The list that was a fist
a) it is possible
b) it is inevitable
chained to a million pleasures
an astonishing compendium of compulsions
honed bright with a fool's ardor
the kind you'd wish for in a comedy script
the land waxing rich with autographs
and other acts of front page humiliation
backwards on the curb with Officer *****
a limited perspective but not without its ironies
blazing trails to metabolic equilibrium
using every crutch and cane there is
in a fanciful play of medieval shadows
colliding with the grace of mosh pit elbows
hell was upon us and none grieved
in statistically relevant numbers
apparently they had finally reached
the bottom of the cosmic barrel
touch something holy once in a while
and mighty Thor will wing above
ah sure right uh huh you bet
needing humor the wires tried to sing
the blades of the switch bit the anode
all is broadcast everywhere right now
on all the boogie woogie coordinates
some curse some utter gratitude
may the good fairy console you
and turn the illusion of warmth
up a little higher on your rheostat
since it hasn't yet been made a crime
to destroy your own mind
and let the foundations of the world
thunder and come apart like cooked meat
but working on the problem
is better than attempting nothing
even if you really don't know
all that you think you know
even if hideously scarred in battle
a terra cotta bust hot from the oven
smelling of sulfur and bruises
tempted by radiance and music
which could get you jailed tonight
so pretend your vision is tunnel shaped
under a curse without an escape clause
in varying pedantic proportions
for another ill coordinated attempted exit
from our dear friend Average and its Law
played to hi fives all around
eventually kindling fires of rebellion
the Metaphor League saw to it

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

I think I'll signal guru Bob
that I've had quite enough
of his implicit stress therapy as he calls it
I've contacted the hunchback ***** banks
for a safe deposit box until I bolt the ashram
with the last flood of disobedience
guru Bob waves his signing stumps
and I go nuts trying to figure out
the message behind the message
which was whatever happens
keep this out of the tabloids
I threw the Studebaker into reverse
and scorched the tires upstate
in order to stop the madness
of hope divided by exctly zero
as the horizon failed to recede
or vice versa being we were in reverse
years from now forensic miners
will stumble upon these passages
and be unsure if this is the he or
the he behind the he somewhat
unable to repair the scrap heap damage
after having been repeatedly ***** trained
by wrecking yard executives with cutting torches
fat as spring worms free like sniffing hyenas
fortunately sugar appears to be universally pleasing
and bought me some time to think
have we gotten to the topology segment
what's wrong with a philosophy of surface
hi what's your sign I'm a capricornucopia
delusion A against delusion B
a cosmic food chain of ransoming angels
I'm just trying my best to avoid
the hell words like cooked and eaten
cooking with Rosetta Stone
eating with zealots and lynch mobs
in the how wide can you talk contest
where the taboo behind the taboo
reverses us to Black Plague status
and the subsequent Violet Plague too
where clouds of flies lurk in church doorways
their buzzing can be infinitely instructive
even if it's the last thing you hear
with a flat rock for a pillow
bless my clumsy adolescence Bob
rosy dawn into evening's umber

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

Sgt. Bedlam of heavy artillery reporting sir
Bedlam I want you to pick the runt of the litter
and turn him into an agent assassin
with the clandestine power of hypnotism
yes Generalissimo I am here to obey
decked out like a burlesque ***** warlord
his Mauser cigar lighter on his belt
a curlicue mustache and a pie tin helmet
Opal his ***** fiend gun moll squirming in his lap
was our banana republic Generalissimo
Bedlam weighed the coming abrasions
concluded we are our scars and furthermore
if adaptation is survival so is parasitism
cleared his throat noisily and bowed an exit
later that fate laden candle lit night
he made a deep study of his globes and charts
Europa Asia Oceania the Steppes the Savannah
the mud slipped scorched Hills of Malibu
a map addict re-educated and re-issued
in the Great Culling of the Herd
his bell-shaped curve insisted love me
server and served a beautiful thing
if one enjoyed giant jungle arachnids and leeches
and centipedes that crawl up your ****
to lay millions of eggs when you sleep
where the laws of physics become
a tumbling burbling retinal stew
geysering steam and sulfur and
an occasional alabaster Venus de Milo
where was I oh yah
yet a thing of beauty was Opal to Bedlam
he heard scratching and purring at the door
it was she incognito in an iguana skin
we must escape this hideous circus of shame
she coo coo rooed as her tongue dove into
the holy fissure in his brain
and he threw caution to the feral hogs
forgetting good posture he oozed upon Opal
I bet you think you make your own decisions
she cloyed and again he tossed caution
into a cauldron of grunting mammalian rut
for several hours perhaps the entire weekend
it's easy to rewire a human
you just give them a little epiphany
and bingo ownership pretty much forevrr
his hypnotic gambit paid off in ducats
the Generalissimo slept like a corpse
the pet centipedes concluded their labors
his ex-kingdom rejoiced at their new liberty
and that's anarchy for ya

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

don't even think about it
a bucket of motel ice in the face
proving the thing in itself does not exist
because he registered all the meanings all the time
in a nausea so profound the retching never ended
this being the proof in the pudding
rearranging all my severed proteins
in a hypnotic anarexo-bulemic frenzy
I marched to the beat of crawling flesh
tattooed Celtic blue by an ******* dermatologist
in an idiot if lyrical ritual purification
couldn't find a long-haired dog for winter
settled for an inferno of intrigue and dissipation
in a tin shack at the edge of an endless swamp
it wasn't serenity that's a ******* fact
the horse hairs stung across his ****
Mistress Cheetah grabbed the microphone
she had saved him from pointlessness in the past
weaving many paths upon his terrain
in a fairy tale about fairy tales
fear swept the land as a craving for snacks
the ones who get no peace rose in rebellion
the Brahmins and their bullies faced extinction
so they cut a deal to escape the cro magnon hordes
coldly calculating the cost to nations
in a curious mix of apoplexy and daring
a grandiose epic on the nature of Nature
and the desert of human intellect
clanked and hummed into bloom
an infectious enthusiasm swept the palisades
curing the sick and raising the dead
bypassing the humiliation of needing to lie
now if that doesn't please your ghost
here's something that will
I'll give you the formula now
in a dance of erupting minutae
if the West is decadently feudal
the East is feudaly decadent
this is my message to Earth
multiply yourself by yourself
and avoid counterfeit soothsayers
like you avoid a broken pin ball flipper
some of the angels are stuffed dolls
where everyone is a game piece
tell me what is not measured
like wild geese honking through the night
part of a vast migration of souls
with the moon low and full
in a time of riches and knowing
in a teasing ****** of ignorance
in a power surge that spiked through the wires
the closer to the pillar you stood
the more transparent it all became
end of transmission

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

it ain't the gush of hot blood
or a madman’s teeth ripping open
a bag of chips and a microbrew
it is a clenched heart squeezed
by feral anteaters in the Age of Steam
then left at the century's doorstep
following the great migration
of Cimmerians to Penemunde
said the monkey to the parrot
we’ll cut away from our intro now
just didn't want the intergalactic
Mind Police Black Dog Terror Squad
to think I had forgotten their food dish
hence the esophageal spasm
it's all a gateway to paradise
where Lake Placid erupts in flame on cue
I assure you posthumously volcanically
presumed dead still twitching
possibly a victim of hypochondria
needing humanitarian relief
hell what do I know
you got your inductive
you got your deductive
one leads to vacillation
the other to megalomania
I watched the best minds of my generation
lobotomize themselves with ideology
and lop their nuts off with paper cutters
less out of vengeance than mitigated tranquility
journalists were the first to go
many ifs in the Thesaurus of Legends
you see the words
you spectate pleasantly
inconsequential and obsolete
separated from the five senses
by the five in-between senses
sense of irony sense of outrage
sense of monotony sense of wonder
sense of mediocrity
and a great list of impermissibles
as long as your extended elbow
with curiosity the test of courage
discovering that the path of least aversion
was sweet to gaze upon
in a universe of distortions
this is a level 5 commando alert
follow me men he drunkenly commanded
and stumbled out into the darkness
cursing and singing
singing and cursing

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

so easy to speak of suffering and love
so instead we'll speak of
the one body many minds problem
it is the wisdom of pain
vs. the wisdom of pleasure
vs. the wisdom of extinction
the greater the risk the greater the risk
I flunked out of school school
so my dice are perpetually on the fly
presently writing the final flaming chapter
you will recall from your history texts
that there is a describable form of data
which controls the description of all other data
which is shining above like the Milky Way
you can pet my **** now
then a voice booms out
from everywhere at once
with an intensity that is preposterous
preposterous now there's a word
that needs no introduction
marry into money son
don't Van Gogh that ear son
get the best set of maps
your set of maps can provide son
that finishes our emergency broadcast
it's all in post production special effects
lots of zoom in and out simultaneously
plane to plane projection the pure stuff
none of that cheap point to surface
no sir not for my minions of desecration
the evidence is way too flimsy
to change the modern direction anyhow
then I did some number crunching
and took a ride on Godzilla's foot
loaded my pants with explosives
took out two day shift checkout aisles
and a Starry Night mall fountain mosaic
before they punched my ticket
drugged gagged and bound
thrown at the jury's unwashed feet
BTW the sickness of modern society
is in fact the previous society
but the reasons for not writing
are the same reasons for writing
we'll come up with something
every night is karaoke night

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

he waived cross examination
innovation had suffered a ******* head wound
and the Mossad was after my ***
a post Ragnarok pre Utopia picnic
with a cozy camp fire on the ice
hot enough to fry a penguin steak
code breakers grab your lapiz lazuli
it's the Florentine Colonnade Dancers
and gravy covers the spuds
the beaten man fears to drink his fill
swallowed the shiny faucet handle
in a messy near suicide by drowning
tried to live on borrowed time
and die a minor hero with a minor following
followed by a banquet of boneless chicken
and seven times seven bags of Cheetos
we are all either the ruling class
******* things up for generations to come
or clowns in the cross hairs
because they are still here aren't they
megalomania may well be a survival mechanism
where the ******* Adonises are grown
with a suspected core of infinite malice
the gatekeeper only wants to know your symptoms
my life was a waste of time I replied
words being contours as well as baskets
I screamed turning up the gain
with them we explore the human psyche
like branch monkeys swinging in a cage
I sang because it's the smart thing to do
since I never learned to spell i-m-p-e-r-i-a-l
as I rambled onwards and zoomed in
thank you one and all and everything
and I grouted my stones with a la la la
while the streets filled with rubble
a vast line of gate crashers not waiting
dinner forks ready bye m'bye eatum
a final exit from the crazy maze
it was the best he could honestly do
even when they upside us like **** *******
up one side and down the aether
he dodged the repo man one more time
with the compass of compassion
while trying not to be a morale problem
the specimens in my cognitive laboratory
confide and call it symphony
yet in the end the neurons
played a starring role
trying to stir from the trance
he knew the risk
but had a mouth to feed

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon