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Tommy Johnson May 2014
Fly you fool
People only get older
And poetry doesn't always need to rhyme
Life hands you lemons
But my tequila requires limes

What's the recipe for ice?
Can't see with 20/20 vision eyes
Fighting for a far off cause
And Santa Clause

Whatchamacallits
And compost heaps
Michigan to Denver
Face down in the mud
The baker helps me up
He's up at 2 AM
To hand out yesterdays left overs to the hobos and bums

Elliot Ness and Pat Garrett are on the trail
But The Iceman is watching patiently in his quiet suburb to emerge and bathe himself in their agony and his compensation

Hush puppies and truffle fries
Go-carts zooming through the race riots

Stomp
Tap
Snap
Clap
And sing along around the wishing well
Across the universe
Along the watchtower
With the brooding troubadour

The truth is ugly
Unless it sugarcoats itself with a false foundation and misleading mascara  

The burning bush spits out orders like ticker tape

I reckon its witchcraft
Either that
Or vertigo and dream piercing alarm clocks
Snooze

I AM VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW
Take it all away

The air is polluted with "love"
Or self-satisfaction disguised as love

More often than not
Almost always
I want you
Just you

I use geometry to calculate all these feelings
In summation, I'm insane but not as insane as you for loving me

Fractured my scaphoid
Now I'm paranoid of curbs and confrontation

I board the drunken ship
And circle Pangaea

We don't need a meteorologist to tell us the wind is with us, on our side
As we float on to the next one

My optometrist from Minnesota calls me and tells me my state of the art x-ray specs are in

I pulled something in my back, slipped a disk

Gentlemen, I take my leave  

I've been the liar
The actor
The martyr
The scribe
The one under the microscope hating every second
The one on the wanted poster

I can take your boos
I can guzzle your *****
Then clog your toilet
And walk away clean

Satan checks my blood pressure
Gives me ten milligrams of ****** and unleashes me upon the world

I burn the corks and crack the plates
I litter the empty bottles to leave them for the rest of you to recycle

Can you handle change?
Can you hold your own during the transformation?
This erratic evolution of the soul and person?

You've been in the honor society
Have you been inmate 107501?
Then what do you know?

You've been converted by the prizes in cereal boxes
Save the box tops and mail them in for an all expense paid trip to Crimea

Take this box cutter and do your worst

Your tongue licks away this candy shell of doubt that surrounds me
Until you reach the chewy center and free the surreal pleasure of sweetness
(courtesy of tasseled colonel corny maise aye aire)

Challenge more difficult than threading
camel thru eye of needle, hence catchy title
scotched, and I aim to endeavor and steer
away from task surpassing
defying gravity clear,

nonetheless (sorry), I still hotly air
glomming pablum attesting ill
success while sitting
in this wooden hard backed chair
oft times a means to leap bajillion

miles, cuz yours truly doth despair
one composite primate being forged care
fully vis a vis from carbon based life
je ne sais quoi essence Earthenware
composed, whether flora or fauna,

one species, sans latter, whose fanfare
of self importance don, trumpet
white out blinding search lights glare
ring essentially making grist for mockery,
parody travesty, etc shady spectacle

buzzfeeding nothing of pinterest to hear
blabbering blaring blather most teeny
tiny in utero homunculus hazardous heir
to the porcelain throne
faulty genes impair

ability to reign reduced
to basket of deplorable
what, particularly as
one benighted longhair
pencil necked geek refused treatment,

(cuz preexisting condition) by medicare
not covered, thus accursed
imp of the pervert
resigned to toss in hat
unsuspecting nightmare,

and run for political office
touting offering nuclear
weapon to every man,
woman and child

additionally larding couture
to design outerwear
housing protective
missile deflecting capacity,
which article designed by

Penn students, yes a bit
elaborate what with
doodads, thingymajigs,
and whatchamacallits
they (especially Eden)

did amazingly overengineer,
but, what the hey, now
the prophesied armageddon
answered courtesy
oven entrepreneurial pair

two peas in a pod, which
success stories ain't queer,
where Ivy League University
flush with funds to bolster
any promising idea, yea
even full body pod suited rainwear.
This changes everything Capitalism versus climate
(copy written 2014) by Naomi Klein

Though published
more'n a half dozen years ago,
whereby the author
painstakingly details **** sapiens
impact upon planet Earth,
she intelligently describes legacy
lock, stock, and barrel
young people forced
to confront, an alphabet soup
of challenges courtesy motley crew
otherwise ordinary people,
whose penchant to concoct
various and sundry
extraordinary doodads,
seminal thingamajigs, or
visionary whatchamacallits
ushered Industrial Revolution.

Industrialization by hook and/or crook
incredibly, indubitably, ineluctably forsook
agricultural modus operandi - just look
at onset of manufacturing processes
(where population concentrated)
which radically revolutionary
(number 9) mechanization subsequently shook
agrarian paradigm to the very roots
basically, essentially,
and interestingly enough took
away that bucolic,
holistic, and individualistic
coveted and sacred bond
yielding organic crop of tasty morsels
which raw bits (albeit fruitful)
allowed, enabled, and provided
farmer in the dell to cook
powder milk biscuits
courtesy sweat brow
labor yields good eats yum zook.

She (the writer) alludes to activism
years before the voice of Greta Thunberg
affected the young and restless
with the urgent plea for climate change,
yet yours truly (me)
conscientious keeping lively exchange,
when I thoroughly enjoyed
livingsocial amidst grange
where a bartered bride got acquired
during frenzied interchange,

who currently woke
up out of her hours long siesta
while her husband tea zing ideas
to craft reasonable rhyme
did immerse his concentration
housed within
sixty plus shades of gray matter
did figuratively steep and soak
now quietude respite disrupted
snatching precious scarce interludes
of quiescence okey-doke

to distill purposefulness
coaxing and cabling
while cackling wife
causes riddled interruption
reducing mineserious minded intent
as some laughable joke,
nevertheless endeavor enduring
to resume objective and evoke

insight gleaned reading about
how humankind spectacularly
(actually horrifically) rid
oblate spheroid third rock from sun
multitudinous flora and fauna gone
iconoclastic as Butch Cassidy
and Sundance kid
burning fossil fuel
to appease robber barons their ego and id,
no matter toxic pollutants belched at expense
to extract sought after substances hid
deep within bowels of continental crust,
yet recent renaissance
regarding renewable resources amid
youth offer glimmer of optimism
to thwart total mass distinction
comprising every plant and animal.
I don’t know what to do
in stores like Home Depot and Menards
Walking around aisles with a
studious expression, hoping to high heaven
I don’t have to approach a salesman
(Yes, may I please get one…nuts and bolts?)

What am I, an adult?
I’m a child who’s been
alive for thirty one years
I don’t know anything
about Thingamagigs
and Whatchamacallits

This silver bolt thing
connects to where?
Is it important?
Who will install it for me?
The room will surely explode
if I do it myself

Sparkling appliances
snug in boxes looking like
they know what they’re used for
Chrome light fixtures
and sparkplugs that dazzle my eye

and flatline my brain
I’m not adult enough for this
left without supervision
in handyman’s land
I literally crawl through the woodwork

(Balsam wood, cherry wood,
Look at me reading the labels!
Maybe I’ll build a shed!)
To think I was enamored
by the prospect of home ownership

— The End —