime to be around such love
but it’s a colossal bump in the road of therapy