Don’t Goad No Toad

I may have killed a toad or two in my day.

Twenty thousand egg men got in my way.
Besides, they’ve got those warts,
and bulbous thighs, of sorts.
They’re not as smooth as frogs is all I can say.
Of Fowler’s Toad I really have no qualm.
The buttons down his back are just the bomb.
It’s lumpy , brown and round,
blending right in with the ground.
Its go-to call’s a sheepish, bleaty sound.
Don’t Goad No Toad is now the ode I write.
Just trying in my way to make things right.
I might not hang out with ’em
or give ’em toys to play.
But I’ll not toxify their ground.
I’ll stay out of their way.
Go on, toad. I will not goad you.

Why We Care for Baudelaire

Pray to Poe for stimulus.
Pray to God for apathy.
Well wishers and strap holders
insinuate in blankness,
attack in sleep’s deep hold
the webs of forlorn conscience,
the broken bridges of neglect.
Cross the heartland.
Hope to diet.
Ring lords’ relentless retaliation
have furrowed the maps of history
and seeded an underworld of screams.
Dreams broken and corroded
litter the caskets of imagination,
an endless world of tears that never dry.

Kilo Gramma

 

Abandoned old goats hover at the bus stop
and the food lines, waiting for some release.
The one who spreads the most relief
is known to all as Kilo Gramma.
She sells small pieces of the death puzzle,
which the whole damned village
seems to be assembling.
She spreads her wares, then disappears.
And soon, somewhere, another town’s found dying.

We Golden

Fifty years of marriage is like sixty years in jail.

There’s some time off for good behavior and love is the bail.
There were times came close to crimes and some I don’t remember.
But we shared a half century, new years to December.
Romance hits its warranty somewhere down the line.
But grapes ferment on vines of love to become wine divine.
I’m out on bail again tonight, a half a hundred gone.
But I can sleep in peace again. She’ll be there at the dawn.
Fifty-fifty are the odds. And odd folks we may be.
But we’ve played it cool and always aimed for harmony.
Next we play out number fifty one.
I would bet on us. We’re on a run.

May We Suggest Protest?

Thinking about signing a petition

calling for a desperate rendition,
overcoming our present condition,
living as we do in this perdition.
All of those who’ve signed it with a tear
tend on short notice to disappear.
Retribution is the soul of fear.
There are men who make it a career.
Protest has become an aberration
in the current version of the nation.
It can earn a brisk one-way vacation
to some remote desert changing station.
It has all come down to them and us.
Them ride Escalades, us ride the bus.
We are warned to never make a fuss
by our leaders, all omnivorous.
Thinking about putting down the pen,
sign it later, though I don’t know when,
or if I will get this chance again.
Feel like meat inside the lion’s den.

Thirsty Bird’s Lament

I was parched,
but from my perch
I saw a peach.
My body arched,
I made a lurch,
’twas out of reach.
And then my wise
old owl friend
let out a hoot,
reminding me
that I like water
more then fruit.

 

Whether Forecast

Russia’s orchestrating a new US civil war.

And we are recreating Archie Bunker.
On one side are gathering the immigrants and poor.
On the hill the rich protectors hunker.
There’s screaming and crying all over the channels.
The old and the cold are all pissing their flannels.
There’s armies that stand in the way.
And lord help the pregnant or gay.
Gun club rednecks’ new adventure:
hunting season on transgender.
The cities are teeming with patriotic spies.
 Left is right and down is up. The sky is filled with lies.

Dandy Dandelion

Is the dandelion a flower, herb or weed?
The answer could be strictly in the beholder’s eye.
One thing that’s for sure, it’s got a light and fuzzy seed.
Windy days can see a haze of dandies in the sky.
They’re natives of Eurasia, though they’ve made homes everywhere.
Unlike some other plants, they’re not invasive.
They work against erosion, mine for gold, give ground some air.
And one need only look: they’re not evasive.
They’ll just stand there in the grass when young and brightly yellow.
I observed my father dig them up and make them gone.
Seeing them pop up in spring would surely kill his mellow.
Though it wasn’t big, he thought the world of his damned lawn.
I especially liked it when they aged enough to fly,
would blow the seeds off, chanting them away.
In that respect, I guess, it was first plant to get me high.
The first of many, I can hear some say.

MAY 30th (redux)

A Frank Blair (1915) hologram
bleakly announces the death of Sun Ra (’93).
So opens the new Howard Hawks (1896) film,
a bizarre new take on the murder of Joan of Arc in 1431,
starring Keir Dullea (1936) and Michael J. Pollard (1936)
as a conjoined-twins version of the heroine, voiced by Mel Blanc (1908),
whose last vision is of Jimi Hendrix at Berkeley (1970),
the great lefty axeman portrayed by Stepin Fetchit (1892)
in a marvel of editing. An uncredited walk on by Clint Walker (1927)
as Turk Lown (1924) relieves tension and leads to the final gasp
as Gayle Sayers (1943) and Lydell Mitchell (1949) arise from the pyre
as Joan’s conjoined souls and are transplanted into the bodies of
Mike Sadek (1946) and Mike LaCoss (1956) as life’s eternal battery.
Somewhere in the mix, Max Carey dies (’76).
He is played, with lifelike precision, by John Felske (1942).
Joan’s song vocals by Idina Menzel (1971).
“Hymn To Sun Ra” by Ceelo Green (1974).
The movie is dedicated to the memory of Claude Pepper (d. ’89).

But I Never

I got a canker in Sri Lanka.

I got a blister on K-2.
I thought I might go mad
in old Islamabad.
But I never got sick of you.
You could insult me for an hour,
then make me laugh for two.
You’d join me in the shower
if I wore one shoe.
I got a thousand itches
and I hate me some bitches.
There’s one I really loathe in Timbuktu.
You served me whey and curds
and made me eat my words.
But I never got sick of you.
You put me through my paces,
hooked me up with braces,
made both bad and good dreams
all come true.
It busted up my pride
and made me hot inside.
But I never got sick of you.

More Chess Records

I moved my king two squares
and he fell off the world.
The queen did scream, of course.
She’d just had her hair curled.
It was a shocking scene of gravity,
a startling moment of depravity.
Bishops, knights in castles,
all pleaded with their pawns:
keep attackers off the middle,
manicure the lawns.
Of late I’ve seen no mate
and must assume a draw.
The board is square.
It is not fair.
Roundness should be law.

 

Blue Squared

The small window had a curtain
made of checkered blue pajamas.
Outside, in the verdant hills,
there lingered packs of llamas.
It might be South America,
it might be Mexico.
Judging by our only view,
perhaps we’d never know.
Day and night, from overhead,
we’d hear the airplanes roar.
We’d certainly run out to see them
if we had a door.
Inside were boxes of stored food
and other life provisions.
We kept time upon the wall
by making small incisions.
For days on end we stared out
at the land beyond the bars.
Never saw a sign of people,
buildings, roads or cars.
We had two cots, two chairs,
and one small bucket for our loo.
Our life came down to staring at
that square of checkered blue.

Wade in Hot Water

The body politic has gotten very sick.

It’s almost ripped from torsion.
There’s rape and incest on the right.
It might need an abortion.
But on the scene the zygote team
amasses for protection,
their only goal to save your soul
and give you a C-section.
Your fetus is a precious thing,
a gift from the creator.
They’ll drag you to term if you come
from north of the equator.
If you’re not American,
things take a different light.
Those right wingers, Jesus singers,
like their zygotes white.
Visions of babyhood dance in their heads,
futures in commerce and churches.
They see the forest through the trees.
But all of them have to be birches.

Excelsior Mollusk

I love to slug a baseball.
And I sometimes slug a drink.
But, slug, I do find your name odd,
for a shell-less gastropod.
Though I do like your Martian eyes
that hide away at each surprise.
And you can’t run away from crime,
leaving all that trailing slime.
You may have some ugly faces,
but at least fit in small spaces.
And finally let’s talk of your vertical leaps.
You slime up a wall and it gives me the creeps.
It’s not that I think you’re an aggressive devil,
I just wish that you couldn’t rise to my level.
And so I must crown you Excelsior slug.
Or Mollusk, if you like. Don’t ask for a hug.

Chuck the Huck

Sarah Sanders tells offhanders like they were the truth.
She has turned the white house pressroom to a lying booth.
Not to say she’s not okay, but from her ugly mouth,
lies just fly like cold crazed birds heading for the south.
When she’s caught up in her falsehoods, she is not abashed.
It’s the listeners to blame. It’s ‘fake news’ that’s trashed.
What to do about the zoo, the brutal press corps trap?
Don’t back down. She’s a clown. Call her on her crap.
One day, when the plug is pulled on this administration,
her dad Mike will be the spike for jokes about castration.

The Bear Unseen

Hibernation ends with spring,
rousing every living thing.
Tracks in snow quite near deck stairs
could be dog’s or could be bear’s.
It’s been shown that our bird treats
suffice for a bear’s first eats.
Take in feeders, calm the pooch,
nothing left Yogi can mooch.
Snow will melt, the rills will eddy.
Somewhere there’s a hungry teddy.
Sun will make the forest green.
Wildlife will enhance the scene.
Spring will lift us all again,
releasing the bear within.

The Rake’s Progress

A blower doesn’t make leaves leave.

Just parks them under different trees.
And like the ancient plow and harrow
has made antique the old wheelbarrow.
Leaves are piled into high rises,
leaving ground free for surprises.
Acorns which had once been hidden,
are now free to squirrels, unbidden.
Hidden mushroom, bulb or flower
need no longer, covered, cower.
Sure, they make a lot of noise.
Blowers are the big boys’ toys.

Ecological Suicide Hotline

On a warm night in mid June

by the darkness of new moon.
Some millions of outliers
took the air out of the tires.
When the drivers found out that
all their Goodyears had gone flat,
they responded with a cry,
“Those who did this have to die!”
But they’d always missed the point
that this world was not their joint.
What their cars did to the air
harmed the planet, wasn’t fair.
All the climate change deniers,
those who called scientists liars,
had to pause their thoughtless squawking,
faced now with the threat of walking.
“And the smokestacks will be next.
It’s a new day,” said the text.
Business based on growth and greed
must bow now to worldly need.
If the planet’s to survive,
we must be like bees in hive.
Old lifestyles of buy and waste
must be changed, and with some haste.
Without your cooperation,
planet earth goes on vacation.

Godzilla and Robin

He only breathed his fire
in situations dire.
He really was a gentle mate,
despite his movie mental state.
A monster can be less than fun
when people shoot him with a gun.
So, one day when he lumbered by,
he thought he heard a bird’s soft cry.
A robin baby in a nest
poked up its head at his behest.
“You seem a little hungry, fellow.”
(Godzilla on this day was mellow.)
The giant said he’d be right back
and went off looking for a snack.
Whenever he bent close to ground,
he’d make that loud Godzilla sound.
Just when his hunger needs got dire,
the little bird heard monster fire.
And here he came, chef of the day,
with steaming piles of worms flambe’.

Spring’s Protracted Uncertainty

When April’s rains make ground a bog,
some wet enough to float a log,
the peeking flowers give us hope,
we search the sky for sun, but, nope,
the clouds still need a bit more time;
from winter up to spring’s a climb.
The branches waving in the breeze
are summoning the leaves to trees.
Each day we wait for color’s bloom
to wash away grey season’s gloom.
We know one morning after dark
we’ll see the buds amongst the bark.
Soon trees will wear their fine green skirts,
and even some Hawaiian shirts.