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Monday, January 22, 2018




Politico had an article about human organ printing and manufacturing which has crept into my psyche, and I am working it out through this week's cartoons...


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Monday, January 15, 2018

Memoir of an Ice Cube 

I am an ice cube in a sea of soda,
lolling here for hours. I am among
this caravan of swirling ice cubes,
stale sea of soda. Sit here
in the shallow end, feet swinging, swirling, shriveling:
how small this tall glass is. I once thought
it was everything.


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Albino Corporation
  
Summer
& the kids are dropping
aluminum cans like business cards
that read “I’m young, I’m wild, I’m free.”

Skateboarding beneath a rotisserie sun,
Delicious skins frying across the tippy toed length
of June, July & August. Meanwhile
a man collects up all their cans

like a stooped November custodian
gathering musky gym towels
“I will make a profit of your sinful youth,”
he grunts while a sticky genie

composed of sugary pools
of caramel colored sodas
entwines
his albino corporation.


Monday, January 8, 2018


Suicide Beard 
Once we go beyond logic,
and have faith in the suicide beard,
we can accept that the luscious little ladies
will spot the white claws
in the fur and run, for the nearest fountain of youth,
as that is their privilege.

And as this seine
of aging bearded men tightens
around the one lost little lamb, squeezing
all the love out of her, we will run our fingers
through these white swords,
and she will run her fingers

through these white swords,
drawing kisses, never blood,
& the suicide beard
will dream of pennies on the eyes,
as the nubiles haul ass
through the valley of the shadow of beard.


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Hip
The doctor’d prescribed a pill, it’d killed the crocodile
in my hip. Instead, it turned the rest of my body into a swamp. 
So I’d given up the swamp-pills, and nature breathed new life
into the crock.  I’d gone a week with the crock in my hip pocket,
till I just had to get away from his gnawing companionship. Popped
a pill and all was well.  Till the dizziness returned. I started fantasizing
about just hacking the leg off.  Kept thinking about that
mythological bottle of booze: the civil war solution. 
Those few numbing swigs of whiskey, as some sawbones
amputates the drumstick, dipped in the gangrene
flavored batter.  I fantasized about going on Disability, 
buying a cheap van, stealing a page from Steinbeck
and traveling the US of A .








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Monday, January 1, 2018



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dog
dog has a name
dog loves to bark
dog runs like a fugitive
dog is in love with the cat
the orange one
with the bad temper
the rat killer
the killer of rats

dog has an address
dog rarely receives mail
from credit card companies, or
publisher’s clearing house
dog never worries about identity theft
no social security number
no investments

dog has a name,
a bark, a reputation
all the old ladies wave
and call her by name.


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Lost
 Currents
invite me---
I swim away
from my work.
I am free
                & lost.






Tuesday, December 26, 2017









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Illusions
  
Body and mind
touch. No pass-
ports involved.


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The Basket Man 

The Basket Man moved through a numbing aura
with a hunch of shoulder that appealed to he, and only he.
He cleaned his hands constantly, and then returned
to his hiding place, cradling the face of a wild animal;

glaring green eyes in his belly. The Basket Man
had marvelous eyes but shared them with no one:
he was like a selfish boy with a bag of cat-eyed marbles;
he couldn’t bear finger prints, alien whorls and ridges
upon he, or his possessions, instead, preferred the shoulder
of his basket. The Basket Man found much to his chagrin

that the critics underneath his fingernails, and in the folds
of his neck and in the shallow pond of belly lint, chattered
on whether he slumbered or wakened: “damned critics
won’t leave me alone.”

Many an evening, The Basket Man sat, quill in hand, composing
his memoirs. Because he lived in a basket he didn’t work
at the proverbial “big oak desk,”  or the  tiny “school kid’s desk”; 
not even an orange crate. He sat, instead, upon arthritic knees, 
balancing a legal pad into the long hours of the night.
So far he’d only come up with the title:  “Damned Critics
won’t leave me alone.” Hell, it was a beginning;

Thursday the 21st  the Basket Man lay in a cocoon of chill
and sweat. Unclaimed, like a knife used in a murder, and tossed
casually between the gratings of a storm drain. Meanwhile,
“something, once anchored” roamed the house
seeking a way out.

















Monday, December 18, 2017






Alien Agenda

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

smile.

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

don’t raise you antenna
and disappear.

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

don’t make a break
for your flying saucer

even when being pursued
by an ugly torch-bearing mob.

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

don’t forget
they may be the aliens.

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

tell them your birth
certificate’s posted

on-line.

When they look at you
like you’re an alien,

tell ‘em your phaser’s

not set
on stun.

          When they look at you
          like you’re an alien

invite them to your planet.


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Incubator

I vomited the creature---

It swam in the toilet bowl.
I tried to flush the abomination,
but it refused to be sucked down the hole.
Tentacles, sprouting at will.
Dozens of rubbery arms whipping wildly,
water exploding,
because of this creature who had defiled me.

I jerked the bathroom door shut,
heard that thing thud on tile,
tenacious tentacles lashing out,
throat filling with bile.
And then my stomach cramped again.
Forced into puking,
I threw this new one into the microwave,
and gave it a good nuking.

Body and tentacles,
sizzling like bacon,
thought it was dead,
but was mistaken.

Opened the microwave door.
As I did, I prayed,
but found myself attacked
by mouths like razor blades.
Then began feeling more cramps.
This time two creatures
forced their way out.
I was weak, throat burning.
unable to shout.
Lay down on my side
on cold dead tile,
an army slithering from my mouth.
Vile!
Thousands of stinging cuts.
I wanted to scream,
I wanted to believe,
this was nothing but a monstrous dream.

When I woke,
I felt squirming inside me,
they had laid their babies,
Survival would be denied me.
They were growing,
being nourished,
I was the living, breathing, incubator,
and these monsters would flourish.









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Monday, December 11, 2017

Glasses

The glasses
w/ those rectangular lenses,

they brought mathematics
to her eyes,

to the hump of her nose;

geometry to the crow’s feet,
the laugh lines.

Image result for einstein 

She could immediately see
Einstein and Pythagoras

using her oval face as a chalkboard.
Working out theorems

formulas and proofs
that explained her.

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Sweet Addiction

Mister Eye, walking into the Disease Priest
Coffee Shop and Bakery “we make disease
sweeter and sweeter,” mutters one of the many priests,
carrying trays of diabetic delight, pouring cups
of coffee, stirring in  lumps of sugar and gulps
of cream. Mister Eye says not a word, merely watches
the smearing of goo over lips, the waggling of tongues
like acrobatic octopi;  “addiction is our bread and butter”
mutters the high priestess of tooth decay and amputation;
“blood sugars rise and blood sugars fall,” squeal a boy
and girl in training;

 Image result for coffee and sugar

Mister Eye makes no eye contact,
instead orders the same cup of Joe: black, he has
had every morning since the invention of “sugar
sickness”. In the back room
one of the squealing trainees,
clutching a sugar cube,
is about to drop it in:

“don’t mess with that one,”
says the high priestess glumly. 
“He’s a watcher, that one.”

Mister Eye inspects his cup,
while watching the ruination
of another batch of human beings,
like a tray of burnt Cinnabons tossed in the alley
and gobbled by the diabetic dogs of the neighborhood.








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