Nauseous to meet you.
Nauseous to greet you.

Nauseous to look at you.
Nauseous to cook for you.

Nauseous to show you.
Nauseous to know you.

Nauseous to talk to you.
Nauseous to walk with you.

Nauseous to smell you.
Nauseous: to hell with you.

Are boring. And that's what gets you
into trouble. Out of sheer boredom
you drink too much, hit on women
with boyfriends, start arguments
about politics that turn into fights
and, toward the end of the night,
grow maudlin. You cry in your beer,
blubber over how your life
has been one big failure and,
eventually, drunk as a skunk, you puke
all over your shoes, slink off
to your apartment, pass out on the floor
and wake up the next morning
with a shiner and a hangover
wondering what in the hell happened.

Since I pulled up stakes
and ditched this hellhole
chances are the only time
I'll soil the pages
of my s**y hometown paper
again will be in the obits
when I croak.

No more drunk and disorderly
notices. No more photos
of me at anti-government rallies.
No more of my letters to the editor.
No more misleading articles
about the squabbles with my
puke-faced neighbors or my
allegedly delinquent tax payments.

So go ahead you crap-heads and find
someone else to kick around.

This dog is long gone.

This squalling babe
who pukes and poops
and keeps you awake
at night will, one day,
years from now,
and on her own,
hold your frail, dying
hand as you prepare
to depart this world.

So he sank to one knee
and asked, "will you make me
the most happiest man
in the whole wide world?"

Years later, over pizza,
he said, "you been a good wife
and I loves ya."

Now, at his grave site,
dirt turns to mud
as she waters the earth
with her tears.

Don't believe you can ****
half a million Americans, get filthy rich
in the process and walk away scot-free?

Check out the Sackler family.

When you're not getting
mugged, *****, tortured,
shot, beaten, choked, stabbed
or otherwise terrorized,
Life can be kind of boring.

Bring on the boring.

Waving their banners, spewing hate,
armed to the teeth they come,
barbarians at the gate.

They're enraged, irate,
like a baby ripped from the womb.
Waving their banners, spewing hate

Beyond any decency or restraint,
stinking of whiskey and ***.
Barbarians at the gate

Parroting lies, they berate
their betters, they beat their drums.
Waving their banners, spewing hate.

Man the ramparts! It's not too late!
Oh, where did they come from?
Barbarians at the gate.

Years on, when we recall this date,
we'll shake our heads, again struck dumb.
Waving their banners, spewing hate,
there were barbarians at the gate.

They're smarter than the scientists
who've studied climate change for years.

They're smarter than the doctors
who've studied vaccines and viruses for years.

They're smarter than the intelligence officers
who've worked in the field for years.

They're smarter than any rocket designer,
any chemist, any physicist, any structural engineer.

And they're way, way smarter than you or me.

And what makes them so smart?
How do they know so much?
How did they discover THE TRUTH?

Why, they read all about it on the internet!

You sold your soul, there will be hell to pay
It'll **** to be you on Judgment Day

One afternoon, years back
I was caught speeding
through a small town
in Northern Iowa

The trooper, a white man
wrote me a ticket
and let me go

Had I been a black man
in Louisiana, the trooper,
a white man, would have
pulled me from the car
and beat the living crap
out of me with his flashlight
while I begged him to stop

He would pretend I was resisting

Later, he and his buds would
have a hearty chuckle over it

Before I toss them
on the barbie,
I gut and skin,
cut off their heads,
wash thoroughly,
salt and pepper them,
then lather on some
Bbq sauce.

I grill until crispy,
careful not to overcook.
Delicious!

So I went in with my Halloween mask
and colostomy bag
and I pointed the nozzle at the teller,
told her it was loaded
and, for sure, that got her attention,
she handed the money over pronto,
then I made my getaway clean as a whistle

Ever **** your pants? Not this dude

***** words on a page.
Edit and rearrange.
Repeat. More *****,
more edit, more rearrange.
Repeat.
Repeat again.
Tack on sassy ending.
Done.

Any race, gender, color
and it's a little circling,
a sniff of the hand,
a sniff of the crotch,
a sniff of the ****,
a tail wag and it's all good.

JFK, a bird-******* fool, maybe worse.
Bill Clinton, a bird-******* fool, maybe worse.
Ronald Reagan, that amiable date-*****.
George H. W. Bush, notoriously handsy.
Joe Biden, also handsy.
Donald Trump, a good old fashioned ******.

The best and the brightest.
The dumb *****. Not so different.

Yes indeed, we're a ***** bunch.

Dear God-Fearing, Pro-Life Evangelicals,

This is why you held your collective noses
and voted for a ******, corrupt, creepy,
money laundering, freeloading,
traitorous sociopath. Your fat, ugly,
***** grabbing, Putin-loving ******
came through for you. Congratulations!

Desiring a long life,
I renounced Pleasure,
Distraction, Fun--

Like a Buddhist monk--

And offered my delinquent
but pliant body
to the waterboard,
the smoldering cigarette,
the clenched fist,
the medieval rack

In the dungeon basement,
screams unheeded,
the seconds passed like hours,
the hours like days,
the days like years,
the years like millennia,

Each excruciating moment
impossible to elide or ignore,

I felt as close to Eternity
as a mortal man can get

Forget those silly Charmin commercials
Forget the family of bears

When you have mud ****
You can wipe until the end of time
And never get clean

Give up, surrender

And jump in the shower

A live lobster.
A *** of boiling water.

Don't do it.

I'm sorry. I have done
all that I can for you.
The surgeries. The chemo,
the bone marrow transplant,
the cocktail of toxic drugs,
each treatment more desperate
than the last, were to no avail.
I have consulted with colleagues,
scoured the medical journals.
I have wracked my brains,
explored every option.
If I could, I would move
Heaven and Earth to find you
a cure. But, alas, I cannot.
I am not God. I am only
a poor human being.
And so I must let you go.
I commend you to the angels,
to your friends and family,
To the hospice caretakers.
I wish you the best on this
your last journey the one that,
sooner or later, we all face.
I have failed you. forgive me.

Like flies on stink.
Like hair on a gorilla.

The ghouls and goblins.
The rubberneckers. The media.

Here the camp.
Here the shrine.

They gasp. They cluck.
They repeat and repeat.

Until the next one.
Until they pick up and move on.

Crowbar's "Existence Is Punishment"
playing at full blast, tears soiling my face,
thinking how "I gave my heart and soul to you"

Only to have my love betrayed,
only to be broken like a Ken doll and tossed aside

I could set myself on fire,
I could hang myself from the tree outside your window,
I could slit my throat on your doorstep

I could do any of these things but I won't,
because my selfish darling, I know this much:
you simply wouldn't care

An argument with a flat-earther
is an argument you cannot win.
No matter how many times you assert
that the earth is round, he will says its flat.

And, because the flat-earther is strong
in stamina and fierce in self-belief,
he will always get in the last word
which means he wins, you lose.

Your best option?
Admit defeat, walk away.