Gatekeeper, gatekeeper,
I'm the Big Bad Wolf let me in

Gatekeeper, gatekeeper,
I'm one of the beautiful people let me in

Gatekeeper, gatekeeper,
I have a Platinum American Express Card let me in

Gatekeeper, gatekeeper,
I'm down on my knees, let me in

Gatekeeper, gatekeeper,
hear my humble plea

"Please, oh please, just let me in"

Me talk good
Me no talk bad
Me always happy
Me never sad

Me sleep good
Me not dream
Me like meat
Me like ice cream

Me walk good
Me don't limp
Me drive car
Me no chimp

Me not done
Me have fun

My mind is blown.
Destroyed.
I'll never recover.
Ever.

Dear Jorie Graham:

I have called your poems
unreadable crap. Repeatedly.

I have referred to your work
as "page-*****" and proclaimed
you the biggest fraud
in the history of literature.
Such arrogance!

My apologies.
I was wrong.
I no longer believe that.

You will never read this.
Still, I wish you well.
I wish you health and a long life.

Now, excuse me while I put
on a dunce cap, sit in the corner
and shut my stupid mouth.

I asked him
the secrets to
a happy marriage
so he pulled a note card
from his wallet
and handed it to me

It read:

The Rules

1. Don't beat the wife
2. Don't traffic the kids
3. Don't kick the dog

Good advice.

They scream as horribly
As anyone else
When they themselves
Are tortured.

In a parallel sliver of the multiverse,
infantryman Tim O' Brien
steps on a landmine near the hamlet
of My Lai in Son Tinh District,
South Vietnam and Boom!
A Great American Writer
never makes the list.

The believer said:
"Denying the possibility
of an almighty God
exhibits an almost willful
lack of imagination."

To his credit,
the atheist agreed.

You're only a coward
if you crap your pants before
they hang you

Not pretty enough to be a model,
too pretty to be a poet
my mother thought, so she
became an executive secretary
in the days before computers,
typing ninety words a minute

And she was an inch
taller than Sylvia Plath

A tweak here,
a tweak there.

As if the right word
in the right place
could salvage this mess.

But no,
a simple fix won't do.

What's wrong here
is nothing less than
pretty much everything.

So, forget the thesaurus.
Forget the band-aid.

What I need is a miracle.

Didn't feel comfortable
playing characters smarter
than me, better looking than me,
more successful than me

Now I work at McDonald's

A spare, not an heir,
you are the back-up plan,
an afterthought, a contingency.

Get used to it.

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

I said, "it's not that I'm lazy,
it's that I don't like work."

He said, "it's not that I don't
like work, it's that I'm lazy."

We pondered that
for a while, then decided it was
a "po-tay-to/po-tah-to" type of thing.

So we shook hands,
wished each other well,
and went our separate ways.

Forgot my Social Security Number,
couldn't find my card
so I logged onto the Dark Web.

Very helpful!

Cruelty disguised as satire.
Very clever.

And, no Cartman
is not a cutesy Archie Bunker Jr.
He's Ted Bundy
only much smarter.

It's a temptation to roll
out the vocabulary,
have a parade.

On the other hand,
sometimes less is more.

Can't decide?
You're not alone.

Flames--
and a kiss, eyes closed,
mouth opening--

Millennia pass.
Stars explode.
Empires rise and fall.

What a way to go.

Confused? Don't be.
The one with the most money
When he/she/they dies wins!

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.

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.

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.

Yes, it's a fundraiser.
Yes, it's for a good cause.
And yes, you're a team player,
a good sport, maybe a patsy.

So you put some lipstick on that pig,
a little mascara, a little blush,
then close your eyes
and picture your high school sweetheart.
You even dare a little tongue.

Sorry folks, it's still a pig.

"Hey," I said, reading her poem,
"That's pretty good." And by
pretty good, I meant good.
And by good I meant very good.
And by very good I meant
so good I had to change
my pants. Bravo!

Don't think so.
God does not play dice with the Universe.

Newly crowned and she's
already looking forward
to growing old and ugly
so she can reflect back
and remember how it was
to be young and beautiful

Just double the regular price,
slap on a Fifty Percent off sticker
and call it even. Hah!

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.

In this reader's opinion,
a good poem is one that, upon re-reading,
gets better and a bad poem is one
that only gets worse

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

So let's not even talk
about Calculus.

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

You wish you would have.

Jeremy Meeks

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!

It's only fun if your really smart
and, even then, you better watch out

Starts out as a Democracy,
everyone participating but,

sooner or later,
the jocks take over

and, for everyone else,
that's all she wrote

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

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

One of the flunkies
at the journal/review
will glance at your submission
just to say he did,
reflexively hit the REJECT key,

Direct your 3 or, worse, 5 dollar
bribe into the coffers
and think to himself SUCKER.

Victory in the morning,
cancer in the afternoon,
dark night on the way,
these are the dominoes falling,
this is your past catching
up to you our ruling elite,
America's so called Best and Brightest.

Sorry, can't.
Too much to be done.

Got bills:
a mortgage, loans,
a boat.

Got kids to clothe,
a cat to feed,
a wife to entertain.

Got a lawn to mow,
hedges to clip,
a car to wax.

Got an office party
on the docket.
Bowling league,
tennis at the club.

Got quarterly reports,
license applications,
weekly meetings.

Got vacations to plan,
family to visit.

Got books to read,
trails to bike,
birds to identify.

And all that good air
to breath.

So no, I can't die.
Not today.

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.

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

Whew!

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

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

Robert Pirsig knew
what was really going on
but he promised not to tell.

Sssshhhh! It's a secret.

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.

After the deep, deep thinking
I think about lunch!

It's always a surprise
to discover that someone
you barely know
hates your guts.