We talk about cold fronts
and warming trends.
We talk about imminent storms.

Hail, frost, wind.
The long hot summer.
We nod, smile, commiserate.

We talk about the weather
To keep from killing each other.

A slug slogging along
The surface of the pavement
And arriving.

It's not a dream.
It's not a nightmare.

Go Buddy, go!

Shakespeare was just kidding!
They lived happily ever after.

Was not as bad as some
people say it was

It was worse

It's called Staying Alive
Even if you don't particularly want to

I have an idea!
Let’s do something
Really, really original.

Let’s get an Olympic Ring tattoo!
Better yet let’s get Olympic Ring tattoos
For every one of our body parts.

We can hot tail it to the tattoo parlor
Downtown in our Ralph Lauren outfits,
Pick up a six-pack of Coca Cola on the way
And pay for it all with our Visa Card.

What say? You in?

Sure, I win my fair share
And more of Scrabble games
And, yes, I’m the one who keeps score
But it’s not just that.

Nearly every day I practice
Drawing tiles for an hour or so

So, when I draw good letters
On my way to victory,
I think of how all that hard work
And preparation is paying off for me.

That slick dude
In elegant suit and tie
With his graphs,
Models and algorithms,
With his pointer,
His pitch, his buzzwords,
With his MBA,
Ivy league education
And erudition

The monkey in diapers
Throwing darts

I’ll take the monkey

Love it.

The faster the tail wags
The quicker I fold.

The more the tail droops
The more I raise.

And at the end of the night,
I walk out with a bagful
Of doggie treats.

I pooped,
wiped my ****,
pulled up my pants
and walked away

I was a little bored
With human narrators
So I told the AI to write
Me a novel from the point
Of view of the grass

I gave it a few minutes
Then started reading
Turned out to be
The best book ever

But that wasn’t ‘til
Twenty years from now
So you’ll just have to wait

How rich am I?
I wrapped my Royce
Around a tree
And walked away
Without a scratch.

"You better watch out
you better not cry
better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Clause is coming to town

He's making a list,
and checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!"

Like a crack addict,
The poet chases a cheap high

And when it wears off,
Feeling worse than before,
He’ll do anything for another fix
Which means writing down
Whatever ****** pops
Into his head

Sad

Open a book
To any old place
And have a look

Chances are,
You’ll find something
Of value

One taste of that
Heavenly meatloaf
And, for a moment,
It all became clear to me

And I forgot about
The three days I spent
In the Iron Maiden

Has a wonderfully
***** mind.

I'm surprised she
wasn't born a boy.

I didn’t go, you didn’t stay
We never went to Mandalay
I clasped my hands but couldn’t pray
And asked is this the Milky Way?

Miraculous that,
Shuffling down the street,
You didn’t simply
Spontaneously combust
And go up in flames.

You wish you would have.

Nope. Don’t want to hear
Any more about ‘em.

If you talk about a laundry list,
It better be about ***** clothes.

If you say you put a nickel
In the piggy bank
It better be about your latest deposit.

And if you tell me you’re riding the tiger,
I’ll say you **** well better
Have a saddle.

Ask if you like,
But the answer is no.

Who claimed he liked what I sent
And, though he can’t publish any of it,
Would like to see more I say
I’m sorry but this is pretty much
My best **** anything else I submit
Will, frankly, not be as good
So why should I bother?

When he’s not sexually assaulting women,
Insulting war heroes, the disabled,
Veterans, Gold Star families

When he’s not hoarding
Classified documents, cheating contractors,
Hiring illegal immigrants, stiffing employees,
Kowtowing to dictators, chumming around
With Jeffrey Epstein and lusting after young girls
Who remind him of Ivanka at age thirteen

When he’s not committing tax fraud,
Filing for bankruptcy, peddling nuclear secrets,
Mocking evangelicals, threatening election workers
And his own vice president

When he’s not promising to build a border wall,
Selling products made in China,
Using campaign funds to pay his lawyers,
Conning his supporters into buying worthless
University degrees or contributing to his bogus
Charity foundation

When he’s not losing money hand over fist,
Packing the Supreme Court
Or trying to destroy the democracy,
I kind of like that little two-****** dance
Trump does at his campaign stops—

It’s kind of amusing

It goes without saying
That what you leave out
Is as important as what you put in

Which reminds me of Tim O’Brien,
In the first draft of a war story
He left out the ****-field,
A mistake he rectified later
And the whole tone changed significantly,
Made things more gritty and real

Or so he claimed

Maybe he planned on putting
In the ****-field all along,
An author’s prerogative

True or not,
It makes a good story

She’s 79 years old.
She weighs 350 pounds
And spends most
Of her time in a wheelchair.

Every month she sends
Money to her “boyfriend”
In “Australia.”

He promises to visit.
He just needs a little more time.
He just needs a little more money.

It was three years ago.
Then two years ago.
Then last year.
Now it’s this spring.

Don’t try talking to her.
She knows he’s coming.
Just a little while longer.
And it will be joyous.

The song that got me,
The song that captured
My imagination, the song
I played again and again
And again—

Now, I can’t stand
To listen to it.

Because next week’s coin flip
Is so important to the franchise,
I’m hiring a consultant to help me.

Looking through a stack
Of resumes, I’m liking this one:

“I have nearly forty years of experience
Advising clients on this topic.
I have witnessed thousands upon thousands
Of coin flips in hundreds of venues.
I have written dozens of papers
On probability and the various factors
Involved in making this difficult decision.
I will employ charts, graphs, metrics
And can explain in detail your options all
For a reasonable fee. Don’t try this
On your own. You need an expert.”

Yep. Think I’ve found my man!

Is a lot
more fun
going down
than it is
coming up

The **** Cheneys of the world
Start the wars but the young guys
Laid off from the paper mill fight
And die in them.

For Brian

Yeah the pay’s okay, but it’s five long days
Of hard, ****** work plus, maybe
Another half day, then it’s off to the bar
On a Saturday night to get completely blotto
And try and forget the whole lousy week.
Maybe you get in a stupid fight
Or pass out or whatever, anyway
You wake up with cotton-mouth
And a terrible hangover.

Your high school sweetheart, who lied
To you about birth control
So that now she’s a stay-at-home mom
With two kids for you to support,
Is already up and out of bed
But she’s cranky. You groan and mope
Around, spend the day doing
Household chores or watching the tube
While the kids make a racket,
The clock ticking down all the while.

Come Sunday night, if the wife’s
In a generous mood, you might get
Lucky but don’t count on it if it isn’t
Your birthday or a special occasion
And in bed, before you drift off,
It’s all you can do to hold back the tears
Because this what you have to look forward
To for the next thirty or forty years
Unless you fall off a ladder first
Or have a heart attack.

No wonder you’re four times
As likely to unalive yourself
As someone in the general population.

I don’t want what you want,
Don’t know what you want,
Don’t think, to want or not to want,
Don’t think, what it is to want,
Don’t think, what it is to not want,
Don’t think, why it is you want what
You want, whatever it is you want,
Don’t think, what all this wanting
Is about and come to the conclusion

That no, I don’t know what you want
And, frankly, don’t care.

There’s a kind of power
In the beauty of a flower
And there’s fun
In the glory of the sun
When you look up in the sky
It’s only human to ask why
But, if the lawn, green,
Is pretty as you’ve ever seen
Why not smile?
Why not be happy?

That’ll be $5.99 please.

I wanted to see the world
With fresh eyes so I had
A scientist clone me a new pair

A surgeon remove the old pair
And connected the new pair

It was a delicate operation
And it took weeks to recover

But when I could finally see clearly
Again, everything looked the same

It would be cool
To be a rhyming fool
To rhyme sappy
With happy
To rhyme hullabaloo
With Picachu
To rhyme resurrect
With circumspect
To rhyme yellow
With mellow
To rhyme dirigible  
With incorrigible
To rhyme hellacious
With salacious
To rhyme Jocasta
With pasta
To rhyme moon
With buffoon

And best of all
To make the call
To rhyme maybe
With baby

Then salute the purple cow
In the audience and take a bow

Behold the expendable character
Who’s death is designed to help establish
The putative high stakes of the show.

Cue Walter, a homicidal monster.
Little nuance here. Sneering, lecherous,
He’s due a satisfyingly violent demise.

And there’s absolutely no danger
In giving him one.

After the deep, deep thinking
I think about lunch!

That the journalist writing
the story about him doesn't know
is that there's no such thing
as meaningless action.

Which is why he's throwing a fit.

Are a house on stilts
in shifting sand
in the path of a tsunami

On some level even the most die-hard cultists
must realize that their orange-skinned Messiah
wants to burn down The Republic.

They're so angry they don't care.

A fighter jet turns on the afterburners
but no false absence confuses me

The antidepressants I take
dull what I recall of pain

Though a ghost of it remains
though I see mostly clouds

Checking out YouTube,
never seen so many people
being crushed, destroyed,
annihilated, wrecked, obliterated,
owned, eviscerated and so on.

Whew!

You give them money
and, for a minute or two,
they pretend to like you.

Most, if not all of them, despise you.
Who can blame them?

Sign up.
Shorten your life.
Make an orthopod happy.

Is boring and hard.
There are those
you despise.
There are those
who despise you.
In the cattle car
classrooms and corridors,
you cannot avoid them.

The teachers are smart
but not too smart.
You, of course,
are not so smart.

The hours pass
like a slow moving
train filled with nothing much.
It is difficult to pay attention.

You will eventually move on,
but not really.

This is your life.
You will learn to like it.

Algebra beat me up
Geometry worked me over
and Trig finished me off.

So let's not even talk
about Calculus.