EVERYBODY got ‘em a cell phone
pissant with not a nickel to pay his rent got him one
i ain’t got one or the quarter to use this pay phone
sittin’ there behind me waitin' for me to feed it
and hear that jingle like some slot machine that always pays out
temptin’ me like some shiny new toy
but i got two pennies and i ain’t even rubbin' them together
back then, back when nobody had no cell phone
i filed pennies down on the street to make them the size of dimes
when one of them dimes could by me a marshmallow pie
from a vendin’ machine at the bowlin’ alley
that ain’t there no more
but some cell phone store is
but that don’t matter
i don’t want no cell phone
i would like me one of them marshmallow pies
and an extra quarter to give this hungry phone
yesterday, some lady give me three quarters
and i give two of them to Jose to call his mama and sister
he gave me two smiles
i kept that other quarter to make a call
but couldn’t think of no number
or no soul
want to hear my voice
so i give that quarter to a little boy
who was all alone
and didn’t have no cell phone

We're not really poets
We're liars pretending to capture moments
We're trapping butterflies in nets,
fireflies in mason jars capped with lids, fish in styrofoam coolers layered between cool ice melting .
Its eyes are bulging as it's gasping, inhaling toxicity that we call air.
The will to power beckoning through its form, flopping around the ice cubes exchanging energy,
creating heat
Lukewarm drops slip down creating a puddle not large enough to survive
I reach out across to my brother for a high five.
Our palms slap and I laugh as the light from the sun shimmers across the water.

You must miss me
  must miss the kiss of me
The break had to make You ache
MISTAKE

I can write now what will still be
years after You've forgotten about me

in the myriad of mirrors in my mind
  Yur diamonds shall be the sole soul shine
every bit as real and raw and radiant as the first moment
they raced and rained and raised their reign within clint

reflections refuse to fade
each an inflection of Yur voice
  a forever of Yur face
   a reminder there ain't never been noe choice

every pissant poignant poet
weaving emotion images with their words
all the cunning linguist lyricists
singing lies and lines they think you've never heard
didn't actually feel any ******* thing
knew not one iota beyond nothing
of life
of love
of living in love

pathetic paintless portraits
(tattoos on a corpse)
empty echoes of nothing notes
(dealt by the deaf and the dead)

but I bet it's not their fault
they probably never felt a real fall
a feather float race up the rapids
with the fluffy grace of rabid rabbits

Not so for this man who be me
my feather has done dancin' shakin' in anti-gravity
I have sung sacred songs as angels swum along
our feather mountain biking heaven-strong

Of course our river was an awesome flow
(a hot-tub raft in moonlit snow)
And Our Poems were always best in show guitar glow
cuz I had You to Noe

yet the Mostest WOW was not enough somehow
the Bestest LOVE of this Life is not alive now

here I am again
a millennium worse than i've ever been
fetal black rose petals
dead dull dried
all their thorns' tears cried

no light left in my once bright blue eyes
dead and drowned and dried out
  cried out
  ashen grey
  nothing evermore to say

Silence
Deafening and
Destructive
The water begins to pour
The pitcher tips over
And down
There is a puddle on the floor
He looks at my offering with fury
Why does he turn rain into hurricanes?
Pissant.
He needs to learn how to swim.

~Christa E. Cannon

it's all
up in my head
all  these disparate threads

all these under the bedclothes
secrets
all these don't mean to be
but am what i am moments

all stuffed away in stacked suitcases
braced by not sure what you ,mean faces
all those sacred and scared places
within this wearied, wary and weirdly  warped soul

all the tattered scraps, the you are here, maps
the body slaps, the landings without *****
the god i need a nap snaps
all stacked racked and filed under
memories:
vivid, hazy, pleasant,pissant, piquant,
crazy, tearful, fearful, beerfull
and happy, sad glad mad,
**** why did i follow that there fad
bad...badass
fragile as glass
pain in the proverbial...
ask no questions ....
tell no lies
time flies....

all there bats in the belfry
cats in there pj's
no where, mayhaps be free
listening to internal dj's

dancing til dizzy
drinking slightly fizzy
alcohol.... misty tizzies,
getting bizzies...

all there, in a mixed up soup
smiling faces, put through paces
thoughtful moments, all the components
to make a life....to make a life
it's all up in my head.........
                                                roosting

So some little sawed-off *******
Gets himself a big boy gun.
He’s got a plan to make people pay
For every slander aimed at him.

He takes a walk on a crowded street
Looking for a likely victim;
The harried mother, the overdressed man:
Who will have his bullets.

How about the couple in that car,
Fun to shoot through a window.
None of these quite fill the bill;
This is the wrong location.

The only spot is back at work
They don’t know he’s angry.
He smiled when treated like a dork
And they deserve his vengeance.

He enters through the double doors
Walks past the guard while smiling
Strolls into the head-man’s lair
And shoots him at least fourteen times.

He saves the last shot for himself
But this time he miscounts
And security men now pounce on him
And hold him til police arrive.

Hauled onto a cop car’s seat
He has but one regret
Not that he didn’t **** himself
But that he didn’t **** more others.
          ljm

Bouncing happy can't contain
this beauty born from struggle and pain
I know I annoy those still in the dark
who eye me like a hungry shark

It's not that I am actually annoying
it's just that their misery is so cloying
it's needy and saps all of their strength
they go on and on about it at length

I want to hand them a bottled cure
but there's one thing that I'm very sure
that if they looked for help from God
they would not feel like dirt that trod

everybody trying to use them for stuff
taking and taking, it's never enough
nice to everyone so they won't be hated
but never feeling their appetites sated

So now I go on my merry way
and for these souls, I often pray
I sometimes see them start to change
but there's only so much in my range

So turn from your misery, turn to hope
the self-help obsessively saying don't mope!
Like, oh, well I'll just be happy then
this is not within the ability of men

You cannot do this all your own power
to sit at the top of some imaginary tower
You were built to rely on a loving Creator
Make that decision now! There may not be a later

Lying poets, they take their words to street
And sweep their hidden eyes to the pissant stone of curb
And drink in the sound of vehicle
Dreaming to be heard as loudly
But soft
And dreary
As the cloud
that casts its watchful shadow
Over the golden hills at the edge of space
And perpetually disposed themselves
Of any real fluidity

The sun pecks at the skin of the earth, as the waves of heat dance for her
And I become lost in the very essential part of it
That runs across the blades of grass in a quiet park
Where children scream gleefully and rub up against the chain-link
And the dogs empty themselves in feeling

The church bells, a trolleycar, the hobo collecting cans from an oasis of free trash bins
I drink the taste of **** and flower fields in the sweet summer sun

I could not believe what I had begun

The dream of Milton, my friend Kerouac, the Republic
The marble columns on Sansome
They are a treat to my ever-aging eyes
Seeking something in the dirtied troughs of heat
In the summer sun

But when will I be done?

breeding frenzied jawboning
nastiness, rock'm sock'm vermin
zealously, dizzying hordes kickstart
outrageous trampling, xMen busting

displays, heralding luminary
pastoral times, Xing Bethlehem
figurine Jesus observes sacrilegious
wackiness anarchy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
  
Ah, nothing beats the fistfights,
   bloodied noses,
   knocked unconscious bruising
   bad *** blimp

   at absolute gall
bladder kicking, eye poking,
   neck choking, up pall
ling, et cetera brutality at this,
   that, or s'mother mall

far from madding crowd portentous squall,
but at a safe distance
   removed along a deserted hall
witnessing flying seer sucker-punches,

   et cetera all
encompassing pandemonium
   solely about one small
pinterest ting live mutant

   ninja vudu doll, a mere couple inches tall,
sporting ability to transform
   into an antagonistic tournament
   cavalier two pronged horn spurning beast,
   which former attribute
   manufacturer didst install
with constituent parts shipped from Blue Ball

poker red hot furious loosed bull
   eyeing a glitter bauble
   half cocked pissant, with an alien drawl
dressed in bulletproof coverall

shoving people
   just another brick against a wall
angrily erupt volcano like,
   provoking  lava lee flowing mayhem,
   when a security detail
   prior to temporary cease fire didst recall

merely axes whatsapp with y'all
thence, bing kicked in groin
   and reduced to crawl,
   thus in no mood to sing jingall
bells, where stood,

   yet another beefy watchman
   aghast at squall
lid human wrecking machine
   analogously offensive as off fall
spreading riotous wildfire conflagration

   analogous to absent referee,
   when sure betted best
   team mate of foot ball  
   lost Superbowl game
   by a tackle merely postal
stamp size distance to win game,

   thus anonymous observer
   made an urgent call
   to Donald Trump, whose reaction begot
an uncontrollable nuclear fusion reaction

   jerryrigged, hair-pulling,
   fisticuff dueling brawl,
spreading bedlam, sparking
   avast capitalone, groupon,
   flickr ring plenti tinder
   triggering military police to go awol.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
a quick thinking whippersnapper
   holds up a baseball bat
as a make shift microphone,
   donning reversed hat
feigns to be an announcer
   live from pseudo faux palestra and spat
out nonsensical *** for tat.

But when I saw her my heart danced,
A dance that thumped and jumped,
She was everything my desire wanted,
And more so that my soul daily worshiped;

But the day I saw her with another,
Everything I built was torn asunder,
The man, certainly, was not her brother,
They looked too happy and too warm together;

But what did she want?
We were young, and sure would enjoy heaven's grant,
Yes, I had no job, but certainly not a pissant,
Together, I believed, our lives could be vibrant;

But alas! Conception did not come to term,
Something went wrong with our germ,
She refused to be my gem,
And broke, into pieces, my world's stem.

The hurricane winds are a bore
When they’ve been pushing you around
For two-thirds of a century
There’s nothing surprising about what torsion can do:
I know, I know,
It’s real but it’s all in your head, both at once,
Your collarbone is at 227 degrees toward Polaris
And meanwhile your left hip is rotating in a
Hyperskewed dimension only plottable with
Imaginary numbers, which is a problem
For peristaltic functions dependent on
Newtonian mechanics – sigh, shiver, burp,
Keep your awareness don’t fall over
BORING.
You’ve been on orange alert since Ike.

Let’s run down the repertoire of available distractions.
Jokiness? Sometimes worked in small
Person-to-person settings (you see the current problem)
But amazingly hard to pull off in text;
Mentally mugging the innocent online?
Leaves a bad taste.
Obliterating lust? Seems to have annihilated itself
Except in pain-in-the-*** dreams, the actually-asleep kind.
Guitar, or similar toys? Only fun as long as you keep finding
Novelty – which turns into, you know, work.

Drowning your mind in other people’s stuff?
This is the scary part.
Sometimes, still, for a little while; but never for long;
Not the freshest, not the most age-old time-tested brilliance;
Metaphors fall apart – the plot devices cannot hold -
You blink twice and the wind’s whipped the page out of your grip
And twisted your neck down up inside your ******* again.

So blowblowblowblowblow, babybrainballoons,
And Crack Your Cheeks,
Coz the only shred of hope is that if we all keep
Caterwauling our pissant poetic brains out at maximum vocal volume
Preamped and reverbed by global satellite systems to some
Unpredictable transhuman force it might eventually
OutShout the drone of Earth’s idiotic entropy
Kuz krist I’m bored of standing up in the wind

We both had enough of the poison Springtime
So you picked me up, and you started driving.
               The street's Westbound,
                rain and wipers pound.
We can be reborn if we can just depart
                             our town.

Race away--
                  --like we'd set fire to Bon-Ton
Lose a day...
                   ...take 84 past the county line.
               Let the rain keep time on the sunroof
                                  'til we're fine.

                              Do they ever feel it?
                                --Someone does!
                          The grinding. Rewinding,
                                hit play to repeat
                                          and then
                                          get paid.

                                        The payoff?
                                      You'll stave off
                          14 lies from their dead end eyes
                                     for one fortnight.

                                        Be forthright.
                                        Am I blind?
                                   Or do I detect that
                               our headaches kind of rhyme?

Make us reborn this time; phoenix down and back upright.
Continued the drive and the world we're righting.
                                 We killed our time
                               and came back to life
Just in time to return to our twinkling
                                         town lights.

When we have our fill of the pissant Summer,
let me pick you up and we'll head out driving.
                   past the Cannery
                until Rouse turns free
our zipped up obits that we can't speak
                          cleanly.

Race away--
                  --like we'd set fire to Bon-Ton
Lose a day...
                   ...take 84 past the county line.
               Let the rain keep time on the sunroof
                                  'til we're fine.

                                Let the rain keep time
                                    on the sunroof.

                               You'll be fine...

Fore score minus xv orbitz ago
from being centenarian
strong contractions forced me
to pass thru ******,
buck naked bare lady,
I ranked as only grandson sharing
same surname as Aaron,
(mine paternal grandfather)
me the sole heir –
foreshortened to Sol Aire

evinced scrawniness then (as shown
via ultrasound), which at birth
became crystal clear,
unbeknownst to parents
obsessive hidden compulsive predilection
pronounced with social anxiety affliction
manifested later in life,
whose mental health of mine,
would find me at sea
schooled in counting fish,

where I did flounder with anguish,
nevertheless as newborn human being,
the propensity with panic attacks
a decade plus years in future
whereat yours truly
would wallow in despair
meanwhile bundled cuteness
ranked as excelsior,
though said infant
extremely agitated and fussy,

I possessed unusual fear
witnessed in scrunched
and furrowed brow
slightly resembled
quirky pissant outlier
tipping the scales
courtesy old fashioned
analog needled gear
greater or lesser
than seven pounds

(minus or plus a few ounces)
with a mass of
(the following feature fabricated)
dread fully locked hair,
otherwise a gangly sack
of many lovely bones,
whereat obstetricians
could not help themselves but jeer
thus upon exiting
birth canal found

yours truly anxiously twirling loose
***** follicular fibers according
to medical records prevaricated,
courtesy poetic character sketch,
whose trademark embellishment
endemic beginning to end of poem,
(your job dear reader
to distinguish fact from fiction)
reasonable rhyme now resumes
along current frayed thread

stitching baby me finding
strands of hair wrapped around fingers
surmising in retrospect, I felt bored
without access to world wide web
infant versus aging baby boomer
expressed at early stage individuality,
and nonestablishmentarian stance
sporting knotty harried styled
swiftly tailored quasi/pseudo dreadlocks,
gave Medusa a run for her money

(before they were in vogue)
tough as hemp cord
an anomaly, which
no app could compare,
boot nonetheless highly adored
and valued more than fine spun gold
resembling inimitable
indestructible filaments,
when taut could lift
off the ground a board

dill low, which no reference
manual could address
even topnotch experts
queried, could not explain
outrageous constituent rare
peculiarity the likes
never seen before,
though still insured,
a novel boot nada
so critical freak

of nature ma lord
hirsute component
partitioned in a triple tier moored
substantial pressure upon noggin,
entwining, looping, spilling somehow
interweaving insync with umbilical cord
into a mass of whirled
wide webbed wear suitable for
four seasons, which bamboozled,
grew like Kudzu

into an immense
globular mass galore
'bout the size of Rhode
Island) after one year ****
more, and wove in part
from stem cell threads, nor
ceased proliferating
after birth placenta
accrued intact and
immediately put in cold store

room, a by very peculiar product
tinged with strands
of strawberry blond hair
evoking how lioness would roar
cocooning, contriving, and conveying
this tiny dude into self concocted
hermetically sealed giant spore
miniature mummy, who without doubt
looked like a lady
bug hide entombment

able to survive thermonuclear war
as a minor subsequent repercussion
the downy side understood,
impenetrable forest
filched countless growing years,
without jesting, when
figurative messed hair em scare em
bedlam reigned as a supreme nest
sans shrieking obsessed
invisible hoodlums

broke free their electric kool
aid acid test
from maximum security solitary
confinement investment
for naught busting andirons
weighing down with reinforced
steel trap door cladding
didst not bar
compulsive banshee
like imps of thee pervert,

but merely slow down
minuscule limbs
emulated a hitchhiker thumb
upon will could assume
Alaska Bull Worm sized Albatross
shaped anchorage) unsinkable (short
term) screaming, rebelling, quaking,
atomic sized banshee beastie boys,
et cetera with fiery zest.

(sung – in a round ***** willow warble - to the tune of --
Oh Where Oh Where has my little dog gone).

Once pronounced libido of mine
took kamikaze nose dive,
whereby about two thirds of mein kampf ago,
I yearned to be sought after beaux
yet as severely socially
anxious and withdrawn lad
present day ofttimes repeated laments
find me to crow
slamming self NOT losing
my virginity at a precocious ago,
cursing lack of tangible results courtesy

feeble attempts delivered deathblow
to a fragile ego,
and now only
as a married celibate sexagenarian
dearth of rutting thoughts
along the unforgettable lines sketched out
by storied author Eugene O'Neill  
includes lustful and romantic desire,
largely illustrated by the relationship
between Eben and Abbie

hashtagged within tragedy
Desire Under the Elms
ricochets with salient significance
an attempt by O'Neill
to adapt plot elements
and themes of Greek tragedy
to a rural New England setting
inspired by the myth of Phaedra,
Hippolytus, and Theseus,
which story of five characters
on a rural farm

in 1850s' New England,  
how their lives  
both pushed together
and pulled apart
by their conflicting desires
such aboriginal, primal,
optimal, animal, et cetera characteristics
once figuratively bounces
hither and yon, to and fro
within testosterone
powered windmills in my mind.

With a flame boy hunt
deft jais nais sais quois
firm lickey split tongue
and two bell yule yar pissant
little nippy ***** noopy ruck berry
filled up paul ling sacks
viz peppy la pew doth not peter out,
and weathers clawed rained swipes
from hello kitty when faux pas gets swung
assisting climbing Jacob's ladder

(without ***** footing,
orb bing a putz like the president)
advancing quick to attain ******* rung
while heading into a slippery sloping sluice
(with prickly endeavor emitting cleat trill
smooth sailing along a ****
re coarse upon ******* shaped pung
crossing la brea tar pits (peppered
with lai bee ha tricky
bridge over the River Kwai)

comprising ideal place de la resistance
to woo tang clan foreign nee Kate,
where two puckered
rill lee fleshy ruffling rills
tinged pinkish lips overhung
a challenging escarpment,
where many a brave
Tom, Harry or **** get hung
up, particularly while searching
for fabled “G” spot,

Fear of Flying (a bildungsroman
whose central theme couched
in the search
for self-discovery) by Erica Jung
cuz portcullis hamstrung
even the most fiercely determined
Engelbert **** per ****
necessitating the moist risky ski maneuver
as most studs know tubby gelandesprung

though ***** prize
wool worth any slimy setbacks,
where sticky **** gets flung
from angry cat,
who does not in the least find amusing,
and if further pricked with rage
not averse to hurl dung
gar (with) ease at snaky,
retractable hardened foo fighting

beastie boy twill clung
for dear life and limb
(er, or twig and berries),
while applying crampons (bivouacked
within his maxipad), viz ****
gull low, essentially a ball peen size cove
******* and hammered out
by Dashiell Hammitt, where coiled,
kinked follicles strewn tightly inlet among
pheromone laced verboten fruit.

Apalachee High School,
located in Winder, Georgia
witnessed an active shooter,
whereby the alleged lone gunman
(actually just a teenager of fourteen years)
killed four people and injured nine more
the latter hospitalized with injuries
after a shooting Wednesday
(June 4th, 2024) morning.

His (the lad who pulled the trigger
on the firearm – an AR platform-style gun)
father and mother must be held culpable,
and similar to the slain victims
surviving kith and kin
probably experience immense grief
(at least I would hope).

Yours truly (me),
a married sexagenarian and proud papa,
whose two grown daughters;
a twenty five old, lives in Bend, Oregon
and eldest - almost twenty six months
her kid sister's senior
resides within bucolic Ithaca, New York,
whereby he himself
dwells at Highland Manor Apartments
smack dab within the heart of
Perkiomen Valley, Pennsylvania
nestled here within suburban
southeastern Montgomery County
deeply affected by the tragedy
(as well as most previous occurring
violent, nasty, and brutish ****** crimes.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. The original text of the Second Amendment is:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.

The Second Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. Its origins can be traced back to ancient Roman and Florentine times, and to the late 16th century in England when Queen Elizabeth I required all classes of people to take part in a national militia.

I (a slight baby boomer at approximately
seventy inches tall from stem to stern
targeted as "scapegoat" during boyhood),
no longer a ticking time bomb harboring
rage against the machine,
would never buy nor use a weapon
intended to fire rapidly
loosing countless bullets,
nevertheless writer of these words
empathizes, sympathizes and telepathizes
third-person singular simple present
indicative forms of empathize,
sympathize, and telepathize respectively
with the predictable cited suspect,
who frequently trends toward being
a quiet natured, nerdy lad
at the receiving end
of verbal and physical harassment.

Still back in the day mean kids
indiscriminately name called me
attendant with closed fists
mere inches from my face -
both boys and girls made a point
to assail introspective
severely shy Matthew Scott Harris
pleading with cruel, fiendish, imps -
of the pervert please don't hurt me
and repeated the following saying:
sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me
(or so the playground adage
wants us to believe).

Words do hurt and the shame
those words can instill in us
have a way of instigating and
perpetuating inferiority complex
in our minds and our bodies.

Easy access to high powered military grade sophisticated woud find blunderbuss quaint.

     More often than not such brutal and nasty (short lived) nefarious schemes directed at humble lettered people (like those comprising my home town of Lake Woebegone) minding their own p's and q's, when out of the blue a sudden bitta bing bitta bang rings the terrorist catcall followed by red tide and river of blood.

     Thus occurs yet another staccato sinister sonic soundcloud boom across the pearl gray slate of some formerly anonymous place-name. which blitzkrieg of shells shattering (at shutterfly speed) the democratic rubric of society with senseless slaughter, whereat somber silence echoes the wails of agony.

     This epidemic re: murderous love affair with gruesome morbid fixation allowing, enable and providing the terrifying trappings for angry person to maniacally gun down (in slo mo) a milling crowdsource (perhaps pathetic plan premeditated) employing coterie of odious loading incendiary fiery clips.

     Suicide bombardier seeks to slake thirst to take aim with deadly precision, and spray with pump posse city, a congregated engaged group of people), with egregious fulfillment to mow down slew unsuspecting victims, which bring revulsion to this American citizen.

     Death be not proud, nor ought airtime allocated to these heinous cavalier avengers.

     Foe tee eight hour special proffers especial easy access to sophisticated high caliber compact offspring of rapaciously lethal gimcrackery cutlasses.

     Sorrow soulful songs sung by the likes of death cab for cutie in tandem with foo fighting beastie boys pay homilies and homage to grateful dead.

     Fetishistic martyrs wannabe set sights of sister and brothers of their same simian species.

     Once target(s) locked and stocked per skull and cross bones, the ammunition barrels at greased lightning speed dead set upon unaware persons. the final minutes/seconds of various lives instantaneously cut short, when instagram cross hairs seal the fate upon avast group of happy go lucky men and women.

     Instantaneous re: within the blink and/or flickr of and eye, the gallivanting live capital one progressive pinterest-ting human hulu hooping unwittingly accompany the grim reaper as riders to final resting place.

     Ribald exhortations and allegiance gifted from he/she who ushered in bereavement, where grief experiences a field day, whence pandora gorges philabundance like, as incalculable forsaken emptiness doles bleakness upon a grim outlook brought about per spilt blood, sweat and tears tallying the cost.

     Mortal kombat rues unfathomable payless priceline, which induces adrenaline to course thru the melee, where survivors sprint non selfie ish lee to a safer outlook, where moments before the collective asylum seekers indulged in a joyus fancy feast per vanity fair, whence diehard fanatic (attired inconspicuously like some dishabille schlepper of an outlier) pulled the trigger releasing high powered voluminous ammunition loaded murderous mass homicidal instrument.

     Netzero escape for those unfairly killed in ceaseless undeclared warfare, whereby killer (ofttimes a pissant punk) cooly unleashes fearsome fusillade from out the barrel per his/her lethal methodological munitions.

i guess that's it
cause we both know
how cowardly you are
you can be maimed and marred
and still stay stone faced
without so much as a reaction
though you'll need that
considering you can't help from going back
to that pissant who beats
because he's still of some use to you