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"

They laughed when, hands
bound behind his back,
he ran deliberately headfirst
into a wall to try and escape
the pain

When it didn't work
they jeered and mocked

He wasn't getting off that easily

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

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

To his credit,
the atheist agreed.

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

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!

Announce a competition, any competition
feature the word "Victory,"
offer a shiny Gold Medal to the winner
and watch them beat a path to your door

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

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.

In Heaven, they spell your name correctly.

In Heaven, you have your own parking space.

In Heaven, you don't need a spam filter on your computer.

In Heaven, there are no sprained ankles or torn ACLs.

In Heaven, they play Tori Amos songs.

In Heaven, you neither sweat nor bleed.

In Heaven, there are no concussions.

In Heaven, there are no flat tires.

In Heaven, there is no male pattern baldness.

In Heaven, *** is optional and always consensual.

In Heaven, crutches, walkers and wheelchairs are superfluous.

In Heaven, meat is grown in a lab.

In Heaven, there are no guns.

In Heaven, the mailmen are friendly.

In Heaven, there are no brass knuckles.

In Heaven, the dogs do not bite.

In Heaven, the pharmacy is always open.

In Heaven, there are no hangovers.

In Heaven an afternoon nap is de rigueur.

In Heaven, we're all BFF.

Blind faith, idolatry.
So tempting.

Though it's almost always misplaced.
Though our heroes always fail us.

Not their fault.
We expect too much.
We expect the impossible.

Open the cage door.
Let them go.

What shocked her most
was how angry they were,
as if her very existence was offensive.

The gang of armed men
and their dogs hunted her down,
cornered her in an abandoned shack
outside of the city proper.

They dragged her by the hair,
ziptied her hands,
as if she were a threat,
as if she could fight back.

They beat and defiled her,
then put a bullet in the back of her head,
dismembered her body,
cut up the pieces and scattered them
across a fallow field.

A year passed before
they allowed her loved ones
to search for her remains.

When her family came to the field,
to everyone's great surprise,
all they could see was green.

What do I know about horses?
What do I know about the female point of view?
What do I know about how mathmaticians think?

What do I know about Quantum Mechanics?
What do I know about the Appalachian Trail?
What do I know about a mother's rage?

"Write what you know," advises the manual.
Okay.

So let's forget about the horses.
And the article on Reverse Transcription.
Oh what the heck!
Let's just forget about the poem altogether.

Forget it.

Take a "moderately gifted" child,
expose him to a crazy stepmother
and let nature take its course.
Mission accomplished.

Start with a little girl's muddy drawers,
toss in some dialect, stir in some Shakespeare

Add the bellowing of an intellectually challenged man

Add a suicidal sibling, a sassy young black boy,
a dose of Southern ambience and wallah

You're William Faulkner

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

In this one, the psychopath isn't Hannibal Lechter,
instead he's intellectually challenged.
But that doesn't stop him from causing mayhem.

Feel free to go with it.

Sometimes the best ideas come when you paint
yourself into a corner,
it forces you to sprout wings
and fly your way out.

You're a short, ugly, unattractive man?
You don't deserve a girlfriend.
You don't deserve respect.
You don't deserve anything.

So why don't you just crawl off somewhere and die?
I don't want to have to look at you.

So spake Her Royal Highness Billie Eilish.

Three Georgia Crackers
went ++++++  hunting
and bagged themselves
a  ++++++. Not a black man,
not a human being, a  ++++++.

His name was, is Armaud Arbery.
The Crackers did not know
his name that day, nor did they care.
They were proud of themselves.
They thought they got away with it.
The jury thought otherwise.

Thank goodness.

"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!

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

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.

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.

Open a book
To any old place
And have a look

Chances are,
You’ll find something
Of value

Before I won the big jackpot,
I'd pretty much lost my faith
in human nature. But after word
got out things changed.

Some of the jocks who used to
slam my head into the lockers
in school called me up to chat
and see how I was doing. And
the girls who'd shot me down
and laughed in my face over
the years texted me on facebook
and asked if we could get together.

Even my mom who ran off
with her affair partner and went
no contact for twenty years
got in touch and said she wanted
for us to reconnect.

Everyone's been so nice!
I guess people aren't so bad after all.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

So let's not even talk
about Calculus.

Because I can never be honest,
I cannot write my memoirs.
I cannot stain the pages with the truth.
I can only tell lies.

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.

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.

Mirror, mirror on the wall
who's the most wicked of them all?

Putin.

It starts out with a cup of Joe
that becomes two, three, four, more

It starts out with a cigarette
that becomes two, three, four,
a pack, two packs, more

It starts out with a beer
that becomes a six, a twelve, a case,
shots in-between, more

A snort, then two, three, four, more
A pill, then two, three, four, more

Until you're in as deep as the criminals
in power who started the war

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

I

I think it a clever
pre-emptive move when
I order him a vest
with the stitched message:

"Please Don't Kick The Dog."

No need to tell you
how that works out.

So I take the vest back
to the fire pit and he and I
watch it burn.

                 II

I take my dog for a walk
and, tugging on his leash,
he pulls me along, nose
to the ground, wandering
here, there and everywhere,
stopping now and then
to strategically ***,
living an adventure I can
only remotely share.

                 III

My dog, seated, lifts a leg
to lick himself down there
and looks a little puzzled.

They're gone, of course.

I pat his head,
offer him a meaty treat.

"Sorry Butch," I say,
"I was only following the vet's advice.
Try not to hold it against me,"
then I offer up my hand.

Lick or bite? It's up to him.

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

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

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.

Has a wonderfully
***** mind.

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

Ask if you like,
But the answer is no.

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

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

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

Go Buddy, go!

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.

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

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

Now I work at McDonald's

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.

You wanted a ticker tape parade.
You wanted a Rolex.
You wanted a closet filled with designer clothes.
You wanted a trophy case the size of a yacht.
You wanted to be Lebron James.
You wanted to be David Bowie.
You wanted friends in High Places.
You wanted an arena full of screaming fans.
You wanted The Grand Prize.

What you got was a quiet country road
and sensible shoes to walk it.

That's more than enough.