Red Tin Noodles

He claims he wrote the very first
hillbilly constitution.
He got hit by a truck but
still awaits his restitution.
Born to rust and death by dust
are words in his preamble.
He lost a finger in a bet
then swore he’d never gamble.
He picks up tin cans by the road
and feeds them to his goats.
He never rode an airplane
but has paddled several boats.
He told his family sell his body
parts off when he dies.
He dreams of Daisy Duke at night.
He’s called Earl of the Flies.

Oh, one percent, we’re very sorry.
Your time has just gone down, in glory.
We’ve just agreed to feed the world
and, in return, no rockets hurled,
a peace over the very globe descended.
All gods agreed to stand in tow,
to watch a new plan bloom below,
and hope, alas, the greed of man has ended.

Don’t wed that fool.
He’s still in school.
You’ll work to pay his loan.
His head’s too big,
his eyes too small.
And listen to his tone.
He’s mister smart.
He’s mister right.
He’s got just every answer.
You’d think that
he has done something:
found god, cured aids or cancer.
So back it off
and slow it down.
Make sure that he’s the one.
You’ll be enchained
for all your life.
Now is the time to run.

Some things in life aren’t too pretty:
acid trips in Kansas City;
motorcades in downtown Dallas;
racks and shackles in the palace;
fast foods made with rats and roaches;
little league abusive coaches;
bible thumpers and their fandom;
drones that seem to kill at random;
mortars, missiles, bombs and rockets;
tortured limbs pulled out of sockets;
monsters, misers, cheaters, beaters;
grimy thugs with gats and heaters.
Some things in life aren’t too fair:
many people just don’t care.

The flying green ninja
will not harm the ground.
His tactics are all
ecologically sound.
He fights against fracking
and ozone pollution.
He champions thought
as the safest solution.
He doesn’t believe in
the throwing of stars.
And, if he must travel,
prefers hybrid cars.
The flying green ninja
is friend to the flower.
He shuns electricity
for solar power.

Put me on a government list.
Gotta get me some of this.
I got problems medical.
Need some prophethetical
Gotta smoke to get me well.
Government can go to hell.

Give my name to Uncle Sam.
Give me meds and let me jam.
Get me to the clinic, stat.
Doctor Feelgood, feelin’ phat.

Give me my own dose of weed.
I’ve been patient, but I need
Smoke, not syrup, for my cough.
Fill my script and get me off.

I be lovin’ medicare,
Feelin’ better everywhere.
Aches and pains just disappear.
Uncle Sam, got yours right here.
Light this blunt up with the flag.
I still got me half a bag.

The changes wrought by science
now overwhelm defiance.
There’s pills to cure all sorts of ills
and some insure compliance.
Amongst us pass both man and beast
as unsuspected clones.
They’re programmed well, to say the least,
and monitored by drones.
The food we eat is riddled now
with crap made in a lab.
Experiments cost crazy bucks,
but we pick up the tab.
So, mother nature’s lost the race,
crushed by an engineered embrace.
The world is now a "better" place.
Emoticon here: happy face.

Sometime’s life’s so good you have to scream,
even if in pain, glorious pain.
Moments aren’t so fleeting as they seem,
oft repeating, back and back again.
Dreams appear to stitch it all together.
Years pass, unpredictable as weather.
Then one day it all makes sense,
seeming like coincidence.
Memories amass a psychic quilt.
All your past comes into focus,
faith or death or hocus-pocus.
There’s the map of time your life has built.

I gave a boy a pirate toy;
he cut me with a sword.
I taught a little girl to whirl,
until she got too bored.
An old man walks on darker streets.
Increasingly, they narrow.
He wraps his bones in memory’s sheets
and listens to the marrow.
The children play, and hide all day,
behind the gravestones bending.
I wave goodbye. I’m off to die.
There is no happy ending.

(30)

If you should see a smile
upon a crocodile,
return to domicile:
they’re very volatile.

If I had money in my pocket,
I’d lend it on the spot,
like betting on a rocket
to hit a microdot.
Anything is possible
if you can beat the odds.
All it takes is good relations
with prevailing gods.
If I had money in my pocket,
I’d lay it ten-to-one
on a hunch the night this time
might overcome the sun.

The long legs of the law of physics
unravel like a chemical cuff.
Strands of conversation multiply
into equations of noise unfamiliar.
Arms of love encircle scientific concept.
Atoms split, molecules cool.
Genes are always shrinking by design.
Periodically, a table is turned,
revealing an element of surprise.
The soul of explosion is destitute,
always seeking flame.

A turtle has no moxie.
It’s probably too boxy.
Must be a living hell
encumbered by that shell.
To let one win a race
would bring lifelong disgrace.
To bolster tortoise pride,
one martyr rabbit died.
The chant of "slow and steady"
makes many snappers heady.
If for bunnies you may care,
don’t talk races to a hare.

Intervention. It just can’t
compensate for your intention.
The failures great
and just too long to mention.
I hope that I have garnered
your attention. The probables
defying all retention.
The touching points define
the line’s dimension.
And fair or foul
is only a contention.
Prevention is a negative
invention. We need a
constitutional convention.

Dog men bark in afternoon breezes,
fetching papers to train masters, tails awag
for justice. The bone of existence. They run
in packs, an army of homeless carnivores
clawing evening alleys for scrap iron and wire,
building small houses of waste and wood.
They snap and chew, growling stomachs,
barking backs, teeth bared, fur matted,
sleeping on cardboard. Until morning unleashes
the muzzle and they hunt again, howling for god.

Don’t blame me for the bees’ suicide.
I don’t control the planet: I’m just on for the ride.
The melting ice up north that’s going to make the planet neat
Insures there’ll be a channel some day where there’s now a street.

[CHORUS]

Am I sitting on your flower?
Have I taken all your power?
If I come back in an hour
Will you even be around?
If I pull the big alarm
can it still undo the harm?
Will the third time be the charm
or must we move to higher ground?

Scientists predict a run of great catastrophes.
Since there’ll be no underground, we’ll have to live in trees.
Fighting crows and vultures for our food will be a pain.
Sunburned fish will float by in the wake of acid rain.

{CHORUS}

Somewhere strangers sit and cultivate an inner peace.
Fatalists are hollering, "Remember Rome and Greece."
What’s abundant got redundant, then just disappeared.
With a bang we had to face the whimper that we feared.

(CHORUS)

We used to dress in chinos,now we’re just neutrinos,
floating in the cosmic wash of space.
Where used to be the earth, there’s just a blackened dearth,
a soul-less void that used to be our place.

*END* (or sing forever…

The Frank Sinatra hologram
is just an advertising scam.
He’ll drink with you and sing a song,
but bring your credit card along.
Faux Frank does not croon on the house.
In this sham rat pack, you’re the mouse.

Bats without balls
often cling to walls.
They can hear a pitch resound.
That’s why they hang upside down.
They can sense the stitches turn
in their radar fueled nocturne.
Bats, not balls, are taking flight
in the diamond moonlit night.