the trump impeachment show is a lot of fun
those republications don’t give a **** though
so nothing will happen
but like bernie sanders’ cosmic environmental plan
it advances the conversation

when i was a squirt
i hated winter
and swore that when i grew up
i'd move south
where they never heard of snow
but when i grew up
and saw who lived down south
i said **** it
i'd rather freeze my *** off
than hang with those people
and those people are probably just as glad
that i'm living in an igloo

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

there is no justice in this world
not in nature’s rules, nor human
the cosmos is a cockeyed moral labyrinth
if you want justice
you must apply it yourself
according to your own standards
and your best abilities
don’t expect to receive it in turn
not even on christmas morning
santa has other priorities

people lie constantly
mostly to themselves
cause they're the only ones
who give a ****
we lie about who we are
and that's ok
sometimes it helps us
become who we want to be
a dream is a lie is a dream

he was going 110 on his harley
smack into a guardrail
where he left his nose, upper lip and moustache
which they peeled off and took with him
here to the hospital, putting him next to a fella
whose girlfriend tried to shoot him, missed
then stabbed him and tried to bite off his thumb
and they're next to a guy who found out
that shooting yourself in the head
does not make for a pleasant morning

last day before vacation
so you know you gotta pay
an hour left on my shift
the patient was going full linda blair
arched pelvis grinding out of the bed
trying to pummel one and all
but when i came in the room
i triggered something special
YOU ****
i thought her head was gonna spin completely around
she punched me
people straining to hold her back
as she desperately snapped, trying to get a bite of me
GET OUT
GET THE **** OUT OF THE ROOM
as i got the **** out of the room
i explained to the nurses and doctors
i often have this effect on women

one corner of my job in the hospital is chest physical therapy
pummeling people on the back to loosen the junk in their lungs
a grueling effort requiring strength and stamina
i’d broken my arm, bike v. pothole, had been on disability for months
and now i was back at work for several weeks
but chest pt hadn’t come up
until this morning
i wondered how it would go
i positioned the elderly patient for proper drainage
and commenced beating the **** out of him
i snuck a glance towards his head
the old fellow was grimacing like an outraged skull
my arm felt fine and i thought
i’m back, baby

just had a conversation
with our cafeteria worker/union organizer
he’s on fire in his 5 kilowatt way
someone took down his flyer
at the hospital starbucks
"it’s capitalism," he fumed
as he gave me my biscuit and gravy
and a LOT of bacon
since i’m a fellow traveler

it’s a planet of limitless horror
governments massacring their own populace
neighboring tribes bombing each other to oblivion
school shootings inspiring other school shootings
and on top of all that
italian restaurants and wine
are overpriced and unashamed
someone had to say it

gotta give it to the New York Times
every week they blindside you
with a new apocalyptic scenario
that you had no idea existed
when armageddon arrives
the only mystery will be which way we’ll respond
"didn’t see that one coming"
or "we knew but didn’t do anything about it"

yet another victim
of what?
******* that passes for thought
circumstances set in motion
losers with nothing better to do
business as usual
morons who feel passionately
about their reflections in the mirror

gotta keep my eye on the ball
the big picture
i helped a bunch of folks to breathe
probably helped a couple to live
at least for one more day
so i worked too hard and long for a shift
no choice, boo-hoo
my skills were sharp
and my back was strong
i was worthy

exit interview
with the manager
you’re both ******
he opens his trap and you snap
"shut up phil, and do what you do best
sit down and do nothing"

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

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

five minutes into our morning shift
in the emergency room
we get a fella gunshot to the chest
it might be 7:05 am sunday morning
but it's still saturday night around here

they may resent that i appropriate
other people’s lives for this scribble
well this ain’t journalism
there’s no who when where
only OH ****
they may not have noticed
art takes no prisoners

he sold *** in high school
it was so easy
he made thousands
and now he knows easy money
working will always seem a sucker’s day

let's see
russians annihilating ukranians for no reason
china supporting them for cynical advantage
india itching to massacre its muslims
republicans dismantling the electoral process
while their paranoid millions load up
a mass shooting in the pittsburgh north side
another ***** acts out in the NY subway
with smoke bombs and bullets
the devil visits an elementary school in texas
one fifth of reptiles are about to disappear
goodbye birds and bees
the environment disintegrates
and we crank up the heat

it's speeding
accelerating
you can taste it
the fever is peaking
exhilarating
detonation is imminent

instagram took down a photo of me
with fake dreads
saying "i shot the sheriff"
they don’t countenance violent content
evidently bob marly/eric clapton
aren’t famous enough to reference
lucky the robots don’t come to my door
and arrest me for ******
although my wife says they should book me
for the fake dreads

as i play with the building blocks
of my perceptions and conclusions—
of course i’m an existentialist
i didn’t make the road
but i’m in the driver’s seat

what’s happening in the Ukraine seems clear to us
but not to much of the world
World War I started because of a global chess game
hard to fathom from today’s perspective
if there are any survivors in the future
they’ll be scratching their heads
about why China/Russia and America
decimated the planet with World War III

i want to slide downhill
with woofers in my ears
i want to either save the planet
or leave a large crater in it
give me blue neon city lights
and lulu singing to sir with love
i want the blues in every note
(but without the blues fans)
i want fat to be the new thin
and i want time to roll backwards
i want the folds of my thalamus to flatten
not a stroke but nirvana

don’t worry about choosing a tattoo
don’t sweat that you’re gonna have to live with it for life
yeah but no
it’s about who you are when you get that tattoo
not about all the people you’re going to become
that’s irrelevant
of course you’re gonna change
there may come a day when you can’t stand sadie
and groan every time you see her name on your arm
but there was a you who was nuts about her
and that man will always stand guard
over the tricep of your love

we shared manhattan
me partying in fetid basements
you dancing on skyscrapers
magic is a mild word
it’s a miracle we’re alive
so let’s hook up one more time
i’ll meet you at midnight
on the tip of the empire state building

i know why
you ******* around on your wedding night
it was a great party
the girls were all dolled up
and you were the center of attention

she does the crossword puzzle
with such skill and intensity
it MUST cross over to other dimensions
she’s saving countless lives
on some transfigured planet
she has to be

heard about the doctor running for the hospital elevator?
the doors were closing so he stuck his head in
decapitated
which is shocking enough
but imagine the folks inside the elevator

had a ****** french meal
dull, heavy and not cheap
but like opera
french cuisine is out of my ken
maybe it was marvelous
all i can say is opera’s not for me

the rib dinner with your wife
the cuddle with your daughter
watching tremors with your son
that show you did at sonny’s
rereading wonder boys
the night you were ****** up on ludes with your poet friends
dropping glasses off the table to torture the waitress
these were the peak and you enjoyed it all
you just didn’t realize it was the best it would be
the best it COULD be
you didn’t miss the moment
you just didn’t recognize what you were seeing
you think it’s all-you-can-eat
but the buffet runs out
you think there’s always more
and there isn’t
but there is this

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 showbiz failed in room 63
"you look like you don't like your job"
said mrs. patient
i laughed
"i love my job"
"you don't look like you love your job"
"this job is great"
"i don't believe you
if your job involves other people
you should get another job"
i laughed again
"i will consider it!"

all these people are trapped on the A train
they look half dead
maybe from the jobs they came from
or the subway
or the lives they’re heading home to
trapped head to toenail
but like all animals in captivity
open the cage door
pull them out
and they’ll hop right back in the cage
and call themselves happy

that macking wasn’t easy
the poor kid had it all
and had nothing

"enough of this lollygagging"
i say to my wife as i leave for my hospital job
"there are lives to save"
and as soon as i lock up my bike at work
i run into a woman stuck on the sidewalk
trying and failing to make it up the hill
"my chest hurts real bad"
i fetch a wheelchair and push her up that hill
delivering her to the emergency room
man am i connected to the universe

intelligence = pattern recognition
you’re intelligent to the degree
you perceive patterns
i’ve always believed that
but now i realize
patterns recognize patterns
they corrupt each other
it’s 2 a.m. and patterns diagnose me
they’re nodding to me across the bar
is it my imagination
or do patterns laugh at my simplicity
then stumble off in search of **** complexity
before last call?

when people make assumptions about you
you resent them when they get it wrong
and you resent them when they get it right

once upon a time
i woke up in a garden of dried *****
from a tuinal OD
an uh oh moment
and if i hadn’t woken up
well no one held a gun to my head in union square
(an actual possibility in those days)
now at work in the hospital this morning
we just gave up on a 20-year-old athlete
OD’d on pills, arrested, dead before 8 a.m.
mom, dad and older brother are wild with grief
uh oh

we make plenty of mistakes in our belief
intellectually we know these things are not true
but a deeper part of our brain is certain they are
we’re going to live forever
we won’t
we’re the same person we were when we were young
we’re not
our employer gives a **** about us
he don’t
our social media activity counts for something
not in the least
the president is more important than the first grade teacher
nope
he’s just some ******* who won the lottery
all these certainties swirling in our brain
gently nudging us over cliffs of absurdity

as american society continues to disintegrate
to absurd levels
i predict the new of threshold of battle
will be traffic signals
"how i drive is MY business
red lights are for democrats"

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

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!

a lifetime bouncing on the high seas of tito’s *****
you’re either dunked like a fatal donut in the acrid waves
or wind up washed up on the shores of sobriety

glorious twaddle
launching a generation of ***** feet
book upon book of wishful thinking
a saccharine boozehound
trying to convince himself
of i don’t know what
i say this with affection
i lived it and loved it
but it made zero sense

most of us can get through most days
without melodrama
but can every day contain a moment
memorable and meaningful?
when it was worth the effort
of getting out of bed?
maybe this moment is that moment

i’m suddenly in a ****** up situation
the patient is brought in tripping
the word is he took peytote
stopped his car, got out and proclaimed himself god
now he resides in the ER
he’d been tied to the cot but his nurse let him loose
"there’s no doctor’s order, i can’t restrain him"
strict regulations
he crawls out of bed and wobbles unsteadily down the hall
i get in front of him to block and redirect
but he’s not going for it
which puts me in an uncool position
he could start swinging on me
and he’s a big fella in good shape
if i respond he could fall and hurt himself
either way, i’m *******
i push him back into his crib
and strap him up anyway
a nurse who knows what she’s doing
says she’ll get a doctor’s order for restraints
once in bed, the guy is docile
"you want some ******?" he offers politely
"no thanks," i say
"i’m working"

what we believe
and why we believe it
is a bowl of spaghetti
we're persuaded before we hear the issue
it's where you were hatched
who hatched you
and the other chickens in the coop
we'll believe the sky is green
if it's pinned to the top of the internet feed
to put it charitably
we're open to input
and it doesn't matter anyway
our decisions rarely coincide with our principles
we choose whatever door is nearest
and scoot on through

oh no
my sacrum has dissolved into the earth
and i can’t get up

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