you go to her/him with something you gotta do
that you know is wrong in some way
and she/he presents a convincing argument
as to why it’s right and has to be done
by you

a libertine nutcase doing exactly what he wants to do
breaking things that need to be broken
getting paid for it, getting laid
drugging, drinking and mutating the scenery
until he pulls his own plug
seems like a golden shore
when you're "commuting" to "work"
and dragging "home" for "dinner"

when i was a kid, i never imagined
homosexuality would be mainstream
gay marriage would be legal
or a trans person could walk down the street
without being eradicated

on the other hand
the reaction to all that freedom
has conjured an openly-stated longing
for violent fascism

never imagined that either
when i was a kid

you know what i like about the Atlantic Monthly?
many Important Articles on Important Subjects
when i read it, i'm Important

i live for music
but it’s undeniable
music is manipulation
roll over beethoven
roll over taylor swift
"i want to move people"
uh huh
move them to do what?
spend a few bucks?
worship you?
but i'm not talking to you
jeff beck
the man just wanted to play guitar
and **** did he

on a warm winter day
i was taping poems to a pole
outside a coffee shop at the edge of the city
as i got back on my bike
the barista sauntered out of the coffeeshop
with a cup and saucer
a panorama of undiluted allure
a storm of blonde hair
eyes from venus
smile like desert rain
she was, obviously, the muse
"hello darling" she said
and strolled to the pole to read my latest

there’s one murderous tree
putting itself in front of every car
it’s a serial killer
there’s one crippled kid in the ICU
he’s in every bed
one set of frantic parents pacing every hall
standing shellshocked in each room

it’s a neat metaphor
the single kid and singular set of parents
when there’s zillions of each
but i’d watch out for that son-of-sam tree

pulling the plug on a covid patient
his brother MUST be in the room
"i gotta be there – i GOTTA be there"
he insists on the phone
and even though it’s perilous to be in the room—
when the breathing tube comes out
the patient will be coughing covid in all corners—
the hospital protocol says it’s a-ok
the man can by all means inhale his brother’s deadly breath
BUT  
at 4 pm, the anointed time, he’s not there
we call – "are you coming?"
he’s dead drunk and not going anywhere
MEANWHILE
the patient’s fiancé wants to ZOOM in for the end
we set up a laptop at the foot of the bed
aim it at the poor fellow
and as i pull the tube to send him on his way
there’s SCREECHING from the computer
what the hell are we listening to?
is that martin lawrence and a piercing laugh track?
she’s got her tv BLASTING some old situation comedy
to usher her man into eternity

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

all days are a necessary struggle
caterpillars slithering to wherever
empires striving for dominance
bands thirsting for acclaim
africans thirsting for water
rich people ******* up your money
(it’s zero sum, they NEED you to be broke)
clouds vomiting rain
the sun aching to implode
folks who lost bed and home
hunting warmth for the night

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

when politics is pure circus
the clown becomes ringmaster
merrily grabbing voters by the *****
it's the dancing elephant in the room

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

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

a couple of homicide detectives
just showed up for my patient
his daughter shot him
he can't get an MRI
due to fragments from a previous gunshot
i wonder who shot him that time?
his mom?

my neighbor keeps her bicycle chained outside year round
that was MY plan when i moved in here
i see her bike in the rain, i see it in a blizzard
rusting, sneezing, freezing, wheezing
i chuckle every day at its deterioration
i didn’t do the stupid thing, by accident
on a whim, i made the wise decision
and every day i’m a smug ******* enjoying it

call it religion
slaughter the heathen of choice
the easter bunny commands it
call it education
keep the kids prisoner for twenty years
then crush them with debt as they exit the jail
call it government
watch king and crew siphon money from the realm
call it entertainment
knock out the brains and ******* the senses
call it love
a mess
call it life
a tremendous blip in the firmament

the concept of william byrd is weightless today
he wrote the music on my current hit list
which has everything and nothing to do
with a fellow who roamed london in 1586
named william byrd

it’s friday
trump is still a dangerous *****
the republicans who enable him
are a cynical bloated disgrace
his diehard followers
(alright, much of the country)
are a sad crew of suckers

there--  i feel a lot better
now i can get my BBQ on
and listen to the ******* surfers

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

the bartender looked like bukowski’s mom
she served me another shot of tequila and said
"you better slow down, son
it’s bad for your health"

"i ain’t long for this world anyway"
i said, throwing it down

she snorted
"you’re the third kid who told me that tonight"

"hey, can i help it if everyone who dies young
comes to this bar?"

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

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

it’s a common consolation
that we all share the same view
flush or broke, lucky or luckless
we all live under the same sky
pondering the same constellations
too bad it’s *******
the wealthy live on another planet
more water, less desert
more dessert
closer to the stars
and their constellations provide
luxurious consolation

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

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

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"

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

i was a vegetarian for a short time
smoked a joint and watched a documentary
about the factory farming of animals
when i saw them snip off the faces
of a box of baby chickens
so they could be stacked up
without pecking each other to death
i said to my wife "that it’s, we’re done"
we gave it up after a couple of years
i feel bad for eating meat but i just can’t stop
however
i figured out a way to pay for this transgression
a strategy to balance the karmic score
when i’m ready i will slither into a lion’s cage
and let him feast on my carcass
it’s what i deserve for all those chicken wings

we convened to play a book of hieroglyphic scores
bought for a buck at the yearly carnegie music library sale
collectively you could say these pieces by various composers
comprise the music of the spheres
we knocked the **** out of them on friday night
with drums, a cheap synth
and a ukulele plugged into a powerbook
playing these scores today
by forgotten or never known primordials
who channeled nature and magnetism
and yoked them to the concept of music
was like breathing life into the dead
reanimating them
i say death to bach and metallica
those greedy pigs
we honor the others
because we are the others

next time you drunkenly bring up suicide
“you guys are better off without me”
i will once again drill it in your soggy noggin
we are NOT better off without you
if you die, much of us dies too
you will ******* me
you will ******* your son
you will ******* your daughter
and all the good things you have done
will be erased

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

some artists are genres in themselves
like Dr. John
when hacks replicate them for profit
Monkees vs. Beatles
Beastie Boys vs. all of hip hop
sometimes they strike gold
they’re playing the fun parts
distilling the hooks that work best
making them better than the real thing
sometimes phony wins

i’ve worked out what to say
to whiny patients in the hospital:
"your dissatisfaction was expressed
quite eloquently...
may i retort?"

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

i don’t beat myself up
far from it
every line i write crackles
every note i play sings
but if i had to perform an autopsy
on the ludicrous things i’ve done
and smart things i haven’t done
bypassed opportunities
and episodes i might regret
or should regret
i’d lay blame on short-sightedness
and laziness
not stupidity
selfishness?  yeah
malevolence?  nah
and a low hum of fear
which keeps me human
so **** it
i’m perfect

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

hitching a ride to the southside after a night shift
looking forward to sunrise holiday obliteration
oh holy night -- it’s our christmas party
my twenty dollars the first of a hundred on the bar
tequila from me, girlie shots from my menagerie
they taste like Chanel #5 but by shot #10
they knock you across the room

getting home from the christmas party is always an issue
but the bus goes directly from Jacks to my living room
so at 11 a.m. or who knows when i exit the bar
it’s freezing, snowing, and too much fun out here
but when the 54c bus finally materializes i rejoice
pay my fare and relax onto my seat
elated to be escalating home
i’m safe on the bus, so warm, so comfy
so slowly sliding from my seat to the floor
all seven passengers look down at me, that guy
i giggle up at them with christmas cheer
and say "woops"

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

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

is god speaking to me?
am i the genius of my own topology?
do i have an iceberg in my pocket?
are my insights contagious?
are my revelations fatal?
am i just rearranging legos?
am i flaky in that way?
is there a point?

it’s not much of a mystery
the law says police can **** you
if they’re afraid of you
they’re terrified of black people
so there you go

today i want to play my harpsichord
and i have to clean the gutters
why wouldn’t i play the harpsichord first?
we all know the planet’s in bad shape
what if the world ends at noon
and i cleaned the gutters
and didn’t play the harpsichord?
tragedy

cheer up, my talented friend
as far as picking up chicks online
an out of work drummer
and an out of work Broadway drummer
are two different species

the small blonde nurse and i were breaking our backs
transporting the giant patient in the ****** bed to a cat scan

"i’m hot," she said as we slogged through the hospital

"you are kinda hot," i said
"you don’t really need to mention it"

we laughed and she said
"well i’m just putting it out there"

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

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

but then there's poetry

there have been four so far
never consummated
through ignorance and morality
if i knew then...
but if i had made it with them
would they glow the same way?
am i the one who got away for them?
and for my wife of twenty years
i'm not him
me and the kids are right here
and he's back there somewhere
a beguiling smile in the window

i have my discontents
but when i get to my hospital job
and look in the mirror pre-shift
i think of all the hurting people
in this building i came to help
and all the medicos i’m here to help
help these poor folks
and i think "you’re a useful *******"
and that’s good enough

if you can't play your set drunk
you can't play rock'n'roll
no judgment
straight fact
take it from a guy
who rehearsed down the hall
from the ramones