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At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.
Neil T Weakley Nov 2013
I let the sky be my tent tonight,
a sparkle-filled indigo field
like a Star Trek transporter.
I swirl the stars with my mind
as my body says, "Energize!".

My destination: points of light,
any one of which could be a hive
of beings living, working, playing
in a mirror of the musings originating
from the sleeping bag in which I lay.

Rolling over to feed my notebook,
a firefly insists on sharing my pen.
Among his friends gathered about my flashlight
is a dragonfly twisting and turning its head
in a display of 360 degree impossibility.

"Do it again!", say my wide eyes,
then I'm shushed by a distant Canis howl.
The trees carry its magic to me like
a powerful totem, making me wary,
reaffirming our instinctual similarities.

Relaxing, I smile goodnight to its echo,
shoo the Insecta from their little electric campfire,
and turn my face again to the Universe
while whispers from a nearby stream
provide a soundtrack to twinkling above.

Gentle air pulls its blanket over me,
while scent of earth and pine
send me dreaming of cosmic fireflies,
blinking their lullaby in rhythm
to the ecosystem powered by my heart.
Ottar Aug 2014
insects buzz, noises
that say they own nothing at
all, but only eat
Don't let it bug you... bite me
now, unlike my usually trenchant literary librettos, I regale the unknown (tum me) reader for savoir-faire articulation, elocution, and indomitable tour de force proffered by a spectrum of bounteous expropriated hegemony rightful to Mother Nature.
--------------------------------------------------------
A Place Revisited Within The Mind
(an illusory escape during dead of winter).
The shafts of a golden veil, spring sun at noon
break through the heavily coated
overgrowth of leafy foliage
and cause shadows spar upon the forest floor.

In a field of wild
a mosaic of crystalline color
from the prismatic play of sunshine
upon the silently talking heads
of the swaying stalks.

the scintillating and sparkling rays
in unison with the weft
(and warp across an invisible loom)
weaves a delicious tasting warm breeze,

(which sways the boughs of treetops to and fro,
akin to an unseen baby being cradled)
brings a ladled spate of cool freshness
from the map-cap world (webbed wide)
of a manmade existence.

The grandeur of the fallow spring meadow
a pageant of exquisite dignity
by the graceful movements
from the un-choreographed fall and rise
of the unplowed acres

eyes orbit, ear re Canal,
and twitching nostrils of sensate beings
to the mellifluous sounds
and sweet smelling aromas
that gently teasingly assault the senses
beguiling the sight,

and lulling ears into a transcendent state.
A buoyant airy tonal plume
rises into the surrounding heights
touches the breadth of cerulean sky
and scythe lent lee gently tumbles back down
like a merry widow waltzing flowery waterfall.

In quiet circumspection
the antics sans plethora of BuzzFeed ding
busily buzzing foraging insects,
which contentedly hum and alight nearby

flitting to and fro
oblivious to plaudits encore
harmoniously thriving
within the living laboratory

of Mother Nature,
sans, Insects or Insecta are by far
count as the largest group of
hexapod invertebrates
within the arthropod phylum,

where simultaneously
underneath the earthen surface
the ground this abustle with
glorious heartthrob
of one micro universe
comprising architects, builders, and weavers
engage in all manner
of natural devices for a livelihood.

This brilliant splendor tantamount
with top-notch operatic performance,
a sensational visual and audiological feast
hypnotizing one humble human (me)
into an inebriated state of bliss.
Non random, but (based on my very
     far out, flimsy laughably
     amateurish thinking)
     faux feigned aye
firmly believe, that
     what appears bye and by
as erratic, kinetic,

     pathetic housefly...doth not defy
explanation, when theory linkedin
     with sophisticated espy
craft, and anonymously fyi
confirmed, grounded, touted...
     across world wide web
    of secret agents akin
     to James Bond 007 guy

remotely controlled, via
     artificial intelligence high
lee believable telltale
     (invisible) fingerprints my
counter espionage foot
     soldiers well nigh
came to this
     sticky hunch expertly ply

ying spellbinding twisted
     sinister and sly
and family tombstone,
    where anti-American saboteurs,
     perhaps planned purposely
     left loose ends
     only one practiced
     in surveillance would tie

dangling minuscule threads
     pulled together, how
     indiscriminate fiends
     of American government
     blatantly intrude zooming
     carefree necessitating vie
hubble counter measures
     Accorded unsuspecting

     and surreptitious ploys
CIA and/or FBI Intel recourse
     never need to explain why.
Anyway scrutinizing distraction
     from Insecta nuisance
     found yours truly
     pondering impossible odds
     stacked against this elusive drone

(YES), this supposition
     finds a "NON FAKE" assertion
     Musca domestica
     gets used to hone
in on random (a for instance)
     chosen guys, who share
     the christened name
     this Matthew Scott Harris,

interestingly enough
     tend tubby a lone
ranger clear ring stream
     of consciousness muck
cob bray undertaken
     (with grave solemnity)
     while awaiting for
     divine intervention

     with any luck
     after reciting pater noster,
     while this drake
     didst quack like a duck,
     hoop fully heard
     by cosmic consciousness
     differentiating my unique cluck
among the bajillion

     of other angry bird,
     calls and even accompanied
     by snorting from one buck
     king bronco minister,
     whose birth debut
     occurred, viz astrologic
     Capricorn sign butta no fault
     could hash tag, nor pin

     blame circumstance attributed to
     nobody in particular recognizing
     accounting held for no logical rhyme
     or courtesy of
     posthumously feted author
     Ayn Rand who, birthed
     Genre Objectivism creates novel
     page turner starring John Galt

     (yeah...yeah..yeah...
     him of Atlas Shrugged)
     waiting by Howard Roark
     named Fountain Head
     (with mine pent up insult
ting barrage of
     regular play station
     expletives, and time

     soon to call quits),
     where protracted radar
     enforced grunts to halt
**** sitter hub lee delayed by...
     an unexpected Alien abduction
     (fortunately nsync
     with my gestalt)
this male (terrific, sarcastic fault

less rhapsodic, quixotic,
     poetic, magnetic, exalt
ting kinetic, Italic,
     generic, energetic, dolt
copacetic, atheistic adult

prayed for nothing
     short of being struck
     by a (NON binding mortally
     Wounding) strunken white
     hot lightening bolt.
Chandy Jun 2021
The man woke up
Looked toward his reflection
In his vision
Was a human, with a beetle's head
His wife of several weeks
Unleashed a gasp
"Why has this happened?"
The man replied
"I have become Insecta, my true self, a pest."
ever the amateur family entomologist

Upon texting her a picture
(countless moments ago
since October ninth)
unfamiliar delicate looking critter -
(seen inside the apartment many times),
she quickly identified crane fly
agilely affixed to lampshade.

I figuratively tip hat at Tipulidae
long legged dainty insect
poised to strike proboscis,
where adults buzzfeed on
nectar from flowers or other outdoor plants
unlike larvae whose diet
constitutes decaying wood and vegetation.

Said winged six-legged invertebrate
of the class Insecta
resembles a mosquito on steroids,
and can freak people out, crane flies
pose absolutely zero harm
to bipedal hominids i.e. **** sapiens.

Detriment to human beings
ought not serve as benchmark
to assess purposefulness regarding
all creatures large and small,
rhetorical question cometh your way:
how came man/woman kind
as arbitrary arbiter
determining which animal
and/or plant species
can claim their sweepstake
linkedin with world wide ecological web?

If assigned role of divine creator,
(atop egg shaped noggin of mine
thorn of crown yours truly would don)
dutifully, eagerly and immediately trumpet,
whereby naked ape relegated to dung heap
feasted upon courtesy voracious grubs
chief among them
the Alaskan Bull Worm.

Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
in sync with inalienable rights
decreed toward all flora and fauna
except nasty horrible brute
loosing wanton cruelty upon planet
bajillion dollar bounty on her/his head
plus forced to eat Peruvian puff peppers,
which measures 16 million Scoville units

(this drake just joshing you)
if she/he violates trespassing code
compromising, jeopardizing, or yawping
indignities heaped against the existence
of any organism
(except haughty human beings)
entitled to live
upon oblate spheroid.

Invariably survival of the fittest
will decree dominance
of one or another living entity
unless robots take over the world.
Survival of one wreath speck table insect,
(poll ease pod din me Elmer Fudd speak)
thus earning hardy laurels
nsync with inxs of standing kudos
ranking as bajillion year old species
scientific name: Periplaneta americana
(Linnaeus)  Insecta: Blattodea: Blattidae)
throve for more than 300 million years,
not surprisingly they constitute
one of the oldest groups of insects on the earth.

Longevity of twittering, skittering,
and buzzfeeding critters survival
witnessed their collective essence being gifted
with best in class adaptation techniques
particularly with debut appearance of naked ape
slowly evolving into modern (wo)man,
(after God - somewhat cagily
took a rib from Adam),
who when not resembling a rolling stone,
nor asking sympathy for the devil
furiously drove beasts of burden
into dire straits down to the waterline.

Much as yours truly feels squeamish
about the the humble cockroach,
(who most likely piggybacked as stowaway
courtesy unbeknownst to people
and hitched a ride across
all four corners
of the webbed wide world
essentially becoming globetrotters),
I chose said topic to broach
as an object lesson how one creature

namely aforementioned adaptable
creepy crawly creature
made themselves quite at home
raiding the pantries and refrigerators
across wide stratification
of income earners,
not exclusively the purview
solely nor singularly
circumscribed and described
by under-resourced people
most often found

living and reproducing
in cluttered city streets, parks,
subway tunnels, and sewer systems—
as well as inside houses
and ramshackle buildings
frequently woebegone tenements
not strictly linkedin
with Norwegian bachelor farmers
but also make cameo appearances
inside the coiffed hair of trumpeting dons
subsequently hobnobbing with glitterati.

German cockroaches are known for their prolific reproduction, with a female capable of producing up to 4 to 6 egg cases (oothecae) in her lifetime, each containing around 30 to 40 eggs. Under optimal conditions, they can go from egg to reproductive adult in as little as 100 days.

Cockroaches prefer dark places because they are nocturnal, so you will barely see them during the day. Hence, you will see them scuttle to hide when you turn on the basement or bathroom lights.

Thus yours truly attests
to become easily spooked
out of his skin,
and prone to utter bejesus
then subsequently and immediately
apt to swoon into a heap
of lovely bones
after espying a fast moving dark shape(s)
videre licet pronouncing exaggerated silhouette
cast courtesy moon shadow
outsize profile shimmying and shaking
across the outer limits of the twilight zone
delineated by structures of silence.

Imagine dragons exudation regarding fiery breath,
which scary scene would not faze me in the least,
cuz I would whip out my handy dandy blue's clues
and extinguish flaming forks courtesy water hose.

— The End —