Sunday, October 31, 2010

 

Two Wretches

Returning after flood,
quake or eruption, one,

bucket of possessions
over sunken shoulder.

Another escorted out by
guard, work-life in a box.

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

 

The Drama Queen

She requires understanding, he
understands, and plunges in dur-
ing hopeful Spring. With Summer

he has sorted the hysterical from
the legitimate and is quite smug
about it. But Fall brings a vibrancy

where nothing can be proven
small. By Winter he has numbed,

smiles incessantly, one
strangely content. Others

visit the Mary Kay bungalow
on La Dee Dah Lane, bringing
their toolkits. His man-cave

in the basement declared off-limits,
but no one cares about it anyway,

only the intriguing case exhausting
oxygen in the chintzy living room.

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Friday, October 29, 2010

 
Rocco and Worrywart


ROCCO
So, Wart, what sky is falling down this morning?

WART
The fuckin Republicans. They're running these reactionaries
who wanna take us back. And not to Reagan but...

ROCCO
I always thought he was a pretty good actor,
in movies and after.

WART
But to the period before Teddy Roosevelt!

ROCCO
That's when some of the bosses beat the workers.

WART
Yeah and when that happens, what will the Left do?

ROCCO
Well, they're most comfortable doing nothing, but in this case get guns.

WART
So they'll shoot each other?

ROCCO
Not a worry. Even after the bloodbath, the proportion'll remain the same.

WART
So, what should we do? You’re not encouraging!

ROCCO
In the old fashion liberal sense, nothing. Listen, if these poseurs gain office, they'll swing with the status quo.
Most of them'll even hire faggots for the staff.

WART
So, you’re saying, the more things change
the more they stay the same?

ROCCO
No, there are changes at the margin, thus Senator So and So
can pose as a champ at deadening hearings.

WART
Nothing really gets done, though.

ROCCO
Lots get done. As a matter of fact, if you watch these
hearings, he’ll first convince you he’s intelligent.
Pretty soon, he’ll use the most exotic word in his
vocabulary: Work! Congratulating the chair and
staff and himself on all the work accomplished.

WART
You sound as if the biggest firebrand becomes a mild functionary.

ROCCO
That's exactly right. Ever hear of a song called Big Noise From Winnetka?

--------
Rocco lives in voluble South Philadelphia.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

 
The Bank–a Vignette Set in the Near Past


-Jesus Christ, Charlie! We’re giving a million dollar
mortgage to a short-order cook!

-Hey, whatta we know? Maybe Aunt Tillie and Uncle Mark are helping out. Besides, we’ll peddle it to sharpies who’ll slice all these bastards up and sell ‘em to dense Indonesians.

-Uh huh? And what’ll we do when the shit eventually
hits the fan?

-Well in my case, I had no idea what my mortgage officers were up to!

-In the meantime?

-I’m taking Sweetie to The Lion King, and that new French Restaurant with real Frog waiters, who I’ll tip so generously they’ll be happy they left their stupid socialism.

-Sounds like a good time.

-If it is, I repeat next week with the wife.

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

 
Mickey Mantle

Early for the first day
and note his grace,

even in the mild
horsing around of
outfield practice.

So, for once, hype
true. In retirement,

glad-hander at Atlantic City.
Not long after that seedy
whore gussied up: like

pouring glitter in-
to a corpse’s armpit.

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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

 
Senator and Campaign Director


-Five hundred K is a hunk of change.

-Best thus far.

-Who are they?

-Americans For Adjustment.

-That doesn't tell me anything.

-Oh the usual suspects among pissed billionaires.

-What do they want?

-Evidently fog. Can't make head nor tail
from their website.

-Well, give me the Readers Digest version.

-They wanna go up everybody's ass. Midst flags.

-Achieving patriotic greatness by enforcing behavior.
The America of Convenience.

-Yeah, theirs.

-So, people give money for themselves? I’ve got to juggle
them with real people.

-What?

-Okay, real people is a fiction. Let me have some fun here!

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Monday, October 25, 2010

 
The Wealthy Buy the Election

to re-seize their
feudal rights.

The Middle Class
lives on its knees,
the better to climb.

Others into the toilet
and, once under the rim,

can’t see loyalists
touting freedom.

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

 


After Scorching Alleged Drug Damage
“Beat” Speaker Blanks



okay
shelves fall away

up there moreso
w/you guys just

from the wry debris
and junk

DNA can’t fish out anything
resembling thought it’s

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Saturday, October 23, 2010

 
Two Families


-I’ve spoken to Mrs Murphy.

-How Fifties! Mrs Murphy’s Boarding House.

-Not really. Just a pretty spacious bungalow with an empty
in-law apartment.

-I see Dad more as an intrepid captain! Pushing that shopping cart through billowing seas!

-Uh huh. Well, Mrs Murphy’ll take three hundred a month
to house him. Though Mr Murphy acidly insists, that it should
be a thousand! So, anyway, hundred from each of us, if...?.

-Have you even looked at the stock market lately?

-And Marcus wouldn’t allow me to give even a penny.
He’s, like, freedom!

-Well, perhaps we could work out a method whereby...?

...

-Well...anyway...that’s it, then? A shame you two
can’t help. But I’ll talk to her again.
And the social worker. May be other ways
to get him off the streets.

-We think he likes his life just the way it is!

-Yeah! Not really a question of money then, is it?


At The Murphy’s

-Well that’s family, isn’t it? Can you handle two hundred
on your own?

-I suppose. But Mr Murphy, now rapidly approaching us...!

-‘ll do what he’s told.

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Friday, October 22, 2010

 
Q What Happen To


In the roaring traffic's boom
In the silence of my lonely room ?

A Smothered by Be bop a loo bah she's my baby!
Be bop a loo bah I don’t mean maybe!

Q I mean where did it go after that?

A Nowhere. Nothing goes anywhere. It’s still here.
Everything mishmashing together!

Q Isn't that all too headachey? Noisy and busy?

A Can’t hear a word you’re saying!

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Thursday, October 21, 2010

 

Democracy In Action

Y heads for the local school
to pick between

a Democratic incompetent
and a Republican moron.

Easy, since the Dem
might sort a problem out

by chance while rooting
for lost keys, whereas

the Republican will do nothing
and never shut up about it.

(Y has boned up on the all but
incomprehensible ballot questions,

yet knows zip of the judges
he could keep or jettison.)

Polls favor the Republican but
within the margin of error.

Last commercials of moron suggest-
ing, therefore, the Democrat queer.

Most advisers prefer stopping there.
Decided thirst persists for a scream-
ing flagwaver, though, positively HD.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

 
My Team Loses

and I restage
incidents which

might have gone
another way.

But, get over it,
being a tepid 5 on
the Fan Scale. 10s

weep and gnash, forever
resembling let-
down patriots. Well,

the mouthier variety.
New Haven Arena once:
an old man refusing to rise

for National Anthem and
viciously menaced by
a trio of drunks. Is he res-

olute or ill? Fortunately, hockey
game flashes into life. Actually,

a drunk makes the best patriot.
In initial fervor.

After berating your pansy diffidence,
he suddenly crawls in apology,

then bawls over an unjust rain
of personal tragedies always re-

sponsibility of others. Must be,
at any rate, a parade some-

where. Or mercurials
anxious to start one.

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

 

To the Virulent Saving the Nation

If you succeed, then
History decrees we'll

soon enough
be saving it
from you.

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Monday, October 18, 2010

 

Re Mortgage Mess

With the infinite slice-dicing of loans,
nobody can figure out who owns
these crap residences. In Florida

an entrepreneur will haul a whole-
sale hundred or so off a bank’s hands.
Then sell one to you, benign John Q.

60% you save, you fast old dog, gets
eaten up by lawyers eventually.

Well, lot more than that actually
to the extent you realize
The American Dream

goes up your ass.

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Sunday, October 17, 2010

 

Honeymoon in Cairo in a Brand New Autogyro

Ah love songs!
More exotic by locale
& transportation mode.

Plus exigencies of rhyme
& rhythm. In a grim-
mer genre, Brother

Can You Spare a Nickel?
just doesn’t cut it.

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Saturday, October 16, 2010

 

Relying on PAX

I’m so tempted
to assume command
of my tiny fiscal estate,

but knowing myself
as one who shifts
halfwit strategies

for wildass hunches on
Yahoo Football, I
steer wide of investing

pros at Pax. I don’t know
where they are and what’s
doing there or why and,

probably, they don’t either,
that much, but at any rate,

always a baby
step, I’m, from
addictive ruin.

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Friday, October 15, 2010

 

Daring To Call It

Republicans refuse role
in governance, duty
under Constitution. So

mere treason or deep-
er moral treachery? At

any rate it's prospering,
according to polls.

Yet their sheep try rol-
ling for revolution. May be

acutely dammed by
direction it comes from.

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Thursday, October 14, 2010

 

Celebrity and Soon, More


FUTURE SENATOR
Trusted adviser!

ADVISER
Even for this new life?

FUTURE SENATOR
Hell yeah! Let's drink to it!

ADVISER
Lemonade, I hope.

FUTURE SENATOR
Yeah, since we've both ceased all forms of ingested shit.

ADVISER
I found out there's such a thing as morning.

FUTURE SENATOR
Me too. Pretty nice, mostly.

ADVISER
Depends on who you wake up with.

FUTURE SENATOR
Doesn't it?

ADVISER
Will you miss the variety?

FUTURE SENATOR
Huh?

ADVISER
Only present wife from now on.

FUTURE SENATOR
No Betty...or Butch?

ADVISER
Uh uh. Doesn't play in Peoria.

FUTURE SENATOR
What other way do you wanna put my balls in a vise?

ADVISER
You'll say what's pre-approved by me and the Party.

FUTURE SENATOR
Impotence to gain power.

ADVISER
And after also. The rest is illusion.

FUTURE SENATOR
I must be crazy to want the job.

ADVISER
Unparallel opportunities to steal.

FUTURE SENATOR
Check and double check. As you know, I pissed away just
about everything from the mega-celebrity days.

ADVISER
Everything but name recognition!

FUTURE SENATOR
Yeah, I got that, for better or for worse.

ADVISER
About half and half. They'll go after some of your quotes,
which I and my group have analyzed as one third inane,
one third incendiary, one third so vague as to indicate a cognitive disorder.

FUTURE SENATOR
Uh huh. Well I was flying or crashing when the
rabbit-ear reporters came around.

ADVISER
Our take is to laugh and then state that everybody grows up.
We're hoping like hell for a flood back home and you hoisting
the sandbags and pouring out the coffee for Real Americans.

FUTURE SENATOR
Hey I had enough of them! They stink, for one.

ADVISER
Just lodge this in what’s left of your brain:
they stink like money.

FUTURE SENATOR
Consider it lodged. It’ll fill the space where a
whole shelf just fell away.

ADVISER
And, of course, I was just kidding about stealing.

FUTURE SENATOR
About what?





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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

 

In Place


At the lesser Presbyterian in
Philadelphia, minister sure
to dismiss moments

early so that chauffeurs
could propel the Pierce-Arrows
and Duesenbergs to the Greater,

there to throb at the curb, merging
with the virile faith of Dr Therefore

marching through the open windows
until the final bell.

Christianity
once represented industry, masculinity

in America. Blood has been deposited
in less orderly places to keep it thus.

Continues to be.

Won’t you help?
Or do you feel

you’ve logically done enough?

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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

 
Branding the Banks

We Fucked Millions:
Trust Us!

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Monday, October 11, 2010

 
The Fiscals


TEA PARTY REPUBLICANS
We can't afford the future. And never will. Let all the infrastructure keep crumbling away and maybe we’ll
all of us learn our lesson!

OLD LINE REPUBLICANS
Hey! Have Treasury float humongous fuckin bond issues whilst we're in power! Borrow from China!

Grow the glorious deficit any which way! What’s the diff?
That way we get to name the roads and bridges and
airports for our conservative heroes.

Junior gets stuck with the bill? If he's smart he'll
borrow too. Keep it going until fiery rocks render
the Earth smoky-black, and nobody ever
ever really pays.

Totally fuckin beautiful!

DEMOCRATS
Fix the whole shitty infrastructure mess and
put our voters to work doing it! Soak the rich
to pay for everything. Tit for tat.

RADICAL DEMOCRATS
Level it! Start new with everyone wearing surplus
army outfits. Expropriate all standing hotels:
you shouldn’t have to screw outdoors.
THE NEW DECENCY! That’s the brand.

We want to start, like, immediately, but three
on our Executive Committee have lost their keys.

And the other members are not ready to issue
their report just yet--disagreements as to phrasing.

Some being acerbic revolutionaries, others,
florists of glowing syntax.

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Sunday, October 10, 2010

 

Reality TV

You're sent home.
Another dud, or fix
in for drama? Cagey

you, so we can't probe
your contract for fish-
y closing costs.




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Saturday, October 09, 2010

 

Negotiating Sequence


Single brownie on white plate. Aesthetic! Need none
but I'll eat half.
---
Oh well...pretty small anyway!
---
“You’re leaving me because I ate the last brownie?
I'll buy you a dozen! What do you mean, character?
You're being silly!”
---
To the lowest sports bar then! No women except
the raunchy waitresses.
–--
Enough of such overindulgence! Cotton mouth and
I'll still be queasy going into work Monday!
–--
Well, faint heart never won fair maiden.
So, bold thrust! But no Mr Nice Guy this time.
They like, demented as they are, the bad boys!
---
I talked to the DA's staff and thank God they see you as a
total bumbler, because together we found a sexy
misdemeanor you can plead guilty to. No jail time
and just a thumping fine and a lecture from the judge--
I heard it before and it's scathing! But your mother
and father needn't be present.

Just a bit of non-legal advice: Hang with the boys more.
Get some street-smarts.



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Friday, October 08, 2010

 

The Hypothetical Candidate


Say I run for Congress as
the anti-Walmart candidate?

That's taking on an entity
mightier than most nations.

As a sort of nation then, with
a domestic and foreign policy.

Its workers--excuse me, Associates!--
menaced by even thinner pay envelopes
should I succeed. The Chamber of Com-

merce exercising its greasy mouth &
money; China, of course, leading ally, coy-

ly chipping in to boost my adversary: True &
Thoroughly Dependable Pillsbury Doughboy.

Not legal, but where there's a way it
gets willed. I’m routed! Hammered
also by the Cross of Jesus–-in a land

of bribery, the religious
proving the easiest.

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Thursday, October 07, 2010

 

Radio Call-In Show

Caller’s premise: I am vast-
ly superior in breadth of
intellect. Yet fair, balanced.

Listen on ye vile bastards
and despair!



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Wednesday, October 06, 2010

 
Blogger

Usually blog politics but lately
mix it up. What the hell!
Same old same old:

Dem prez must rule w/o alienating
the left loonies, of which I’m one.

Repub, same for right loonies,
whom I viscerally despise, to
understate a natural issue.

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Tuesday, October 05, 2010

 
The Hyphen


When he was diagnosed with a disease containing a hyphen, interest grew within the hospital.

Physicians visited from departments which had no
hyphen diseases.

A group of doctors even came from Buffalo, asking him questions and texting their impression to each other.

They further asked him to recommend a strip joint
and he told them he knew only of Peaches Flambé,
a Gentlemen's Club, but only because Channel Six
had interviewed neighbors objecting to sex
in the parking lot.

This news inflamed them, so much that one apologized,
"It's all the snow."

It proved time for his cocktail of drugs which brought him diarrhea and hallucination. An hour later the nurse administered the countervailing dose bearing
constipation and headache.

One day they told him he could go home and he did.
He put the drugs in the freezer because throwing
them into the toilet would be a toxic, thus antisocial, act. Friends came by with herbal teas, a few of which
he actually liked.

A year later he went for tests and they told him
he no longer had hyphen disease.

He went back to his apartment feeling comme ci
comme ca.

Death would come someday, of course, checking
into a local motel and watching a football game
with the sound off.

Then leisurely walking over, knocking softly
because of the late hour.

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Monday, October 04, 2010

 

Ass Like the Back of a Hack

So like older
forms of jazz.

Syncopation im-
pinged by vast
circularities.

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Sunday, October 03, 2010

 
Friends Discuss Alien "Language"


-Language? laughs he. We never bothered! Transmitting, as it
does, imprecision, exaggeration, and lying.

Oh? counters yours truly to him or it, how about “Bring home
a dozen eggs, Honey.”?

-Well, enunciation of the Honey depends on mood or could
be mindless--like the one of blowsy old waitresses.

-You're splitting hairs. Or breaking balls--which is the
same thing to you.

-Anyway, after your trump card, he, of course, smiles.

-Yeah! So damn superior!

-Anyway, they have no language. A chip implant kicks
in when you talk to them and handles things automatically.
In their culture, thought-recipient, aka Honey, just shows
up with the eggs.

-Big deal! Someday we'll wipe that damn smile...

-Whoa! Wanna get both of us zapped?

-Baloney! Have you ever seen anyone...?

-It's not like old Buck Rogers movies. Dissolved into visual
marmalade. It’s one nano second you're here, the next...?

-Oh yeah? Well just maybe we’re smarter than...!

-We're not.

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Saturday, October 02, 2010

 
Twin Sisters

Our real Daddy travels.
We get many packages
wrapped by foreigners.

Our at-home Daddy is “Clint”
nicknamed after Eastwood. He

actually says GO AHEAD, MAKE
MY DAY! First line of The Moron's
Natural Anthem. Understood that

Mom keeps him for the bed-thrust.
Viagra adds to it, presumably. They

worry about us as sexual beings
but art's our lust. Mom, in one
of her cogent moments bought us
memberships in the town art center.

We’re there late hours, so
Clint picks us up to shield

against the army of perverts
patrolling its borders. Sisters,

ordinarily reserved, babble all
the way home like we-we piggies!

Also, throw in a lot of sleazy expressions
and sexy hints for Clint and Mom to con-
duct a CIA analysis over kitchen espressos.

So, off to college next year!
And different ones. Hey, we

tweeted before it was possible--
don't have to live together. Clint

and Mom toyed with boutiquey ones.
Dad thought Ivy, but we convinced
him and his money that huge state

universities with thumping art departments
would make it in our identical eyes. Been

lectured as to large, licentious temptation
there, vice multitudinous! Oh well, be nice

to have boyfriends. If they
don’t get in the way.




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Friday, October 01, 2010

 
The Show


INTERLOCUTOR
In a way, Hamlet can be seen as conflicted
between the right way and the political.

REPUBLICAN
The political is always the right way. No pun. Its...

DEMOCRAT
I'm sorry, lost the thread. It's...Shakespeare is it?

REPUBLICAN
Its corollary is pay to play--as I was saying when I was
foggily interrupted.

INTERLOCUTOR
Can political and right be in consonance, or forever at odds?

DEMOCRAT
Odds? A ballgame?

REPUBLICAN
Won’t pick the Raiders again! They never beat the spread!

DEMOCRAT
Can we get back to--?

INTERLOCUTOR
We're out of time but you two have genuinely given the
audience much to chew over.

REPUBLICAN
Indeed!

DEMOCRAT
Whatever.

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