Back to School

A young schoolboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the bus
The boy was filled with questions about what was all the fuss.
He’d picked his clothes and shined his shoes. He thought he looked quite cool.
And his mother cried as he walked out:
“Don’t wear your mask to school, son.
Leave your mask at home, Bill.
Don’t take your mask to school.”
He laughed and kissed his mom and said, “Your Billy Joe’s a man”
I can avoid this Covid best as anybody can.
And I won’t mask without a cause;  I’d look a total fool.
She cried again as he rode off:
“Don’t wear your mask to school, son.
Leave your mask at home, Bill.
Don’t take your mask to school.”
He hummed a song as on he rode, his face mask left at home.
He saw his schoolmates in the yard, wherein they liked to roam.
He saw some wearing masks and wondered if that was the rule.
But his mother’s words echoed again:
“Don’t wear your mask to school, son.
Leave your mask at home, Bill.
Don’t take your mask to school.”
He razzed some of his schoolmates about covering their face.
And said they needn’t worry about virus in this place.
A bemasked schoolboy at his side began to laugh, quite cruel.
Again heard again his mothers words:
“Don’t wear your mask to school, son.
Leave your mask at home, Bill.
Don’t take your mask to school.”
Filled with spite then, Billy Joe breached Covid protocol.
But then he started coughing wildly right there in the hall.
As Billy Joe fell to the floor, the crowd all screamed “You fool!”
And wondered at his final words:
“Don’t wear your mask to school, son.
Leave your mask at home, Bill.
Don’t take your mask to school.”

Return of Hair Drumpf

Hair Drumpf has got abortion in his sights.
He will continue smashing voting rights.
His followers believe in resurrection.
They have no real reality connection.
They plan another big D.C. to-do.
Steve Bannon calls it Insurrection II.
With Kev McCarthy working as his lackey,
the district could again become real wacky.
The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers out in force
will try once more to change history’s course.
This time one fears that shooting
will accompany looting.
The final outcome could be great remorse.

Texas Hold ‘Em

Texas got things all out of proportion.

Need a person swing for an abortion?
Bounty hunting fetus crime?
They are going back in time,
Christians stalking med providers
as if they were freedom riders,
shutting off all women’s rights
as if they were dimming lights.
They would better judicate
men’s rights to ejaculate.
Ovaries are not men’s biz.
Take care of your own damn jizz!
Texas, this is not a joke.
Free your women from this yoke.
Call off this sick bounty hunt.
You will not control my cunt.

Matriculation (For Colin)

Unnecessary complication

That’s my occupation
I take a situation
And offer it striation
It’s better than stagnation
In some ways a vacation
Above all confirmation
Of the pattern of this nation
Celebrating ostentation
With a dog-eat-dog vibration
And the fast track to elation
Driven now by automation
We humans were just a station
For too long a real sensation
But we stayed on the plantation
And worked hard toward damnation
Though you still could find salvation
It may need some new creation
Make solutions your vocation
Good luck/ Watch for radiation

Unfinished Poet

The unfinished poet never learned to cross his tees.

One never knew if they were ells or was it meant to tease.
Sometimes subbed stars for vowels or used periods as names.
His sentences only made sense if registered as games.
He’d run awhile with sections vastly overrun with rhyme,
then switch to haiku or blank verse without regard for time.
He’ll quote from Poe or Doctor No without a sense of guilt.
His poems are the oddest structures writers ever built.
A leading critic once said were they gathered in a book,
they could become a danger that was hard to overlook.
A poet has an urge for words when stepped up to the bar,
but this unfinished poet’s simply taken things too far.

Born 8/21

Count Basie was the counterpoint to Kenny Rogers’ ‘Gambler.’

Clarence Williams III was by far ‘Mod Squad’s’ greatest scrambler.
Kasey Musgraves minus fifty is Jackie DeShannon.
Usain Bolt runs like a colt who’s shot out of a cannon.
Wilt the Stilt and Jim McMahon both reached sport’s greatest heights.
Joe Strummer of the Clash was one of punk’s fast thinking knights.
Toe Blake patrolled that frozen lake and rink in Montreal.
And Christopher Milne used to live with his pal Winnie in the hall.

Protein Hobo

I’m spending all my coin on protein drinks.
If you haven’t got your energy, for sure this hard life stinks.
You gotta get up early and then make your scheduled rounds.
Feed the cat, walk the dog, toss the coffee grounds.
Nine gram shots of protein taken three, four times a day
should give you all the energy you need to work and play.
But should you feel it start to wane before your day is full,
a supplement should help you: just drink one can of Red Bull.
At night, you won’t need alcohol to float you off to sleep.
A day of action acts like traction, pulls you under, deep.
And in the morning, there’ll await there for you when you wake
the guiding light of your new life, that eight ounce protein shake.

Wake

I had them Day After Funeral Blues.

Dressed up in cold black shoes.
Dark in the whitened apse.
Stretching a long time lapse.
She was and now she’s ashes.
We had our times and bashes.
Life traits like garters tossed.
Turning old and sold with fingers crossed.
The solemn column filing out.
All of them soon dead, no doubt.
We are but an epoch’s tears,
bolstered by wine, fearing years.
While we party underground,
some say there are gnomes around.

The Knews Knows

Lies, cries the CultPopNet’s new news nose, The Knews Knows.

Standing with his ego and a firehose, shooting out wet prisms and some rainbows.
While around him bruised waves circle, seeking optimum ways the world flows.
The Knews Knows nothing chant may echo between banks.
Compassion for old fashion decorates too many tanks.
The waves one braves in seeking out the eddy and the flow
may get points in your heaven, but no luck in Kokomo.
The CultPopNet is gorged with fish, all multicolored scales.
A talking dolphin is their God. He says please don’t kill whales.
The Knews Knows many languages and signs with Janie’s apes.
He once fell in with Hubbard and has his brainwashing tapes.
His hurricane of colors sometimes threatens black and white.
But birds and bees and trees agree The Knews Knows way is right.
Outside, the constant crying of the antis and the pros
abates late night so size regenerates while helpless doze.

Times Are A Changeling

The rainbow bridge has melted in its wake.

The overwhelmed face more than they can take.
The clown car’s screaming downhill with no brake.
There is no sense of what is real or fake.
The multiplicities embrace no common theme.
Is life a cabaret, or maybe just a dream?
Without the senses, sensing nothing is as it may seem.
Death alone can turn us into something like a team.
The fires of winter turn eventually to hails of spring.
And nature redefines the nature of what it can bring.
Of days of old, like solid gold, so simple, we now sing.
These days we graze, we praise, but we don’t understand a thing.

Big Top Down

Our circus is bedeviled by old age.
An elephant fell dead while up on stage.
The dancing bears all have a limp.
A poor kid got slapped by our chimp.
Our giraffe’s cut back to decaf.
His neck is often at half staff.
The tiger’s never burning bright.
He won’t get up until twilight.
The snakes are fed rat protein shakes.
The parrot apes soon’s he awakes.
The horses are all donkeys painted white.
All headed for that fourth ring, out of sight.

Space Farce

Send the rich to space.
It’s their kind of place.
No vile madding crowd.
No critics allowed.
Billionaires in flight,
passing in the night.
Screw the earth and taxes.
They’re the new cash axis.
Those who have the deepest pockets
can return to upgrade rockets.
Grab some friends to flush out crew.
Crazy what the moneyed do.
See that light up by the dipper?
That’s Jeff Bezos, feeling chipper.
And the one that’s going slower?
Richard Branson, flying lower.
Elon Musk in Tesla X
says he’ll soon achieve apex.
Bill Gates better get one made,
or he’ll miss the space parade.
Walton family’s time draws near:
Walmart in the stratosphere.
Princes, dukes and shahs will fly
in the fast lanes of their sky.
Rumors have the monarchy
transported to Mars to see
if it would be too much hassle
to erect a big red castle.
Eventually, there’ll come the mob.
Collection is their proven job.
Protection from space disaster.
Payback by godfather’s blaster.
We, the meek, watch all unfold
from our gravity foothold,
working, always, for spare change,
watching, shocked, life rearrange.
Climate and war have no place
for elites in outer space.
And for those who have the bling:
colonies on Saturn’s ring.
Astronauts with silver spoons
buying up some bargain moons.
Those stranded on this big rock
wait now for an aftershock.

Coffin Nails

Low sodium and sugar free.

The two important facts for me.
No candies, cookies, cake, ice cream.
I’m stuck in a starvation dream.
No Mars, no Mounds, no Almond Joy.
Three Musketeers have lost this boy.
No devil dogs, Yoohoo or Coke.
It’s all a tasteless, funless joke.
My kingdom for potato chips!
But nay! No salt must pass these lips.
A pretzel would be tantalizing.
But there is no salt disguising.
All my thoughts of salted corn,
lifetime favorite, now food porn.
Pepper is the only spice
that I’ve not been warned of thrice.
Salt and sugar, S & S,
got me in this heartbeat mess.
Now I’m on the cutting edge,
out here on the isle of veg.
Raw foods, nothing boxed or canned.
Microwave meals mostly banned.
Plain old water, pure fruit juice.
Diet soda’s cutting loose.
Chemicals try hard to sweeten.
But you don’t know what you’re eatin’.
Taste bud life is now a bore,
since I’ve turned a herbivore.
I might as well chew fingernails.
And sometimes do, when all else fails.

Heartfelt

My heart is like an engine that just runs on stolen gas.

Doc says the result’s from years of eating like an ass.
I’ve quit the drink and cut way back on both sugar and salt.
Cuts the appetite when faced with cauliflower malt.
Fat free and low sodium are now my current curses.
Don’t wanna eat nothin’ that will send me back to nurses.
In five day’s I’m scheduled for an echocardiogram.
Had one just two weeks ago, but I don’t give a damn.
Life is now remarked by time I spend with the machines.
Next in line, a heart stress tester, Don’t know what that means.
They pull all the strings now and I must do what docs say.
Eating wrong could mean swan song: my only choice, obey.
So, yogurt, fruits and uncooked vegetables are now a snack.
I remember hospital and don’t want to go back.
Hard to give up booze, desserts and chips for protein drinks.
While getting old is difficult, the alternative stinks.

Warming to the Future

This wouldn’t have to happen if we raked our forest floors.

Now the Oregon/Cal border’s only good for cooking smores.
Fire waves and furnace heat are bouts of climate change.
It ‘s irony but adds a new light to ‘home on the range.’
And this time the inferno’s booked for a cross-country tour,
with temps well past one hundred, really too much to endure.
In the west, thirty five cities set temperature highs.
Portland scored a one-sixteen. Now that was a surprise.
Climate change affects the jet stream. We’re told that’s the reason.
Who knows how bad things will get in this year’s wildfire season?
And, if one thinks Canada’s a cooler place to be,
they just hit a record one-eighteen up in BC.
Rolling blackouts result from need of A/C and fan.
They’ve already happened two straight days now in Spokane.
We’ve still got two months of summer hot spots to endure.
Climate change has gone deranged. We’re hurtin’. That’s for sure.

Blues and the News 6/29

Police in Greece find a stolen Picasso.

And throw in an ought-five Mondrian.
Matt Gaetz, talks CRT; he’s such an asshole.
And Syrian air strikes link to Iran.
Walmart low priced insulin today’s perk.
Britney Spears, still all over the news.
Twenty found dead on a boat near Grand Turk.
But how can Brit end conservatorship blues?
Condo collapse was warned of years before.
South Africa’s ex-prez will go to jail.
Judge Thomas declares pot laws are a bore.
And Boss on Broadway shows life is for sale.

Weigh My Dust.

(Note from the author’s son: Below is a snippet from one of our email exchanges in June 2021. I felt compelled to share this mention of a title for a poem.)

Weight down to 179 today, aiming next at high school mark of 150. Then a zen-like 85. New poem title: “Weigh My Dust.”

Seven Deadly Zinns (Hospital poem 7)

Another long sword’s been unsheathed
against the darts of reason.
Again, we’ve wept. Once more we’ve grieved.
It comes round every season.
When power rules with sharpened tools,
there’ll always be some clashing.
The constant grate ‘tween kings and fools
will set the teeth to gnashing.
“Rise up with the tides,” we’ll chant,
as our followers battle our leaders.
And, when history’s made, either truth or charade,
the past’s granted a future through readers.
But, as long as one knows,
like the blush on a rose,
much of what we suppose leans on light.
There’ll be dream mixed with fact.
There’ll be lies left intact.
In the end, it’s all schemes, wrong and right.

A Brief Debris

The world is at a standstill.
There is no such thing as time.
Every inch into the modern world’s
considered blatant crime.
On the fulcrum of extinction,
we are balanced on a peak.
It may all end in a year, a month,
some even say next week.
With rains and floods and fires,
we’ll be ushered out the door.
While remaining time expires,
we live on the killing floor.
Just one small tilt toward an edge
could unloose great destruction.
There are no more bets left to hedge.
There’s no hint at instruction.
We could become a void in space,
a former, not a latter.
Alas, the poor old human race,
run down to anti-matter.

Extended Booking (Hospital poem 5)

I’ve been booked for a holiday in hell,
whose soundtrack is a constant ringing bell.
Each meal, exactly same, and sleep, a losing game.
If there’s an escape route, no one will tell.
The personnel ensure they’ll be your friend.
But, what they don’t explain: it will not end.
There’s no plan for return; it’s an eternal burn.
An S.O.S. is nothing you can send.
Goodbye world I’ve known most all my life.
So long home, hearth, kitty cats and wife.
It’s strange I’ll not be missed.
Seems I’ve been Judas-kissed.
And now I hold the wrong end of the knife.
My life’s become a film stuck on repeat,
an endless journey down a one-way street.
It’s home without a range.
The view will never change.
From living soul, I’ve now turned into meat.